Autumn's POV

When my brother did something stupid, which happened depressingly often, I sometimes slipped back into our native Korean.

I shouted in our mother tongue, glaring at him fiercely. "Have you lost your mind?!"

    He raised his empty palms, as if showing me he wasn't carrying a weapon—although I knew that he had at least half a dozen blades on him at all times. "Hey, calm down a bit. I'll be safe."

I resisted the impulse to smack him and attempted to regain my composure, as well as my grasp on the English language. It took at least a few minutes of frustrated pacing around the room and a lot of swearing under my breath, but eventually my rage simmered down and I faced him again.

With my hands still trembling, I took a series of deep breaths in an attempt to calm down. When we were alone together, my brother and I often called each other by our Korean names rather than our English names.

"Myung-Jun," I said slowly, "I know you're smart. But have you considered that fighting Dark Scimitar is like hitting a rock with an egg?"

He sighed. "I did consider that. But what other choice do I have? We can't let him keep mocking and threatening us. I can't fail my family and friends again. Getting rid of Dark Scimitar is the only way he'll stop coming after the people I care about."

I pulled my brother into another hug. He returned the embrace quickly.

"You'll be okay," I said softly. "We all will. But you're not fighting him one-on-one. You have a team for a reason, remember?"

That got a tiny smile out of him. "Yeah. What's a wolf without a pack?"

"Exactly," I answered.

He nodded, then vanished into his armory. A moment later, he returned with dual daggers and handed them to me.

The sheaths were intricately made from high-quality black leather. Each one was engraved with a word. Pain and Hope. I looked at my brother quizzically.

    He shrugged. "It's tradition to name them. I thought these would fit you."

    I smiled and unsheathed Hope. Despite my more peaceful and heroic mindset most of the time, I was still a soldier's kid, so of course I knew my way around a blade.

    Hope was a beauty to behold, nine inches of sharpened steel with a comfortable leather-wrapped grip. The blades were identical, except for the decorative gems inset in the pommels. Hope's was golden, and Pain's was red.

"Thanks," I said with a grin, sliding my new blade back into its sheath.

He smiled in return, but the look quickly vanished from his face. He glanced away.

"What is it?" I asked.

My brother took a sharp breath. "If we're going to take down my old team—Matt and all the rest—showing mercy isn't going to be an option. You'll have to aim to kill, all three of you. No room for heroic moral codes. Understand?"

    Instead of responding to his cold-blooded question, I changed the topic with a deflection, asking questions of my own. "Why do you keep using his real name? How well do you know this guy, exactly?"

    Myung-Jun blushed, pale cheeks going pink.

    "...Intimately," he admitted reluctantly, refusing to look at me. "We shared a bed—actually, we did more than just share it—and we trained together, fought together, bled together. Kind of like the Sacred Band of Thebes from Ancient Greece."

    I stared at him, and we both stayed silent for an uncomfortably long moment as I absorbed that information.

    "You slept—as in slept naked—with an assassin?!" I questioned.

    "I—yeah, but listen, I was also an assassin! It was good for boosting morale!" He said in a defensive voice.

    I couldn't help but burst into laughter at that. It just sounded utterly ridiculous coming from my brother's mouth.

He quietly fidgeted with his weapons, clearly embarrassed. He rolled his eyes toward the ceiling as if praying for divine aid. The gods gave no assistance.

When my laughing subsided, something else occurred to me. I gave him a curious look.

"Do you still love him?" I asked gently.

He groaned. "Seon..."

I fixed him with a stare. "Spill."

My brother ran fingers nervously through his hair.

"Jury's still out on that," he said. "And I know he's not the greatest person morally, but neither am I."

I shook my head, stepping forward and poking his chest. "Stop saying that! You've made a lot of bad choices, but that doesn't mean you're actually evil. You were just a kid when Volt manipulated you."

Myung-Jun exhaled. "So was he. Same with everyone else on my old team. You and Jeremiah saved me from becoming an even worse monster than I already am. If anyone can reach Matt, get him to stop hurting people, it's me."

    Before I could respond, Myung-Jun doubled over in pain with an agonized groan.

    I grabbed his arm, and after a terrible few seconds, he stood ramrod straight. Sweat dripped down his forehead.

    "What the hell was that?" I questioned.

    He grunted before answering. "Dark Scimitar sending his regards. He's laughing at me again."

    My fists clenched around the handles of my new dual daggers. "Where is he?"

    My brother never answered, because his eyes began glowing solid gold. He spoke in a voice that wasn't remotely his own. I recognized it as Eidolon's, the purple-haired villain from the rooftop earlier who could apparently take over other people telepathically.

"Good to see you again, Golden Ember! Let's have some fun."

My brother's possessed body threw an experimental punch, but I deflected the strike and countered with a knee to the stomach.

While Eidolon wheezed, I went in for a grapple and threw her to the floor.

"You're slow," I taunted, staying just out of reach with my hands up.

Eidolon grinned. "Let's fix that."

My twin's body was up and attacking before I could even process any movement. Two dozen machine-gun-fire body punches had me on the ground, groaning with fierce agony radiating from my ribs.

"That fast enough for you?" Eidolon mocked, looming over me and getting in my face.

As a last resort, I unsheathed the dagger named Pain and stabbed Eidolon in the chest.

My brother's face contorted with a shriek, and Myung-Jun's eyes went from gold back to their normal dark brown.

He grunted, glancing at the blade three inches deep in his chest. I'd deliberately any avoided vital organs, but a stab wound was a stab wound.

I tugged the blade out with a gruesome wet noise, allowing his rapid healing abilities to seal the wound within seconds.

"Ugh. Thanks for getting that bitch out of my head," he muttered, getting to his feet and helping me up.

I nodded, but every movement made me want to scream from the pain in my ribs.

I bore it stoically, gritting my teeth, but of course he noticed.

"Med bay, now," he said, carrying me there despite my protests.

"I can walk," I told him. "Seriously, I'm fine!"

He scoffed. "Tell that to your two broken ribs. You're actually lucky it's not way worse, but the point is, you need to recover."

I didn't have the energy left to argue. He laid me gently into a healing pod—another courtesy of his former employers—and I fell asleep while my injuries mended.