A turtleneck was a bad sign among their kind. Each Theronai warrior’s chest was marked with a living image of a tree. As they grew, so did the lifemark, branching out and growing stronger each day as the magic inside them swelled—magic that could be accessed only by a female of their kind. A couple of centuries ago, their enemy attacked, killing nearly all their women. The men were left alone, struggling to contain the magic that continued to grow inside them with no outlet. As the power they housed grew, their souls began to weaken and die. Leaves fell from their lifemarks, each one marking a loss of what made them who they were.
The warriors became darker, angrier. The pain was too much for some, and they took their own lives.
Iain had considered doing the same more times than he could count, but one thing kept him holding on: He was the answer to the prayers of his brothers. He could save them.
He’d found magical artifacts that slowed the decay of their lifemarks and allowed them to cling to their souls for a few more years. His efforts hadn’t saved everyone, but he’d saved Madoc, who was now happily united with a woman who could wield his power and take away his pain. Nika had saved Madoc’s soul, but Iain had made it possible.
He hoped to offer Cain that same chance for survival.
The signs were all there. Cain had grown darker over the past month, quieter. His clothing had changed. So had his habits. He no longer dined with others. He sat alone, ignoring the rest of the men who offered to share his company.
Those were all signs that his lifemark was nearly bare, and that his time was almost up. He was distancing himself from the others, doing what he could to make his death easier on his brothers. Iain had seen it all before.
“Why were you looking for me?” asked Cain.
This was always the hardest part. Iain had to offer Cain a chance to slow the fall of leaves from his lifemark without betraying the fact that there were others like him—others whose souls were nearly dead. “I was worried about you. You seem…different lately.”
Cain’s face tightened with skepticism. “Did Joseph send you?”
“No.”
“Bullshit,” spat Cain. “He won’t listen when I tell him I’m fine, so now he has you spying on me.”
“You’re not fine, and we both know it.”
Cain backed up and his hand moved to the hilt of his sword. A bit of magic made it invisible to the naked eye until it was drawn, but Iain knew it was there. He also knew that a man close to the end would have no trouble drawing a blade to use on someone he had once considered a friend.
Iain slipped the ring into his pocket and lifted his hands in surrender. “You don’t want to do that.”
“What I want doesn’t seem to matter anymore. My best friends are dead. Their daughter—the little girl who has been like my own child for centuries—has grown up literally overnight and no longer needs me. No longer wants me meddling in her life. That’s why she left.” His voice broke at the end and his throat moved as he struggled to regain his composure.
The man’s pain would have had Iain aching a few years ago. Now it was simply more data used to gauge his brother’s decaying status.
“Your duty to Sibyl was what you lived for. Now that she’s no longer a child, you feel lost. I get it.”
Cain glanced up, meeting Iain’s gaze for the first time since he’d entered the room. There was pain and desperation there. Mountains of agony crushing the soul from his body.
“I want to help,” said Iain.
“There’s nothing anyone can do. It’s too late. I’m done pretending. I’ll let Joseph know my intentions before I leave tonight.”
“You’re going to kill yourself.” It wasn’t a question.
Cain swallowed hard, and his big body shook with fear and regret. “I don’t want to die, but I’d rather walk calmly to my death than risk hurting Sibyl—which I will do if I follow her to Africa like some kind of overbearing father. Even if I pretend I’m only there to help rebuild the ruined stronghold, she’ll know the truth.”
“What if I could offer you another alternative?”
Cain let out a long, resigned sigh and then stripped off his shirt. His lifemark was nearly bare, with only a precious few leaves clinging precariously to the empty branches. “There are no other alternatives. It’s too late for me.”
Iain showed no sign of horror or surprise. It was just as he’d thought. “I’ve found another way, but before I tell you more, I need your vow of silence.”
Confusion wrinkled his wide brow. “What?”
“You must promise me that you will never speak to anyone of what I tell you here today.”
“I don’t understand, Iain. What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m offering you your life in exchange for your silence. Do you want to take the deal or not?”
Cain hesitated, but he wasn’t the first to do so. And Iain knew exactly which buttons to push to get the result he wanted. His brother’s life was worth more than the rules by which they lived.
“Think of Sibyl. She just lost her parents. What will it do to her to lose you so soon?”
Cain’s eyes slid shut and his mouth tightened in anguish. “She asked me to leave her alone. She left me behind when she went to join Lexi and Zach.”
“She didn’t ask you to die, did she?”
“There’s nothing anyone can do about that. Not even you.”
“What if you’re wrong? What harm is there in hearing me out? Worst-case scenario, you turn in your sword and go fall into a nest tonight if you don’t like what I have to say. Best-case scenario, you live long enough to see Sibyl united with one of our men, protected.”
