“I think I’d like to see how this all looks from Hyacinth’s previous vantage point,” he said, interrupting Nae’s description of some ridiculous centerpiece at a previous party with a different relative.She arched her eyebrows and smirked, and it was all Declan could do to not crumple under the weight of the realization that hecouldn’t keep doing this.“Would you mind terribly if we scarpered for a bit?”
Confusion, then a wave of breathless concern, Antonio’s fingers bruising tight at his shoulder.
“Later,” was all the man said, before tugging Declan toward the stairs.Declan, who clung, and breathed, and didn’t bloody spiral even as the impending crumpling of his world loomed louder than a deathsight vision.
Broken, burnt out, or dead, and he couldn’t do it.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Antonio
AntoniopulledDeclanbackinto his arms as soon as they made it upstairs, holding him bruising tight.Whatever was causing the spiraling torrent of misery and distress, Declan needed to know that someone had his back.
“What is it, Murderpunk?”he asked, trying to think through the reverberating despair.“Talk to me.”
“I’m fucking done,” Declan rasped, shaking in Antonio’s arms.“Bloody hate this.Ican’t.I–”
What the hell had triggered this?Tsuri and Nae?Someone Declan had seen that Antonio missed?It’d been feeling sogood.Better than it had in too long, and now Declan was breaking down and Antonio didn’t even know what he was supposed to be fixing.
“We’ll leave,” he offered, running his fingers up through Declan’s hair and pressing him closer.“Go back to the garage.I'm sure there’s a wisp down there who can take us.”
Declan shook his head, took a shuddering breath like he wanted to speak, but said nothing.Well, there went Antonio’s only fucking trick.If Declan didn’t want to go back to the garage, he had nothing left to offer.
“Breathe for me,” he murmured.“We’ll figure this out.Do whatever you need.I’ve got you.”
It took time.Minutes passed while he tasted only Declan’s misery, felt it like it was his own despair.The world gone heavy and inescapable, a rat running on a burning wheel.
“It’s not–” Declan said at last.“Is this what’s left for us?The only time we’re almost happy, when we’re eventogetherproperly, is when Hyacinth throws a party like this?”
The bitter truth,yes,burned Antonio’s tongue, but he didn’t say it.A day in sunshine after too long in the cell, and that was what had Declan shaking.Knowing that it wouldn’t last.That they’d be locked in again soon enough.
“I can be around more,” he offered.It was all he had to give.Himself, for what that was worth.Declan loved him.It was worthsomething.“Can–”Say it.“I don’t need the garage.Can tell Angela to sell it.Be here all the time.”
He meant for it to help.But Declan shook harder and all Antonio could taste was ash.
“That’s not– Bloodyvoids, Antonio.”A flicker of heat, in Declan’s words.Of anger.Antonio would take anger over guilt and despair any day of the week.It didn’t last.“How long before you’d hate me?Before I’m just another ‘fucking fae’ to you?”
“Never.Jesus Christ, Murderpunk.”And he knew that it was true, but it stung, that Declan didn’t.“Love you.All of you.”
“All of me except what I’m made of.”Declan’s laughter wasn’t.“I don’t blame you.We see every day why I’m your exception.Why you hate the bloody fae.”
The floor dropped out from under him.Every low revealing a new trapdoor, and the two of them just kept fucking falling.
Exception.Hate the bloody fae.
It wasn’t true.It wasn’t fucking true.
Antonio bit it back, that first, fierce denial, held on until they hit bottom.Again.
Was it true?
No.
Declan’s soul lived under his skin andthatwas what he was made of.The rest, Faerie…
Yeah.Maybe.Once.When it’d just been a memory, a nightmare.Hated plenty about Faerie still.Mostly hated how fuckingpowerlesshe was.But not like Declan thought.Not in a way that made the sluagh a damned exception.
“I don’t.Swear to the fucking voids, I don’t.Maybe at the start, it was like that.Before I met people.Learned shit.I was a fucking idiot.”How did he explain?Antonio clung tighter, like that would somehow help.“Look, I hate what you’re fighting.Whatwe’refighting.The system.The way they treat me.The way they treatyou.And yeah, I hate being fucking powerless, always.Moving through a world that doesn’t want me to touch it.But that’s– It’s like iron.You don’t hate it.It just hurts.”
