He started gathering the scattered papers he’d thrown out into piles, separating them by subject the way Fix always did. Fix bent down to help, gathering them up and placing them into their corresponding folders.
He looked up after clipping one closed and noticed Wren was lingering over one of the papers. He held it up to show Fix.
“Haven’t found him yet?” Wren asked.
Fix recognized this particular paper immediately. It was filled with the sadly small number of facts he’d managed to recall about the young man who’d come looking for their help at the height of Hart’s curse—the one Fix had brushed off in his own laser focus to fix his brother.
At the time he hadn’t put it together, but afterward he’d remembered the guy as the same one he’d helped in Cane’s warehouse. He could recall how lost and confused he had looked amid the police raid and the stampede of people flooding toward the exit, but he didn’t know anything else about him. Nothing that could help Fix locate him and offer the help he’d been denied.
Fix slumped into his chair and shook his head.
“Not yet, no,” he said, guilt eating him up from the inside.
Midas had told him it wasn’t his fault when they’d talked about it. He said if the man really needed a cursebreaker he would have been back or left his contact information like Fix had told him to. But he hadn’t. So he was most likely fine.
But Fix couldn’t get that face out of his head. The wide, scared green eyes as he asked for help. The shaky voice as he forced himself to speak. The shine of his long blond hair and the tremble of that thin body as he walked out, shoulders hunched and head bowed.
It was the first time someone had asked for help and Fix had done the one thing he’d never thought he’d do.
He’d turned them away.
Yes, Hart had been in danger, and yes, their entire team had been scrambling for stable footing trying to deal with the sudden realization that actually, cursebreakers were not immune to curses after all.
But the man was a client in need of their services and Fix had been rude to him.
“You know Hart said Cane could find him for you,” Wren said, setting the man’s file on Fix’s desk and looking up at Fix from under his long, dark lashes. “They said they’d seen him around the warehouse with some of the guests.”
“I know.” Fix’s stomach twisted uncomfortably at the thought of so much beauty at a place like Cane’s warehouse. At the thought of Cane’s guests with their hands on someone who looked the way the mystery man did—pure and beautiful.
“So why not let him?” Wren asked.
“It feels too invasive.” Fix scratched at his beard. “Cane won’t be able to find him without resorting to some very…underhanded tactics. And I don’t think my peace of mind is worth it.”
“It’s not just your peace of mind though, is it? He came asking for our help. So it’s about that as well.”
“He never came back after that,” Fix said. “Maybe he managed to get help elsewhere?”
Wren tilted his head and pierced Fix with those blue eyes of his. He narrowed them, dimming the shine of his cursemark, but not completely. Fix felt himself shrink under that stare, as if Wren weren’t half his size and as intimidating as the gerbils he’d placed inside his drawer. He was insightful. Dangerously so, sometimes.
“You know you don’t believe that,” Wren said finally. “You sent him off and now you’re feeling like you failed all of humanity because you couldn’t help one person. And you won’t accept help from anyone yourself because you think you have to do this the hard way to make up for your mistake.”
The words cut deep. Because they were true. Fix knew he was self-critical to the point of destructiveness when it came to failing people. Hart had sent him enough pamphlets about theissue to last him a lifetime and make sure he never forgot. He also knew he was…intense, in the way he cared. In howmuchhe cared.
He thrived on making sure others were taken care of, and while he was sure he had gotten better over the years, the fact that he hadn’t noticed Hart was cursed made him feel guilty. That guilt had spilled into overcompensation, and then that had led to him fucking up with the beautiful boy who came asking for help. Combined, his own mistakes had sent him into a spiral. And right now, that spiral might be making someone else go through something they didn’t have to. Just so Fix could make himself feel better. Just so Fix could give himself a chance to right his own wrongs.
“You think?” he asked.
“I think you need to focus on the fact that you knowing who he is and where he is might be the best thing for him,” Wren said.
“End justifies the means?”
“One Hart on the team is enough.” Wren hopped to his feet. “But yeah. Accept the help. Make sure this guy is safe, whoever he is, and then get some sleep before you keel over. Mary will cuddle if you need someone.”
“I’ll pass. Thanks though,” Fix said with a barely concealed grimace.
“Your loss.”
Wren headed toward the door, a tiny white rectangle falling out of his back pocket as he moved. Fix stood to pick it up off the floor, realizing with a start that it was the letter Damir, the Arcstead cursebreaker, had left for Wren before leaving.
