“I’m sure. Slade is very cautious. He’d never tell anyone his true intentions, least of all you.”
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Again, I bristle.
Again, he glances at me like he’s noticed.
Intrigue in his eyes, he stops sketching and studies me as he turns his notebook over in his lap, once again hiding the image from me.
“The Gemini curse was obviously a curse when we found the cure written in a prophecy. The only reason cures exist is to free someone.”
“Always a damn prophecy,” I grumble under my breath.
His smile stretches wider. “Indeed. It was told the end of days would come, and the Gemini Twins would be there for it. However, only one has to die. Slade is trying to ensure he’s that one.”
Confused, I shake my head. “If one of you dies, the other dies. And I can assure you, if it wasn’t so, Slade would have already killed you.”
“Just as you believe he would kill you for helping me,” he says with a shrug. “When we both know he’d simply save you.”
“You’re the one who pointed out he’d kill me. I feel like you’re trying to fuck with my head right now, and I don’t have time for this.”
Just as I stand, he speaks again. “You think you know how I severed the first bond between us, but you don’t. And one twin can die if the final bond is severed. But only Slade can do that, and he’s waiting, biding his time, so that he can inflict the least amount of damage to you before he follows through with his suicidal plan and sacrifices himself in order to punish me.”
“How would him dying punish you?” I ask, lowering myself back to my chair as an unexplainable pang of pain forms in my chest.
“Because he knows I’d never end my life if he sacrificed himself in an effort to save me. And I’d walk alone on this plane for all eternity—no family, no mate, no…one at all. He does feel as though I betrayed him. He feels as though I was stupid and weak. He feels as though I abandoned him when he needed me the most, despite the countless times he’s always been there for me.”
He pauses as he clears his throat and blinks back tears when his gaze drops to his lap. Wordlessly, he flips the notebook back over so I can see the sketch, and my head tips back as bile rises to my throat.
On the page is the same woman, only this time, her belly is rounded and tears are on her face.
With a flick of his wrist, the sketch comes to life on the page, and my breath catches as a sketched image of him joins her.
He moves to her, leaning in to drag her closer, but she pushes him away as she buries her face in her hands and her body shakes with sobs I can’t hear. The image changes and she’s suddenly on the ground, her eyes vacantly staring at nothing, as a pool of blood surrounds her and her protruding belly.
The page instantly goes blank, and my eyes come up to meet Alton’s as he watches me silently, regarding me with eerie intent.
“She was your mate,” I say quietly. He says nothing. “And that was your unborn child,” I add on a broken whisper.
He clears his throat as he gently places the sketchbook onto his lap and locks his hands together in front of him. Finally, after what seems like a never-ending span of silence, he nods.
“The curse of the Gemini can only be lifted if a mate is claimed,” he says with a tight smile. “But when I claimed her, I never knew the repercussions. We had no idea what would sever our bonds. No one did—until that prophecy was discovered. It was pure instinct demanding I take her as mine when they thrust her into the cell with me. They knew, given the circumstances, I’d never be able to resist claiming her, and they used it against me.”
“Circumstances?” I ask, confused.
“I was on high alert, constantly tortured, and my instincts were growing wilder with each passing day,” he answers as his eyes dip to the woman on the sketchbook, no longer animated by whatever magic he used. “The second I saw her, I knew she was mine, and I immediately claimed her.”
“But how did they—”
“Their visionary found her,” he says, answering the question before I even finish asking it.
I swallow down anything I might say, and he stares at me like he’s trying to get inside my head for some reason.
“I’m almost positive the claim revoked one half of the bond between my brother and I, and I heard his screams even from the other side of the prison. An emptiness immediately slithered into my bones, but then it was replaced by a heady, incomparable warmth that seemed to expand and never stop. It was…for lack of a better term…amazing. I felt her love and not his pain.”
His eyes glisten even as his lips turn up in a reminiscent smile.
“Carolina was absolutely everything to me,” he adds on a hushed breath as he absently hugs the sketchbook closer. “And I only had her for two very brief years before they filled my soul with an emptiness that has left me too hollow to carry on. Sans for the small bond I still have with my brother.”