Quartz and dark wood unfurled, first petal-like, and then petals in truth, a flower opening toward the sun of the stranger’s regard. It smelled, oddly, of long closed rooms, of dust and forgotten things. The lighting shifted, as the curtains and furniture lost their rich reds, and the first chords of an unfamiliar song played through the air.
The man watched the box in silence, a crooked half-smile on his lips. His breathing deepened, some of the tense wariness appearing to leave his shoulders.
“The fuck,” the human said as he stepped closer to the table. Quiet and wondering. “You make this?”
Everil couldn’tthink. There were answers he could offer. Should offer. He might fool the man with talk of technology, which Talia claimed capable of endless impossibilities. Or a glamour to hide the room’s shifting, though he hadn’t the strength for it.
The room spun. Each breath drowned him further in honey and citrus.
The man stepped toward Talia’s toy, captive to that harnessed bit of Faerie. And Faerie was so very unpredictable around humans. It might crown him in oak or fill his lungs with rose petals. Set him dancing or put him to sleep for a hundred years.
“Wait.” Did he speak the word aloud? All Everil could hear was the music and his own beating heart.
A step, then another, through the dizzy blur of colors, not thinking of why he’d been keeping his distance. Only thinking of Lawrence’s blood and Nimai’s smile. Faerie’s relentless cruelty and the man’s guileless curiosity.
Everil made his way past the settee, stepping between the man and the table. Too close. Much too close. The man’s aura dragged at him like a current.
He needed to get away.Now. But he didn’t dare move back and leave the man at risk of the box’s enchantments. Instead, he wavered, caught between impulses, lips parted to better taste the summer-sweet honey in the air.
The man glanced up, his eyes widening in surprise. He looked ready to speak, but whatever he intended to say was replaced with a startled, “Fuck!”
Because Everil was falling. Too much, too fast, too dizzy, and when his knees gave, it was almost a relief. Hitting the floor would be better than wavering there, unsure.
The floor failed to materialize. Instead, there was an arm around his waist. Another on his shoulder. The man was holding him. Keeping him from falling.
There was no time. No chance. The man caught him, and the world ended. Again.
The world dissolved on his tongue like candy. Baked oranges, rich with honey and vanilla, served on a summer night. The distant call of crickets and nightbirds. The dance of fireflies.
And Everil should have been able to fight it, to tear himself free, as he’d done when he’d found Nimai covered in Lawrence’s blood. But there was so little of him left, and he needed this stranger, needed him down to his soul. To draw him closer, drown in him, taking in selfish desperation even as he collapsed, half supported, to the ground.
“Fuck, fuck,fuck.“ The man was swearing, breath warm and close.
The human somehow managed to settle on the settee, while Everil knelt before him, clinging to the man’s legs with all of the fresh bond’s desperate desire for contact. Hisforehead rested on the man’s knees, and the man still held him, his hands on Everil’s back and shoulder. He could feel the human’s confusion and concern, just as he could feel his own panicked heartbeat.
There was no Protocol for this.
Or anyway, the Protocol was simple. You did not, under any circumstances, form a soulbond with a human. You certainly didn’t spring one on a stranger, taking all you could of him while clinging shamelessly, shivering at his touch.
Everil took a shaking breath and carefully pulled away, sitting back on his heels. The distancehurt, a pain deeper than merely physical. It didn’t matter. It couldn’t matter. He couldn’t let this happen.
(It had already happened.)
“I’m sorry,” he murmured, looking up, his long, dark hair falling into his face. “I’m afraid I’ve done you a grave disservice.”
Chapter four
Bo
Water taken straight fromthe river, all clinking ice and the chill of winter on his lips and fingers. Grass gone short, frost broken or summer cut, fresh and sharp and not, all at the same time, crunching under boots and soft against bare feet. Dark shadows and old wood, unpolished and damp, air heavy with dust on that first step inside, disturbed for the first time in years.
A torrent of emotions. His. Not his. His? Guilt and desperation mixed with a deep, protectiveneed.
The man spoke so softly, apologetic and grave. Awareness of the words came slowly, Bo still half-lost in the sense of ice water and shadow.
Hair falling in artful fucking strands across a face that’d gone pallid when the man collapsed into Bo’s arms. He looked better now. Better even than he had when Bo first walked in. Naturally tan skin and sad gray eyes. Soft apologies given in a vaguely British accent.
Emotions slid over Bo’s skin, flitted through his mind, slick and alien. He knew,he knew,they came from the man with the mellow voice kneeling at his feet. The man had leaned away, left Bo aching to be closer again, to curl up and sleep away the exhaustion settling over him. To make it nothurt.
