Total pages in book: 94
Estimated words: 89539 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 448(@200wpm)___ 358(@250wpm)___ 298(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 89539 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 448(@200wpm)___ 358(@250wpm)___ 298(@300wpm)
The worst part was, it didn’t seem as though Castien even appreciated the effort he’d put into distancing himself and playing the part of a perfect apprentice. It seemed there was no pleasing him, no matter what Eridan did. Part of him wanted to think that Castien just missed his affection, but Eridan locked those foolish thoughts away. He was done deluding himself.
Stop thinking about him, dammit, Eridan snapped to himself. How are you supposed to get over him when all you do is think about him? Instead of obsessing about Castien, you should obsess over how to get out of this situation.
Right. Okay.
Eridan forced himself to focus his attention on Warrehn.
Carefully, he stretched out his senses and poked at the guy’s mental shields. He could sense anger, mixed with grief and regret. He probed deeper, bracing himself for the usual nausea that he felt at the touch of another mind.
It never came.
Eridan paused, confused. Perhaps Warrehn’s mind was just compatible with his. It was certainly possible: telepaths didn’t have just one person compatible with them. But he didn’t feel even a hint of the pleasure that he usually felt when Castien touched his mind. Clearly there was something else at work here.
Gently, Eridan withdrew. He didn’t want Warrehn to sense his spying.
Frowning, he eyed Warrehn’s profile. There was something… almost familiar about him.
Pursing his lips, Eridan finally forced himself to examine the errant thought he had pushed out of his mind when he’d first heard Warrehn’s name.
No, Warrehn wasn’t that rare of a name.
But all the little tidbits of information he had learned about Warrehn so far… It all fit.
It was widely presumed Prince Warrehn had been kidnapped and killed by the rebels. Sirri had implied that Warrehn wasn’t actually a rebel even though he was with them.
The man also emanated grief and loss when he heard Eridan’s name, which was somewhat similar to Prince Warrehn’s younger brother’s.
Warrehn’s hair and eyes were the right color. His face… it was hard to compare a grown man’s face with a picture of a ten-year-old boy, but theoretically, Prince Warrehn could have grown up to look like this man did.
But all of this was circumstantial evidence at best. It didn’t prove anything. And Eridan didn’t feel any familial bond to this man.
Then again, he wouldn’t feel one. All familial bonds were broken when a child brought to the Order was Named.
Except… except it didn’t exactly matter, did it? Familial bonds were natural. As his Master had once told him, they were the result of similar telepathic marks.
Siblings were supposed to have similar telepathic marks.
His heart beating faster, Eridan closed his eyes and started breathing evenly, trying to sink into a deep meditation. Meditation was still far from his favorite pastime, but by now he was proficient. He didn’t even need to focus on his thaal anymore. With such a demanding teacher as Castien, he had been forced to learn. His meditations with Master Tker had helped, too.
Once he achieved the state of deep meditation, Eridan stretched out his senses. They confirmed that there were only two other people in the small house besides him. Outside the house, he could feel other minds, more primitive and muted. Animals. The house must have been located somewhere isolated, in a place with a lot of wild animals, perhaps a forest.
He stretched his senses further, looking for one telepathic presence he would recognize anywhere. He found it, but it felt incredibly distant. This house must have been a significant distance away from wherever Castien was.
Giving up on connecting to his Master, Eridan focused his senses on the telepathic presence closest to him.
Warrehn.
Carefully, he dissected Warrehn’s telepathic mark, stripping away all the distracting emotions Warrehn was feeling and comparing it to his own. It was long, tedious work, made more complicated by the fact that Eridan’s own telepathic mark was hopelessly intertwined with Castien’s. Strong bonds tended to do that. As years passed, Eridan had noticed how much his mark had been affected by his Master’s. Much to his surprise, he had found traces of his own in his Master’s telepathic presence, too, though it was harder to tell with Castien, since Castien could completely mask his mark if he wanted to. Even the distance between them lately hadn’t seemed to dim their connection at all, and Eridan had trouble separating their telepathic marks.
Finally, after what felt like hours of work, he succeeded at making a mental replica of his own mark—what it would look like without Castien’s—and then compared it to Warrehn’s.
The result made him inhale sharply.
It was unmistakable how similar their telepathic marks were. How familiar. Such an uncanny similarity could exist only between close relatives.
Eridan pulled out of his meditation and stared at the man who was still moodily looking out the window.
At his brother.