Dying Wish: A Novel of the Sentinel Wars Read Online Free Page A

past month, quieter. His clothing had changed. So had his habits. He no longer dined with others. He sat alone, ignoring the rest of the men who offered to share his company.
    Those were all signs that his lifemark was nearly bare, and that his time was almost up. He was distancing himself from the others, doing what he could to make his death easier on his brothers. Iain had seen it all before.
    “Why were you looking for me?” asked Cain.
    This was always the hardest part. Iain had to offer Cain a chance to slow the fall of leaves from his lifemark without betraying the fact that there were others like him—others whose souls were nearly dead. “I was worried about you. You seem…different lately.”
    Cain’s face tightened with skepticism. “Did Joseph send you?”
    “No.”
    “Bullshit,” spat Cain. “He won’t listen when I tell him I’m fine, so now he has you spying on me.”
    “You’re not fine, and we both know it.”
    Cain backed up and his hand moved to the hilt of his sword. A bit of magic made it invisible to the naked eye until it was drawn, but Iain knew it was there. He also knew that a man close to the end would have no troubledrawing a blade to use on someone he had once considered a friend.
    Iain slipped the ring into his pocket and lifted his hands in surrender. “You don’t want to do that.”
    “What I want doesn’t seem to matter anymore. My best friends are dead. Their daughter—the little girl who has been like my own child for centuries—has grown up literally overnight and no longer needs me. No longer wants me meddling in her life. That’s why she left.” His voice broke at the end and his throat moved as he struggled to regain his composure.
    The man’s pain would have had Iain aching a few years ago. Now it was simply more data used to gauge his brother’s decaying status.
    “Your duty to Sibyl was what you lived for. Now that she’s no longer a child, you feel lost. I get it.”
    Cain glanced up, meeting Iain’s gaze for the first time since he’d entered the room. There was pain and desperation there. Mountains of agony crushing the soul from his body.
    “I want to help,” said Iain.
    “There’s nothing anyone can do. It’s too late. I’m done pretending. I’ll let Joseph know my intentions before I leave tonight.”
    “You’re going to kill yourself.” It wasn’t a question.
    Cain swallowed hard, and his big body shook with fear and regret. “I don’t want to die, but I’d rather walk calmly to my death than risk hurting Sibyl—which I will do if I follow her to Africa like some kind of overbearing father. Even if I pretend I’m only there to help rebuild the ruined stronghold, she’ll know the truth.”
    “What if I could offer you another alternative?”
    Cain let out a long, resigned sigh and then stripped off his shirt. His lifemark was nearly bare, with only a precious few leaves clinging precariously to the empty branches. “There are no other alternatives. It’s too late for me.”
    Iain showed no sign of horror or surprise. It was just as he’d thought. “I’ve found another way, but before I tell you more, I need your vow of silence.”
    Confusion wrinkled his wide brow. “What?”
    “You must promise me that you will never speak to anyone of what I tell you here today.”
    “I don’t understand, Iain. What the hell are you talking about?”
    “I’m offering you your life in exchange for your silence. Do you want to take the deal or not?”
    Cain hesitated, but he wasn’t the first to do so. And Iain knew exactly which buttons to push to get the result he wanted. His brother’s life was worth more than the rules by which they lived.
    “Think of Sibyl. She just lost her parents. What will it do to her to lose you so soon?”
    Cain’s eyes slid shut and his mouth tightened in anguish. “She asked me to leave her alone. She left me behind when she went to join Lexi and Zach.”
    “She didn’t ask you to die, did