And then Florian was there.The elderly wisp stood a few feet away, his eyes wide.
Too much.
The guy didn’t do anything.No music.No fog that made the world fade.He was just there, and Declan was talking, asking Antonio to go first, and Antonio was nodding while his pulse beat in his ears, but he took a deep breath, the way he did when he needed to calm the fuck down, breathed in the rot while his pulse kept galloping in bullshit fucking panic and …
His stomach knotted, and he dropped to his knees, heaving, the sharp smell of vomit mixing with putrid flesh and seawater.
Funny, but he’d had worse nights.Ones where no one had his back.Still, he never wanted to see another damned beach.
Chapter Ten
Declan
Evenwhenturnedtorot, nereids popped when bitten and left ocean between the teeth, saltwater lingering for two days despite brushing or attempts to will the taste away.Declan found little comfort in the fact that thesmelldidn’t permeate past the baths he took immediately on return.
Little matter.Three nereid and a pair of boots he’d owned since the seventies destroyed, but Antonio remained out of Calloway’s clutches.
Antonio, whose very presence was starting to drive Declan mad by inches.Holed up in Declan’s home as they were, they lived in each other’s pockets.Antonio dragged him outdoors for runs at least once a day, the sadist.Declan, in turn, pulled Antonio about the house, finding all the spaces not yet safe for a Hollow and making them so.
And through all of it, theytalked.Antonio always seemed to have some new question.Not about Faerie or magic, but aboutDeclan.
“How you know the pooka?”for instance.It turned to Declan discussing Wyte and Hyacinth, the gay clubs of the nineties.Of Hyacinth’s friends, the few seelie who weren’t tits about things.Wyte’s human lover, an old flame rekindled.
In turn, Antonio talked of his time in prison.In other facilities.Not a lot.Declan knew enough about the mortal realm that he didn’t need to.Family and what they needed to get the Council seat.Pigs and slang and nieces, nephews.What was in the library on fae-human bonds.
Each night, Antonio fell asleep with his fingers brushing Declan’s.After which Declan blinked himself to the next room and stroked himself off until the only thing on his tongue was the copper bite of rust and sun.
Antonio slept deep, unflinching, even after he’d witnessed the nightmares Declan could rain down.How had it taken bonding a human who was frightened of fae for Declan to finally feel at home with someone?
As the answer to that question would only depress him, Declan focused on things thatwouldn’t.Such as finding lost mementos, bits and pieces kept through the decades.
“I found the cursed pictures,” Declan announced, leaning on the doorway to their room, and shuffling through the old photos with a critical eye.“Apparently, I decided they were best preserved as a book marker.”
Declan glanced up at Antonio’s snicker, grinning.The human sat at the desk, flipping through a magazine he’d retrieved from his garage.He leaned back in his chair, watching Declan.
“Sounds like you were trying to hide them.”
“Or drunk,” Declan suggested.“It’s a very drunk thing of me to do.”
Antonio's laughter was rough and easy, a curl of that surprise through their bond that he got whenever the two of them talked.Perhaps ‘surprise’ was the wrong word.
Wonder?
But, no.That was Declan projecting.
“Give here.”Antonio pushed his chair back, hand outstretched.
“Curious to see a pooka, sidhe, and sluagh in their human guise?”
Not waiting for an answer, Declan crossed the room, photos exchanged for a warm smile from Antonio.
Projecting.
“I’ve never seen a pooka without the ears,” Antonio murmured, his eyes on the pictures.He looked through them slowly, for all that there were only four.“Rabbit, cat, whatever.This the boyfriend?”
Declan tore his eyes from Antonio’s profile long enough to follow the path of his finger, hovering just over Tommy’s faded, slightly blurred face.The human grinned down at Wyte, his thick arm wrapped comfortably around the pooka’s slight shoulders.Hyacinth smirked sidelong at them from decades ago.Only Declan, heavy-lidded and pupils blown, smiled for the camera as Orrim had instructed.
His human glamour looked much like the one he wore in Faerie.Less gaunt than his true face, flesh sitting properly on bones, his mouth still thin, but not a nightmare smile.Eyeliner instead of dark hollows.
