INDEX:
Link here to a general overview of the novel
Prologue, Chpt 1, Chpt 2, Chpt 3, Chpt 4, Chpt 5, Chpt 6, Chpt 7, Chpt 8, Chpt 9
Join the story as Sebastian is reunited with the old crew while Daav is practicing his magic.
Chapter Ten
Sebastian
“To Seb, our lost brother, returned from his time wandering the desert. Who has finally found the promised land.” Ravel raises the beer bottle, clinking it against everyone else’s, and takes a swig.
His deep chocolate curly ringlets and deep brown eyes always make my Cohort mate look like some sort of cupid, with those damn dimples, too. That hasn’t changed over the years. No wonder Nuée licks her lips each time she glances over at him.
“Cheers,” Frederick, aka Freddie to me, adds. “A fucking movie star moves among us.” He chugs down his drink as the others chuckle.
The danger from the viral footage of Daav and me is so large it’s better to make it into a joke.
Nuée shuffles a deck of cards as she lounges among us, hands amazingly nimble as the cardboard dances quickly between fingers. She’s laughing.
“Nah, he’s just the co-star. Now that I see Daav and him side-by-side again I’m reminded how hot Daav is. He hides away from us which makes me forget. But he’s like some broody runway model. No wonder you stayed away, boy. Avoiding the poor comparison to your leading man?”
I tip my head at her. “You’ve found me out, sweetie. Just keep your grasping hands away from Mr. Model, thank you very much.”
Ravel frowns, as he tries and fails to secretly look for Nuée’s seriousness in her comments about Daav. Poor lovesick pup, Ravel.
The living room of our suite is comfortable, with large cushioned moss green couches and soft muted orange cushy armchairs, throws draping their wide backs. And at their center a low broad presentation table with more discarded decks of cards littering its top and rings discoloring the wood from years of casual gatherings. A kitchen off the side to keep our tummies happy, and a hall leading to our respective bedrooms, each with an en suite bathroom to boot. Enough comfort to keep us content and willing to stay at headquarters without complaint the times our Cohort gathers. Sweet agony, it feels good being back.
A pile of plastic-wrapped dry cleaned forest green ceremonial robes, and the damn privacy masks to hide our identities sit piled on the bar countertop that divides the living room from the kitchen, a reminder of the reason the group is gathered.
Hanna totters into the room with an armful of wood, her honey blond hair pulled back into a pony, messy tendrils falling out and clearly annoying her as she blows out a breath to clear her sight. Or is she just annoyed in general? Never can tell with Hanna. “Open the firegrate,” she says with a huff as the rest of us lounge around the room. Lazy bums, all of us. Although Hanna never could just rest. I remember that about her, and it brings a smile.
The fire is burning low, although none of us care. A quick trip to the Verse and the newest load of fuel will ignite and be on its way to warming the room.
“I tried to get him back here sooner. You know I did, Seb,” Nuée says, turning my way. “It never occurred to me that planting bombs at Victor’s place would do the trick.” Nuée goes to remove the grate and help Hanna while she joins the rest of the Cohort in giving me shit.
Ravel, sitting on the couch with his guitar in hand, strumming absently as everyone relaxes, follows Nueé with his eyes as she moves. Yep, that definitely hasn’t changed. Nueé never admits to me they have a thing. Conclave prohibition can’t touch what the heart wants. It’s not just Daav and me, although I’m not sure how far the flames have grown for those two. But it makes me sad my carefree, joyous Nuée feels the need for such guardedness.
“So funny, sweetie,” I say to her. “And Freddie, don’t make me bring up your own sordid video history. The porn industry would weep if you’re forced out of your side gig. And Colleen would be so disappointed.” My sharp darkness throws in that last comment, fuck me. I push away my little cruelty and let my fondness for him cascade out insead, and flash him an apologetic glance.
He blushes.
“Fuck you, Seb. It’s like eight years never happened. Still the same asshole,” Freddie says back to my porn comment. But he’s smiling. Delicate maybe, but Colleen hasn’t killed all his fight.
Colleen, his Mentor, has chosen a twisted path for Freddie, sexual energy and practices are her chosen keys to increasing his magical strength. It’s created a complicated and way unhealthy relationship between him and Colleen. Abusive without question, and turning Freddie into a strange mix of sex addict and sex averse. At least she hasn’t killed all the sweet parts of his soul. Even his looks, golden blond hair, delicate features and slimmer build remind me he’s played victim to her predator as long as I’ve been conscious of the dynamics in each Mentor household. Freddie had just as little choice about it as Daav and I had with Victor.
