“The less time I’m required to spend in ‘your rooms, ’ the better.” Nimai’s words dripped with disgust. “Talia, know I only came out of concern. I hope, yet, to be your ally. And, Everil? Don’t tarry over long, my love. The Council isn’t so patient as I am.”
With those words, Nimai gave his will-o’-the-wisp a curt nod, and the two of them disappeared in a final burst of power.
Gone.
Gone, and Bo leaned in further, his forehead against Everil’s back, his arm around his waist.
Gone, not because Everil had stood up to him, but because Talia had made threats she shouldn’t have voiced and certainly couldn’t make good on.
“What a fucking bastard,” Bo gritted out. “No wonder you called him an asshole, Talia.”
“I don’t like him.” Talia still sat in the center of a nimbus, but it wasn’t quite so brilliant.
“Yeah, me either. Is everyone there going to call me Oberon, or is he just being a prick? Will you guys get punished if I call him Nims or Nimmy or My-my? ’cause fuck him for that.”
Ah. Yes. Everil had let Bo down in so many ways. Felt his hurt and done nothing.
“Should anyone else address you thus, I’ll correct them on their rudeness.” Everil’s tone held none of his cringing guilt. It came out flat. “And he cannot harm either of us, regardless of what you call him. Talia is a Gate. And he can no more lift a hand to me than I can to him.”
“Anyone else, but he’s free to?” Bo’s question, bitter on Everil’s tongue, was the lash he’d been waiting for.
It was almost a relief to finally be the target of Bo’s anger. It was always going to happen that way.
“I…” The helpless word barely voiced, because what was there to say? Everil had failed Bo. He had known he would fail him.
“Fuck, sorry. That was shitty of me. It’s not important.”
It clearly was.
“I cannot harm him. It isn’t simply an aversion to the idea.” Everil stood rigid, Bo still leaning against him. “Icannot. I’m oathsworn against it. So, yes. I fear you’re correct. I will defend you from anyone else, but I cannot protect you from Nimai. That he did you no harm was for Talia’s sake. Not for mine. You aren’t safe, Bo. I’ve told you this from the start.”
Silence.
Silence and Bo’s breathing and the chaotic swirl of his emotions. Fear, among them. The man who had kissed and touched and held him was afraid. Because Everil had failed him.
“I thought you meant ‘correct’ like you corrected Talia when we made our oaths,” Bo said at last. “I didn’t realize you meant fucking someone up. Sorry.”
“Protocol is only a pretty idea, unless you’re ready to shed blood for it,” Everil explained quietly. “Laws are not laws without consequences. And we fae have very permanent opinions on consequences.”
“Okay, when did this become a sad piano moment?” Talia asked, the bed creaking as she stood. “I’m aGate. I could open a pocket dimension and keep you both there. No sweating.”
“You serious?” Bo asked, a flicker of relief in the question.
“Yep. It’d be a little ‘unbroken void-y,’ but you wouldn’t get visitors.”
“I don’t believe that would be my first choice of solution,” Everil replied, with the barest hint of dry humor.
And Bo, too patient and too forgiving, laughed, rough though the sound was.
“There’d be snacks.” With a final shrug, Talia walked to the door that Nimai had left open. “You two hug it out or whatever. And Everil, use yourwords.”
The door slammed, and it was only the two of them.
“I apologize,” Everil murmured, still stiff in Bo’s arms. “For Nimai and … everything else. The fault is mine, in all of this.”
“You’re not responsible for your shithead, murderous ex.” Bo reached out, his fingers brushing Everil’s, and Everil reached in return. Couldn’t help but do so. “What’s ‘everything else’?”
“Do you require the full list or only the abbreviated version?” Everil’s bitter laugh was unbecoming but impossible to swallow. The disappointments had begun with his birth when he’d emerged a kelpie and not a nereid like his father. “You wouldn’t be in such danger if I hadn’t given so binding an oath. If I’d been the partner Nimai needed. Not betrayed him as I did.” He shook his head, helpless in the face of his innumerable mistakes. “If I had only remained in Faerie, faced the whispers, I could at least call in favors. We are, as I said, a people who trade in debts. But I left. I am, in human terms, ‘broke.’ You deserve better than this. Than me.”
