Chapter 12

Chapter Twelve

His brothers had all left messages and texted, as expected. So far, Everest had ignored them all. Everything he'd wanted to tell them he'd written in his book. He didn't know what else there was to say.

Kaine had said how impressed he was with the strategy and plan, and that he understood why Everest had hatched them all, what was traditionally considered, too close together.

Dalmon expressed his concern about the magic and wanted to talk about the Shadow Board. He also told him he should've asked for help and called him reckless.

As usual, it was Gerrit's words that hit the hardest. He apologized for the arrest and wished that Everest had come to him after finding the plan three years ago and that he didn't want to lose him as a brother or a son.

Cadel would be talking to either Kaine or Dalmon or perhaps both.

He should call Gerrit, but he knew how many times they had gone around this, and things didn't change. He had to break the cycle, but explaining it to Gerrit was going to hurt him. He sniffed and checked to see if his nose was bleeding.

It wasn't.

Stay in the present. He didn't need to review his past lives with Gerrit. He'd done that years ago.

With a sigh, he dropped onto the edge of the bed, wrapped in the robe. If he was doing something, it was easier not to let his mind drift. He'd cleaned up the bathroom and hung-up Cadel's clothes. Made a cup of tea and listened to and read the messages.

Now there was nothing to do but call.

He glanced at the door, hoping Cadel might sense he needed help and give him a distraction, but after several seconds, he gave up waiting. He needed to get this done.

Gerrit answered after the second ring. No doubt he'd been expecting the call. "How are you?"

Everest was tempted to lash out. How dare Gerrit arrest him and treat him so callously, and then, in his next breath, say how much he loved him?

But he'd have done the same thing.

"As well as expected, given my mind is collapsing under the weight of the past."

He heard Gerrit's wince of pain. "I'm sorry that I wasn't ready to listen. I thought?—"

"You thought what I wanted you to." Gerrit wasn't to blame for any of this.

"You played us all."

"There wasn't another way to do it. I needed to know the past to execute the plan. I needed more than what I wrote." Now he saw the way everything fitted together. How he was put together and the way his lives meshed with his brothers'.

"How many lives did it take you to set this up?"

"This is the third. It took me a while to pull the idea together, longer to put out feelers with the Board and to put things in motion." And he was exhausted by it all. Three lives of work to erase the mistake of one. "I didn't know how to share what I was doing. I wasn't even sure it was possible until last time."

"Where did you get the idea?"

"Humans were dabbling with unlocking past lives through meditation and such. I figured maybe there was something in it that I could use."

"So you had the spell made so you could access the information in this lifetime."

"Yes. Our past is glorious and bloody and brutal and full of wondrous things. But I wouldn't want any of you to do this."

"You're nineteen."

Everest squeezed his eyes closed. The life he should have ahead of him clashed with the past and the knowledge there would be another. "I haven't been a teen since I did the spell. You saw the change." He exhaled. "I'm not blaming you for not stepping in. You have been my father so many times. As I have been yours. It never ends well."

"Everest…"

"Papa, please. I know you love me as your son. And I loved you as my father, even after learning the truth. But I also learned of the damage we have done to each other. You love me so much I can't breathe, and I push too hard, driving you away." He swiped away a tear. "We have done it so many times. It's not a healthy dynamic, so I am making a formal request that we no longer play those parts for each other."

Gerrit was silent for several seconds. "I'm going to assume we've had a similar conversation before, for you to make that request."

"Yes. It's not that we clash, not like Kaine and Dalmon, but we cannot raise one another in the way we deserve. "

Gerrit muttered a curse. "You sound like my father. Like Sebastien."

Everest nodded. "I am him."

And he'd written his apology for the things he'd done wrong.

"Yes, but you're speaking like an eighty-year-old man who has seen too much."

Everest smiled. "Come on, I'm at least eight thousand."

They were older than that. Much older.

"You don't look a day over at eighteen," Gerrit said with forced humor.

A soft laugh escaped. "I'm guessing they've put you in charge of trying to find a cure."

"They have. Would you tell me if there is one?"

Everest bit his lower lip and stared at the door. He wanted one, but he was also so tired of the pain in his soul and his head. And if he wasted time thinking of himself, he risked failing, which was unacceptable. "Is it too hard to ask you to respect my desire to exit this life early?"

"The other two might, but I don't think I can."

"There you go, loving me so tightly I can't breathe."

"Someone needs to love you. You didn't let anyone last time, did you?"

The memory that had surfaced earlier threatened to push through. His lover reached for him as though the centuries didn't matter. "I can't talk about the past without risking becoming lost in a memory, and the more I do that?—"

"The worse it becomes."

"Yes." Everest nodded, his throat thick. He loved Gerrit as a brother, but that was all they could be to each other.

"Is there anything I can do to help?"

"Stay on track. And if I ask you to do something, just get it done for me. "

"Is there anything we shouldn't be doing?"

Everest laughed. "Well, I didn't have Kaine or Dalmon finding their fated mates in my plan. But I think that's working out, okay."

"I don't think anyone had that in their plan, including them. Perhaps next time you plan my assassination, you could warn me."

Everest sucked in a breath. "If I do that, it doesn't look real. I trust the people you have around you. I trust my brothers to do their job. It's why I was able to commit treason and trust I would be stopped."

"That was a gamble."

"It wasn't a gamble. I know how you all react. It's why I set things up the way I did." It sounded arrogant, conceited even, but it was the simple truth.

"How did you do it without all your memories?"

He'd experimented the human way—with meditation—but had known that he needed more to do the job. "I read your books."

"You did what?" There was that snap that Everest was used to when he'd done something Gerrit thought particularly foolhardy.

"I was alive for a very long time. I had to raise you all. I needed to make sure you'd play your parts." He ran his fingers through his hair. He'd raised his brothers to be the men he needed them to be. "Yes, I manipulated all of you to take down the Shadow Board and get Olier back."

Gerrit was silent for several seconds. "Did you consider asking for help?"

"You were barely ready to rule. How could I dump the Shadow Board in your lap? How could I hand you the guilt of a soul bruise that was never going to heal until I found him? I wasn't that much of a terrible parent. "

"Those books weren't for anyone to read but myself."

"Please, you've read mine. How many did you read? How many lifetimes did you go through? Did you read Olier's? His are quite interesting."

Gerrit drew in a breath and said nothing, needing a moment to digest the news. "So why the memories now?"

"Because I didn't have time to do all that reading again. And there are things I didn't write in the books, things that matter."

"If a mind reader created the spell, then one should be able to undo it."

"I know you mean well, but my focus is not survival. It's healing the wound. Make that your focus, too." Everest sighed. "You're not going to like the next bit."

Gerrit groaned. "Are you going to warn me?"

"Yes, because it needs to stay out of the media, and I don't want you to worry."

"I'm already worried. What if I don't see you again?"

He wanted to promise Gerrit that they would see each other again in this life. Tell him that he'd done a good job raising him and that Everest didn't hold anything against him. They were who they were, and changes to their personalities happened at glacial speed. But the words didn't form. "I hope we do. It was not my intention to hurt you, but you would've stopped me or told me to wait."

"I would've because I love you."

Everest squeezed his eyes shut. "That's why the next step is going to be hard for you."