“Don’t,” says Hex, and his voice is rough in a way I haven’t heard before. “Don’t thank me.”
“Hex…”
“The fire was not an accident.” He says it quietly. Controlled. But underneath the control, something is running very hot. “He used Felix to get me away from you. It was planned. All of it.”
I think about that. I think about Felix on the fourteenth floor saying I don’t think I’m getting out of this one. I think about Wraith’s pale eyes and that wrong cold and the hand reaching towards my face.
“He didn’t get what he came for,” I say.
“No.” Hex’s jaw tightens. “Because I came back in time.”
“You did.”
“I nearly didn’t.” The words come out like they cost him something. Like saying them out loud is worse than not saying them. “I was nearly too late, Adam.”
I cross the hallway. I don’t think about it. I just do it, close the distance between us and put my arms around him, which is something I haven’t done before, not like this, not just because I need to and not for any other reason.
He goes very still for a moment.
Then his arms come around me, and he holds on with a ferocity that says everything neither of us is saying out loud.
Outside, Bristol carries on. Somewhere across the city, Felix is sitting on a fire engine in his pyjamas. Somewhere in the Shadow Realm, Wraith is reporting back.
But right here, in the dark hallway of my uncle’s flat, with all the lightbulbs blown and the cold slowly fading and Hex’s armsaround me, I think that whatever is coming, whatever Dis sends next, whatever the cost of all of this turns out to be…
I am not sorry.
Not even a little bit.
Chapter 19
Always
Iwakeuptodaylightand the smell of something burning.
Not dramatically burning. Not fire and smoke and Felix on the fourteenth floor. Just the particular smell of toast that has been left slightly too long by someone who is not entirely familiar with the temperament of my toaster, which is old and erratic and hates bread.
I lie still for a moment and let the ordinary settle over me like a blanket.
Toast. Daylight. Bristol doing its morning thing outside the window. Somewhere in the flat, Hex is conspiring with the toaster and committing minor crimes against bread.
We are fine. Everything is fine.
I get up.
Hex is standing at the kitchen counter looking at two pieces of very dark toast with the expression of someone who has faced down a shadow enemy and won, but has been comprehensively defeated by a small domestic appliance. He looks up when I come in.
“The toaster,” he says, “is broken.”
“The toaster is not broken. You have to watch it.”
“I watched it.”
“You have to watch it the whole time. You can’t look away.”
He looks at the toast. Then at me. “That seems inefficient.”
“That’s just the toaster.” I take the burnt toast from him, scrape it over the sink, and put two more slices in. I stand directly in front of it. Hex watches me watch the toaster with the expression of someone learning an important lesson about the gap between his realm and mine. Or maybe the gap is more royalty and normal people.
