I shook my head. “No. Julien. Viktor. They have their talents. Alex has—”
“Alexander has it all,” Gerard said. “It’s hard to explain what you were like as a child, my boy. You were so…so very…”
“Golden,” I muttered as my stomach heaved, thick and queasy.
“Yes!” Gerard nodded emphatically. “He was—he still is—so golden!”
Alex glanced down, as if trying to spot some sort of difference between him and us.
“Golden and strong and resilient. I created the perfect specimen—a mind full of kindness and infinite capacity, a heart of goodness and love, a body of persistence and power. I created a better god than any that reside in the Sanctum!”
Alex looked horrified. “Father!”
Gerard’s blasphemy echoed sharply in the room, sending a shiver down my spine. I could hear Kosamaras as clearly as if she’d just whispered into the curve of my ear.
You and that boy will create things, terrible things. Things terrible enough to bring down even the gods.
I thought back to only hours before, when Alex and I had been nothing more than a tangle of limbs and ravenous hungers, gasping, grasping, and crying out with need and ecstasy. Desires filled. Appetites sated. My mouth now tasted of ash.
She’d meant Viktor.
Not Alex.
Not Alex, who had no trace of power within him.
Not Alex, who was warm and mine and so very human.
Pontus please, not Alex.
Alex held up his hand, studying its lines, as if they might show him exactly who he was. “But…I can’t do anything like my brothers do. What power am I meant to have?”
Gerard glanced at his legs meaningfully.
“What?”
“You lived,” he whispered breathlessly. “You don’t remember that day but…haven’t you ever wondered how far you fell?”
“A handful of stairs, only two or three. Mother said I just landed wrong, so very wrong and—”
Gerard shook his head. “Alexander, you went over the balcony.”
Alex blinked in disbelief. “That’s not possible. That’s at least—”
“Forty feet. Forty-two, actually. I measured it myself. Forty-two feet onto the marble floor below. I saw it happen. You were like a meteor plummeting to earth. We had to cut away the section where you landed. It had smashed to bits.”
“The Laurent crest,” he murmured with understanding.
I recalled the rose-gold chips that made up the large mosaic in the entryway. It stood out starkly from the cool gray marble, as if it hadn’t been part of the original design.
It hadn’t.
“We couldn’t find any stone that matched just right, so I told the contractor to make something beautiful in its place. Every time I walk over that crest, I’m reminded that my son is alive. Wonderfully, impossibly alive. Because of me. Because of what I did.” He swallowed, beaming with pride. “I created a god. An immortal.”
The air in the room had taken on a hushed, reverent quality.
“And what of Julien and Viktor?” I asked, daring to break it. “What did you create there?”
Gerard had the decency to look away, ashamed. “Something different entirely, I’m afraid.”
“Different?” Alex whispered skeptically.
“Julien never cried as a baby. Not once. He would just stare about the room with those giant, expressionless eyes. I can’t tell you how many nursemaids we lost, unnerved by his unblinking gaze. Only when Viktor pitched himself into a fit would Julien stir. It took me longer than it should have to understand what was going on. No one ever expects their children to have such…”
“Variations?” I suggested.
“Deviations,” he corrected. “On his own, Julien is harmless, but with Viktor…they spur each other on toward madness.”
“What do you mean?” I remembered how they often seemed to communicate without words, one entity sharing two bodies.
“Viktor has always been rage and wrath, quick to fits of anger and violence. Once, he set the nursery curtains on fire. We’d thought one of the maids had been clumsy with a taper but it was only Viktor, wanting a bit more milk before bed.” Gerard wiped the back of his hand over his forehead.
I pictured my nephew Artie. He was not much older than the boys when they were cast out. When he didn’t get his way, his howls could be heard halfway across Highmoor. “He was a child. Maybe you should have taught him that it was wrong to use his…gifts,” I said, mindful to choose a word that wouldn’t further upset Alex, “in such a manner.”
Gerard stared at me, deadpan. “He was six weeks old. He nearly burned down half the manor. After that, we kept the pair of them from Alexander. It was too risky to keep them together.”
I remembered Viktor on the rooftop garden, the look of fury, of being just heartbeats away from losing his grip on everything.
Any desire I had to defend him dried up.
“I shouldn’t have lumped them together,” Gerard admitted. “It forever changed Julien. Having Viktor’s thoughts—those terrible thoughts—constantly saturating his mind…” He shook his head. “No one should be forced to live that way.”
“Do you truly believe me the monster in this story?” a voice asked from the back of the room.
My head whipped around. Viktor stood on the threshold, arms folded across his chest. He wore dark navy pants, a white shirt, and a gray vest, an exact match of what Alex had on.
“Who was the one who sent poor little Julien away to live with such a madman?” He stepped into the study, locking the escutcheon behind him with a casual flick of his fingers.
A hidden door at the side of the room swung open and Julien stepped out, dressed in the same clothing, making them a perfectly identical trio.
Constance was wrong. There’d been a secret passageway all along.
He crossed over to sit on the edge of the desk, dangling his legs back and forth with a strange childishness as he stared down at his father. “Hello, Papa. Remember me?”
Gerard swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing heavily. He nodded. “Ju-Julien.”
“Very good,” he said. His lips rose, showing off a line of teeth. It looked more of a grimace than a smile.
Viktor’s eyes wandered about the room with unchecked curiosity. “I always thought this room was so large and important, the seat of Father’s power and might. Now it just looks”—his gaze fell on Gerard and he grinned—“terribly, terribly small.”
Gerard’s nostrils flared, anger flashing across his face as he studied the son he hadn’t seen in fifteen years. “Verity, I want you to take Alexander away from the study. Get him out of here. I will deal with these two on my own.”
I felt rooted to the floor, unable to move as I glanced from Gerard to each of the boys.
Even still, Alex swatted in my direction, keeping me at bay. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“Bravo, little brother,” Viktor commended, slowly clapping his hands together. He sank into one of the armchairs. “Finally showing Father your spine.” He made a face, crossing one leg over the other. “Poor choice of words, my apology.”