Kesk rose, all fluid elegance, the chair disappearing even as the door formed.
“My best wishes to your next lover.”
With that, he turned and walked out, the door disappearing behind him.
Bo stared at the wall where the door wasn’t, his breath thin and fast. He tried to remember the river, Ever with his almost laugh, leaning into his touch, Bo’s head to his shoulder on the porch where Ever imagined him with a crown of oak, Ever’s hair spilling over Bo’s chest when he tipped his head back at Bo’s ask. Talia and her aliens and grizzled old men and scowling round face over her knees, more hoodie than kid.
Those were the memories he tried to hold to, reach for, cling to like he’d clutched the oak leaf in the ocean.
Instead, he remembered Ever pale and flinching, eyes on the ground as he embraced the whip Bo lifted again and again, both of them lost in their own hurt. Talia, worried, leaving because they promised her they’d be fine, and Bo said he’d see her soon.
He would never see her again. If they met on the street, he wouldn’t fucking know her.
And Ever…
Bo’d left him betrayed. As alone as Bo was, rigid and hurting becauseBowas hurt.
If Ever had wanted Bo in three years time, he didn’t anymore. Not after that. He’d not come for Bo here or in the future. Ever ran from pain. No reason to seek Bo out, broken or not.
Path of least fucking resistance. Ever hadn’t said he wanted to come back to Bo.
Hard to blame him. Why would he want the coarse, crass human he always stepped back from or ahead of when around others? Even now, muted as it was, Bo could feel it. That self hatred that had radiated from Everil anytime someone saw them together.
His back met cold stone. The corner again. He didn’t remember moving. He slid down, sitting with his burning eyes closed. The memory of Ever flinching repeated again and again and again, except for when the memory of that gray, hollow face took over, turning away, obedient. Docile.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered to no one. He had ruined it. Broken Ever, who he’d only wanted to build up. And Bo, he’d lose all memory, not even care he hurt his kelpie, his Ever, and Ever would never know Bo wished he could make it better.
No point in fighting.
Ivy crept up his arms and legs, curled over his neck when Bo pressed his eyes to his upturned knees, shaking. He couldn’t stopshaking, oak leaves rustling from his hair and falling, slow, to the floor, only the acorn solid in his shirt pocket. The room dimmed and Bo, shattered, heard that same thin whimper come from him that he’d heard so many times in the last few days.
“I yield,” more hitched hurt than words, all fractures and no joy. No reason to fight. No one to want him to. And he was so tired of fighting and not being fought for. Of building and rebuilding himself.
Unwanted. Small. Alone. Pathetic. Weak.
Cruel.
Easy, then, to give up. To be numb and silent and wait, body rocking with silent, dry sobs.
I yield.
Chapter twenty-seven
Everil
Everil’s fingers danced lightlyover white and black keys, turning silence to song. Nimai had been tense since Veroni and Kesk’s party the day prior. Quiet, though not snappish. Affectionate, if anything. In some ways, that was worse.
The piano was a way of occupying himself that Nimai could neither object to nor interrupt with conversation and touch. It didn’t matter that the notes sounded dull. Everil wasn’t playing for the music.
Focus on the notes. Think of nothing else and–
A wave ofanguishroiled through him. Mixed with it, consuming it, emotions Everil knew all too well. Self-loathing and guilt, a churning miasma of pain. Everil’s hands curled into fists, setting off a chorus of complaint from the piano.
“Finished, my love?” Nimai asked.
Everil didn’t look at him.Couldn’tlook at him. Couldn’t do more than suffocate in Bo’s regret and despair. An orange grove, the fruit left to rot on the vine. A hive of dead bees.
Bo had been angry since Everil abandoned him. Defiant at times. Hurt at others. But always angry. There was no anger in the bond now. Where Bo had burned, all bitterness and acid, now the taste of him was flat and fading.
