55. Those Forgotten
THOSE FORGOTTEN
LEV
S ilas’s laugh skittered across Lev’s eardrums like a spider.
“You’re doing it again, Levvy.”
Lev followed the laugh to Silas jumping on the bed in pajamas. “What? How did you…”
The past and present blended. Time was moving in circles again, wasn’t it? The characters changed but the end remained the same.
Lev looked down. Below him, Asher’s eyes were open. Not dull and glassy. Not scared. Tears had escaped the corners of his cheeks and he looked so very sad, but loving.
“Asher!” Lev released Asher’s neck. “I’m so sorry.”
Asher sucked in a long breath through bloodstained lips. Lev peeked inside his mouth to check for a busted lip, but Asher had a painful gash on his tongue. What a nightmare that must have been for him.
“Are you alright? Why did I ask you that? Of course you aren’t. I nearly killed you.”
Lev helped Asher sit up and turned his chin from side to side. His head didn’t roll limply on his neck. Lavishing apology after apology, Lev checked his head for injuries, and then the rest of him, but the only marks he found were the marks on Asher’s neck.
“Blakely, can you please confirm I haven’t killed you?”
That entirely serious request earned Lev the most pitiful attempt at a laugh.
“Don’t talk, darling. Just breathe.”
Lev pressed his ear to Asher’s chest, and the sound of his heartbeat and the air whooshing through his lungs and the way Asher hugged his head was exactly what Lev needed after the memories he’d been locked in.
“Say something so I know I haven’t broken anything.”
Lev looked for Silas. He was still a threat, but wherever he was, he was hiding.
“Stop apologizing,” Asher answered with a tragic rasp.
Lev pulled back to inspect him again. Asher had fought hard. Lev’s arms were covered in scratches and he felt like he’d taken a few punches.
“Are these all from you?”
“Sorry,” Asher whispered.
“Thank you for stopping me.” He pressed his forehead against Asher’s. “I almost killed you.”
Asher cupped Lev’s cheek. “But you didn’t. Don’t cry.”
“Am I crying?” Lev wiped his cheeks. “Oh. I guess I am.”
Asher coughed and cleared his throat. “You were crying before, too.”
“You already sound so much more like yourself instead of a very sad frog, but does it hurt?”
“I’m fine. Why were you crying?”
“I don’t remember. I hurt you, and I don’t know how or why.”
“It wasn’t you. It was Silas.”
“Silas doesn’t exist. He lives inside my head. I did this.”
Lev trailed his fingers down the side of Asher’s neck, cataloguing each of the red fingerprints that would become bruises. Maybe the visceral pain in his gut was guilt, rather than an injury from Asher fighting him off.
“Lev…”
Lev climbed to his feet and scrubbed his face with his hands. “I don’t know what to do. You’re not safe with me, but I can’t leave you because what if Silas comes back, but what if I disappear again?”
Asher tried to stand.
“No. If there was ever a time to listen, be a good lad and stay far away from me.”
“Where did you go when you left?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Before you…”
“Tried to strangle you?”
“I was going to say something less dramatic.”
Lev cocked his head to the side. “Oh? What sort of spin would you have given it?”
“A neck massage.” Asher laughed.
“It’s not funny.”
Asher made another move to stand.
Lev rushed forward. “Let me help you.”
Once Asher was in bed with his head perched atop several pillows, Lev backed away toward the bathroom.
“Wait here. I’m going to grab a sword from my closet.”
“Fuck no.” Asher snagged Lev’s wrist. “You tried to kill me the last time you went into the bathroom by yourself.”
“Precisely! How do you plan to stop me without a sword?”
“We’ll go together, and you can tell me where to find it. The last thing I need is for you to turn all Silas-shaped with a sharp object.”
Asher hopped down from the bed far too carelessly for someone who’d recently been strangled and dragged Lev toward the bathroom. Lev had worried Asher had other injuries, but he had no limp and needed no escort.
Christ. A few minutes longer before he’d snapped out of it and Lev would have been crying over Asher’s corpse like Silas.
“Are you going to explain why you have a sword in your closet?” Asher asked.
“In a word, ADHD. I’m afraid the story is terribly boring. It’s not even an impressive sword. Not much longer than a bread knife.”
It took Lev the entire trip to the closet and back, including changing out of their bloodstained clothes, to explain how he’d been reading while walking and crashed into a suit of armor, which then fell down a seldom-used stairwell, making a colossal racket.
“I had no choice but to close my book and go down the stairs after it?—”
“Why?”
“Blakely, you can’t just leave swords at the bottom of staircases. Imagine if you tripped and somehow survived cartwheeling head over arse all the way to the bottom only to land on a sword.”