But Victor’s dead. Colleen isn’t.
Bethany looks up from her notebook, pushes her glasses back up her nose where they’ve dipped down as she concentrates on the page. “Seb, all these years and you’re still unable to self-edit? Goals, sir. Nuée and you are two kindred spirits that way. I’m not sure two of you in the Cohort are a good thing.”
Bethany’s chiding us in that cute, serious way of hers. I’m still not sure she needs those glasses, and I’ve always considered them a nod to a strange vanity, like she thinks they make her seem more intelligent. Or maybe they’re a tribute to her value of study and information.
I lean back on the couch, rolling the beer bottle between my palms, my fifth of the night, and leaving me on the edge of drunk. I glance again at the door, half ignoring everyone’s easy laughter. Being back here, surrounded by the Cohort, goes far to dissolve some of the tension in my gut. And Nuée’s right. I have missed this. Nuée, Bethany, Ravel, Frederick, Hanna. My family, or the only one I remember. All good people. Eight of us were meant to be together, or so the Conclave says, all of us born the same year, packaged as a unit at age five to start the countdown to our twenty-fifth birthdays. Twenty-five, when the nation hopes one of us will be the prophesied magic user.
Each year brings a crop of eight mages bound into a Cohort. The Conclave never finds more than eight born any year, like the number is destined to be. Eight, they say, is a number meaning balance, abundance, prosperity, hard work and determination. Yet in our birth year, no matter how they looked, there were only seven born inside Orreance’s borders. Until Victor insisted Daav was our eighth and retrieved him from Staltz.
But we haven’t been eight for a long time. First losing Trina in the bombing of the Conclave building, and then my exit a year later when Victor forced me out, warning me away from Daav. That leaves six if you count Daav, although I doubt he’s been much of a presence in the Cohort, almost a self-exile.
Each of our Mentors are also from the same Cohort as one another. A decade after a group’s quarter centuries they get assigned their own crop of kids who are placed into a Cohort together. A convoluted kind of family group, and interesting to watch although none of the Mentors talk about it much. Or at least they didn’t when I was last around. Even before our cluster formed, two of their original Cohort had died, making them six. Coincidence? Who knows. But it’s why both Deidre and Victor got a pair of us to raise. I wonder how they feel with Victor dead? It leaves them only five.
And here I am, finally back with my friends, and only now letting myself enjoy it. But my gaze still goes to the door. I worry. I know Daav needs to deal with the shit tossing inside him, those ridiculous burdens from his father, Victor and the Conclave, given how they’ve worked him over. As much as I want to be up in Daav’s space twenty-four seven, he needs breathing room, or the little I can stand giving him now that I have him back, for as long as I can keep him. I’ll protect him if he’ll let me. That’s been the deal since we were boys. Or my deal, since even back then he’d bitched about it.
Where is he? It’s been hours since he left with Johan. Dinner’s come and gone.
Here I am. Waiting, with an itching feeling crawling my skin. The group before me are each drunk on the idea of tomorrow’s holiday as much as from the alcohol. But really drunk on their exhaustion, the pressure of the countdown. Daav’s coming birthday is the last one left in our group. The last hope. And it’s Daav. And now there’s the extra squeeze on Orreance’s financial existence, brutal economic warfare. It’s breaking all of them, drowning them.
I see beyond the smiles to their brittle fear, broken hope, bitterness. Their anger, both at me and Daav as we’ve fucked up the pretty picture of the eight. Even Nuée, who I love dearly, leaked her anger in small ways all along while she stubbornly kept contact with me. It waits in the words they haven’t said out loud when Nuée showed up with me tonight.
I see their disappointment now that each of us has turned twenty-five and maxed out our power without exploding magic awake. Petty jealousies, as siblings have, and as they consider their situations and compare their own to the others’. As we wait to find out how the Conclave will use our power as it is for their agenda.
I see their pain, the gorgeous thing it is. And my fucked up soul enjoys sliding back into this group, stirring this frothing cauldron and basking in the warmth of the steaming mess. I love them, all ridiculously human and fractured.
Ravel raises his drink again. “And to the resurgence of Orreance’s glory. May we rekindle the magic and wake up the Verse. To Daav!”
“To Daav!” the rest of my friends call, clinking glass between them.
I don’t raise mine to the toast. Instead, I place it down on the side table with a loud clunk and lean forward, eager to wipe away their pleasure, perverse fuck I am.
