Tarnished Embers: A Dark Stepbrother Fairytale Retelling (Dark Retellings)
Tarnished Embers: Chapter 16

My brother and I watch Ember as she sleeps, holding her soft body close to ours and breathing in her scent. I can still taste her skin on my tongue from our lovemaking earlier, the musk that I never want to forget. Fuck, I was worried that we were losing her for a moment; she was so lost to her grief that we had to keep her sedated for four fucking days. I hated every minute of seeing her in pain, and being unable to rip it out of her has been one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.

“What do we do now?” I murmur into the darkness, my palm gliding down her side. The sun has set since we came to bed with her, and Prince and Cas went to sort some shit out, giving her more time before she has to face it all.

My arms tighten around her, pulling her even closer to me, her warmth filling my very soul. Kit grumbles then shuffles until he’s pressed against her back again.

“I don’t know,” he admits softly, his hand stroking down her arm. She sighs, and I could live off that sound, the contentment in it has my chest aching.

“Do you think we’ll have to…” I trail off, bile filling the back of my throat at having to go back to that. Back to the life we had before Ember came into it.

“I don’t know,” Kit grits out quietly, frustration lacing his tone, then heaving a sigh, he brushes a gentle kiss on Ember’s head. “Her dad was pretty loaded, so we should be alright.” He doesn’t sound convinced, and if I’m being truthful, neither am I. Odette spends money like it’s going out of fashion, and even we’ve gotten accustomed to a certain lifestyle, although Kit is right, Ember and her dad are—were—rich as fuck.

“I’m not sure I can after Ember,” I tell him, my voice barely a breath in the darkness. I can’t say what we’ve done, can’t let the disgust sink in any more than it already has. It coats me like a second skin, never washing away no matter how hard I scrub. Since meeting our new sister, the oppressive feeling of being suffocated by it has lessened, and I’d hoped that one day, I’d be able to take a full breath and not taste loathing.

“Me neither,” Kit answers, and we stay quiet, digesting what this means.

“We may not have a choice.”

And there it is, the thing that I’m most terrified about. It’s not like it was before, where it was just us and our rapidly growing aversion to the parties. The idea of Ember finding out, of hurting her in that way… My stomach churns, and I bury my face in her hair, breathing her in to calm my racing heartbeat.

Kit breathes out heavily. “Don’t worry about it now, Oct. We don’t even know if it will be something we’ll have to do again.”

But my dry mouth and constricted throat won’t listen, and as we go back to silence, I can’t help wondering what will happen next. I may have only known Ember in real life for less than two weeks, but I know I can’t be without her. The last four days have shown me that. We almost went out of our goddamn minds.

She’s essential to me, to us, as much as the air that fills our lungs.

And I won’t let Odette take that away.

PRINCE

Sick.

I feel fucking sick to my stomach, and no amount of deep breathing can calm the roiling of the organ. History is repeating itself, for a third time, and the churning in my gut tells me that something is not right. It hasn’t been right for a long fucking time and I’ve been too cowardly to look too closely.

I stare at the screen on my laptop, at the weather reports from the Cayman Islands for the past three weeks, including the day that Richard Everly went fishing.

No reported swells or unusual sea activity aside from the one incident that took Ember’s dad’s life. The boat returned with no damage and all the rest of the crew were fine.

My phone vibrates on the desk next to me, and seeing the caller ID, I pick it up and bring it to my ear.

“Thank you for returning my call. I hear you can unearth secrets that people want to keep buried?” I say into the device, my tone calm and collected even though my pulse is thundering in my ears.

“We can do anything, Prince, or should I say, Eugene Brown. The Fallen have unlimited reach. It just depends on if you can pay the price.”

A favour. That’s the price for the help of The Fallen. You will owe them a favour that they will collect at the time and place of their choosing. It could be to gather intel. It could be murder.

I heave a heavy sigh, looking out into the darkness of the night, the moon shining bright as I think about how close we came to losing her, our sister.

Our soulmate.

“You have yourself a deal, Lucifer. We’ll owe you whatever you need. In exchange—”

“In exchange, we will find out whether your mother, one Odette Everly, killed Richard Everly, Brant Johnson, and Michael Scott.”

Then the line goes dead. Hearing someone say my suspicions out loud is like a fist to the gut, my eyes going up, looking heavenward as a small measure of relief makes my muscles weak, but at the same time, I can’t breathe for a second, the guilt making my chest tighten until I want to claw at my insides. It feels like I’ve been harboring these twisted thoughts for years, my dark theories kept to myself as I protect my brothers from my mother’s heinous crimes.

A knock at my door has me gasping a breath, oxygen rushing into my lungs and leaving me dizzy.

“Prince?” Cas’s voice comes through the wood, and I have to clench my jaw to stop the bitter bile that hits the back of my throat from spilling. I’ve kept so much from them, from my brothers, taking on the mantle of protector and keeping my suspicions to myself. It would hurt them if they found out, and I’ve had no concrete evidence to support the theories I have about my mom. “You coming down for something to eat?”

“I’ll be there in a minute,” I reply, no hint of the turmoil that plagues my soul in my voice. I’ll tell them my thoughts when Lucifer gets back to me, but until then, I’ll let them live in ignorance for a bit longer. It’s kinder this way.

I close my eyes as I listen to his steps getting further away. My hands clench into fists, and not for the first time, I hate the universe for giving me a mother who is no mother at all.

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