Calloway smiled at him.Antonio spiraled, and Calloway smiled, so fucking pleased with himself.With his ‘presents.’
“So, as you see, the matter is complicated.”Nimai’s too-cheerful voice cut a place for itself in Antonio’s panic.“Now, I think we’ve taken enough of your time, Declan.Your little ‘gift’ is so unpredictable.Something for your new bond to look forward to.”
Antonio’s thoughts were racing, but that sank in.Or maybe it was the flash of real hurt and fear from Declan that made the meaning clear.Declan’s deathsight.Fifteen minutes a day.Christ.
“Is that supposed to scare me?”he snapped.“People die.That’s not news.”
“Quite right, Antonio.People die.”The same words, from Declan, were a threat.But the wash of gratitude, flower-sweet, that was just for him.“Farewell, Nimai.Calloway.My best to you, Wyte.”
“Same.Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”And the pooka winked, as he turned away.
Antonio felt Declan’s weight against him and managed not to draw the sluagh into his arms.But he didn’t move either.Just stood there, shaking with relief, wordless.
Because there weren’t any words for when someone saved your messed up, shitty soul.Especially when you both knew it wasn’t over.
Chapter Eight
Declan
Browniescouldn’tbreatheunderwater.
Neither could sluagh, but that was fine.If Nimai needed air in his lungs, the chances of him surviving claws through the ribs were low.
Declan had claws.
The same damnable brownie whose cruelties had nearly broken Declan’s dearest friend had tried to drag Antonio away and shove him into the arms of a simpering bratling.
“Swine swiving piece of shitprick,” he hissed, as soon as he heard the front door close.
“Yeah.”Antonio’s panic simmered, no longer scorching.Background terror, blanketed by an iron-brushed satisfaction.“He was real personable.”
“I ought to have asked Everil to drown him as a bloody bonding gift.Fuckingwanker.”
Rot blossomed on the wallpaper with Declan’s continued outburst, his words set on a growl.He winced and moved away from the furniture and Antonio.The floor bore the decayed marks of his passage.
“This why Florian went on about the carpets?”Antonio asked, a humorless laugh in his voice, his fingers twisted again and again over Declan’s bracelet.
“He despairs at my dramatics.Are you well?”
Did I frighten you?
“I’m alright.Seeing Calloway just… set me off.Same with you and Nimai, yeah?”
“You kept it together better than most.”Declan threw himself into a chair tucked away near a corner, rubbing at his face.The chair shifted, warped.Rotted.He couldn’t find it in himself to care.“Nimai embodies the nastiest bits of the fae.”
Another rough, unsteady laugh from Antonio.“How do you figure, Murderpunk?”
Murderpunk.It sounded like friendship.Tasted as he imagined trust might, soft and tough and shaped by the sun, a touch of lilacs at the edges.Somehow it had become a single word, with a capital M.Murderpunk.A title.
“Seelie.Beautiful and well liked, the warmth of hearth and home.Willing to call the likes of me ‘friend.’” Declan snorted, his head tipping back against the chair, the decay slowing as he spoke.“So very eager and able to destroy those weaker or vulnerable to ‘help’ them.Cruel with it.Things like me, we’re the monsters in the night, but it’s what we are.We don’t twist our nature to feel better about destruction.”
The sound of fingers on leather.A few footsteps closer to him.Declan didn’t open his eyes.
“Bastards like that, they like getting under your skin.”
Ah.Yes.Antonio and his cell.His experience with the powerless turned empowered.
“Quite.I, in turn, must resist the urge to peel him out of his.”
