Anothergift,rightthereon Antonio’s bed.A crystal ring, just Antonio’s size, surrounded by calla lilies.And a letter.
One Antonio read and reread, trying and failing to change the words purely through will.
Three days before Calloway came for him.Three fucking days.All the bullshit along the way, and none of it had prepared Antonio for this.For “my beloved, soon we shall be wed.”
Antonio was supposed to be the crazy one.He hadn’t seen the wisp in eighteen years.You didn’t ghost someone for eighteen years and then decide you were getting married.
Married, just like they’d promised.
And they had.Twelve years old and clinging to his best and only friend, the boy he worshiped and adored.Terrified of losing him.Knowing he was about to.
Stupid, twelve-year-old Antonio had asked for the only thing he thought he wanted.To stay with Calloway.
“We could get married.And then no one would say that I can’t stay with you.No one will think I’m just a pet.”
Calloway kissed him.Antonio’s first kiss.Soft and sweet and a memory that’d haunted Antonio for years, after.
“Soon,” Calloway promised.“I’ll come back for you soon.”
And then he hadn’t.
Eighteen fucking years and the bastard thought he could drop off a pile of cheap trinkets and drag Antonio back to Faerie.
No.Didn’t think.Would.
Would because Calloway’d always chosen the games and made the rules, while Antonio hurried after.
He wouldn’t listen.Antonio could lock himself in his iron bunker and the wisp would walk through the fucking walls, call it all a new game they were playing, and take him back to Faerie.
Antonio crumpled to the floor, the letter still gripped in a white-knuckled hand.
Faerie, where he was a game people played.See if you can enchant the Hollow.Change his shape.Change his mind.
Faerie, where creatures of impossible, ethereal beauty, all delicacy and floating gestures, spoke in mannered phrases about whether a Hollow bled different, and wouldn’t it be fun to find out.
Antonio bled as red as any human, much to the disappointment of some.
Faerie.Where he was a toy.A pet that Calloway occasionally remembered to feed.Where nothing he’d built for himself would matter, and if he ever escaped, saw his family again, they wouldn’t believe him.Institutions and drugs that made the world soft at the edges, but never changed what was and what wasn’t.
If there were a pill that made the fae go away, Antonio would’ve already been taking it.
This, he recognized distantly, was a panic attack.The ragged breaths and the shaking.The race of his heart and the tingling in his fingers.The unshakable knowledge that it was over.All fucking over.Done.Climb into his Mustang and hook a hose to the tailpipe.
And leave his corpse for one of his nieces to find?No.Drive somewhere else first.Somewhere far the fuck away.He had three days.He’d have to leave a note.He knew what it was like to wait and wonder.So did they.Too many disappearances his family had already weathered.But what did you even say?
“Turns out you’re right.Tio Tio’s a crazy, selfish bastard.Kisses to the girls.”
Maybe a river would be better.That’d been the kelpie’s curse, that he’d drown.Might as well use one fae to stick it to the other.Didn’t they say drowning was peaceful?It hadn’t seemed that way, with the kelpie growling in his ear.
No.The car was better.Go out surrounded by iron.Make it a final fuck off to Calloway and the rest.The kelpie.The banshee with the cat.The murder punk sluagh with his pained smile and his ten not-so-special bonds.
Declan.
Declan who’d made his offer and walked away.
Burnt petals.Spilled ink.
Calloway had been terrified of sluagh.Even his shitty, puffed-up cousins had been.Genuinely, turn tail and run terrified.