Cain hesitated for a long moment. His gaze moved to Angus’s sword, where Gilda’s luceria was woven around it.
“Let me try to help you,” said Iain.
“No one can help me, but I’m fool enough to listen all the same.”
“Swear to me that nothing we speak of here and now will ever pass your lips.”
There was a long silence before he finally said, “I do so swear.”
The weight of Cain’s promise barreled down on Iain. He braced himself, suffering through the heaviness of his brother’s vow. It passed quickly, but the magic holding Cain to his word would not soon fade.
Iain looked right into Cain’s eyes, willing him to know that what he spoke was the truth. “There are a few of us, like you, who have come to the end of our time. Years ago, I began seeking out a way to save them. I discovered artifacts that had the power to slow the process.”
“Artifacts?”
“Magical trinkets. Gilda’s mother spoke of them once when I was a boy. She didn’t know I’d overheard. I thought they might simply be a myth, but then I found one. It worked.” For a while. Nothing could hold back the flow of time forever, and Iain’s last leaf had long since fallen, but he’d bought himself enough time to learn what he needed to do to hide his barren state. He’d learned to pretend he had a soul, to pretend he had honor. Everything he did now was a carefully choreographed set of lies meant to fool everyone around him. And it had worked.
He’d passed this knowledge on to those who allowed him to help, just as he’d passed on the artifacts he’d found.
The black ring had been the first.
“How can that be? I’ve never heard of anything like this.”
“Those who created these devices didn’t want their existence known. If what they’d done had been found out, the people they were trying to help would have been put to death.”
“How do they work?”
Iain pulled the black ring from his pocket, ignoring the frigid burn of it, and held it out in his palm. “This one slows down the rate at which your leaves fall. It won’t save you forever, but it will buy you time to find the woman who can save you.”
Perhaps Jackie. She hadn’t chosen a man yet, but she would. Cain was a good man. She might choose him.
A low swell of anger rose up inside Iain, distracting him for a moment. He didn’t understand where it had come from, but it was there, burning deep in his gut.
The urge to draw his sword and lop off Cain’s head slammed into him. In his mind’s eye, he could see his brother’s blood arcing across the wall as he fell to his knees. He wanted that. Needed that. Cain couldn’t touch Jackie if he were dead.
Iain’s fists tightened as he fought back the bloodlust. His hand ached to draw his sword.
Cain was his friend, and while he felt nothing more for the man than he did the leather armchair to his left, he had once felt something. A fondness, perhaps. It was hard to remember now, especially with anger pounding at him to act, to kill.
Pretend you have honor.
That was what he told his men. It was all he had to do now. It wasn’t that hard. He’d done it a thousand times before. He’d been a good man once. It was his duty to behave as if he were that same man now. Perhaps he’d kill Cain later, but not right now.
The thought eased him somewhat, giving him the strength to take control of himself. He shoved down the last flickering embers of his rage with a force of will, returning his focus to his brother and what had to be done.
Cain flashed him a skeptical look. “How many of you are there?”
“You don’t need to know that. Only I know, and if you agree to join our Band of the Barren, I swear I will never reveal you as a member, just as I will never reveal who the others are to you.”
Cain stared at the ring, hope plain on his face. “What do you ask for in return for saving my life?”
“Only that you live by the code I set for all of us. Our lives depend on secrecy. If Joseph were to find out, he’d have us sent to the Slayers for execution. We must lie well, my friend. You must act as though you are fine, as though you have honor, no matter how dark your thoughts become.”
“What’s in this for you?”
Iain wasn’t sure anymore. At first he’d simply wanted to save his brothers, but now even the satisfaction he gained from that was a distant memory. His actions were merely habits now—doing things because he’d always done them, without thought of why.
But that answer was not what the members of the Band needed to hear. They needed hope so they could hold out for a while longer, fighting back evil as they were sworn to do.
“What wouldn’t you do to save one of your brothers?” asked Iain. “We’re in this together.”
“It’s against the rules.”
“We need all the warriors we can get if we’re to have even the slightest chance to win this war, even if it means breaking a few rules.”
“You said it slows the progress?”
“Right.”
“How do you know when it’s too late? How do you keep yourselves from hurting others because you wait too long to give up the fight?”
“I keep a careful eye on everyone. If you’re too far gone, or if you do anything to jeopardize the others, I’ll kill you myself.”
So far that last resort hadn’t been necessary. Even Madoc, who had been worse off than most, had managed to find salvation in time. Only Iain had held on too long, and there wasn’t enough of the man he used to be left for him to care that he should have gone to his death long ago.