“And if he’s not the damn messiah?” I suggest. “If this was all for nothing and we don’t get the outcome everyone expects? What if Tristan Crane’s dreams were nothing and we never get back the magic? What then? If Orreanceans have only been sticking their heads in their collective asses for seventy-five years?” I wave to the piles of green material on the counter, and agitation is buzzing through my bones. “Staltz sends its people to the fucking moon while we prance around in robes and masks singing the glory of magic. We’re sitting dead in the water, waiting for the hurricane to hit. Like assholes.”
The room goes dead quiet, only the crackling fire breaking the silence. I don’t smile with my challenge, but it’s a close thing.
Then Nuée. “Stop it, Seb. I know it’s been an intense couple of days and a lot coming back here, so just cool down and get through the evening.”
They don’t get it. They don’t understand how living in denial has brought us to the edge of disaster, and torn apart Daav’s life in the process. The dark wins every time. They need to accept that and work with it, not pretend we’re on the verge of being saved.
I run my fingers through my hair, a mess after this day. “What, you’re just going to make believe the crowds outside with signs don’t exist? That people aren’t about to starve in the streets and Daav’s house didn’t just explode? I missed you guys, but I didn’t miss the day in day out of Conclave bullshit and brainwashing.”
Hanna scrapes the fire grate back into place and scowls at me. “All these years and you think coming back here with an attitude makes you something big? How does that help? What sage wisdom have you found hiding away from us? You do what the Conclave wants. You show up for your shifts, we listen to the gossip. But I don’t hear you coming up with other solutions. I won’t apologize for my hope. You know what it feels like to be in the Verse and to sense all that potential. That’s real. You have no right to come in here and lash out with your bitterness. This isn’t just the Seb and Daav show.”
“It’s not about bitterness, Hanna. It’s truth. I know you all want to get by, but the longer Orreance and the Conclave avoid planning for a future without much magic, the worse off we’ll be.”
“What?” Freddie barks. “So you want them to turn Daav over to his father and us to become Staltz’s slaves?”
A rage is there suddenly, flaring up from the carefully banked fire I carry around.
“Of course the fuck not!” I yell at him and shove up from my seat. “But we have to stop assuming that in a week he’ll hit his magic godhead and miraculously explode us into some state of nirvana. Shit, Freddie, what’s supposed to happen even if Daav is everything they’ve told him he needs to be? What happens next? He’s one man, not a superhero. He’s supposed to be everywhere using his magic? Single handedly in charge of the survival of Orreance with his power? No one talks about what happens next. Although frankly, even that’s fucked up since his birthday will probably come and go and Nothing. Will. Change.”
“Daav!” Bethany says, her eyes staring beyond me, wide with shock.
I turn. Freeze. He’s there, standing in the doorway, having heard everything. His face is shut down, sea eyes guarded. He runs his hand over the back of his neck, spins away, and leaves, movements stiff as he disappears down the hall.
“Shit!”
More licks of fire spread over my ribs, keep my breath stuttering and my body a prisoner to my surprise.
Someone shakes my shoulder, hard. I look toward the touch. Nuée. “You’re not the only one who loves him. We do, too. Go after him, idiot,” she says, and shoves my shoulder this time, enough to have me stumbling forward.
Enough to wake me.
And then I’m on the move, chasing him. He’s nowhere to be seen when I hit the hallway. I squeeze my eyes shut, feel more of that burn in my chest. I picture Daav and his beautiful mouth, even when it’s turned into a stern frown.
I know where he’s headed. So I follow.
###
I find him in the hall of portraits. They’d rebuilt it first after the bombing that ripped away a quarter of Conclave headquarters nine years ago. Only geopolitical displeasure with Staltz from its allies after the incident and the threat of their economic sanctions has kept our enemy from trying to bomb the place again. From Harkness to try to kill his son this way again. But the continent is too small for other countries to feel easy with Staltz’s demonstration of blatant aggression. And we’ve protected ourselves at the risk of overusing our remaining mage strength by a continual posting of two mages 24/7 to be ready to try to stop any aeroliner attacks over the building and a few other key places in the capital.
The beige walls of the hall of portraits are lined with large framed color portrait photographs of the mages, each with tastefully inscribed name plates, who have served Orreance since the magic dimmed to almost nothing. The history of our mages is important to the Conclave. It’s part of the propaganda they sell to keep our people strung along on their plan. I think of this place as the hall of hopeless causes, but that’s the last thing I’ll say to my Prince.
