He should have known then that it was wrong.

All wrong.

“It isn’t safe here,” said Alucard.

Berras shifted forward. “No, it isn’t. Not for you.”

The light caught his brother’s gaze, snagging on the ropes of fog that shimmered in his eyes, turning them glassy, the beads of sweat beginning to pool in the hollows of his face. Beneath his tan skin, his veins were edging black, and if Berras Emery had had more than an ounce of magic to start with, Alucard would have seen it winking out, smothered by the spell.

“Brother,” he said slowly, though the word tasted wrong in his mouth.

Once, Berras would have knocked the term aside. Now he didn’t even seem to notice.

“You’re stronger than this,” said Alucard, even though Berras had never been the master of his temper or his moods.

“Come to claim your laurels?” continued Berras. “One more title to add to the stack?” He lifted his glass and then, discovering it empty, simply let it fall. Alucard caught it with his will before it could shatter against the inlaid floor.

“Champion,” drawled Berras, ambling toward him. “Nobleman. Pirate. Whore.” Alucard tensed, the last word finding its mark.

“You think I didn’t know all along?”

“Stop,” he whispered, the word lost beneath his brother’s steps. In that moment, Berras looked so much like their father. A predator.

“I’m the one who told him,” said Berras, as if reading his mind. “Father wasn’t even surprised. Only disgusted. ‘What a disappointment,’ he said.”

“I’m glad he’s dead,” snarled Alucard. “I only wish I could have been in London when it happened.”

Berras’s look darkened, but the lightness in his voice, a hollow ease, remained.

“I went to the arena, you know,” he rambled. “I stayed to watch you fight. Every match, can you believe it? I didn’t carry your pennant, of course. I didn’t come to see you win. I just hoped that someone would beat you. That they would bury you.”

Alucard had learned how to take up space. He had never felt small, except here, in this house, with Berras, and despite years of practice, he felt himself retreating.

“It would have been worth it,” continued Berras, “to see someone knock that smug look off your face—”

A muffled sound from upstairs, the thud of a weight hitting the floor.

“Anisa!” called Alucard, taking his eyes off Berras for an instant.

It was a foolish thing to do.

His brother slammed him back into the nearest wall, a mountain of muscle and bone. Growing up without magic, his brother knew how to use his fists. And he used them well.

Alucard doubled over, the air rushing from his lungs as knuckles cracked into ribs.

“Berras,” he said with a gasp. “Listen to—”

“No. You listen to me, little brother. It’s time to set things straight. I’m the one Father wanted. I’m already the heir of House Emery, but I could be so much more. And I will be, once you’re gone.” His meaty fingers found Alucard’s throat. “There is a new king rising.”

Alucard had never been one to fight dirty, but he’d spent enough time recently watching Delilah Bard. He brought his hands up swiftly, palm crunching into the base of his brother’s nose. A blinder, she’d called that move.

Tears and blood spilled down Berras’s face, but he didn’t even flinch. His fingers only tightened around Alucard’s throat.

“Ber—ras—” gasped Alucard, reaching for glass, for stone, for water. Even he wasn’t strong enough to call an object to hand without seeing it, and with Berras blocking his way, and his vision tunneling, Alucard found himself reaching futilely for anything and everything. The whole house trembled with the pull of Alucard’s power, his carefully honed precision lost in the panic, the struggle for air.

His lips moved, silently summoning, pleading.

The walls shook. The windows shattered. Nails jerked free of boards and wood cracked as it peeled up from the floor. For one desperate instant, nothing happened, and then the world came hurtling in toward a single point.

Tables and chairs, artwork and mirrors, tapestries and curtains, pieces of wall and floor and door all crashed into Berras with blinding force. The massive hands fell away from Alucard’s throat as Berras was driven back by the whirlwind of debris twining around his arms and legs, dragging him down.

But still he fought with the blind strength of someone severed from thought, from pain, until at last the chandelier came down, tearing long cracks in the ceiling as it fell and burying Berras in iron and plaster and stone. The whirlwind fell apart and Alucard gasped, hands on his knees. All around him, the house still groaned.

From overhead, nothing. Nothing. And then he heard his sister scream.

* * *

He found Anisa in an upstairs room, tucked in a corner with her knees drawn up, her eyes wide with terror. Terror, he soon realized, at something that wasn’t there.

She had her hands pressed over her ears, her head buried against her knees, whispering over and over, “I’m not alone, I’m not alone, I’m not alone.”

“Anisa,” he said, kneeling before her. Her face flushed, veins climbing her throat, darkness clouding her blue eyes.

“Alucard?” Her voice was thin. Her whole body shook. “Make him stop.”

“I did,” he said, thinking she meant Berras, but then she shook her head and said, “He keeps trying to get in.”