“Oh?”
“He was upsetting Bo. I didn’t eat him.”
“Well, Hollow are rare. Too bad I wasn’t there. Would’ve given him a proper fright.” Declan offered the words lightly enough, but his unglamoured appearance always had been a complicated topic. Sluagh were not always the most welcome of fae.
“I believe I managed.”
Silence then, but they were fae. It was pleasant, falling into those unhurried rhythms.
“Talia says you don’t want the human,” Declan said at last, watching Everil over his cup.
Blunt, but Everil had always appreciated that about Declan. His lack of propriety was freeing. Not that he had Bo’s rough-hewn brashness, but they had their similarities. Declan deliberately crossed lines, while Bo crashed blindly through them.
“Did she?” Everil shook his head, just slightly. “Talia is less perceptive than she imagines herself to be. What I might want is immaterial. Bo needs to be gone before midnight.”
“Is he truly that objectionable? I’m afraid I may be missing a stanza of this particular poem.” Declan frowned at him, lowering his cup. “It seems poor treatment, Everil. Bonded, oathsworn, and abandoned within a day?”
“Objectionable? He’s ahuman,Declan.” Everil hated the emphasis he put on the word, too like how Nimai would have said it. “Foul-mouthed and temperamental and kind. Stubborn, too.”
“You always did give the most interesting compliments. I’m not sure any of that justifies breaking the man.”
“It justifies attempting to save him.” Everil studied his hands, one clenched into a nervous fist. Like a child. “I need you to convince him, Declan. He refuses to consider breaking what we accidentally set in place. You, of all people, know he isn’t safe with me.”
Declan’s expression didn’t shift, that same frown. But it hardened.
“We found a sixth bond for me while you were away,” he said conversationally. “They declined to hear me out. Politely, mind, but refused, nevertheless. Don’t ask me to spin my words at your human as if we were in high society, Everil. Not on this.”
Everil looked away, jaw tightening with a sudden flare of anger. At himself. At Faerie. Declan had been seeking a bond for centuries, but his every option had turned him away. If kelpie were a poor option, sluagh were worse. No one wished to risk a bond who couldn’t help but show them the deaths of their loved ones. Not even if that bond was clever, loyal, amusing Declan.
And Everil was no better. Hadn’t he spent the last century avoiding Declan for a vision the man had no control over?
“That was wrong of me. I apologize.” Everil forced himself to meet Declan’s piercing look.
“Aye. It was.”Declan sipped his tea and said nothing further.
Well, he deserved that. Everil let a moment pass in silence, before trying to speak again.
“It was a vain hope, anyway. Humans seem to take to a bond rather intensely. Bo sees me as half tyrant, half waif, and still refuses to sever it.”
“Does he now?” Declan, generous as he was, chuckled. “He did come across as the blunt sort, though some humans are rather partial to tyrant waifs.”
“He accused me of depriving both him and Talia of their say in matters. Which I have not done.” The last came out brittle. Why everyone but him seemed perfectly fine with allowing Bo to die, he couldn’t say. At leastBoshould have some objection. “I’m only trying to protect him.”
“Really? And if Bo agrees to dissolve the bond, what of Nimai? Those are tender mercies I’d not leave many to.”
“Nimai is no barghest. He won’t smell the human on me.”
“True. The only barghest who might lower themselves to stalking you works with Mother. He’s not likely to take up against a family friend. And what of the bits of Bo that will be left on your soul?”
“I intend to cut things in such a way that I take none of Bo in the division. Nimai won’t sense him, either.” To his ear, he sounded level and reasonable, as he wished to. It would be damaging, of course. But Everil was already damaged.
It was hard to miss the incredulity in Declan’s glance. The way his lips tightened before he spoke.
“Everil,” he said, low and intent, in that much-missed rasp. “Hear me. You’d leave a human to wander this world with your magic on him. Do you think you would be in any shape to sidestep the whole of it, hours after you do this thing? If he asks you if you have had any others, or perhaps, do you have any human pets you wish to bring along, so you won’t have to go off on your own? Will Talia keep her peace indefinitely? She’s young, as you said.
“When Nimai finds out, he will hunt Bo. Nimai will take your human to you on the estate once he finds him. He’ll claim Bo as his. You will be his bonded, and thus your mortal his by rights.”
Gently said, but it hardly mattered. He may as well have carved the words into Everil’s flesh with his talons, for how they cut. Worse, for the unavoidable truth of them. And when last spoken about a human’s fate, Everil had lost his temper and refused to see reason. It was so tempting to do it again.