Asher exploded into an uproarious round of laughter that sounded like the quack of a duck with a head cold. Lev almost smiled, but not even the reward of making Asher laugh could boost his spirits. He’d been so close to never hearing him laugh again.
“I took the sword and left the armor with the limbs askew and completely forgot about it. At least until Luna stumbled upon it later and screamed like a kettle.”
“Poor Luna.”
“Indeed.” Lev helped Asher into bed and handed the sword back to him before sitting against the headboard beside him. “Promise me you’ll use this if I start to look murderous?”
“Yes, sir,” Asher said in a solemn whisper .
“Good lad.” Lev kissed his temple. “Now that you’re armed, where were we?”
“Do you remember catching me looking at the things you hid in the wall?”
Lev wracked his mind for the memory and shook his head. “No. Did you look inside the bag?”
Asher nodded.
“What a horrifying thing to discover. Ordinarily, I’m very good about keeping everything locked away, but when I couldn’t find you, I was frantic.
” Lev dropped his gaze, and forced what he hoped were very repentant and alluring eyes back to him.
“Please don’t be angry. The watch I gave you has a GPS tracking device, and I hid the transponder there.
I pulled it out to search for you, but as you may have noticed, your watch is still on the table where you left it. ”
Asher lifted a single incredulous eyebrow. “Excuse me, what the fuck?” He’d said it at a normal volume, which meant he was definitely yelling.
“I know how it sounds, but I was only trying to keep you safe. I trust you to go wherever you care to, and if you ever want to leave, I’ll let you.”
If he had any say in the matter, he’d chase Asher back to America right now, but he’d settle for as soon as the roads were passable.
“I don’t know if Lichenmoor is cursed, or if maybe Silas…” Lev shook his head. He was Silas. “Regardless, I can’t bear the thought of you lost out there, and you simply have far too much confidence for someone with such a dreadful sense of direction.”
Asher held out his left arm. “Put it on.”
“You’re taking this remarkably well.” Too well.
“Silas told me about the curse.”
Lev nearly dropped the wristwatch. “What? When? How?”
“We talked a lot before he strangled me. ”
“ I strangled you.” Lev finished fastening the watch and kissed Asher’s hand.
Asher shook his head with a dismissive frown. “No, you didn’t.” He looked at the watch. “Is this custom or do luxury secret GPS tracking watches exist?”
“They’re intended for unfaithful husbands, as it were.”
Asher silently watched several seconds tick by.
“What are you thinking about?” Lev asked.
“Marriage,” Asher said.
The single word pierced Lev’s heart like a sword, because that would never happen for them. “I don’t know what to say except that I quite like the idea of you as my husband.”
“I didn’t say I was thinking about marrying you,” Asher said so convincingly, only the flash of his dimples made Lev believe his joking smirk.
“Words hurt, Blakely.” Lev placed his hand over the spot where his heart hurt so acutely, he hoped he wasn’t having actual chest pain.
“When I asked Silas how he was in your room, he said he was only strong enough because of the storm, and he could only hurt me until the tide retreated.”
“That’s just a story Wendell wrote. Silas wasn’t in our room. I was.”
“But where did Wendell get the idea from?”
“The aether? I’ve no idea.”
Asher took Lev’s hand and knit their fingers together. “Where did you go while Silas strangled me?”
“A memory.”
“Of when you killed Silas?”
“Yes, but I didn’t strangle him, if that’s the theory you’re testing.”
“How did you kill him?”
“Why aren’t you afraid of me? Are you actually this reckless with your safety?
” Lev snapped and pulled his hand free from Asher’s.
“I promise you, there’s no redeeming revelation.
I murdered him and I was too much of a coward to confess.
I don’t even know where he’s buried. He’s just out there somewhere all alone when the only person whose company he needed was mine.
I killed him with my own two hands, and the closest to a prison sentence I’ve served was the last five years locked at Lichenmoor.
That’s nothing compared to all the years I robbed Silas of. ”
Lev buried his face in his hands and filled them with tears, all while Blakely, in his fucking unending benevolence, tried to reassure him. When that didn’t work, Asher climbed into Lev’s lap and held Lev’s head to his chest the way Lev had done to Silas after killing him.
Lev lifted his head. “I don’t deserve your faith in me. I don’t deserve your leniency. I don’t deserve your love. I never should have invited you here, and I should have sent you home immediately. Murderers don’t deserve happy endings.”
Asher wiped his tears. “I believe you when you say you’re guilty, but if you never confessed, maybe you should confess to me.”