Chapter Fourteen
Declan
“You’re fretting, Everil,” Declan said, as he settled gingerly onto the same chair he’d occupied when he’d asked the kelpie to remove Antonio’s curse.
Everil adjusted the angle of the teapot yet again. “I believe I’m justified, considering the call we received.”
“Ah. That was Mother’s idea. No one to follow us here, if Florian called from–where did he call from?”
“Cork.” Everil finally picked up the teapot, pouring two cups. “When you told grand stories when we were children of how notorious you would be, I didn’t think you serious.”
“Nor did I,” Declan admitted.
Everil sighed, little more than a soft exhale. “In the future, I would be grateful if you contacted me before the matter escalated to shinigami assassins. I’d rather not spend a century attempting to nurture some new friendship.”
Not the most open, he’d told Antonio. Demonstrative in his own way, their Everil. Soft scolding and trusting Declan to not make a glib comment. Caring enough for his reproach to show to begin with.
“I would be loath to deprive you of my company and charm, old friend.” Declan settled further in the chair, as purposefully relaxed and loose as Everil was tense. “In my very meager defense, gossip across the veil isn’t the easiest feat to pull off.”
Easy, mannered conversation. They were fae. Pretending to not have been at the brink of death the day prior was nearly second nature.
“Even so, perhaps contact me at the first murder attempt next time. I would have come.”
It hadn’t occurred to him to run to Everil. A century ago, certainly. But he’d long overcome the impulse to flit to Everil for gossip or other silliness. Perhaps it did him ill, now.
“I’ll make sure to. Though, I hope there’s not a next time.”
“My thanks.” So soft. Relieved. And, with his eyes fixed on the tea preparation, Everil added, “It seems, I’m not the only one who would feel deprived of your company. For a man who professes hatred of the fae, your bond appears very … solicitous.”
And Declan? He couldn’t help it, the small, slow smile, wry though it was, at Everil’s probing words. “Do you disapprove? Now is the time to voice your concerns. Antonio’s not well pleased, when others do so in his presence.”
“Disapprove?” Everil echoed, stock-still in the way he grew when anxious. “Not as such.”
Declan extended a hand, if only to coax the man to move, to hand Declan his cup. It did the trick.
“As what, then?”
“Concern, perhaps. Forgive me, Declan, but I know too well that not all soulbonds are healthy.” Everil folded his hands on his lap, each motion deliberate. “You’ve been ill-treated too often. By those you trusted. And you’re very forgiving.”
Ah.
“It takes more than a bit of death to scare me off.” Hyacinth’s silk-smooth voice from decades past, amused and dismissive both, mingled with the memory of Antonio’s blunt, confused, “I’ll deal. Won’t say I won’t get really fucking wasted when it happens, but I’ll deal.”
Everil had not dealt.
“His hate is tied to fear. Not of me, ironically, seeing as how he’s unable to see glamour. But you weren’t the first time he faced near-death at the hands of a fae, my friend. Merely the most recent. It began when he was only a child.”
Everil failed to look repentant. Not that Declan expected him to.
He had been well within his rights to curse Antonio as he did.
Near any fae would see it thus. It would be unfair to hold that lack of regret against his friend.
Only, Declan was a bit biased. And prone to forgiving those acting without malice in the aid of another.
“The Hollow’s aversion to our kind, however justified, seems likely to complicate matters for you both.”
Declan didn’t snap or growl or bristle. He sipped his tea, and took the moment he needed to find the proper words. Everil, meanwhile, added sugar to his own. And then quite a bit more sugar.
Finally, as gently as he could, Declan spoke. “My bond’s name is Antonio. Not ‘the Hollow.’ He’s not a thing, separately or in a collective.”
“Your bond, Antonio. Of course. My apologies.” Everil’s tone remained mild.
And perhaps it said something of the rebuilding trust between them that he didn’t flinch at the correction.
“Will you tell me a little of how these past days have gone between you? Just to set my mind at ease. You may consider this an invitation to wax poetic about your Antonio.”
That was better. Declan felt himself relax, as the line of Everil’s shoulders softened in turn.
What was it like, between them? The last week or so a whirlwind, scattering everything in its wake. Laughter and fear and negotiation. Comfort. Hurt. Confusion. Boyfriend.
“Warm.” Leather and rust, yes, but Antonio was warmth.
He reached for Declan. Didn’t shut him out, for all he was well justified to do so.
Warm hands. Warm soul. “Validating. We talk often, laugh nearly as much. Antonio stood with me when the Council visited, including a certain brownie. He spoke for me. He calls me ‘Murderpunk’ the way I hear Bo address you as ‘kelpie.’ ” Declan lowered his drink to his lap, studying the delicate porcelain for a beat.
“He sees me, Everil. Sees me and knows me and wants me. A fact he confessed a few days back, begging space because he thought his interest one-sided.”
Declan waited for Everil to express some skepticism at the possibility of Antonio’s attraction. Suggest, perhaps, that Hollow sight wasn’t as immune to glamour as assumed. Though he’d never dropped his glamour fully before Everil, people knew what sluagh looked like, even without an eyeful.
“You sound well suited. I could hardly ask for more than that.” And Everil smiled.
Perhaps three years of being called pretty kelpie by Bo, who never flinched from Everil’s claws or serrated teeth, had done more for Everil than Declan had realized.
“We are.”
“There are few who will understand your decision. But you can always discuss such matters with me.”
