a shield that was too late in its protective endeavor. The words being spoken were so soft, Blay couldn’t hear them properly, but he didn’t need to know the precise syllables. The tone was resonantly mournful, and that was the only translation required.
Unable to hang back anymore—even if that was what Qhuinn might have wanted—Blay went forward and knelt down beside his mate. Placing his hand on that back, he made slow circles—
Oh . . . God. The face.
Luchas’s face.
The features were exactly as they had recently been, but as if death would have rearranged them?
Qhuinn straightened some and sniffled. As Blay offered the handkerchief, it was accepted and there was a quick mop-up.
“We need to call—” Qhuinn cleared his throat and returned the handkerchief. “I need help. To move him.”
“May I call the Brothers?”
“Yeah. Maybe they can bring those snowmobiles.” Qhuinn glanced around. “How will they know where we are?”
“We’re not that far.”
Qhuinn looked down at Luchas. “Oh. Right. Of course he couldn’t have . . . made it very long.”
Backing off a little, Blay got out his phone and stared at the thing. It was a moment before he could remember how to work it, his brain seizing up from everything. But then the Samsung was at his ear and ringing.
Who had he called, he wondered—
“What do you need?”
Ah, Vishous. Of course. Because the Brother would know how to use the GPS search function on the phones, just in case they were farther away from the escape hatch than Blay had thought—
“Transport,” he said roughly. “We need to bring Luchas back home.”
“What . . . wait, is he alive?”
Blay looked over at Qhuinn. With incredible tenderness, he had taken his brother’s frozen hand into his own, the ice-cold, mangled digits lying against a warm and vital palm.
“No. He’s not.”
There was a pause. Then V’s voice resumed its normal clipped tones. “I’m coming right now. You’re only a hundred yards out.”
Almost immediately, there was a flare of headlights in the darkness and the sound of a vehicle approaching. And that wasn’t all. Ghostly figures materialized around the periphery, the Brothers and the other fighters standing among the trees, silent sentries in the subzero darkness.
As V got closer, the headlights were canned, and then the Tahoe halted about twenty feet away.
The Brother got out and just stared for a moment, as if he were catching up on the inexplicable math—and the incomprehensible tragedy.
Qhuinn looked up. “My brother has died.”
V nodded grimly. “Yes, he has, son. I am very sorry.”
“He went out into the storm last night.”
There was a sad pause. “I have a vehicle here, Qhuinn. Would you like to carry him into the back?”
“I would.”
The words were stilted. Formal.
“Okay.”
After which, no one moved. No one spoke. Then again, there was no hurry, and it was all up to Qhuinn. Yet he seemed frozen.
Blay put his hand on his mate’s shoulder. “Let’s gather him up, shall we?”
“Okay.”
Qhuinn leaned back down, stretching his arms toward the upper torso and down to the thighs. But when he went to push his hands under the remains, he clearly met resistance, the ice and snow fighting the removal of that which it had claimed.
“We can help,” Blay said as he motioned to Vishous. “We’ll just—”
“No.” Qhuinn put his palms out. “No.”
But instead of struggling further to pick up his brother, the male sat back on his heels and stared at the folds of the black robe.
“This is where he chose to die. He chose this.”
The words were not a condemnation. They were a lonely statement of fact. And maybe a first attempt to try on the reality of what had happened.
Qhuinn looked up, his blue and green eyes searching for, and finding, Blay’s stare. “I’m just trying to figure out how to honor a choice that has broken my heart.”
As the cold wind wandered through the panorama of grief, Blay felt more powerless than he had in his entire life.
“Whatever you want to do,” he said softly, “we support you.”
Qhuinn was lost, but he wasn’t ungrounded in the fact that his brother’s remains were frozen to the snow. If he wanted to move Luchas, he was going to have to get rough with that body that had been so badly broken. He was going to have to shove and push, yank and pull—and for reasons that he wasn’t clear on, he feared the sound of dead limbs disengaging from the ice.
Then again, was the why of that really such a fucking mystery?