THE OTHER BROTHER'S OBSESSION
Immediately I was alone, the temperature in the room changed, forcing me to realize exactly what—in this case—who Elin had been looking at.
MALRIK.
The past few times he’d snuck in, the room had always dropped into a chill temperature, like walking into a freezer. But now, it was hot. From what I knew of the brothers, the weather bent with their emotions. When Malrik was flirty or lovesick, clinging to me like a pup, everything was cold.
When Seneca was mad, the world burned.
I knew one thing now: Malrik wasn't just here.
Malrik was MAD.
Thick smoke rolled into the air, transforming my strangled pants into a coughing frenzy in seconds as my eyes scanned the room for him.
Why was he so angry? I thought.
And most importantly, why was he here?
Light flooded the room after a thunder rumbled the sky outside, touching the corners the bedside lamp couldn’t.
And, there he was, leaning against the closet.
Heat creeped up my neck from both shame and anger as the cough turned to wheezing. I’d been squirming against the mattress, desperate for one brother and another was just there watching. The invisibility act he must have pulled on Elin was not fooling anyone, especially not me. His amber-green eyes glowed through the smoke, pinpointing his exact location in the room.
I jolted up in bed, a hand over my nose.
“Malrik!” I growled.
Growled, which took even me aback. I sounded nothing like a human girl. The sheets were twisted around my limbs and my shirt was soaked through with sweat. I reeked like a corpse of sweat and blood, like I'd crawled out from the underworld. Like I had been locked in a small box with thousands of dead rotten rats. However, whatever had happened, wherever I had been, every single pain was gone, leaving only the phantom touch of fingers around my skin.
Like a switch, the lust that clouded my head turned into anger that made my stomach flip in somersaults.
“Look at you,” Malrik tsk-tsked, stepping into the light.
With every step closer, the smoke parted around him.
“Finally growing some balls, uh? Or is it even your courage I’m looking at? You stink like him, Riley. Acting like a Drakoness already.”
“You cannot be here!” I whisper-yelled. “How many times do I have to tell you? You are going to get us both killed!”
Malrik slammed a fist into the wall.
“If you went to Hell, Riley, I’d give my soul to perish with you!” He roared. “This is the last fucking time you tell me where I can be or not be! I am a Prince of the West, I will not be exiled from you!”
Oh my God.
Oh. My. God.
I was going to go mad.
“Nobody’s exiling you! I’m just letting you know that you need to learn boundaries.”
He stalked toward me. “Did you read it?”
“Read what?”
“The letter.”
I looked away, my heart hammering.
“Did. You. Read. It?”
“NO, MALRIK!” I shouted, “NO! Is that what you want to hear? I did not read your letter. I tore it. You know we cannot work. I’m tied to him! I’m a breeder for your brother. YOUR BROTHER. Think about him…”
“And what about me?”
“I want nothing to do with you.”
“Why, Riley?”
“Because it’s impossible! I want nothing to do with you. I shredded the letter because it was pointless to send me fucking love letters or knifes. What the fuck is wrong with you.”
He repeated the word ‘shredded’ in a strangled voice. The way he sounded. The way he took two steps till he was looming over me did something to me. I couldn’t place what immediately. Until, my heart pulsated. And I knew. It was my chest. It ached.
It ached… for him.
A few seconds ago, I had been engulfed by the smoke but now, it had cleared out. My eyes fell to Malrik’s hands to see it had gathered all around his fists, swallowing all the way up to his elbows. He was controlling the smoke of his anger… from getting to me.
Oh, Malrik.
If I liked him, if I cared, I would have found the gesture thoughtful.
Maybe, even cute.
But I did not care.
I only felt pity.
He was starting to become a hook in my throat.
The unspoken competition between his brother and him was repulsive.
If Seneca—I glanced fleetingly at the door—found out, both of us would be dead.
I untangled the sheet from my limbs, kicking it off speedily.
“Malrik, go.”
“NO,” he protested. “If I'm leaving here, you're coming with me. I'm not going anywhere without you.”
“Tell me you’re fucking joking,” I muttered.
He wasn’t.
I scrambled up until I was on my knees, glaring him down. “Listen to your fucking self! Do you hear how insane you sound? Where will you take me that Seneca won't find?”
“I’ll figure it out.”
“There is no figuring anything out! Not for me! And definitely not for a man trying to steal his brother’s breeder.”
“You're more than just a breeder, Riley,” he sounded hurt. “And I don’t give a fuck about my brother.”
“And what if I do?”
“You don’t, Riley.” He sounded so sure. “I can see it in your face. I can see how unhappy you were at the game. I can see it when I watch you in your sleep every single night.”
Chills crept up my back, and heat up my neck at that confession. Malrik took another step closer, fighting for every inch of control over the smoke. The veins in his neck, all the way to the root of his dreads looked like they were seconds from bursting.
“I’ll ask you one question now…” He said with a stifled grunt. “And I want you to answer it correctly.”
I swallowed. “W- what is that?”
“When you were in your head... Did he touch you?”
“It wasn’t a dream?”
“Answer me, Riley.” Softly, dangerously. “Did he touch you?”
