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Hell.
Brass sagged onto the bench, biting back the sting of the metal kissing his rear end through his jeans. “Spare me the humor. It doesn’t suit you.”
“And backhanded comments don’t suit you.” A grumbling pause invaded the line as several cars drove past. The reprieve was just long enough for Brass’s regrettable self-reflection but not so long for him to steel himself against his brother’s next attack. “It’s happening again, isn’t it?”
It.
He and the other sentinels all knew what it referred to, along with the unspoken hourglass sifting through his remaining hours until the chains snapped tight and he became a prisoner of his own mind.
The curse.
Brass wrenched his eyes away from the road. The bus stop was perched in front of one of Aurora’s many municipal parks. Landscapers had long ago switched out their lawn mowers for leaf blowers, ensuring the manicured fields would stay as such. But the calendar had turned over a new month, and with it came the chilling threat of winter. Out of the corner of his eye, Brass silently marked the edge of green grass, painted a deeper balsam by the shade of his visor.
And speckled with a thin, crisp layer of pearlescent frost. The first of the season and a precursor of what was to come.
The solstice.
Brass peeled his lips away from his teeth, again grateful for the cocoon of the helmet. “Yes.”
“How bad was it this time?”
He flicked a concerned gaze down the road, where a tow truck had just arrived on the scene, and the electric vehicle’s driver was circling the car, phone to his ear, arms waving like the world owed him penance. “Bad. Could have been worse. I wanted it to be worse, but I didn’t let it get that far. I managed to control it.”
“Managed. Never did like that word. It implies too many out-of-control variables.”
“Yeah, well, it’s the best I’ve got at the moment.”
“If that’s your best, then we’re fucked. It’s December first, Brass.”
“I know!” he snarled. “Don’t you think I know that? Don’t you think I’ve spent every last one of these two thousand years searching for a way out of this? Believe me when I tell you there is none. Ragana had made certain that much was . . . ensured.” Ridicule and disdain floated the word from his distant memories of the goddess’s vengeance. “All I can hope for is to command it, master its rule so it can’t master me.”
Even as he spoke the words, Brass knew they were embers floating on the ocean, something a mighty volcano would sputter out in carefree warning before it erupted into chaos.
“Are you? Have you?” His brother’s questions weren’t meant to be the attacks they were, and yet they still landed as such.
Brass jolted off the bench, properly parked his bike like a good goddamn samaritan, switched the call from his helmet to his phone, and stormed down the sidewalk in a self-indulgent fit. If the mortal driver with the god complex could be afforded such a tantrum, surely one of the Empyrean’s warrior sentinels could be allowed a stomping session or two.
“I’ll find a way to handle it,” Brass gritted out. “I don’t need your censure.”
“I’m not giving it. I’m here to help you, brother. We all are.” The plea in Iron’s tone nearly caused Brass to miss a step. A pervasive silence filled the line, strengthening against the enormity of how few days he had left with his brothers before . . .
A shuddering sigh vibrated through the phone’s speakers. “We’ll keep looking,” Iron assured him. “Always. We’ll find a way out of this.”
Brass couldn’t summon the strength to respond, so he simply grunted his acknowledgment and ended the call.
At some point in his mildly panicked broodfest, he’d managed to wander into the heart of Aurora’s downtown. Casual strolls were not indulgences he was accustomed to, but given the events of the morning, he was far more inclined to let himself explore.
Let himself memorize what he stood to lose.
As it was not yet eight o’clock in the morning, many businesses were still locked up tight save for the coffee shops, bakeries, and that one food truck at the end of the cul-de-sac off Spruce Path that always served those churro waffles with the Mexican chocolate dipping sauce he’d enjoy on occasion.
Brass let himself be led by the enticing aromas of cinnamon, cocoa, and chili. Before he made it to the next traffic light, however, his senses drew him in another direction.
A direction he’d tried to train himself, over the past several months, not to move toward.
Tried and failed miserably.
The sign that lorded over the corner property no longer boasted the elegant script of the town’s most popular fine dining establishment, Serendipity. Instead, hard block letters were displayed prominently, announcing the newest tenant to pander to Aurora’s caffeine-fueled clientele.
