Keefe kisses like he's trying to kill him. And he might succeed, fingers tracing his jaw and cheekbones, pinkies grazing his throat. His heart speeds, skips beats like an inexperienced drummer playing a bad rhythm. His leg aches as he takes a step even closer, echoes lunging through his body. Fitz's heart burns in his chest like it's ready to explode. It wouldn't be the worst way to die.

No worse than driving a dagger through a throat and feeling blood spray across your face.

"Hey—hey," Keefe murmurs against his lips, pulling away and searching his eyes. He's blurry, and Fitz realizes with a start that warm tears trickle down his cheeks and drip off his chin.

"Sorry," he mumbles, wiping his eyes, but that only reminds him of how he wiped his hands on Alvar's tunic after killing him, and a bit of the stone comes back against his will, calming down the echoes in his heart. It's not really fair, because Fitz has only lived with this realization (of love, that is) for a few minutes and his brother shouldn't be ruining everything again. Shouldn't still be ruining him, because he's supposed to be fixed. Killing him was supposed to make everything better.

"Fitz," Keefe says, like he's invoking some sort of god. His face fractures and reforms as he blinks and his eyes well up again.

"I killed Alvar," he says, and Keefe sucks in a breath. But he doesn't let him go. "I— today. Before you came over. I killed him and I wiped the blood on his tunic and I washed the knife in the bathroom sink and wiped it off with toilet paper. I cleaned my brother's blood up with toilet paper, Keefe."

Keefe removes Fitz's hands from his neck where they rest and holds them in front of him. They're scrubbed clean, except for crusts of dried blood under his nails. "You missed a spot," he says quietly, and Fitz feels his face crumble at the mistake. "Why did you do it?"

"He was going to kill Tam," Fitz answers immediately. "I did it to— to save Tam."

"Why would he want to kill Tam?" Keefe asks, before the pieces click and he breathes, "Oh. You told him about Ruy."

"If you want to ask me why I did it, I don't know." Fitz imagines that he is the statue of a prince, raised high above the masses of morality and reasoning. But the tears keep falling and his voice keeps breaking. Princes molded from gold aren't supposed to cry, and they aren't supposed to lie. "I just—I think—I wanted to—"

"What did you want?" Keefe traces Fitz's palms with his thumbs and a shiver goes down his spine. He can't tell if there's disapproval or understanding hidden in his eyes.

He should be the one to understand, the only one who possibly could. Maybe Sophie wouldn't, or Biana, or Linh, but Keefe is supposed to get it. He's supposed to be numb too.

"I wanted... I wanted to protect Tam. And my family. Protect everyone." He's a shield thrown in the way of the truly important people, like he'd been in Exile when that arthropleura had stabbed him in his stomach. He'd doubled over and felt the venom sing through his veins and known that Sophie was safe from everyone else's mistake.

"Liar." Keefe clings to his hands like a lifeline.

Or like he's reading his emotions.

How far does the numbness reach? How strong are his walls?

"Liar," Alvar had said. "Why are you killing me?"

Fitz closes his eyes so tightly it hurts and watches his life flash by.

"I wanted to hurt him," he says softly. Set him on fire like he'd watched Dex and Sophie and Kenric burn, poison him like he'd allowed the gnomes to wither, slash him open like he'd done when he set those newborn trolls free to wreak havoc. Alvar killed Calla. Alvar killed Umber. Alvar gave Biana her scars, kidnapped Wylie, Tam, Sophie, and Dex, took Keefe away from him. "I wanted him to feel what he did to me."

Keefe nods and drops his hands, and Fitz feels the immediate lack of him, a phantom pain. "Do you regret it?"

The tears have stopped. He considers this for a moment. "No. I don't regret it. I would do it again if I had the chance. I wish I could do it again."

"So you've discovered it," Keefe says, like he's come to an epiphany that Fitz just has to hear. He rubs his fingers together, a familiar tic that he'd stopped doing years ago. "You've discovered the way to feel no guilt."

Fitz wants to laugh. Of course he's guilty. Of course his mind is close to broken over this. The last of Alvar's blood swirling away as Fitz flushed the fucking toilet, dying the water pink, and he's not guilty? Any moment, he waits to feel a pressure in his head and the fracture of his memories. Maybe he'll faint as Alden had, but be locked up in Exile instead of the accommodations his father got. His father, the hero, a tortured soul. Fitz, a murderer, deserving of guilt. Deserving of regret when he doesn't feel any at all.

He doesn't feel any at all.

"If you want something hard enough," Keefe tells him. "Then you will do whatever you need to achieve it."

"Then why is Fintan like that?" Fitz challenges. "Because he didn't want to burn down Oblivimyre? He didn't want Kenric to die?"

"It wasn't that," Keefe says. "I've spent more time with him. It was the first time, when he killed his friends, his students with Everblaze. He's broken, at least a little bit. But Brant didn't want to kill Jolie. And Alden didn't want Prentice to break. And you wanted your brother to die."

Fitz can't look at him anymore. He looks instead at the window, the glaring sun burning into his retinas until he can't see at all. If he can't see anymore, then the mirror won't betray him and show him who he is.

"Yeah," he says softly. "I wanted him to die."

"Then..." Keefe grabs his hand again, and Fitz stares at it: chipped pink polish versus his own nails bitten nearly to the quick, slender fingers belonging to a painter and all the scars Fitz's accumulated over the months of training and the years since Sophie arrived, the fresh split on his knuckles where he'd hit Alvar too hard (again), pale against brown. "Then... it's good that you killed him." Fitz meets his eyes, and he adds, "Sometimes, not doing anything is worse."

"Is that why you ran away?"

"Yes."

They're both quiet for a moment.

"Since we're telling the truth..." Keefe starts, and Fitz shoots him a glance, already dreading his next words. He's waiting for rejection, maybe. But instead: "I've been getting letters from my mom. And my dad has, too."

"What?" Fitz asks in alarm, flicking through the reasons she could be after him (legacy, changes, abilities) before settling on the most important question: "She knows where you are?"

Keefe gets this stupid dopey expression, like he should be scuffing his shoe on the ground with his hands in his pockets and sending dirt flying. "Tam removed the shadow tracker, and the notes stopped coming, but then today I got a new one."

"So she knows where you are," Fitz repeats.

"She won't come after me," Keefe says, so confident and reassuring like he has the brain cells to back it up.

"How the hell do you know?"

"Because she wants me to come to her."

It takes a few moments for the words to register. "Did she say that?"

"Well, she wrote it."

"Are you going to go?"

"Sure," he says, matter-of-fact, but there's a miserable undercurrent in the words. Keefe attempts a grin. "I'm glad we got this resolution, though. Before—you know."

"Before you die? Before your mom kills you?" Fitz asks in disbelief. He wants to pinch himself, or punch someone—he can't believe he kissed this guy a few minutes previously. Is stupid contagious?

"She won't kill me," Keefe tells him, like that's any reassurance. "Just—y'know, use me. She needs me for her plan." Catching the look on Fitz's face: "Either I do this, or all of you die. She can get anywhere she wants, you realize."

"And if she makes you kill us? Which you could, with your new ability," Fitz points out. Keefe shifts on his feet. His finger taps errantly on his leg. "What if she sends you after Sophie?"

"Fitz, I've thought this through," he says, even though he clearly hasn't because Fitz can think of a million reasons why he shouldn't do this off the top of his head. "I'd rather lose myself than lose you. She can't force me into anything."

"And she won't," Fitz says, leaving no room for argument. Keefe opens his mouth anyway—of course he does— and Fitz presses his finger over it to silence him. "Because I'm coming with you."