Daav stands near the end of the corridor, staring at her portrait, her dark doe eyes stare back from her calm oval face.
His eyes are overfull. With the pain in his heart and with his love. His hand lifts, fingers drifting out, almost brushing the surface of the glass frame, but not quite. There with his grace and beautiful magic. An offering. Daav may not let himself touch others much. But when he does….
Kicking myself out of the trance he inspires, I walk slowly toward him. I know he hears me coming, but his eyes never leave her face.
Trina.
I want to reach out to him, pull him against me and bury my head in his neck. But I don’t think he wants that, not after what he heard me say. Or maybe not at all despite that.
“Even after all this time you know where to find me,” he says.
I’d hurt him. Being in this place hurts him. And I know what he chooses to do with pain. So of course he’d search out more, search out another terrible memory, all to feed his goal of strengthening his magic.
“I’m sorry, Daav. I didn’t mean what I said. I was just…frustrated.”
He’s all tight, locked muscles, poised in front of Trina’s picture like he faces a firing squad. As rigid as any statue I could chisel.
“Yes, you did. But I’m not angry and you don’t need to apologize. And it’s more than frustration. You’re afraid.”
True. Fear for him, fear of losing him.
A rough cough of laughter erupts from me. “Even after all this time you also know me.”
“I can never unlearn you,” he says. The words melt me apart, like a wax candle burning down into a formless puddle. And still he’s staring at Trina’s portrait.
“We can run,” I say. “Just take off, across the ocean. Start new.”
He chuckles, and it’s full of his grief. “How many times have we considered that option? When we were boys I asked you to run away,” Daav says. “You remember?”
“The first time was after Clark.” I’m nodding my head, although he’s not looking at me.
“And many times for several years after. You kept telling me no, that the world would be just as cruel everywhere.”
“I asked you to run after Trina,” I argue.
He sighs. “It was too late for me by then,” he says. “Or so I thought. It might have been different if I had agreed, but I didn’t. It laid our course, and now I have to see it to the end. But you did run, even if Victor forced you to. I’m glad you did. You shouldn’t be here now.”
Yet I’m desperate for him to know that I never left him. I never wanted to. Every single day it’s his face I imagine from the moment I wake.
“I didn’t go far. And I didn’t run away, I was chased away. Nowhere to go, no plan. Spent the first nights sleeping on the beach up Northside. Which, let me tell you, was damned miserable with the cast.”
My beach. The one I showed him on our roadtrip the year before I left. The one from my memory. From before…Victor, before Daav. My seashell necklace is tucked away in my bag, and I’m glad I packed it when we left my place after that first night. I’m willing to give up almost everything I own. But not that necklace, and not Daav.
He shrugs. “The end result was the same.”
Daav sounds so matter of fact, with an undercurrent of defeat. Verse twist it, I hate it.
“I’m sorry I left,” I say again.
“I told you before you don’t need to apologize, Angel.”
“Logically, you may not blame me, but logic doesn’t do shit when you’ve spent years bleeding out from a heart wound.”
I know he has because I have, too.
He rolls his eyes. “Melodramatic.”
“Tell me I’m wrong.”
He doesn’t deny it. “When I found out the real reason you left, I considered running again. Considered finding you and running.”
“You did?” Daav’s words surprise me. And then, “how did you find out? That I hadn’t wanted to leave?” I want to know. I’m afraid to know.
He shoves his hands in his pockets, and keeps his eyes trained diligently on the photograph. Like if he looks away the world will end. “It had been three years. I’d experienced another burst of power, been able to increase solar cell functioning by tenfold, and saw the avaricious delight in Victor’s eyes at the achievement. It was the look he’d had when he’d handed me your letter the day you left. And I just knew. Or maybe enough time had passed and I had the distance to let myself think of you again. So I demanded he tell me what had happened. Said he owed me, and I threatened to leave if he didn’t. And when I made my demands, he simply handed over his journals and walked away.
“He trusted his power over me, or maybe knew me well enough to know that what the journals said wouldn’t change my choices. That my threat to run was empty. Or he was cruel enough to know that exposing the truth would do just as much to inflict pain on me and serve his purpose as the pain his lies had inflicted three years before.”
Daav sighs, rolls his shoulders as if to push away tension.
“He was right. I read the journals. He’d been convinced you were holding me back and he could push me more if you were gone. So he brought you into his office, told you his hard work with me would be wasted if you stayed. That he’d rather kill me, his right as my Mentor, than see that potential thrown away. He’d do it and make you watch, then kill you as well, all if you didn’t leave.”
