Brother.
It seemed unthinkable.
Unbelievable.
Such a coincidence seemed ridiculous. What were the odds?
But one’s telepathic mark didn’t lie. Eridan knew he hadn’t made a mistake; his Master had taught him better than that. A telepathic mark analysis was almost as foolproof as a DNA analysis.
This man was his brother.
Eridan chewed on his lip, trying to understand how he felt about it. His feelings were all over the place, a horrible mix of contradictory emotions that ranged from anger to irrational elation.
Part of him wanted to snap at Warrehn, Where have you been all this time? Why have you abandoned me? Why didn’t you come back for me?
Eridan squashed down the urge, trying to erase the hurt in his chest. Blood was nothing. It didn’t matter. This man was a stranger. A stranger who had abandoned a three-year-old him more than eighteen years ago. They were nothing to each other.
Nothing.
“Do you have a family?” Eridan heard himself say. He winced, annoyed with himself, but it was already too late.
Warrehn turned back to him, frowning. “What is it to you?”
Eridan shrugged. “Just wondering. We know very little about you rebels.”
“I’m not a ‘rebel,’” Warrehn bit out, turning back to the window.
Eridan stared at his profile, something about it vaguely familiar. He told himself it was just confirmation bias. He told himself he was just imagining that he remembered his brother’s face. He told himself a great many things, but the part of him that had always craved belonging couldn’t help but feel something when he looked at this grim-faced man.
What Eridan remembered of his brother wasn’t his face, but his bright, infectious laugh and the way he allowed him to ride on his shoulders. This man with unsmiling, hardened eyes was nothing like that.
“Then who are you?” Eridan said.
Warrehn was silent for so long he thought he wasn’t going to reply.
But he did.
“I don’t know,” Warrehn said, and there was something painfully familiar in his eyes now.
Eridan’s stomach knotted up as he recognized that look.
He’d seen it often enough in the mirror.
Chapter Sixteen: Captivity
Days dragged by.
Eridan felt the tension in the house become more and more uncomfortable with every passing day. Warrehn and Sirri had nasty arguments several times a day, their words getting uglier and harsher the longer they were stuck inside. They seemed to have a history. At first Eridan had wondered if they used to be lovers, but he soon realized that their relationship was closer to that of siblings after some ugly fight. Eridan hadn’t been sure what that was about, but as they let their guard drop around him, they became careless, and he was able to piece things together.
It seemed Warrehn had been living on Tai’Lehr all these years and pretty much had grown up with Sirri’s distant cousin, Rohan. They had known each other for years. Sirri’s problem with him seemed to be Warrehn’s refusal to call himself Tai’Lehrian despite living most of his life there. Sirri called him ungrateful. Warrehn told her to mind her own business. It was all rather interesting—or would have been, if Eridan hadn’t felt a little sick every time he heard of their childhood and teenage years, every time he heard of that Rohan person, who was apparently “like a brother” to Warrehn.
It shouldn’t hurt.
It shouldn’t.
But it did. He didn’t want to listen to this anymore.
He wanted to go home.
He wanted his Master.
Eridan hated himself for these thoughts, hated feeling this way, but he couldn’t help it. No matter how strained their relationship had become lately, he still associated the word “home” with his Master. Even when they were fighting, there was still a certain comfort in being around Castien, the sense of rightness under his skin.
Eridan told himself it was just a habit, but deep down, he knew he was lying to himself. Even thinking about Castien made something inside Eridan tighten with terrible, achy yearning—the pent-up yearning he’d been trying and failing to extinguish for a year. He missed his Master. He had been missing him for a long time now, but the actual, physical distance between them pushed the feeling to the forefront of his mind. It was impossible to ignore anymore.
He missed him.
He didn’t even want anything special. He just wanted to curl up by Castien’s side while his Master worked on his datapad. He wanted to go to sleep lulled by Castien’s telepathic presence wrapped around him and delude himself into thinking that he was loved.
He didn’t want to be stuck in this tiny room, bound to the chair or chained to a couch like some kind of animal. He didn’t want to listen to Warrehn and Sirri arguing with each other or worrying about that Rohan person. He wanted to forget he’d ever met his brother, this stranger who worried about his pseudo-brother instead of looking for his real one.