I shake my head, pointing to my throat. “It was a mistake,” I finally say.
He sighs. “Aren’t you supposed to be in Reign?”
“I haven’t gotten—”
The sentence is choked out by magic.
I don’t have a room there yet.
“I will be paid in a few days,” I say. “I’m setting aside money for Benji and you.”
“He’s suffered enough,” he says. “I’m sure Jeremee would appreciate any help for his brother.”
“What are you truly saying?”
He sighs, running a hand through his hair, blinking bloodshot eyes. “Benji does not want to see you, so you will not see him.”
“It may take time.”
“What if he never changes his mind? Will you accept that?”
I can’t lose another person, especially not him. The child I love like my own, a part of Jeremee that’s still here. My family. My family. My mother and Jeremee and now Benji.
“We will let the boy decide,” I finally say.
“We will.” He nods. “But in the meantime, I understand if you don’t want to share your coin with someone who won’t see you.”
“You think me so shallow that I would buy my way into the child’s life and if he refuses, would refuse him, too?”
Glenn just watches me with a drawn expression. “I don’t know what to believe.”
Pain, like love, seems to always plummet to a new depth I did not know existed until I hit it.
“You know me. We know each other,” I say desperately.
“Do we? Besides Jeremee, what else do we have in common?”
Not this. Anything but this.
“Benji. We have Benji in common now.”
Glenn nods, eyes shining. “I promise I will deliver whatever you can pocket for him. To help the boy out, but only for his sake.”
“Thank you.”
“Avery, you were…” He presses the heels of his hands into his eyes. “You were always going to be the one that Jeremee married.”
A hiccup escapes my lips, and I cover my mouth.
“I couldn’t pledge to him, you know this,” he says, voice shaking. “But I would’ve been happy when you took my place.”
“I hoped we’d reach a time when anyone could pledge to another.”
“Perhaps we will, even if he won’t.”
Tears stream down my cheeks at the thought, at infinite time stretching on like an endless river, some of us following the flow of the current while others slip under, forgotten.
“Jeremee didn’t like to choose,” I say.
