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He was your brother…
Was.
Brother.
The Count Di Luna staggered from the window, the air of the dungeon suddenly choking him.
He’d gloated over the sight just moments earlier, the thorn in his side finally drawn out and cast to the dirt; that face he’d cursed so often torn from its body to lie as a mute portrait of defeat…
He was your brother.
And now all Di Luna felt was horror, a sick reeling of the mind that drove him from the dark chamber to the moonlit courtyard, past the body of the woman he'd loved, and the one he'd hated who lay unconscious, at best, through the guards watching him in impassive deference, to the hastily-erected block, to its victim whose blood still flowed over the wood —
What a trail of death he'd left behind him...
If his men had doubted his sanity when he was spurred by rage, what must they be thinking now, seeing him kneel, trembling, over the man he’d gone to such lengths to kill?
Your brother—
It wasn’t a lie. It couldn’t be.
He could see it, now that he was looking, the dead features making no objection to his perusal.
He lifted Manrico's head, blood seeping into his gloves, pored over the dark hair (that curled the same way as his chestnut strands), the aquiline nose, high forehead, strong cheekbones…
The same dark eyes that had blazed the same fire, now lit only by a cold autumn moon…
And he remembered the look in those eyes one long-past night, when he’d looked up at them awaiting shameful death and seen… sudden confusion… the sword waver above his breast… his enemy straighten and run back to the woods, leaving him bleeding and shaken on the ground.
He knew, now, what the troubadour must have seen that night, when—
When he should have died…
He pulled the gloves off, and cast them aside.
He’d been too young to cry for his brother when the abduction took place, comprehending only that something terrible and frightening had happened.
Still learning to accept that his mother was truly gone — that she’d died giving life to the brother who was now also — who his father died grieving over —
The brother he’d just murdered.
Lured to his death with a mother (a witch, a killer of children) as hostage, a mother who now lay dying of grief and terror in that cell.
How they must have loved each other —
He remembered little of having a mother or father, of being loved by someone gentle and devoted.
Guardians, governesses, soldiers, Ferrando’s certainty that he would one day be the triumphant avenger…
Why the sudden thought of the old woman as his mother, of what could have been had he only known in time, reunited his family rather than tearing down what remained of it?
My son…
Your brother…
Ferrando was at his elbow.
“The other prisoner, my lord—”
The Count heard clear anticipation in his officer’s voice, and why not? A man who had been young and helpless at the time of the initial horror, finally about to see those old ghosts pacified?
About, however, to be disappointed once again.
Di Luna looked up to answer, half-distracted.
“Does she yet live?”
“She’ll live long enough to die in torment.”
His thoughts snapped into place.
“She’ll not die, if we can prevent it. Have our physicians see to her.”
Ferrando started.
“My lord— Your brother’s murderess?!”
“It wasn’t she who killed him.”
Di Luna bent his head again, focusing on the act of closing Manrico’s eyes — a small, futile kindness no one else was likely to give.
“My lord…?”
His hand was resting, gentle, on tousled black hair… Was this the gesture one used to comfort a younger sibling?
And his explanation, short as it was, nearly washed away under the tears it dragged forth.
“He was my brother.”