The next flash was when he’d saved his brother ten years after his abduction on that same beach. Stefan didn’t see him through his own eyes this time. He wasn’t Stefan anymore. He was his brother. He saw himself from his brother’s point of view—a stranger all in black standing in the doorway of his prison, then pulling him out of a place of horror. He felt his confusion, his lack of trust, but years of brainwashed obedience had him allowing the grip on his arm and the tug and the run to freedom. The gravel and glass under his bare feet, the pain of the cuts, the ear-ripping explosions of firing guns, and the stars; Stefan felt and saw it all. Pain, blood, and flying bullets; he’d thought that would be what would stick with the kid—Michael—but it was the stars he remembered the most. The students—the prisoners—of the facility weren’t allowed to wander the grounds at night, and they didn’t have windows in the small cell-like rooms. Death behind him, and, for all he knew, death in front of him, but it was the stars that he saw. Far from any city, deep in the Everglades, the sky might be the color of the Grim Reaper’s cloak, but Death’s robe did make the ideal background for a hundred stars.

Brilliant light that shone down on you and could almost make you believe in miracles.

A light that could almost make you believe escape could be real and life was more than being trained to kill, turned into a weapon with no will of your own.

A light that was worth dying to see.

Only Michael had it in him to think that, which was unbelievable too. A wonder. He was a good kid. A damn good kid. The best. Even while dying, Stefan knew that as well as he knew anything in the goddamn world.

Michael left the bullets and the stars behind. The next was a string of emotions: fear, confusion, exasperation, more confusion, bewilderment, denial, annoyance, finally a reluctant acceptance, contentment, and a sense of belonging. All those emotions had been caused by Stefan, and while he wished the ones at the beginning could’ve been avoided, he was damn proud of the ones he felt . . . that his brother felt at the end.