The Burning White (Lightbringer #5) - Brent Weeks Page 0,383

that I was afraid they were all dead or that I’d killed them. I couldn’t even think that far ahead. I only knew I was lonely. After all that? After this conflagration of magic the likes of which no one had ever seen or even heard of? No one cared if some guy on the battlefield was naked and his hair didn’t look right or some shit. But I was cold, and I saw Gavin had clothes and there—at the end of the fucking world!—it made me remember this one time when we were kids.

“We’d stopped on one of the little islands my father owned on our way between Rath and Big Jasper and we snuck out late one night and hiked up the mountain to look for this old ruin—which we’d been forbidden to do, of course. And we’d been going for hours and there was a sudden storm, and I’d left my cloak back at my room, and I thought Gavin was going to tell me what an idiot I was. He’d even reminded me to bring it. But instead of mocking me or hitting me—” Gavin’s voice cracked suddenly. He had to clear his throat hard. “Instead Gavin . . . Gavin hugged me under one arm and gave me his cloak. He said he was too hot. The damn liar. Asked me if I’d wear it home for him.”

Gavin cleared his throat, irritated. “He didn’t deserve—I mean, at Sundered Rock I was naked and stupidly embarrassed about it and he had clothes and was dead, and I, I just took them. It seemed really practical, you know? He didn’t need ’em, right? But I looked back at it, and I stripped the dead like a looter. I stripped my brother’s corpse like a grave robber. It was like I’d planned, you know, with Corvan. I mean, it was one possible outcome of like six: set a bunch of smoky red luxin on fire, come out as Gavin, take charge of his armies and pretend to be him . . . I’ve never had a plan go so flawlessly and so poorly.

“After that I used black luxin again, on purpose. To wipe out some memories. And I . . . what I was left with was my hero worship for my big brother. Like remembering that night in the storm. I thought he was the perfect Prism, that I could never measure up to him. I tried to be what I thought he’d been. And in the last couple years . . . I’ve seen and started to remember all the terrible shit my brother did. His cruelty. His meanness and fear. Some of it excusable because he was a child and scared and . . . and some of it not, not at all, regardless. And you know, learning about who he really was—seeing the truth about him? It’s been like losing him all over again. My family was shit, and I was shit, but I had a hero, and then I lost him for a second time. He wasn’t ever who I’d thought he was. He did some awful, awful shit I can never forgive him for. But at the same time . . . he wasn’t all bad. He was still the big brother who gave me his cloak.”

Gavin had to swallow again.

“So I guess, you know, I guess I miss my big brother. And I miss Sevastian. And I miss my mother, who never let me in all the way, even though she loved me. I trusted her and she had my back, but she didn’t trust me. Not with the truth. She was ashamed, I guess. And I miss my father, or the man he was before all this . . . I miss the man he should’ve become. The grandfather he should’ve been to Kip. I miss Kip, and the father I should’ve become for him. I miss all the things I cost me. I miss Karris, and the great years I should’ve had with her. I miss Corvan, who was my best friend, and who I abandoned. I . . . shit. I miss things that never were and mourn things that ought to have been. Ridiculous, huh? It doesn’t matter now. It’s too late.”

Gavin tried to shake it off, finally turning to look at the old prophet with a lopsided half grin. “So, should I complain some more about my unhappy decades as the richest, most powerful and admired