“That’s seriously fucked up.” Robin’s voice was as flat as his own. “Nothing more romantic than ‘hey baby, I’m going to break your will, it’ll be hot.’ ”
“I thought it romantic at the time.” Everil’s voice grew quieter, distracted. “I had been a problem and a disappointment for so long. Nimai, at least, saw potential in me. I loved him for that. Iwantedto be what he saw in me.”
“Fucked up,” Robin repeated, with rather more force.
“We were suited for a time. Nimai, magnanimous in his acceptance of me, shame that I was. And me so very accustomed to being an embarrassment.” Again, Everil fell silent. Nothing but the crunch of his feet on the gravel. His feet, and his feet alone. “Do I embarrass him, your brother?”
“No. God, no.Youdon’t embarrasshim. But I don’t think he’d be able to forgive you if you stayed with him out of obligation.” His tone lost some of its edge. “Because you think you owe him or because you fell into bed together. That’d be almost as messed up as your first post-oath chat with Nimai.”
“Bo isn’t an obligation. I am, as I’ve just explained, quite good at letting down my obligations. We remain together out of my selfishness, not my generosity.”
“Because of your … What? I think I lost the plot.” Robin reached up, trailing his fingers through the rustling alder leaves. “Not wanting to hurt him to break the bond is selfish?”
“There are ways to break a bond that don’t injure both parties. Indeed, Bo’s refusal to let go would make it easier to keep him safe, not more challenging.” Everil pressed his lips together in what tried, and failed, to be a smile. “It’s the one who holds on tightest who loses the least.”
“Oh, so you only hurt you. You do like that, don’t you? Being the one to make the noble sacrifice. Taking the bond you don’t want. Then dying for him.”
“I want him.”
“Right. Your ‘sweet Bo.’ Is that what he is? The treat you’ve told yourself you can keep nibbling on forever, even though you’d resigned yourself to eating your vegetables. The inevitable looms, so keep the sugar snack close until it’s taken away. That’s a little selfish; I’ll give you that.”
“Yes. I– You are not incorrect.” Everil’s feet dragged through the gravel. The branches caught at his sweater. “I should do what is right for him and end it. ‘Eat my vegetables.’ But I remain selfish. Say what you wish, but I’ll walk this path until I find my way back to him. You won’t dissuade me from that.”
“And if you change your mind?” Robin watched him, thin eyebrows arched. “If you keep going forward, make it through all the trials, and afterward decide you need more than the four hundred years or so, you’ll break his heart.”
“I–” The gravel covered Everil’s feet. Held him fast. Hadn’t he done that to Nimai? Made a promise and broken it? Betrayed him? “I wouldn’t.”
“Huh.” Robin’s tone was utterly unimpressed. And Everil still wasn’t moving. “You sure? He’s worth sacrificing eternity, cutting your life down to another three hundred, four hundred years?”
Everil studied the man before him. Robin looked so very like Bo. And Bo loved his brother; Everil knew that. Fiercely, desperately, loved him. And, in the way one does with those best loved, he’d made him the vault of all his fears and misplaced guilt.
Ah. Bo was right. Declan really was an asshole.
“This isn’t about sacrifice,” Everil said as the trees ceased their clutching, and the gravel fell from his feet. “I don’t intend to trade my eternity for Bo’s sake but for my own. He isn’t who I should want. And I’ll be thought a fool for my decision. But he’s allowed me more happiness in three days than I’ve known in my three centuries. So yes, I’ll give up eternity for more of him. Gladly.”
It became true with the saying of it. An angle of view so much clearer than the muddle he’d been squinting through.
“See, that’s sweet,” the figment said. “You should tell Bo that if he makes it through his own little wander. Oh, and tell him ‘you’re welcome’ for sending him to the swamp.”
His grin was sharp to Bo’s crooked. White teeth and dark blue eyes that faded to the fall of leaves. Gravel turned to rich, dark dirt, with flowers pushing up in haphazard abundance. The path was gone and Robin with it.
Declan stood in this new clearing, leaning against yet another tree, his flower crown still in place. He met Everil’s gaze, eyebrows arched and put a finger to his lips.“Wait,”he mouthed.“Don’t move.”
Chapter eighteen
Bo
Fucking Declan.
Fucking trees.
FuckingBo, insisting on keeping a bond that would snip Ever’s life from as long as he could want it to fucking chump change. It didn’t matter that neither of them knew it at the time. Ever’d wanted to break the bond, and Bo’d insisted they not.
Because Ever’s other option was oil slick shame, a name that made Talia wrinkle her nose in disgust.
(Because he’d seen those gray eyes and heard Ever’s beautiful goddamn voice apologize for getting near him.A disservice.And he’d felt more at home on that faded couch, his hands tracing Ever’s jawline, than he ever had anywhere else.)
Fuck it all because here he was. Walking down a beaten dirt path, hoping there wouldn’t be another damn dryad. Maybe he ought to move faster.
