This was all so terrible. All of it.
And something told him the worst was yet to come.
“Tell me when,” V whispered.
“Now,” Qhuinn heard himself say.
“You need to get back.”
“No. I’m not leaving him.”
“You’re going to move back a foot, son, or I’m not going any closer to him with this thing.”
There was a subtle pull on his shoulder, and Qhuinn followed Blay’s gentle pressure, easing over so he was on his butt, instead of his knees.
And that was when something truly awful occurred to him.
“He’s already in the Fade, right?” Qhuinn looked at V. “He got there okay, didn’t he?”
There was that rumor about suicide, that whispered, so-called rule that if you took your own life, you were barred from the Fade. But surely…
“Vishous. He’s there, right.”
V’s eyes lowered. “He was a right and just male, horribly treated by fate.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“That’s the best I can do.”
Qhuinn rubbed his face. “Let’s just do this.”
If he got caught up in the unfairness of it all right now, he was going to fucking explode.
Vishous, birthed son of the Scribe Virgin, nodded. And then he slowly lowered the terrifying power that somehow resided within his flesh.
Just before contact was made, Qhuinn had a spasm of doubt, of panic. He almost called it all off—but what had changed? Where else would they take Luchas?
“Oh, God…” Qhuinn breathed. “Oh, God, oh—”
The flare of light was intense, the release of energy so great that Qhuinn was thrown into Blay, the pair of them landing in the snow on a sprawl. And he had expected the final act of his blooded brother’s life to last awhile, but it was over… within seconds. Or at least that’s what it seemed.
There wasn’t even a scent. He’d braced himself to smell burning flesh and hair, but there was nothing of that sort and not because the wind had changed directions.
As the illumination started to fade, Qhuinn lifted his arm from the shield it had become over his face—he hadn’t even been aware of raising it.
There was nothing left.
In the spot where Luchas had lain, there was no robe, no cane, no prosthesis. There was no frozen body, no face or hands or foot. There was not a torso or a lower body.
Gone, gone, gone.
In the place of his brother, there was a precise outline of the position Luchas had died in, the exact contours of the limbs and the head and the robe represented in a bare spot with no snow or pine needles, even.
Just bald dirt.
Qhuinn extended his trembling hand over the place where the immolation had occurred. Curls of smoke rose up, riding currents of heat that dissipated quickly.
Until it was all stone cold.