Filed to story: Mated and Hated by My Brother’s Best Friend Book PDF Free by Anna Campbell
9:54 Wed, Sep 17
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Something between us had cracked since the day I walked away with the veilstone blade in my hand and refused to let him stop me. It wasn’t shattered. But it wasn’t whole either. And when he turned away again, pacing toward the outer hallway without another word, I let him go.
Eva came in a few minutes later with a tray of tea neither of us drank and a map
I’d already looked at three times today. She dropped it on the table and said nothing, but her eyes were red-rimmed, like she hadn’t slept either.
Only Ethan was missing.
Again.
I found him two hours later in the library tower, sitting in the upper alcove where light filtered through broken panes and dust swirled like ghosts. His back was to me, head tilted toward the window, as if he were listening to something only he could hear.
“E?” I asked, voice careful.
He didn’t move.
“Ethan.”
His shoulders tensed slightly, and then he slowly turned his head.
His eyes weren’t vacant-but they weren’t focused either. They were somewhere in between, locked in that hazy place he’d drifted to more and more over the last few days. That place that made me worry, made Bastain nervous, and made Nate stop speaking altogether.
“There’s something wrong,” I said quietly, kneeling beside him.
His lips moved.
I leaned closer. “What?”
“She sings in fire,” he murmured, the words in a rhythm I didn’t recognize. “She stands in the center of it, calling to me. Not screaming. Not afraid. Calling.”
A chill rippled down my spine, even though the air was warm and stale with magic.
“Who does?” I asked, though I already knew.
He looked at me then-really looked. And I saw it in his eyes.
The flicker.
Like candlelight behind fogged glass.
9:54 Wed, Sep 17
Like flame trapped behind skin.
“The child,” he said. “She knows me.”
I didn’t respond. Not right away.
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I just stood and walked over to the shelves, trying to steady my breathing, to fight the pressure building in my ribs. I didn’t know what I’d find. I didn’t even know what I was looking for. But I needed to move. To do something.
Then I felt it.
A pull.
Low and strange. It dragged me toward Ethan’s cot in the corner. Something beneath it was humming-barely there, just under the edge of sensation, like a sound too deep for human ears.
I bent down.
The floor beneath the bed was scorched.
I reached out and brushed back the thin edge of a rug that had been half-kicked under the frame, and my breath caught.
A rune.
Etched into the stone.
In blood.
It was old. Dried. But still sharp enough to sting my senses, like it had never stopped bleeding in the ways that mattered.
And it wasn’t any rune I’d ever seen.
I called for Bastain.
He came within minutes, Eva behind him.
“What is it?” he asked.
I pointed.
His eyes darkened. “That’s Hollow-born script.”
Eva’s breath hitched. “Here?”
9:55 Wed, Sep 17 .
“I told you,” I whispered. “He’s drifting. He’s not… here. Not all the way.”
ELE
Drvoushan
Ethan stood now, hands braced on the edge of the window frame. “I didn’t draw it,” he said, but his voice was shaky. “I don’t remember. But sometimes… I wake up with blood on my palms.”
Bastain knelt beside the rune, tracing its outer curve without touching it. “This is possession magic. It’s subtle, slow. You wouldn’t feel it. Wouldn’t even know until it was too late. Whoever laid this… wanted to use him as a bridge.”
“The teacher,” I said. “He marked Ethan.”
Eva’s face was pale. “We let him in. We trusted him.”
“No,” I said flatly. “We believed his story because we wanted to. Because we were tired. Because we needed a way to stop guessing and hoping and guessing again. We needed someone to tell us what was coming.”
“And he did,” Bastain muttered. “He said one of the Triad wouldn’t survive the child’s birth. And now he’s found the weakest link.”
Ethan didn’t flinch. “I see her in the fire. Every night.”
“Have you spoken to her?” Bastain asked.
Ethan hesitated. “I think… maybe.”
His voice dropped, barely audible.
“I think she’s choosing me.’
The room fell silent.
Not because we didn’t understand.
But because we did.
And none of us knew what that meant. Not yet.
Not until the fire answered back.
*Jiselle*
“Where the hell did you go, Ethan?”
My voice cracked the air sharper than I meant to, but the hallway had been empty one minute, and the next, he’d come stumbling through it like a man dragged from the other side of something. His shirt was torn at the collar, eyes unfocused, hair damp with sweat like he’d run through fire and didn’t know it.
He blinked at me.
Once. Twice.
Then looked down at his own hands, as if realizing they were shaking only because he could finally feel them again.
“I don’t… know,” he said.
The words didn’t calm me. They froze everything inside me. Not just because he’d vanished. But because it was the third time this week. Third time he’d disappeared without a trace, only to reappear hours later with no memory of where he’d gone, who he’d seen, or what had happened.
“You weren’t just out on a walk,” I said, stepping toward him. “I felt it. The bond between us dimmed. You weren’t here. You weren’t anywhere.”
He opened his mouth, but then winced and pressed a hand to his chest, just over the mark that had been burned into him days ago. That same mark-the third rune. It shimmered faintly through the fabric like it had a heartbeat of its own, responding to something not of this world.
“It hurts when you touch me,” he whispered. “Not like pain. Like… rejection. Your flame doesn’t recognize me anymore.”
I reached out, but hesitated. The last time I’d touched him, my fire had recoiled. Not because I feared him. But because something within him had changed. Was still changing.
“You’re still my brother,” I said.
His smile came small, almost apologetic. “For now.”
I hated the way he said that. Like he knew he was being taken apart from the inside and had already accepted it.
Later that night, I returned to his room after he finally agreed to rest. Something in me didn’t sit right. Ethan had always been unpredictable, but he wasn’t a liar. And these disappearances weren’t just absent-mindedness. They were fractures.
I stepped carefully past the scattered scrolls and vials of ink he kept for leyline recordings, avoiding the frayed rug and the single candle flickering on his desk. It smelled faintly of sulfur, like something had burned that shouldn’t have.
Then I saw it.
Just beneath the edge of his bed, etched into the stone.
A rune. Not like the ones that burned themselves onto our skin. This one had been carved deliberately, deeply, with something sharp. The grooves were filled with dried blood, still dark and fresh at the edges. And at the center-a small shard of veilstone, embedded like a needle.
“Bastain needs to see this,” I whispered to myself, my hand hovering just above the symbol. The closer I got, the more the flame inside me stirred, not in warning, but in recognition.
I didn’t wait. Bastain arrived minutes later, expression hard and unreadable as he crouched beside the rune. He traced it with a gloved finger, then pulled back, his eyes locking with mine.
“This wasn’t made by Ethan,” he said.
“Then who?”
His jaw clenched. “The teacher. He was Serina’s ally once. And before the Gate closed, he was experimenting with Veilstone. Rumor was he wanted to make a vessel. A conduit strong enough to hold both Hollow and Sovereign magic. If that’s true…”
He didn’t need to finish. The answer sat in the silence between us.
Ethan.
My throat went dry. “He’s using my brother.”
Bastain didn’t deny it. And that was worse.
We stood in silence for a moment, the flame in me pulling tight, coiling around my ribs like it knew a reckoning was coming.
I returned to Ethan again at dawn. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, sweat-soaked and pale, staring at the mark on his chest like it was a prophecy he couldn’t decipher.
“Tell me what you’ve seen,” I said.
He didn’t look up. “She stands in the fire. That’s what I sec. Every time. The child. Our child. But she’s not small anymore. She’s not helpless. She’s full-grown. Eyes like yours. Power like I’ve never seen. She’s calling to me. And sometimes…”
I sat beside him. Close. Careful. “Sometimes what?”
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