The Brotherhood: Blood Read Online Free PDF Page B

porcelain-smooth flesh of an individual he knew nothing of and took into his arms the very child he now considered his son.
    When he finished his tale, Karma’s eyes softened, almost as if she were ready to let loose a few anxious tears of her own. “Well?” he asked.
    “It’s quite the tale,” the woman said, “especially considering the fact that this figure chose not to reveal its face.”
    “It’s his child,” Ectris sighed. “Not mine.”
    “He is as much yours as it was his.”
    “Do you really believe that?”
    “Do you believe that the child is not yours?”
    “I… don’t know,” he said, tilting his head down to look at his hands. “I don’t feel like I’m supposed to be doing this.”
    “Why is that?”
    “Because it seems as though I’m in the wrong place in my life.”
    “Maybe this is the doorway to the right one,” Karma shrugged, lacing her fingers on the table before her. “I can’t say anything more than that, but I do believe you were given this child for a reason.”
    “You do?”
    “I do,” she smiled. “Things happen for specific reasons, Ectris. That baby was born because its mother died in childbirth; you were given that baby because someone believed you could take care of him; you went to a friend because he was able to give you milk; and you came to me because you needed someone to take care of your child. Life, and events, run in circles. Have you ever heard the saying?”
    “That things come full circle?”
    “Exactly. It’s for that reason I feel as though you should have no concerns about taking care of this little boy.”
    “You’ll help me,” Ectris said. “Right?”
    “I would never abandon a child who is without its mother,” Karma said. “I’ve not the strength in my heart to do such a thing.”
    Ectris nodded.
    When he closed his eyes, he pictured life with a child whom would one day become the man he could only hope to be.
    I guess this is the point where I start acting like a real man, he thought, sighing.
    The moment he turned his eyes up to Karma, he felt as though the pieces of his life would soon begin to fall into place.
     
    He came to accept himself as the boy’s father within the coming years. Slowly, over an amount of time that could only be measured by the passing seasons and the ever-swift growth of the boy who had become his own, he came to realize that regardless of whatever past regards had haunted him and despite the odds so seemingly put against him, Ectris could do just as he pleased in his own life and his son’s—who, regardless of the differences between them, had soon come to call him father the moment he could talk.
    When the boy turned seven—when his body, though small, became acclimated to its own—Ectris took it upon himself to give the boy his own practice sword: a right of passage that, while seemingly simple, would one day secure within the boy the military career Ectris himself had never had.
    “Here,” he said, kneeling before his son and holding the short wooden sword in his hands. “It’s for you.”
    “Me?” Odin asked.
    Ectris nodded. “Yes, it is. I need to teach you how to defend yourself.”
    “But Father… I’m so young.”
    How humble of you, he thought, reaching out to tousle the boy’s hair.
    “Better early than never, son.”
    Odin stared at the sword, almost as if he were unsure what to do.
    When Ectris took the boy’s hand and slid it around the hilt until his fingers touched his palm, Odin smiled.
    “Come on, “Ectris said, standing. “Let’s go.”
     
    “Like that,” Ectris said, bracing his hands along his son’s right arm. “Hold it steady, Odin. Bend your forearm just a little.”
    “Why?” the boy asked.
    “It’ll let you swing faster and move your sword easier. If you keep your arm straight out in front of you, you’ll get it chopped off.”
    The child swallowed a lump in his throat. “All right,” he said.
    Ectris settled down into a crouch, watching carefully as