Shorefall (The Founders Trilogy #2) - Robert Jackson Bennett Page 0,198

pieces. She took another step back, alarmed.

said a voice in his mind.

More memories tumbled into his thoughts.

A house burning in the plantations, and the night filled with screams.

A golden key chattering in his ear, going on and on about a scrived lamp shaking back and forth on a tabletop nearby, and why he thought that meant someone was making love next to it.

Orso Ignacio standing over his shoulder, watching as he scrawled sigil after sigil upon a bronze plate, and muttering, “I ought to break your damned hands, girl. If I don’t, you’ll have my job in a month…”

He struggled to move forward.

These are…not mine. This is not who I am…

Everything seemed to be spinning. It was like he was being torn apart and put back together, over and over and over again.

He felt his left hand ache, and he knew there was a nail buried in its palm. He watched himself staring into his own face, his eyes filled with murderous wrath. He felt the grief and shame and sorrow in his heart at the sight of himself, knowing that he had been unable to fix himself, unable to give to Gregor Dandolo what he had stolen for himself…

What is this?

He took another step, bellowing in rage and confusion.

He knew he had to kill the girl. He had to. Those were his commands.

But his commands were now very…confused. For he began to suspect that, impossibly, he was this person who had stepped into the room. He was her, along with himself.

He screamed aloud as the commands bickered in his mind, unable to resolve who he was, who had entered, who he had to kill…

whispered a woman’s voice in his mind.

He fell to his knees.

she whispered—yet he also knew it was his own voice.

His commands howled that no, no, this was not so—he was Gregor Dandolo, he was the child from the wreckage, the boy resurrected, and he bore these commands, and these commands insisted he kill this girl for entering this room right now, instantly, immediately…

whispered a woman’s voice.

And then he remembered.

He saw himself. He remembered himself, bound up in a black, bloodied lorica, lying on the floor of a ruined marble office, his bolt caster raised—and yet there were tears in his eyes, and he was whispering, “I didn’t want to be this anymore, Sancia…”

Gregor screamed as he crawled toward the girl at the door.

whispered the woman’s voice,

The memories burst forth.

His mother, weeping where she sat on the floor, her face bloody.

His brother smiling at him, saying—You’re getting pretty tall, little brother!

The furious shouts of his father, echoing through the countless passageways of the estate house.

And then the carriage spinning, and the tinkle of glass, and his brother whimpering in the darkness, saying—Gregor? Gregor, are you near?

The boy’s hand trembling in the dark, reaching for him.

Come to me, please…I love you, I love you, I love you…

And yet he had not. He had recoiled from his brother’s reach, there in the broken carriage.

Gregor screamed as he crawled onward, his sword scraping across the ballroom floor.

I was not there for him, he thought.

He hauled himself forward, one hand red and slick with his mother’s blood.

My brother was alone during his death, he thought, just as I have been for all of mine.

Yet when he looked up at the girl he saw she was waiting for him, one hand extended, and she was weeping, and he knew she was weeping for him.

said the voice in his mind.

He growled, trying to summon the will to raise