My chest squeezes and my skin goes cold with the reminder of Victor’s threat that day. Daav continues, repeating what we both already know as if the words are a weapon to keep me distant.
“He knew you’d believe him. He dictated the letter you wrote me, and forced you to say you hated me for hurting you in the lab that day. To call me a coward for not running with you. Did you know he had listening devices throughout the mansion? In our room, too. He described it in his writing. He knew everything we’d ever told one another. Heard you call him evil and mad enough times to know you’d trust he’d do exactly as promised.”
My stomach feels scooped out hollow. There was no limit to how Victor violated us. But he isn’t here now. It’s our mess to figure out.
I swipe at the wet on my cheeks as Daav’s story tears open painful scars. Because I remember that day. Too well.
“So I stayed,” he says.
“But why?” My voice cracks, but there’s no help for it. The plea is there in my words, but he’s still not looking at me.
“Because after Victor gave me the journals I had a huge increase in my power again. My reach in the Verse expanded. Giving them to me was another form of his cruelty. Their pages made it clear how carefully he’d been trying to torture us for the purposes of his experiment from day one. Manipulating us. How ripping apart our lives fit his path. It hurt just like he’d intended and my power grew. After my choice, I think it’s you who needs to forgive me.”
“So you stayed with that asshole.” I’m not accusing him, and I don’t need an apology. I understand Daav. He stayed because the possibility of rekindling magic was that much more in reach. At this moment I hate the Verse more than ever, wish it and every bit of magic gone. “You don’t owe the Conclave anything,” I say, although that argument has never worked with him. “You think you do, but you’re wrong.”
I hate seeing him in pain. It’s not the same as the pain I crave for myself. I never want him to suffer.
“I’m not leaving,” Daav says. There’s no room for argument in his words.
“Your father will keep trying to kill you.”
“He can try, and maybe he’ll succeed. Either way, my quarter century is in a week. I can’t leave.” He sounds so tired.
“Then I’m not running either.”
“Even when you don’t believe what I’m trying to do means anything?”
“That’s not what I said.” I shake my head with all the sharp, firm force of my denial.
“You put your life at risk being near me. Why do you want to? You created a life separate from the Cohort. People you care about like Jellisia, and you have your art.”
“Don’t be an asshole, Daav. You know why. I love you. Let me help you.”
His face reddens, loses almost all of its composure and his so careful control.
“I can’t lose you to my father, too.” He gestures to Trina’s portrait. “I can’t lose anyone else.”
And Verse twist it, why does he keep torturing himself? Daav blames himself for her death, a random casualty of Carl Harkness’s plots to murder his son. Daav’s guilt drives me nuts, my Prince so ready to absorb the sins of his fucking father.
I glance at the picture of Trina’s lovely face, her kind eyes. She’d been the kindest of all of us in the Cohort. I miss her. “I know you loved her. She got you. Maybe not the same as with the two of us, but you connected through ballet and you were…softer when she was around. You were gorgeous together on stage, enough to make anyone cry just watching.”
Daav jerks his head in denial. “And now she’s dead. I need to focus. You distract me, even worrying about you.” Which is why he hasn’t been looking at me this entire time. He sounds desperate, but leaving him won’t get him what he wants. The weight he’s carrying isn’t going to lessen if he’s alone with it.
“Do you think it’s any less scary for me that he might kill you? Your father and Victor already cheated us of so much. We can’t let them take more. We both deserve more, even if only for a week.”
Daav squeezes his eyes shut, his hands fisted.
I step as close to him as I dare, to feel his heat, absorb his light even as it’s wrapped in his fear.
I risk laying my fingers on his wrist, not encircling it, just reminding him that I’m here. If he feels their tremble, fine. I can’t hide from him. “Please, Daav. I’m afraid, too. I need you near to get through this. You may be the mage messiah, you may not be. I don’t really care. Okay, I get that you can’t leave, so let me take your pain, help you through the next weeks.” I can’t stop it, my voice shakes. I swipe at my fucking wet eyes.
“I. Cannot. Give. You. My. Pain. You know this.” Daav almost yells the last. “I need it. And with no lectures about my unnecessary self-flagellation.”
Verse, I’ve missed even his pretentious language.
“Ha!” The sad jagged laugh escapes me, and, twist it, I want him to let me stay. I’m at the point of begging.
“Fine,” I say. “But let me be there while you feel it. It’s what I want back from you, that you just be by my fucking side even while I’m scared to death. Even if it gets more fucked up.”
