All Dad’s blackmail. There’s no way he knew how deep it went for Hex, but hearing it, I hate my father all over again. This is what he’s doing; this is how he’s hurting people.
“Now you’re giving up your plans for your Holiday.” Hex shudders, cheeks streaked red, and he droops, exhausted and resolved. “I’ve let this go too long. Out of fear and anguish and—I can’t anymore.”
He meets my eyes, finally, they’re grieving and utterly wreck me.
“Do not bow to what your father wants,” he whispers, shaking. “Go through with the collective, Coal. Let him make good on his threats. Let him—”
“No.”
Hex flinches. “Coal. I’m telling you to do this.”
“I won’t let my father hurt you,” I say each word purposefully. That’s all I can see. Him, hurting, and everything zeroes in on it, my own grief crumbling away because this, this I can focus on. This I can stop.
“It isn’t about me—”
“Now it is. For me it is. I won’t let him hurt the man I love.”
Hex’s eyes grow wide. “The man you what?”
He has to know. This can’t be a surprise.Why is this a surprise to him.
“I love you,” I say, weak, wretched. “I’m in love with you.”
But all he says in the reactive stillness is, “You can’t.”
“I… I can’t?”
“You can’t,” Hex says again. He shakes his head, trying to negate what I’ve said, but it’s there, and we both feel it. “You—you have to go through with this collective. I have to face whatever repercussions come. What you’re doing—Raven would want that. She wouldn’t want me to keep cowering. You can’t base your decisions off me.”
“Why not?”
“Why not?” he echoes, like the answer is obvious, and theremight be pity in the pinch of his brows. “I’m going back to Mexico regardless of what happens.”
“And then?” A cliff is coming. There’s a pause at the edge.
He watches me like he expects me to answer my own question, his eyes narrowing in growing aggravation. “Don’t make me say it, Coal, please.”
“Saywhat?” I honestly don’t know, and my confusion only angers him more, lips thinning.
“You’re the heir of Christmas,” he says, barely contained. “I’m the heir of Halloween. How did you see this ending?”
He leaves it at that. As if it’s enough explanation.
It sure as hellis not.
“You never saw this working between us?” The words slice my tongue.
“We are both the heirs of very different Holidays,” he says, some of that anger held back behind caution. “As proven more now. We would have come to a moment of choosing between us and our duties.”
“And we would have chosen our duties, no question?”
His silence is answer enough.
“So this was just a fling for you?” I muster. “This was adalliance?”
I throw the word at him because he’s absolutely crushing me right now, and it’s a low blow, but it hits, and he closes his eyes, bracing.
“I have to think of Halloween’s future,” he says, “and you—”
