“But hewill. Some powers take longer to come in than others, you know that. He can’t help it.”
“There are ways around it.”
“We have discussed this, Diego,” his mother hissed.
“And we’re discussing it again. You know, it isn’t your choice to make. He’smyson.Idecide his fate, and if I don’t, my father will. Which would you prefer?”
The silence thickened. Felipe didn’t dare move or breathe for fear that his father would hear his heart pounding on the other side of the wall. His mother wouldn’t let them hurt him. She wouldn’t, not after he had tried so hard.
“If he doesn’t make himself useful, he will be turned out. Do you want that shame brought onto us? How will it look for the Patrón’s eldest son’s only boy to be a wastrel?”
“So what do you propose we do with him?”
A bead of blood ran down Felipe’s leg where he dug his nails into his flesh to keep the sob in his mouth.
“He’s going to learn to fight with the men. It’s long past time. He can still go with you when you visit the Quinteros, but his days will be spent in the training grounds. Mateo will take up his healing lessons when he has time. Don’t look at me like that. Your way isn’t working, and it’s making him soft. My son cannot grow up to be acoward.”
Felipe flinched as if he had been struck, and a sharp breath caughtbetween his ribs. Blood pulsed down his leg anew. He hadn’t hidden it well enough. Somehow, his father knew. That word had been spat in his cousin’s face and whispered behind his back for years no matter how well Santiago fought or how dutiful he was. Felipe’s sister had told him it was because Santiago looked at men the way women did, and that was an unforgivable weakness to their grandfather. Felipe hadn’t understood. He hadn’t understood the consequences of their shared weakness until Santiago was caught with a man from town and cast out of the family with nothing but the clothes on his back. It had been a warning and a spectacle his grandfather and uncle took pleasure in even as Santiago pleaded for mercy. Every word and tear he shed only proved his weakness, but what Felipe remembered most was his sister’s nails digging into his shoulder as if she could sense his sympathy. Ever since that day, Felipe had tried so hard to keep his eyes low and his head down. Felipe bit back a sob. He couldn’t be cast out. Whatever his father required of him, he would do it.
“If I already see it, they’ll see it soon enough, and if they do, there’s nothing I can do to spare him. So no more coddling him, Marina. He’s a Galvan, and he needs to start acting like one.”
The door rattled in its frame, and his father charged into the moonlight. As Diego crossed the garden, he stopped directly in front of his cowering son. For a fleeting moment, Felipe thought his father might try to comfort him or offer something that amounted to remorse, but when he beheld his son’s wet gaze, his face twisted into a disgusted sneer. With a shake of his head, his father stormed off towards the training grounds without looking back.
Felipe awoke with a shuddering gasp. For a wretched moment, he thought he was still that boy on his family’s estate. A wave of long-forgotten hopelessness settled over him until he remembered where he was. He wasn’t that boy anymore; he was a grown man standing in the dark, his body humming with adrenaline from a decades-old memory. Scrubbing a shaking hand over the stubble lining his jaw, Felipe focused on the moon shining on the other side of the windowpane. He had left that life years ago. He had a home, he had a job, he had Oliver.Oliver.Turning back to the bed, relief washed away the remaining fear as Felipe watched Oliver sleep. His pale pink lips were lax, and a boyish wave of black hair covered his eyes as he lay oblivious to Felipe’s nightmares. Felipe swept a gentle hand across his lover’s cheek, and the tether slowly tightened as Oliver seemed to lean into his touch. Oliver who loved him so fiercely no matter what. Felipe swallowed hard. Would Oliver love him less or lose his love for him entirely if he knew where he came from or the man he would probably still be if it hadn’t been for that fateful January night?
“Felipe?” Oliver called, his grey eyes drifting open. “Is it morning?”
“No, love, I was just stretching my legs. Go back to sleep.”
“If it’s a cramp, the jerky’s in the dresser.”
A watery smile crossed Felipe’s lips as he climbed back into bed. Oliver blindly reached for him and pulled him close, twining their legs together. His face nuzzled against Felipe’s shoulder as he murmured “I love you” into his skin. Holding Oliver’s hands over his heart like a talisman, Felipe tried to sleep, but every time he shut his eyes, he saw Santiago’s tearstained face as the gates to the Galvan compound closed to him forever.
Chapter Twelve
Physicians and Pharmacies
From the backseat of the steamer, Oliver watched Felipe as he drove down Aldorhaven’s main road. All morning Felipe had seemed off. He had been quiet and distracted when they awoke, but Oliver attributed that to a lack of proper food. The dark circles under his eyes had been alarmingly stark against his tan skin, and the tremors were more pronounced than normal. Oliver had pressed a piece of jerky into his hands before breakfast and had covertly shoveled the sausages Mr. Allen had deposited onto his plate onto Felipe’s the moment the man’s back was turned. While he seemed physically better after eating, the emotions churning on the other end of the tether still gave Oliver pause. He could parse out pops of stale fear and dread but overlaying them like a patch were fatigue and something harder and duller that Oliver didn’t recognize. When Oliver tried to ask him what was wrong, Felipe gave him a blithe smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes and reassured him that he just hadn’t slept well. Oliver wanted to believe Felipe had gotten out of the habit of sleeping in strange places afternine months of staying close to home, but somehow, he doubted that was it.
Parking the steamer in front of a light blue house that was slightly more stately than its neighbors, Felipe turned to Oliver and Gwen. “Remember the plan?”
Oliver gave the tether two tugs to show he understood.
“And three if you’re in trouble,” Felipe whispered. “Make sure you stay away from the woods.”
More than anything, Oliver wanted to kiss Felipe or squeeze his hand before they parted for luck or fear, but they couldn’t chance it. They would both just have to be careful and hope for the best.
“You too.” As Oliver climbed out of the steamer, he turned to Mr. Allen and said as cheerfully as he could muster, “Keep an eye on him for me.”
The innkeeper nodded with a laugh as Oliver shut the door. Watching the steamer pull away from the curb and disappear around the bend toward the mill, Oliver let the tether run between his fingers until it thinned like wool drawn on a spindle. He didn’t like the idea of Felipe being so far from him, and he hoped he could trust the innkeeper to keep Felipe away from the Dysterwood should he notice him straying. If he felt anything odd on Felipe’s side of the tether, there was nothing on earth that could stop Oliver from running to him. At Gwen’s elbow poking into his side, Oliver jolted to attention.
“Is this it?” she asked, hooking her thumb toward the blue house.
In Manhattan, Oliver was accustomed to physicians having an office of some sort or working out of a hospital. The country doctor who only made house calls was not something one often encountered in the city, and it was hard to imagine the house that seemed to be putting on dilapidated airs was where this man did business. In its heyday, the house had probably been quite affluent with its gingerbread flourishes under the porch roof and its stained glass transom over the front door, but after years of decay, the whitewash had worn away to reveal the pockmarked wood beneath it. From the far end of the porch, a fat, orange tabby watched Oliver and Gwen suspiciously as theyclimbed the steps. Unlike at the society where Gwen wore her most colorful dresses, she had taken to wearing her subdued, more formal church gowns for the investigation. Oliver understood why, but he didn’t like it all the same. Locking eyes with him, Gwen drew herself up and straightened before ringing the bell.
When no one answered, Oliver knocked the way Felipe had taught him to do on investigations. “The doctor might be out already.”
Before Gwen could reply, the door opened and a middle aged woman with grey hair pulled back in a severe bun and a plain black frock peered out. Her blue eyes went wide as she looked between them with something between fear and curiosity. “May I help you?”
