“I know you don’t … appreciate my telling you how to feel.” Everil’s words were even but halting. He watched Bo the way most people might watch a snake. “I will attempt not to. But can you accept that it behooves you to understand some of how the bond between us functions?”
“Sure.”
“You’ve already experienced the pull a bond exerts. The need for closeness. I told you that it would fade, and it will. But it won’t stop. Do you follow?”
“Okay,” Bo said again, jaw set. Nothing to say except, “So, we’ll want to hold hands all the time.”
Everil looked away again. Bo waited, uncomfortable and unsure. Maybe this is what Antonio had felt like, why he’d bounced and moved and looked around so much.
“It is worse than that. I could betray you egregiously. Still, you would wish to be in my presence. Against your will, you would wish it.Always, Bo.Thatis what a bond is. Manipulative. Coercive.”
“That’s the real reason you don’t want to break it,”rang unspoken between them.
“That why you ‘disengaged’ your first bond?” Bo asked. He didn’t look away from Everil. “So, you’d stop wanting to be near him.”
Branches curved further around Everil, groaning in their effort. Everil didn’t seem to notice. He wasn’t looking at the tree, or at Bo, or at anything along the quiet little path that led to the house he’d been shut up in for fuck knew how long.
“Not precisely. It took generations as you measure time. Generations, and the only thing worse than being near him was being apart. In the end, it wasn’t really a decision.”
Ice on water, cold enough to freeze the edges of his mouth. The quiet wilting of grass freshly cut, left in the sun without rain. He’d stepped inside a house, expecting solid ground, only to feel the ground give way beneath his feet.
“What was it?” Bo asked.
“I was–” Everil shook his head, dragging in a long, slow breath. “I lost my temper and tore myself for him.” Grief. Sorrow. Anguish. Some word that didn’t exist yet, to capture the crash of emotions bleeding from Everil. “It was a reckless, foolish act. It’s only luck that I didn’t damage him.”
Self-reproof rose, a clawed hand from the depths, nails dug deep, and still with the pockets of raw sincerity in warning Bo, thewhy, and…
Bo didn’t like the idea of bonding someone who didn’t want to be near him. The thought of Everil wanting to be near him only because of a bond twisted his stomach sick.
But, fuck, Bo knew good and fucking well he couldn’t cheerfully sendanyoneoff to a person that created the emotions Nimai did for Everil. Bo didn’twantanyone’s soul damaged, luck or not, his or Everil’s, and he could at least manage not to be an absolute fucking shithead.
He took a couple steps closer, mindful of the protective trees. He spared them a wary, quick glance before looking back to the fae, partially hidden by the fall of leaves and branches.
“Shit luck you didn’t,” Bo agreed. “I’m– Yeah, fuck, Everil. That sounds like a miserable few generations and a lot fucking more you’re wanting to sign up for.”
Everil stiffened, shoulders set. He took his hand away from the bark, both man and tree straightening up in time with the other.
“Yes,” Everil said without looking at Bo. At anything. “But it is, as you say, what I signed up for.” His smile was bitter. “You, Bo, have not signed up for this. Our oaths are not for play. If you set yourself as Talia’s guardian, you guard her with your life.”
“She doesn’twanthim as a guardian.” And Bo couldn’t leave a kid with a parental figure they didn’t trust or like.
“If you don’t allow me to break this bond,” Everil continued, a touch of steel behind the mellow, soothing fall of his words, “then you aretiedto me. You will either be at my side or wishing you could be.Always. It is a very bitter existence, yearning to be near someone against your own will. I don’t recommend it.”
Except Everil had torn himself away. In a fit of temper, like he said, he ripped the bond apart.
What would happen when Bo pushed too much? He played nice in front of the public, because he wasn’t that kind of huge fucking asshole, and people like Antonio weren’t looking for him at his home. But he wasn’t easy to be around outside of that. Bo wasn’tenjoyable. A mouthy human didn’t sound ideal in the long run for a bond; however much it might not be the worst now.
It wasn’t like he was going to live for ages, the way Everil sounded like he would, being alive for a century or more in Bo’s world.
Shit like this was why Boknocked. This and drug dens.
No fucking wonder Everil prefaced this little pep talk with ‘honesty, not cruelty.’
“Yeah, fucking sounds it,” Bo snapped. Everil winced, looking away from him. From Bo, the bond he wanted to be near and couldn’t fucking stand. Just like the one he’d torn himself away from. “I’m– Fuck. I’m going inside. It’s fucking cold out here.”
And maybe Bo didn’t start walking right away, struggling with himself and his too-tight skin. The burn of irritation and the sting of fucking everything. But he managed to turn away from Everil. Even if it took a beat, the ache of it tugging at him. Thatyearning. The sense of wrongness.
The house wasn’t so far away. No trees tried to stop him.
