Lawrence drifted back again, his hand trailing over the trunks of too-close trees. He looked, if not smaller, than like he wanted to be. Sadness in those soft brown eyes, half hidden by a fall of curls, and he let the silence stretch, like the path stretched, the end never growing closer or further away.
“Bo,” he said sorrowfully. Bo wanted to punch him in the goddamn mouth. “I know what it means to find all your hidden dreams answered, a wish you hardly dared make, suddenly granted. He showed you a world you couldn’t believe existed. In a way, he offered me the same.”
“It’snotthe same.”
The trees were too fucking dense. Claustrophobic. A press of leaves, thick as a brush fire, those twin walls of autumnal flames. They met over the path, blocking out the sky.
“You want to see the best in him. I did, too. I allowed myself to be swept up in it. In him.” Lawrence swallowed, shaking his head slowly. “And it cost me. Greatly. I gave up my family. My friends. My life, eventually. All for him.”
Lawrence sighed, and the wind sighed with him.
“We all make fucking choices.”
“You didn’t make the choice though, did you? You fell into it, none the wiser. You wished to protect Everil and the girl. That is undeniably admirable.”
“I didn’t do it for admiration.” Bo flinched from the trees, scowling overhead. “And I made a choice. I chose to stay.”
“You didn’t know it would mean losing your aunt. Your brother. Your friends and fans. All to age and die while you go on, your only comfort to be found in a man who doesn’t understand what mortality is. A retreat to a world that despises all you represent.”
“Keep my family out of your fucking mouth,” Bo snapped. “Ever knew enough about mortality to be upset over you.”
“As he’ll be upset over you,” Lawrence agreed. “You see all our differences. But I see only similarities.”
“Don’t tell me what I fucking see.” Flat. The best he could do at the moment. “Some of that might be true. My family will die. I probably won’t. But if I tell Ever I don’t want to keep going, it’s been too long, I want out of the bond? He’d fucking let me out. He wouldn’t keep me in somethingI don’t want.”
Bo stumbled, then. A tree root, pushing up the dirt in low mounds, catching at Bo’s feet. Lawrence remained in the tree line, his fingers passing through the trunks instead of over, now.
“That’s wise,” Lawrence said, though it was hard for Bo to tell ifhespoke or the leaves did. “Thinking of it as a temporary arrangement. Something you can keep for now but escape when you’re ready.”
“That’s not what I said,” Bo snapped, turning hard to face Lawrence. His foot hit a small mound of dirt, only dumb luck keeping him from falling. “Don’t you twist my words like that.”
“Careful,” Lawrence said, all genuine, solicitous concern. “Faerie is a dangerous place for our kind. And he won’t fight for you, Bo. He won’t stop you when that time comes. When it gets to be too much. When he gets to be too much.”
“It sounds like you don’t actually know him. You sound like Nimai.”
“If I’m wrong, I welcome that.” Lawrence’s eyes were green. So fucking green. Hadn’t they been brown a minute ago? “Dreams are always safest at a distance. Wanting, that’s the fun part. Having is where it all gets messy.”
“If you think someone respecting your free will means ‘temporary,’ that’s a you problem.” Bo rubbed his arms, scowling. “If I thought he’d treat me like a fucking pet, his to own instead of because wewantto be together, we wouldn’t be talking. Fuck you for trying to make it sound like I want an out. I don’t want temporary. I have him, and Iwanthim.”
Lawrence stepped back onto the path, directly in front of Bo. Or maybe he’d always been there. Maybe it was his foot Bo tripped on, not a root. Either way, Bo froze,Lawrence’s eyes once more the brown of bark and his curls the faded blond of fresh-cut wood.
“Be angry if you wish. Be stubborn. But most of all, be careful.” There was blood on Lawrence’s pale pink lips, and his hair hung knotted and heavy with it. He raised his hand toward Bo again, as if to stroke his cheek, his fingers all raw meat and cracked bone. Lawrence stood without legs, had left them by the tree line, the roots that’d caught Bo’s feet. And hisstomach–
The wind picked up, and Lawrence was gone in a swirl of golden leaves, while Bo found himself standing not on the dirt path, but before Declan, the sluagh waiting with his flower crown and curling smile.
No more Lawrence, prettyand soft, covered in red that came from somewhere deep.Gut blood,Bo’s dad called it once, while they watched a survival documentary. When you saw it, or smelled the cloyingly sweet copper rot, you knew that whoever it was, they weren’t going to make it.
Bo had to catch himself, unsteady from the sudden lack of looming trees. He stared across the clearing at Declan, standing there with his fucking flower crown and one pale finger lifted to his lips. The guy was even more corpse-like in Faerie. Sharp nails and raptor’s eyes, looking like a goddamn nightmare in too-tight skin.
Bo bared his teeth.
“The gang’s back again,” Declan said, smiling, the fucking asshole. “What’s the craic?”
“What the fuck was that?” Bo spat out. “Was that him?”
“I don’t know who you saw.” Declan lowered his hand, and somethingpulled. Dizzying, strange, tasting like oranges and snowmelt. The world shifted, and there was Ever, alive and real as the bond that beat between them. “Just a wee bit of magic and memory, Bo. A trial.”
Just a trial. Not a resurrection. Fuck. Thank fuck.
