Wrath, son of Wrath, should not be bowing under the weight that was laid upon him. He should be shouldering it. That was what members of the Brotherhood did. That was what a king did. That was what a male of worth did. He should be bearing up under the burden, rising above the pain and the fear, standing strong not just for those he loved, but for himself.
Instead, he was falling down the stairs like a drunk.
He cleared his throat. And had to clear it once more. "I need...I need to go talk to someone."
"Okay," Beth said. "We can bring whoever it is to you-"
"No, I'll get there by myself. If you'll excuse me." He stood up and stepped forward...right into the coffee table. Biting back a curse as he rubbed his shin, he said, "Would you just leave me here? Please."
"May I..." Beth's voice broke. "May I clean up your face?"
Absently, he wiped his cheek and felt wetness. Blood. He was still bleeding. "It's fine. I'm okay."
There was a soft shuffle as the two females walked over to the door, then the click of the lock as one of them turned the handle.
"I love you, Beth," Wrath said quickly.
"I love you, too."
"It's...going to be all right."
With another click, the door shut back into place.
Wrath sat down on the floor right where he was, because he didn't trust himself to circumnavigate the library to get in a better position. As he settled in, the crackle from the fire gave him some frame of reference...and then he realized he could picture the room in his mind.
If he reached out to the right...yup. His hand brushed against one of the smooth legs of the table by the sofa. He rode the length up to the boxy bottom and patted across the surface of the thing to find...yes, the coasters Fritz kept stacked neatly there. And a small leather book...and the lamp base.
This was comforting. In some strange way, he had felt as if the world had disappeared just because he couldn't see it. But in fact everything was all there still.
Closing his eyes, he sent out a request.
It was a long while before it was responded to, a long, long while before he was spirited away and found himself standing on a hard floor, beside a fountain that chattered softly. He had wondered if he would be blind here on the Other Side as well, and he was. Still, as with the layout of the library, he knew what the place looked like, even if he couldn't see it. Over there to the right was a tree full of chirping birds, and in front of him, past the sprinkling fountain, would be the loggia with the columns that was part of the Scribe Virgin's private quarters.
"Wrath, son of Wrath." He did not hear the mother of the race approach, but then she levitated around such that her black robes never touched whatever floor was beneath her. "You have come unto me for what purpose."
She knew damn well why he was here, and he wasn't playing her game anymore. "I want to know if you did this to me."
The birds fell silent, as if shocked by his temerity.
"Did what to you." Her voice sounded the same as it had when she'd appeared at the Tomb with Vishous: distant and disinterested. Which kinda pissed a guy off when he was having trouble making it down his own stairs.
"My f**king sight. Did you take it away from me because I went out to fight?" He ripped his wraparounds off his face and tossed them across the slick floor. "Did you do this to me."
In days gone by she would have lashed him until he bled for that kind of insubordination, and as he waited to see what came at him, he almost hoped she licked his ass with a lightning bolt.
There was no smiting, however. "What was going to be was going to be. Your fighting had nothing to do with your loss of sight, and neither did I. Now go back to your world and leave me to mine."
He knew she had turned away, because her voice faded as she headed off in the opposite direction.
Wrath frowned. He'd come expecting a fight, and he wanted one. Instead? He got nothing to engage with, not even a row over his deliberate disrespect.
The radical shift in paradigm was so stark, for a moment he forgot all about his blindness. "What is wrong with you?"
He got no answer, just a door shutting softly.
In the Scribe Virgin's absence, the birds stayed quiet, the delicate sound of falling water all that grounded him. Until someone else approached.
On instinct, he turned to the footfalls and assumed his fighting stance, surprised to find that he wasn't as defenseless as he'd thought. In the absence of sight, his hearing filled out the picture that was no longer created by his eyes: He knew where the person was by the rustle of their robing and an odd click, click, click and...shit, he could even hear their heartbeat.
Strong. Steady.
What was a male doing here?
"Wrath, son of Wrath." Not a male voice. A female one. And yet the impression he had was masculine. Or maybe it was just powerful?
"Who are you?" he demanded.
"Payne."
"Who?"
"Doesn't matter. Tell me something, you plan on doing anything with those fists? Or are you just going to stand there?"
He dropped his arms immediately, as it was entirely inappropriate to raise a hand to a female-
The uppercut slammed into his jaw so hard, it whipped his head and shoulders around. Stunned, more out of surprise than pain, he fought to regain his balance. The second he did, there was a whizzing sound and he was pounded again, the next blow catching him under his jaw and kicking his skull back.
That was all she got in with the clean shots, though. His defensive instincts and his years of training responded even though he couldn't see anything, his hearing functioning as his eyes, telling him where things like arms and legs were. He grabbed a surprisingly thin wrist and wrenched the female around-
Her heel made hard contact with his shin, the pain spearing up his leg and pissing him off as something like a rope swung into his face. He grabbed it and hoped it was a braid attached to the female's-
Yanking it hard, he felt her body torque backward. Yup, attached to her head. Perfect.
Getting her off-kilter was easy, but man, she was a strong motherfucker. With only one leg supporting her weight, she managed to jump and spin, clipping him in the shoulder with her knee.
He heard her land and start to scramble, but he kept a hold on her hair, reining her in. She was like water, though, always fluid, always moving, hitting him time and time again until he was forced to manhandle her onto the ground and pin her down.
It was a case of brute strength winning out over grace.
Panting, he looked into a face he couldn't see. "What the f**k is your problem?"
"I'm bored." With that, she head-butted him right in the goddamn nose.
Pain made him feel like he was on a merry-go-round, his hold briefly lessening. Which was all she needed to get free again. Now he was the one on the bottom, her forearm cranked around his throat and pulling back so hard, she must have had a grip on her wrist for greater leverage.
Wrath strained to get air down into his lungs. Holy shit, she was going to kill him if she kept this up. She really was.
Deep within himself, deep down into his very marrow, deep into the double helixes of his DNA, the response came. He was not going to die here and now. No f**king way. He was a survivor. He was a fighter. And whoever this bitch was, she was not going to issue him his ticket to the Fade.
Wrath let out a war cry in spite of the iron bar across his neck, and moved so fast he had no idea what he did. All he knew was that a split second later, the female was facedown on the marble with both her arms twisted up behind her back.
For absolutely no reason, he thought of however many nights ago, when he'd popped the arms off that lesser in the alley before he'd killed the f**ker.
He was going to do exactly the same to her-
The laughter rippling up from underneath him was what stopped him. The female...was laughing. And not like someone who'd lost her mind. She was honestly having a good time, even though she must have known she was about to pass out from the kind of pain he was going to inflict on her.
Wrath loosened his hold only slightly. "You are a sick bitch, you know that?"
Her hard body quaked under his as she kept on laughing. "I know."
"If I let you go, are we going to just end up here again?"
"Maybe. Maybe not."
Strange, but he kind of liked those odds, and after a moment, he released her as he would have a stallion with a bad temper: quickly and with a fast out-of-the-way on his part. As he planted his feet, he was ready for her to come at him again, and sort of hoping she did.