"Kai San." Kai Low scoffed. It was nothing more than a pained laugh, but something about it broke Yuze's heart a little bit, even though he didn't know why. "Kai San is my brother…was my brother."
"Your…" Pieces clocked into place in Yuze's rage-muddled mind.
"My older brother." Kai Low clarified with something that sounded distinctly like disgust.
Yuze's mind raced. Had Kai Low mentioned a brother before? Maybe he ha,d and Yuze just hadn't been paying attention. He'd been distracted by everything else, not so distracted that he didn't make a couple of stupid decisions at the same time. He should have been paying more attention to someone who had been their enemy not long ago. Especially since Kai Low made no secret of his loyalties. He'd just said he was gone the minute the peace so much as flickered.
Why would Yuze bother to learn anything about him when he wasn't going to stay?
Because he was still a possible enemy, and Yuze had been so weakened by everything that happened with Fox that he'd forgotten his duty. His loyalty was to Chenzhou and Camelia before anything else. Including his own heart. Allowing everything with Fox to throw him so far out of whack that he'd forgotten exactly what he'd dedicated his life to.
Yuze's rage turned to ice-cold shame. He should have been gathering as much information about Kai Low as possible, and instead he'd been…
He'd been fucking everything up, and he hadn't even realized.
Kai Low's brother.
Kai San.
Who was dead.
Who'd done something so aggrevious that Kai Low carried a grudge larger than the Camelia itself.
It dawned on Yuze then. So simple and clear that he felt like the biggest fool on the Rock.
Kai Low had told him. Yuze had just let everything else make him forget.
"Fox."
Fox was Kai Low's brother.
Kai Low sneered. "Fox. That's a stupid name. Did he pick that himself?"
Yuze was about to retort, but stopped when he realized he didn't actually know the answer. Fox had been Fox since before Yuze had known him. "I don't know…that was all I ever knew him as."
"You only knew him by some stupid codename, and you think you loved him?" Disbelief filled Kai Low's face and voice. "You know nothing about him. He was a traitor. A murderer. He should have been strung up and had his flesh flayed from his bones!"
"He protected the Camelia and her people for years. He died protecting me."
"How nice. You had his favor. It wouldn't have lasted. If he could turn his back on us, on his family, he would have turned on you eventually."
"You don't know that!" The urge to defend Fox was so strong and so rooted in emotion that Yuze couldn't ignore it. "Maybe the reason he came here was to get away from you. What did your family do that drove him away?"
Kai Low stilled. The air took on an ominous weight. "We did nothing. We were his family. We loved him, and he turned his back on us. On our way of life."
"Then you did something to make him." Yuze snapped.
Kai Low seethed and hissed. "We did nothing to make him murder my sister."
Yuze froze. It felt like the blood in his veins had turned to ice. How ridiculous it was that they were having this argument here and now. That it was in the middle of someone trying to destroy Mingzhe and possibly the Camelia, in a dingy room that smelled like wet dirt, that Yuze was finding out the secrets Fox had been so careful to keep.
But was what Kai Low said true?
Or was it a lie? Maybe not even a complete one, some memory faded over time and blurred by anger and hurt until they it wasn't recognizable?
Why would Fox murder his own sister?
It didn't fit with what Yuze knew of the man. Which, apparently, wasn't nearly as much as he'd thought.
But it still rang false.
Kai Low was convinced. Beyond a shadow of a doubt. It practically radiated off of him like the heat rose from the ground on the hottest days of the year.
What was enough to convince one brother that the other had murdered their sister and betrayed their entire tribe?
~ tbc