“And so you gave him nothing to hold onto? It’s so easy to doubt you’re important to someone in times of stress if you aren’t reminded. Especially when being left behind.”
He hadtried.He’d told Bo he was everything. (And Bo hadn’t believed him.)
“I had no right to ask,” Everil objected, even as Leana’s words slid under his skin with the clean surety of a razor.
He had tried, as best he could in the moment, to be considerate. To allow Bo his anger without reproach or question. He wasn’tmeantto ask questions. He was meant to simply know and behave accordingly.
“I won’t make you guess.”
Had he left Bo to guess?
It didn’t matter. It was too late.
“There you are, my wild horse.” Nimai’s voice cut through the garden, confident and loud. “Leana, so good to see you. Thank you for keeping an eye on my Everil. I feared he’d gotten himself lost.”
“A pleasure, Nimai, as always. The fault is mine.” Leana smiled at Nimai, warm and easy, as if she hadn’t just been interrogating Everil on the topic Nimai would least want mentioned. “Everil made an impression on one of my shy boys. Trilyn bid me to interrogate him on baking, should I see him again.”
The glance Nimai shot Everil was quizzical but not displeased. Whatever he’d thought Everil had been up to, a discussion about baking clearly hadn’t made his list.
“Aren’t you the surprise,” he said, stepping in and pressing a kiss to Everil’s cheek. He turned the whole of his bright attention to Leana then, offering her a half bow. “We’ll have to have you and Trilyn over.”
“Wouldn’t that be delightful?” And with the way she beamed, it was difficult to believe the prior conversation had ever happened.
“I fear the lands are a bit unkempt at the moment. But I’m taking them in hand,” Nimai, too, beamed. “A little discipline, and they’ll be set to rights.”
Everil considered interjecting, but there was no need. Nimai had taken over the conversation. Everil stepped back, quiet and unassuming. He studied his glass, the brown holly leaf still floating in the colorless champagne.
Tolerable, as Bo had said. It was all so very tolerable.
Chapter twenty-six
Bo
“This is just thestart,” and depth-chilled hands gently laid him on the floor.
Few things rang the This Is Fucked Up bell quite as hard as someone leaving the door open for a stranger in what was supposed to be an abandoned and decrepit building and commenting that said stranger must be lost rather than an appropriate, “Get the fuck out.”
The guy looked a lot like that sketch, and fuck, Bo should’ve checked the date it was drawn. He watched Bo, all calm and smooth. Which would’ve been fine if not for the shake in his words and the way he clutched to the door frame for dear life.
“We don’t give tours.”
“Shhh,” crooned the sea as it had so many times before. “You fight, stubborn one, but you bring them up so well for me. They are there to be taken. No one will blame you.”
He curled around the scrap in his hand. Thought he did.
“Do fae get fucked up about iron?” And heat, glorious goddamn warmth pressed to his shoulder, his side. (He didn’t want to die, either. He really didn’t want to die. He liked his life, now.)
Liked his life, and he’d blame himself.
“Anyone else get a say in this, or is it just you?” Not snapping to protect a wound, this time. Genuine irritation bled through, bristling, and whether it was on behalf of —— or —— or his own fucked up prickliness over choices being made for him, he couldn’t even begin to fucking guess.
Maybe a little of all three. Definitely probably on behalf of all three.
And there were thorns, too. Vines and brambles and green things that didn’t belong in the ocean. They wrapped around —— and ——, kept them safe, pricked at prying hands on his memories and tender, mournful whispers.
“That’s good,” the voice murmured when his furious stubbornness started to lose its edge. The lap of waves under the sharp points: cold and comforting. “That’s good; that’s right. They hurt you. We’ll make them not. Just breathe, little human. Keep letting me in, just how you are.”
“Shove it,” his voice said, far away, as the plants closed in. Pierced the seafoam until the ocean let out a strangled gasp.
