to suddenly come down here and pick up where I left off? Or was it to make Daddy proud?” I sneered making him growl back,
“Fuck that and fuck you! I wasn't lying when I told you where my loyalties lay, brother!” He yanked hard on his chains making them rattle enough that some of the stone cracked. This forced me to heal the stone so he wouldn’t break free, for in that moment he looked more like a wild beast than a man of Persian decent, with his black hair loose and wild around his snarling features because the same demonic ink of power stained our veins, something that now showed under the skin around his eyes.
Oh, yes, he was killing mad… and he wasn’t the only one.
“Ah, yes, that loyalty to the blood you share, not the blood that created you,” I said remembering these words being spoken not long ago and not only believing them, but at the time finding comfort in them too.
“You hiss out that vow like my loyalty is an insult to you, yet it is me you insult! As if you have found proof of it never existing.” I laughed at that and held out my hand in a gesture to point out the obvious as to where he was now.
“You are going to regret this,” he snarled back at me through gritted teeth.
“I already do,” I threw back at him, making him visibly jerk.
“So that is it then, you’re truly in the depths of your dark soul believing the I was the one betraying you all this time?” At this I couldn't stand it and looked away, tearing my eyes from my guilt and pain.
“I see even now the doubt you have, brother, for if that is the case then why be so rash into making the decision…”
“You think this decision is being made lightly, as if it is something that I am rushing into at just a mere whim!” I shouted back in disbelief!
“So, you do this to prove strength to our people, is that it?”
“You know the longer I keep you here without action is every minute our fucking kingdom will consider it as weakness! I do not need another fucking war to battle, not when I will soon need them to fight by my side, not adding to those against me!”
“So quickly it has turned from us into you,” he said as if this saddened him to think that I was actually facing this alone. I took a deep breath, hating how my love for him was manipulating me into taking action. No, I needed to focus on what reasons brought him here in the first place, which was why I reminded him of his own actions and my last chance at a potential proof we all needed.
“I saw you there, I looked into her memories and I saw a portal being created at the mouth of Tartarus, to where the harpies lair was found. The eye was there and so were you!”
“That's impossible!” he shouted back at me as if he truly believed it.
“I thought so too until I saw it for myself!.”
“Then what you saw was false, because I was never there!” I growled low and pushed,
“You’re calling me a liar!?” He took a deep breath as if he needed the calm before first applying logic.
“So, you saw my face, that is what you're telling me, you actually saw my face there!?” I thought on this a moment looking back through Nero’s memories, and that was the one part that had me doubting this whole thing.
I had never seen his face.
“My Chosen One spoke of you, she told the witch, Nero, that my brother was the traitor!”
“Then we both have another brother we did not know about, for I can assure you it wasn’t me!”
“Now, that would be convenient,” I commented sarcastically, which is when he made a viable point of his own,
“Yes, it would, for ask yourself, brother, how would she have known that I was your brother, for correct me if I am wrong, but I think I would have remembered you introducing me as such!” This question was thrown back at me and I had to say, it was one that had plagued me all night.
Because I too had wondered how my Chosen One had found out that Dariush was my brother. But then without all of the gaps to fill in during her time spent at the harpies’ lair, then I honestly didn’t know