It’s the truth. I need. Him. Me. Us. If we get blown up, shot, whatever. Just…please. I try to grab onto this pain, let it comfort me, but this time, I hate it.
And with the feeling, my Verse surges, tumbleweed ugly tangles slither up and try to push, invade my regular world. Like pricking, cackling sandpaper rubbing up against my consciousness. Dots of gold float through my vision.
No! I push away and they fade. All the while Daav is shaking his head at my plea.
“I have to believe this will work. That my quarter century will be what we all need,” he says. “I can’t have you distracting me. And you stand there, bleeding your love and your goodness, refusing to stop giving, and it makes me hope…,” he swallows, “makes me think maybe the pain can end.” His jaw ticks.
And that’s the heart of this. He’s afraid that if I stay around he’ll cave to his own needs, his own desires. Exactly what I want to happen. You’re right to be suspicious of me, my Prince.
“You’re the path to my failure,” he says, “and after all of this.” Daav waves his hand to the room, at the portraits’ staring faces of expectation. “If I can save Orreance, it’s just as likely my magic will continue to require pain and discipline forever. I won’t risk its faltering. You can’t live with that for me, Sebastian. You never could.”
Oh, that pisses me off.
“How can you not fucking trust me? After everything? How many times do I have to say I’d do anything, take anything?” I say. Look at me. Look at me!
He doesn’t. He keeps staring at Trina. “It’s fine that you crave the darkness, but you’ve made it crystal clear you’ve never been fine with that for me. And I love you for it, but do you really want to torture yourself watching me for the rest of our lives? I don’t blame you for leaving, and I don’t blame you for what you said to the Cohort about me, but I can’t have you. It threatens everything that has to matter most right now. Orreance has to matter most. I can’t force you away, I’m not strong enough. But do not expect more. The warehouse was a mistake.”
He’s still bricking himself up behind a wall, sacrificing everything because he thinks he’s saving me and Orreance. Fucking, stubborn asshole.
His shoulders slump. “We have to go back to the suite,” he says, as if he hasn’t just knifed me and left my guts spilling out. “And you’ll apologize to the Cohort. You were harsh with them.”
I’m too tired to keep arguing. Maybe once I rest, get a chance to catch my breath, I can keep playing this terrible game with him. “Whatever, Daav. Let’s go back.”
And finally, he turns my way, staring me in the eyes. But he must catch something on my face, because the hardness of his own dissolves.
He’s there, grabbing me into his arms, wrapping me tight, enough to make my ribs ache. Or maybe that’s from my heart trying hard to ram itself out of my chest to be with his. I lean into the hold.
“Shhh,” he whispers against me, his palms cupping the back of my head, my forehead pressing hard into his chest now. “I’m sorry. My Angel, calm.”
Yes. This. Why does he fight it?
“You’ll feel better after you apologize,” he says, like that’s why I’m falling apart in his arms. “Start with Hanna, she has never been a fan of mine, so you may need to be extra ingratiating to balance out her sour mood toward me. And you hate it when you hurt others. I think you revel in the chance to go all sweet and caring and rub up against them and coo. Put them to bed and nurse them with chicken soup.”
“You make me sound like some sort of overeager repentant puppy.” The regular banter is comforting and I retreat to it after this emotional shitfest.
“You may be onto something with that description,” he says.
“The Asshole Prince, it has a ring to it.”
He pulls back, lets me go. Smiles at me, sweet and sad and full of regret. “I suppose it fits.”
“You exhaust me, Daav.”
“Then go to bed.”
I raise an eyebrow at him.
“Alone,” he scolds.
“Whatever you say.” I shrug.
He scowls, turns, and heads back to the suite.
I follow, because of course I will.
I’m not a doormat. That’s not what I do, helping my friends and the patients I serve, healing them, taking care, taking pain. Okay, sometimes I give too much, and am a bit too ready to let my body carry the costs for the people I love. But I have limits, I value my life, and the selfish part gets off on what I do.
But with Daav…. It’s more complicated. He’s right that I can’t stand seeing the way he tortures himself, but it’s not even that. Finding him again, a clarity is creeping over me with this struggle we’re in together.
Being a mage you’d guess I spend a lot of time thinking about cosmic mysteries. I don’t. But with Daav, with the him and the me of us, our separateness never makes sense to me. Thinking of us as binary is fucking misplaced dualism. There’s no barriers. We’re the whole damn thing, a single energy masquerading as two separate humans.
So, yeah, I follow. I might as well. Because he’s taking me with him anyway.