Knox leans against the kitchen counter and stares at his untouched water and feels the rejection sitting behind his sternum.
He is frustrated at himself. Furious, even, in the quiet internalized way that Knox does fury, turned inward, compressed, examined from every angle until it either yields to reason or becomes a permanent fixture. He barely knows Dimitri. They’ve been bound for days, not years. Dimitri is a demon. A literal demon. An ancient entity who feeds on contracts and has promised to destroy a twenty-year-old kid and who has spent the better part of a week antagonizing Knox with every breath and calling him half nothing and unwanted and angel as though the word is a weapon.
Knox should not want to mean anything to him.
The look on Dimitri’s face, the disgust, the recoil, the way he’d pulled away as though Knox were the contamination, should nothurt like this. It should not sit behind Knox’s sternum like a bruise that won’t fade. They are mortal enemies. They are bound against their will. The only reason they are in each other’s lives is a witch’s mistake, and when the mistake is corrected Dimitri will leave and Knox will return to his life and they will never see each other again, and that is how it should be.
Knox tells himself this. He tells himself this while he buckles his coat and pulls his hair back and puts the mace at his hip, and none of it sticks, because underneath the logic and the reason and the years of discipline there is a truth he can’t quite smother.
He cares about Dimitri, and Dimitri does not care about him.
He knew this. He told himself this on the couch last night with Dimitri’s arm in his lap and his feelings bleeding through the bond, that wanting is not caring, that Dimitri’s possessiveness is ownership and not tenderness, that Knox is caring about someone who will never care about him back. He told himself and he believed it, and then Dimitri walked into his room and cupped his face and leaned in with such devastating gentleness that for one moment Knox forgot everything he knew.
The gentleness was the cruelest part. Because it felt real. It felt, through the bond, as though Dimitri were handling something precious, something he was afraid to break, and Knox’s heart had cracked open for it, had unfolded toward it the way a plant unfolds toward light, and then Dimitri had looked at what was being offered and broken it anyway.
Knox tries to keep all of this from filtering through the bond. He compresses it, tamps it down, layers discipline over it the way he’d layer bandages over a wound. But the bond is wide and the hurt is deep and some of it bleeds through, he can feel it leaking from his side of the connection, and he can’t tell if Dimitri registers it because Dimitri’s side is still that empty deliberate void.
The void is maddening. Knox has grown accustomed to the noise of Dimitri, the constant dark weather system of his emotions pressing against the bond. Rage and hunger and sharp amusement and the grudging, complicated thing that surfaced when Knox touched him gently. Now there is nothing, and the nothing is so complete and so intentional that it feels like a wall built specifically to keep Knox out, and Knox stares at his water glass and thinks:this is what he chose. This is what he chose over me. Silence. Void. Nothing. Rather than feel what he felt last night, he would rather feel nothing at all.
Which is fine. Knox has spent eighty years being the person other people feel nothing about. He is very good at being easy to leave. He is very good at watching people walk away and telling himself it was always going to go this way, because it was, because it always does, because Knox is the kind of man people care about in principle and leave in practice.
He is not going to fall apart over a demon who held his face and then was repulsed by the thought of being with him forever.
His phone buzzes. A message from Vale. It's still a little weird that his technologically incapable partner has a phone now. Oh, the wonders of dating a younger man.
August is available. Meet at the warehouse.
Knox texts back.On our way.
He looks across the apartment at Dimitri, who is staring at the wall with that terrible emptiness radiating through the bond. Knox opens his mouth to speak and finds that the words, any words, stick in his throat. The idea of looking Dimitri in the eye, of addressing him directly, of standing in his line of sight and beingseenby those red eyes that last night had been so close to his and so full of wanting before they filled with disgust, is more than Knox can manage this morning. He is held together with discipline and routine and the thin, fraying thread of his pride, and direct eye contact will snap all three.
“August can close the rift,” Knox says to the kitchen counter. “We need to go.”
Dimitri stands without a word. He walks to the door without a word. He waits in the hallway without a word.
Knox sets down his untouched water. He puts on his blessing rings, one by one, silver bands on scarred fingers, and each one feels heavier than the last. He checks his coat, checks his mace, checks the routine, and the routine holds him upright the way scaffolding holds a wall that is crumbling from the inside.
They leave. They don’t talk. The bond stretches between them, thin and taut and silent, and Knox walks beside the void where Dimitri used to be and tells himself he doesn’t miss the noise.
Chapter 16
Dimitri is angry.
He has been angry since last night. He has been angry since he walked out of Knox’s bedroom and closed the door and pressed his palms against his eyes and felt the shape of Knox’s cheekbones burning in his hands. He has been angry since the bond carried Knox’s hurt across the wall between them, quiet and sharp and aching, and Dimitri had felt it land in his chest and done nothing about it. He has been angry through the sleepless hours and the silent morning and the coffee he drank without tasting and the walk to the warehouse where he kept his eyes on the street and his side of the bond sealed shut because the alternative was feeling what Knox was feeling, and what Knox was feeling was devastating, and Dimitri could not afford to let it in.
He does not care about Knox.
He doesn’t. He tells himself this with the conviction of a man nailing boards over a door that is already breaking. He tellshimself this while the bond bleeds hurt from Knox’s side, a slow persistent seep that Dimitri can feel even through the wall he’s built, the way you can feel rain through a coat that isn’t thick enough. He tells himself this while Knox addresses the kitchen counter instead of him and buckles his coat with shaking hands and can’t look him in the eye, and Dimitri tells himself he doesn’t care, doesn’t care,doesn’t care,and the fury grows.
It grows because the alternative is something else.
The alternative is acknowledging that he held Knox’s face in his hands and it felt reverent and that the wordreverenthas never once in a years applied to anything Dimitri has done. The alternative is acknowledging that he pulled away not because he was disgusted by Knox but because he was terrified of what wanting Knox that badly would cost him. The alternative is acknowledging that the void he’s projecting through the bond is a lie, and that what’s actually underneath it is so big and so unfamiliar that Dimitri would rather burn his own side of the connection to ash than let Knox see it.
Fury is easier. Fury is familiar. Fury is years of armor and Dimitri puts it on and walks to the warehouse and does not look at Knox and does not feel the hurt bleeding through the bond and does not care.
***
The meat packing plant looks worse in daylight. Ugly, rusted, sagging. Knox’s partner is waiting outside with his necromancer.
