Final Debt (Indebted 6)

Yet, now he’d forever remain young. Frozen in time, immortal to the end.

I wanted to collapse to my knees and confess everything to him. I wanted to tell him what I’d done to Cut. I wanted to purge my sins and have him carry them for me.

But I couldn’t.

I would never speak to him again.

And I couldn’t grieve.

Not yet.

Not after the destruction of yesterday.

And in some strange way, I felt as if Kes already knew what’d happened in the barn. As if he hadn’t died because I’d taken a life and another Hawk must forfeit. But because he sensed he no longer had to fight against our father.

He was free to go.

Free to be happy.

You’ll always have my gratitude and friendship, Kes. No matter where you are.

A ball lodged in my throat, but I didn’t break down. It took all of my remaining strength to stare dry-eyed at my brother and whisper farewell.

“He died without pain,” Jasmine murmured. “The doctor told us his heart gave out from his injuries. He was still in a coma…he wouldn’t have felt it.” Jaz looped her fingers with Kes’s lifeless ones. “He’s at peace now.”

My back locked as Kes remained unmoving. His bird tattoo didn’t jerk, no feathers quivered over his muscles. I kept expecting his eyelids to flutter, his lips to twitch. His laugh to explode and an elaborate hoax to be unveiled.

But unlike his prankster illusions from his childhood, this wasn’t a deception.

This was real.

He was dead.

He’s truly gone.

I hugged Nila closer. “He didn’t die alone. You’re never truly alone when you know you’re loved by another.”

Jaz’s tears wouldn’t stop, and I wouldn’t force her to dry her eyes until she was ready. I’d purged and sewn myself back together in the lake after coming apart with my father’s death. Today, I would help my sister do the same thing.

Nila cried quietly beside me. Her heart sorting through so many memories, so many complexities even though she’d known Kes only a short while. They’d bonded. They’d loved each other. They would forever be linked by their own relationships as well as the family tie Nila would form by marrying me.

I’m sorry, brother.

I looked at his face, his cold body and vacant shell, and said a private eulogy.

I’m sorry I wasn’t there to say goodbye, but this isn’t goodbye; it’s just a postponement. I’ll miss you, but I won’t mourn you because you were too good a friend and brother to remember with sadness.

Time lost meaning as we all stood beside Kes one last time.

The moment we left, we’d never see him again. The only way we would look upon his face was to stare at pictures from happier times or watch videos trapping his soul forever.

None of us wanted to leave.

So we stayed.

The room quieted from emotional strain until we all hovered in the same thoughts. We relived our special times with Kestrel. We rifled through memories; we smiled at antics and shared childhoods.

“What are you doing here?” I looked up as the locked door to the prison cell swooped open. I’d been at the mental institute for two nights and couldn’t stand another fucking minute.

Kes slinked through the darkness. “Busting you out.” Holding out his hand, he grinned. “Time to leave, big brother. Time to make a run for it.”

He’d tried to help me escape that night, just like he’d helped me escape so many times in our childhood.

“Now, what are you doing?”

“Focusing.” Kes sat cross-legged on the floor of his bedroom, his hands on his thighs in a yoga pose.

Throwing myself beside him, I rolled my eyes. “It’s not working. Your thoughts are just as horny.” At seventeen and fourteen, our hormones had kicked in, and Kes was a terrible flirt.

His laugh barrelled through the room. “Least I can talk to girls.”

“Yes, but I can feel them.”

“Not in an interesting way, though.” He winked. “You feel their silly concerns while I—” He flexed his fingers “—I feel their tits.”

I punched him in the arm, so damn grateful he was my brother.

God, I would miss him.

He was gone.

It was time for us to go, too.

Moving for the first time in hours, I placed my fingertips on Kes’s icy forehead. His skin seeped my warmth, stealing it the longer I touched him.

Pulling away, I had the incredible urge to touch life after touching death. To hold onto something real. Gathering Nila closer, I hugged my sister and nodded at Vaughn. Flaw would come to pay his respects tomorrow. He was close to Kes; his death would be hard on all of us.

Somehow, two Hawks and two Weavers had come together in shared grief, mourning a man who died far too young.

But that was life.

It was cruel. Unjust. Brutal. And dangerous.

Good people died. Bad people lived. And the rest of us had to continue surviving.

A week passed.

In that week, things changed a lot and none at all.

My fever finally broke, my wound healed, and my strength slowly returned. My body was still exhausted but every day, I pieced myself back together.

Nila had a lot to do with that.

The day after seeing Kestrel’s body, I returned to the hospital on my own. I sought out the nurse who’d brought me the cell phone while I healed and paid her a thousand pounds for her trouble. She’d gone out of her way to give me the means to contact Nila. The least I could do was compensate her.