Montague Von Vexx's Arc

Chapter 8 of 11

Alastair did not speak. He set the decanter down, walked past Montague, and pushed open the doors to the night air. Montague followed, the doll's stitched heart still burning behind his eyes. Wisteria stayed in the doorway, watching them go. Alastair stopped beside a tall pine, its branches scorched but still standing. He stood very still on the hollow remains of an old burned log, one hand flat against the bark. His face had gone past anger into something colder. Montague knew that look. He had seen it once before, two centuries ago, the night before everything ended. "Alastair." Montague closed the distance. "Don't. Not tonight. Not alone." Alastair's fingers pressed into the charred wood. "He took her," Alastair said. Quiet. Final. "He is still breathing." Montague stepped onto the log beside him and gripped his brother's wrist. "Then we breathe with him a little longer. Long enough to do it right. Long enough that I am there too." Alastair did not pull away. He did not agree either. But after a long moment, his hand left the bark and closed around Montague's. "Inside," he said. "We plan. Together." The stillness broke. Montague held on, and for the first time in two hundred years, his brother let him.