29. Your brother' s secret.

Cold sweat on his forehead.

Strange images in his dreams.

Aiolia felt imperceptibly Shaina' tender arms substaining him on her bosom.

She was awaken for him, for giving surveillance on his sleep.

The Veiled Woman. The Woman in Blue.

And, suddenly, he saw himself wearing Leo' s cloth, in an attitude of fighting.

Something changed... he wasn' t himself. He was his brother, wearing Sagitter' s cloth, in an attitude of fighting.

' Yes', said the Veiled Woman, ' they ressemble each other like twins. The same strenght, the same attitude, the same positions, the same movements, the same eyes. Now, I can see your face. The face of my Aiolos. Yes, you' re like him.'

The Veiled Woman was talking to him, but with Shaina' s voice.

It wasn' t possible, it was nightmarish.

The, imagines went fast, so fast to become wild.

A young beautiful blond girl, maybe fourteen, with eyes like violet december' s nights, naked in a river.
His brother, astonished in seeing all this beauty rising suddenly from the water after an offer to the river.
Her face without mask. Her body without dresses.
His eyes unable to turn off her. His body rigid as a stone.
Her broken honour.
His fallen heart.
Their untold secret.

Then, images moved.

His brother, wild as him, running behind that girl on a hill in a night without moon.
His brother, naked as him, fucking as mad that girl on the stairs of the Ninth House, against her will.
His brother, naked as him, fucking as mad that girl on a bed in the Ninth House, as in her will.
His brother, a girl' s name on a roughly engraved gold pendant at his neck.
His brother, with the sacred child in his arms, escaping away.
His brother, wounded to death, on his side, tighting the pendant in his hand, calling softly a name Aiolia didn' t understand, calling it in repetition, till the breath went away from him.

A girl, in an enormous House, crying and hurling, tears and shivers in her, and an imponent mature woman keeping her by her frail shoulders, while other masked girls went around her, covered her, embraced her.

A woman, wearing luctuous clothes, becoming the Veiled Woman.

A girl with sphinx eyes, which goes to the retire of the Veiled Woman who lives in a room protected by a giant Webcob.

Their words, Aiolia could barely understand. Their long conversation. A gift form the Widow of the Webcob, for the girl who had eyes like a sphinx.

He didn't see the gift.

' Live for me...'

Aiolia slowly opened his eyes.

' My brother had a woman... nobody knew... neither me...'

Shaina held him tightly, kissing his hair.

' She is the most broken- hearted creature I' ve ever seen. She was the most fragrant spirit in the world. Passion was her blood. She has no more life in her eyes. Make me a promise... don' t let me becoming like her.'

He took her in his arms, and for a moment he saw himself lied down, murmuring ossessively her name before dying.

He rested.

Then, he had the desire to listen to that story.

' Tell me what you know about them.'