Page 157 of Ghost Ribbon

The word was mild for what Ivan had been. He trained Dimitri the way one trained dogs. “Everyone always only looked at me as something they had to tame,” Dimitri said. “Something they had to shape.”

His eyes found mine. “You and Ilya are different. I consider you both part of me. You’re both my brothers. You’re not a tool for me, Alexei.”

He pressed his lips together and I could see he was struggling to speak the next words.

“I don’t want to lose you.”

He wasn’t the type to voice sentimental shit out loud, well, unless your name was Rei Kurosaki.

I didn’t know how to react to it. “If this was about Rei, you’d do the same.”

He nodded. “I would. But would you stand and watch? Would you not try to stop me?”

Would I stand and watch?

Would I let it happen?

No.

No, I would not.

I swallowed because I couldn’t argue with that. “You’ll lose me either way. My heart may keep beating, but if Marco’s doesn’t… then what exactly would be left of me?” I locked my eyes with his and let him see what was left of me if Marco died.

Nothing.

The void would come back.

It would seal itself shut and I would go back to being what I had been before.

Actually, no. That’s wrong.

It would be worse. Before Marco, I was empty, but I don’t think I could ever go back to being that hollow. I have him now. I’ve known what it feels like to be alive because he exists beside me, and if I lose him, there will be nothing left to return to. I would simply remain behind in the wreckage of us, existing in agony, with no idea how to become the person I was before him.

I would be a body that breathed and moved and functioned but was not, in any way, alive.

Dimitri looked at me and there was empathy in his eyes.

That was strange because I didn’t think Dimitri was capable of that. He stepped forward and put his hand on my shoulder. “Then we will do our best to prevent that.” He pulled me into a hug, and I let him.

***

I went back home.

The apartment was warm when I entered. I saw Rei and Luca were sitting on the couch with Marco.

Marco was between them.

His eyes weren’t as bright.

That was one of the things that hurt me the most. His eyes had always been bright. That was one of the first things I had noticed about him, all those years ago, in a garden in Italy. A sick boy looked at me with hazel eyes that burned with a brightness that outshone all the stars in the sky. That brightness had been the thing that cracked me open.

And now it was dimmer.

Like a candle that was burning low, like a star that was losing fuel.

His body trembled subtly.

I could see it from across the room and my heart hurt constantly from seeing him so frail.