“Your marks faded,” Aisling retorted.“You barely ate.Forthirty years, I thought I’d wake up and see you gone, Declan.If not for Eithne strong-arming you to the mortal realm, I would have lost you.”
She would have, yes.Everil and Declan had exchanged furious words during their fight.Lawrence’s death vision, more gruesome than most, imminent enough that the colors nearly bled from oversaturation, lines tight and crisp.The smell of death and viscera, sickly sweet and thick, still lingered in his memory.
It had ended as it always ended: Declan abandoned for being the creature he was born as.Everil speaking his true thoughts about Declan, what Declanwas.For half the argument, Declan had feared Everil would attack him in grief-fueled anger.He hadn’t known if he’d be able to kill his only friend, sick with the knowledge that it likely wasn’t mutual.
Then silence, for a century.Declan had missed Everil so much.
“Antonio is not Everil.He’s not frightened of me.”
Antonio had promised to not fuck off and leave him for being a monster.Rough-spoken, handsome, watchful Antonio, had offered that with more ferocity than his agreement to the bond.(But hadn’t Everil, too, made such an insinuation, once?)
“It’s notyou, alright?”
“Not yet,” Aisling corrected, softly.Declan was distantly aware that he flinched.“But even if he never is, he could be so much worse.He’s tied to your soul now, love.Can you blame me for being angry that you’d risk fading again?Coercion on your part–”
“Our bond wasnotforced.”
“–or by desperation on his, hummingbird, it could always end with him regretting it.With damaging you.”Damn her to the void.Damn her and the brief glaze over her huge, black eyes, her bloody trembling chin.For the crack in her voice when she said, “I’m soangryat you, sweetness.I just want you safe.”
Of course, she did.She always had.
“You ought to have birthed a third banshee in that case, Mother,” Declan said.He pulled his hand from her grasp and stepped away, shaking his head.“I need to read up on Hollow.Do you think Florian can get word to Calloway?Let the boy know his toy is no longer available.”
Let him know the shadow monster stole his toy away.
“You know he can, love, but–”
“I’ll be in the nook.”Curled up.Alone.Skin on fire and stomach sour.“Anything else?”
Aisling hesitated, gaze riveted on Declan’s face.“I’m to have some business over.Please let Antonio know so he’s not alarmed.”
“Of course.Let’s hope Calloway will decide to come calling as well, aye?”
Manners said he should wait for a reply.But Declan couldn’t shake the hurt of her suggestion that he’d acted as Nimai had.Trapped a bond.Purposefully forced Antonio into that flat, dead“I’ll do it”and then lashed him to his soul.
Declan instead removed himself from the kitchen, Aisling’s eyes on him the entire way.
Hollow,itturnedout,weren’t a topic the fae had bothered to write much about.Declan would have quickly exhausted all he could find on the topic if it weren’t for the distraction of emptiness.A grasping desperation, all ringing, aching urgency, and Antonio and Antonio andAntonio.
Declan refused to think about it.About Antonio and the drag of want andlackingscreaming through him.
No.
Instead, he would read and reread the same brief passage, taking no more from it with each subsequent attempt.The old, leather-bound tome he’d found presented itself as an instructive piece on the care and raising of humans.As such, it explored the oddities.The offshoots.Theories about half-fae, rather than fae with a human parent, like Hyacinth.The origins of changelings, and if the reverse were possible.
Horrifying stuff.And, like many terrible things, it proved as fascinating as it was stomach churning.Or it would have, if he could have thought more on what was written and less on when Antonio would wake.
It shouldn’t matter.The man deserved not to be mauled by his bond first thing in the blasted morning.Midday.
Finally, Declan felt the man stir and brushed aside another nagging pang of touch starvation, swallowing hard.He could control himself.Hewould.He’d read, and not hunt Antonio down to clutch against him for as long as Antonio would allow it.
That determination lasted exactly as long as it took for Antonio’s voice to carry to him from near the door, tight with anxiety.“Shit shit shit.”
Gone was the blurry absence of sleep, and Declan’d been so intent to ignore his own discomfort that he failed to recognize the new intensity came from Antonio.
Presumably, Declan took the time to put the book down.He didn’t hear it fall.
He didn’t hear much of anything outside of the soft string of profanity from the hall and his own beating heart.Each step whispered of relief, a scrape of an ache removed as he closed the distance between them.