“He wasn’t a he, Malrik. It wasn’t a man.”
“Yes, Riley, answer the fucking question, damn it! When you were there. Did. It. Touch. You?”
I stalled.
I fucking tried to stall.
Until…
Yes,” I whispered. “Something touched me. I didn’t see it. I couldn’t tell if it was real or not. But I was alone one minute and the next, it was there. And it.. It touched me.”
Malrik was quiet.
Dead quiet.
The look on his face petrified me. I was used to seeing Seneca being mean, angry, flaring up, but never Malrik. He was always the one who joked. He was the one with the grin, the smile, acting like a player, like nothing in the world mattered but having fun, but teasing me, but calling me his little blade.
The absense of the nonchalant, playful man was intimaiditng. It was even scarier than when Seneca got mad and burned my wrists. I noted that difference between them.
When Seneca was angry, he hit or he burned right away.
But Malrik? You could poke it and poke it, and nothing happened.
Until… he reacted.
“Malrik?” I called out.
He was looking at me, but he didn’t look like he was seeing me.
His eyes were glassed over with tears that ran down his face from the anger. Around his wrists, the smoke was spinning fast, like a dark, tiny storm.
“Malrik, please,” I begged. “You have to go. Please, just leave!”
He was just standing there, vibrating so hard the floor felt like it was shaking.
Cr-crack.
I heard the groan of wood, before I smelled it.
The closet behind him suddenly burst into flames. It didn't start slow, it just went boom, and the fire climbed the walls in an uproar.
I jumped off the bed with a scream.
“MALRIK!”
Instead of a response, the smoke around his fists combusted, filling the room all at once. Chaos. All around. Chaos. Smoke in my lungs. Fire behind him. I was trembling, wheezing, doubling over.
Malrik dwarfed my height as he stormed even closer.
He didn’t touch me with his hands, but an invisible wave hit my chest and flung me back into the bed.
I hit the pillows hard.
For a second, the dream flashed in my head, the feeling of being trapped.
I bolted up immediately, refusing to stay down.
My feet hit the hot tiles. “ARE YOU MAD?” I screamed.
Without a response, he flicked his wrist.
Flung me to the bed a second time.
This time stronger than the first.
But he wasn't attacking. He wasn't touching me like the demon in my head. He was just holding me there, keeping me in the only spot the fire couldn't reach.
My shirt was soaked in sweat.
His was on fire.
The fabric burning till it revealed the olive skin beneath it.
It was the wrong time, wrong place, wrong situation, but my eyes fell—streaming with tears from the smoke—and I gawked at him.
P-O-I-N-T-E-D-L-Y.
U-N-A-S-H-A-M-E-D-L-Y.
I didn't shy away.
One part of me wanted to scream again, for him to go away, and the other wanted to beg him to stay.
I let my eyes feast on him.
He looked like a Nordic god of fire. The flames licked his abs and the veins that ran into his pants till the jeans also caught and started to burn as well.
A shudder ran down my spine.
My heart wasn’t the only thing thudding anymore.
The pulse in my core made me want to scream.
What was happening?
I wanted Seneca.
Not him.
I wanted the brother that chose me first.
Not Malrik.
Yet, my eyes were hooked.
TO. HIS. BODY.
My gaze travelled from his collarbone, to the abs, and then finally, they landed on the length of his member.
When I forced myself to look at his eyes again, they were blood-red.
Like the demon in my dream.
Nobody had to tell me.
I knew his dragon had taken over.
“YOU WHORE” He snarled. But, this wasn’t Malrik talking again. “You’re squirming for a man who doesn’t even care about anything other than your womb! He doesn’t care about you, Riley!”
It was stupid to be getting up to a man that was literally on fire. But the jab at being called a whore by him dwarfed every other worries. Fuck the fire, fuck the smoke, fuck the ache in my chest. I didn’t care if I wandered too close to be burned.
I jumped out of the bed a third time.
“And do you care for me? Malrik, DO. YOU. CARE. FOR. ME?”
Once again, not only did the force fling me back into the sheets and pillows, Malrik was stepping away.
“I’ve always fucking cared—”
“OH, YEAH? Is it for me?” I nearly screamed my head off. “Or are you pretending to love me so you can get my soul? Is that it? Is that what all this show is for? Sending me letters, fucking knifes, setting my room on fire to prove WHAT FUCKING POINT? That you love me? Love me for what? Tell me… FOR WHAT? MY FUCKING SOUL?”
That must have struck a chord, because Malrik didn’t answer.
Elin’s warning about how the Dominuses were after the souls, not the body, not even the womb had stuck long after she told me. I was not only wary of Seneca wanting to take my soul to hell, I was even wary of Malrik.
I hadn’t realised I was crying until my shoulder jerked with sobs. I was shaking too hard, and Malrik was standing at arm’s length. I knew he didn’t want to come close enough to have the bed catch fire.
He summoned his smoke wordlessly, and they gathered around him.
The red in his eyes vanished.
For a moment, the Prince was gone, and only the boy remained.
“Riley,” he whispered, his green eyes searching for mine. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have. I just….”
But before he could complete his sentence, the bedroom door exploded off its hinges.