Fool
Elias sat on the train and ached in waves. It had only been four days in Willem’s house, but it felt . . .
Currents were so many things. They were words, they were vibrations, they were the waves of the sea, the blowing wind, possibly also the shifting of the earth.
It was not so impossible to believe Willem could control the current of favor, feelings of trust. Or maybe it all just orbited him and he bent to their will.
“Brogan will be waiting” was the last thing Willem had said to Elias before closing his door.
Elias looked down at his hand. His palm was healing with the speed it had back when he was in Geneva. But he could feel the strength rushing back to him from Victor’s end.
A woman sat in Elias’s train booth, and he shifted to make room. She smiled at him.
His scars were so faded it was hard to see them from a distance and they did not disgust up close. People were starting to warm to him again. Elias . . . did not have a taste for it. He could remember the cruelty of strangers too vividly.
He leaned his head against the ice-cold window and looked out at the German countryside rushing past. He was almost halfway there.
Elias felt a whisper. He closed his eyes. Victor was sending him something, but the thread barely moved. He was doing that thing where he was trying to send something that wasn’t the right medium for this style of communication.
It was . . . soft, what Victor was sending him. Elias listened closely. It was . . . the sound of rushes, a river, the pleasure of skin, coolness almost like what Brogan had done for him, warm wind. The warmest wind he had ever felt, then silence again.
Elias opened his eyes. Victor must be in Italy now. Then Russia for last. He felt a thrill of laughter at how incorrectly he had gauged Victor’s path.
This was . . . something. They had come to some kind of impasse. One that let Victor feel as though it was suddenly all right to share good feelings with Elias. After nothing but chaos and pain, Elias hadn’t considered that Victor would be the one to make the first move in that regard.
It was unexpected, thrilling in its implication.
But Victor had quieted their thread quickly, like he was embarrassed. Though Elias had the power now to tear it back open and destroy Victor’s barrier, he did not.
Instead, he went to sleep. He did not have to stay awake on these rides; every stop was the last stop.