†
The Dungeon: Two a.m.
Ravan nodded to no one in particular. The confines of the cell had been reduced to the small, safe space the brothers shared as the stories pulled them away from the terrible here and now.
Obviously, D’ata sat there with Ravan and…Julianne did not. It did not need to be spoken aloud, but the sorrow the young priest wore as his second skin was starting to make sense to the prisoner. Something had happened—something unspeakable.
It was just about then that the transition began to occur as they became human to one other. The bond which had been torn from them nearly twenty-five years before rose from beneath the depths of their being to claim its birthright. They were becoming the brothers they’d always been.
Ravan knew that D’ata mourned the torture and heartache that he, as a child, had endured at the hands of Duval. He shifted in the straw, his mind elsewhere as he envisioned D’ata on the outskirts of Marseille, plodding along on an old horse—in love.
Ravan was deeply lost in his thoughts about this, rubbing his chin absently, when something caught his eye from down the black hall between the cells. “Did you see that?”
His brother looked up, pulling himself back from the dregs of the past as well. “What?”
“I don’t know—something. I thought someone was there.” Ravan squinted, peering into the darkness.
“It’s the dungeons I think. Remember, that happened to me a while ago,” D’ata brushed it off.
“I suppose so. Truthfully, I should be totally mad by now.” Ravan discarded the odd moment as well.
Apparitions vanquished, and the two stepped back into the pulse of their memories, swept back into the journeys of their pasts.