“It’s been a couple centuries since we’ve gossiped about boys over drinks.” Worth it, to see Everil’s smile brighten that much more. “Though, on the topic of gossip….”
“Yes?”
“Antonio and I spoke with one of Mother’s contacts, an expert in the time before the convergence, regarding human-fae bonds. He had some interesting information on your, ah, adornments when in Faerie. He has some questions for you and Bo if you’re amenable.”
There’d been a time, not so long past, when Everil would have tensed with shame at the question Declan hadn’t asked. Old magic, sex and sacrifice, and all that the fae had supposedly left behind with the convergence, tied to him in a far more literal way than Declan could have possibly imagined.
Instead, Everil smirked, if only just.
Declan couldn’t help grinning back in absolute delight. Once upon a time, before Nimai, he’d seen Everil make such unseemly expressions. Seen him take joy in himself and in the world. Not often, but enough that Declan had missed their loss.
“Faerie is very fond of Bo.” Smug. The glorious bastard sounded smug. Declan needed to buy Bo a gift. “It would be churlish of me to fault good taste.”
“Bo is good for you,” Declan said, and Everil’s smirk softened to a tender, besotted smile. “And for Faerie, as it happens. As are you.”
“I’m afraid I don’t follow.”
“There was…” Declan’s words trailed off as he struggled to find words yet again. The effort of recovery seemed to be tangling his thoughts. He rubbed at his side absently. “I learned things, Everil. I would have come to you, even without the shinigami. You and Bo are only part of it.”
Concern, metallic in the bond. Then warmth, as a mobile Declan hadn’t noticed on the tea tray pinged.
“They’re to fetch Antonio’s vehicle when we’re done here,” Everil reported with a glance at the screen. Then, “Declan, if you need me to assure you I’ll listen or not react hastily, I’ll do so.”
“It’s not that. It’s– Everil, the Courts weren’t just politics.
Humans were once integral. Bonds like ours weren’t anathema.
We,” he gestured between the two of them, “mattered as more than guardians or warnings. The Solstice Rites weren’t merely for show.
Faerie needed them, and it was always an unseelie as Holly and a human as Oak. ”
“Needed in what sense?” Everil’s expression tightened, only just, at the use of unseelie. But after the conversation with Zyr, Declan couldn’t bring himself to use ‘death aligned.’
“Balance and power,” Declan answered. “Symbolism. Faerie takes strength from the solstice rites. I believe the Monarchs abolished the rites at the time of the convergence because of the weight behind them. Because of the importance they lent to humans and the unseelie.”
Everil’s lips parted, then closed again. For a long moment, they stared at one another. Declan waited him out, let Everil have the time he needed.
“I believe Bo and I should speak with your contact after all,” he murmured, hands tightening, though they remained neatly folded on his lap.
“Declan, the convergence happened. Whatever the… unseelie once were, now we’re a naughty word that children aren’t meant to say.
And the architects of that change sit on the twin thrones to this day.
Don’t–” He cut himself off with a shake of his head, guilt writ clear on his face.
“Are you certain you know what you’re doing? ”
Declan stilled with Everil’s words. Watched and waited again, silent. Everil’s parents had done him no favors, trying to mold him into as near a seelie as they could manage, when he failed to be born a nereid. Nor had Declan’s parents, raising him to see such things as wrong.
“We’re dying, Everil. We’ve been dying since the convergence. Since those architects, thrones or no, decided that taking out the unseelie in power wasn’t enough. They encouraged the seelie to partner with unseelie. And kept only the seelie infants.”
He saw the instant the realization struck. Everil let out a soft, strained sound, color draining from his face, leaving golden skin gray.
Distantly, he felt Antonio’s alarm and concern. Did Everil feel the same?
“Think of it,” Declan continued, voice softer. Voids and stars, he ought to have approached this more gently. “How often have you known an unseelie pairing to miscarry? Childbirth complications, aye, I’ll give you that. We’re born with sharp bits sometimes. But with an unseelie-seelie pairing–”
“Death struggles to birth life,” Everil interrupted, with a bitterness Declan hadn’t thought him capable of. “That’s what my father always said. There were six before me. My mother had a stone for each.”
There was nothing to say, no comfort to give. Declan settled on, “I remember.”
Everil didn’t seem to hear him. He’d gone still and quiet, like Nimai’s shadow still loomed nearby.
“Once my … deficiencies became apparent, my mother began to press for another attempt. It was their greatest argument. My father would say that she couldn’t be trusted to do what was necessary.
And she would say that he could do it himself for a change.
I always assumed it was a cruel sort of joke about her failing to carry to term. I believe I understand better, now.”
Declan hissed, slow and sharp. They’d blamed Everil for it. For not being seelie. For being another kelpie, only born far enough down the line that his mother had tired of faces gone entirely blue and refused to do what was necessary.
“Voids, Everil. I don’t recall wedding vows including caveats about selective infanticide.”
“They often include a line about upholding the honor of the House.” Everil lifted his eyes to meet Declan’s. The rest of him remained in that eerie stillness. “The same vows Suire invoked when she made her attempt on Bo’s life.”
Suddenly, fiercely, Declan wished they were the sort of people who hugged. Everil, still and carefully blank, looked much the way Declan had felt himself, finding out. But he’d had Antonio to cling to.
Sluagh no more offered physical contact than they called specific souls to speak, or sold their services to do so. It would be offensive to extend that ask. So he hissed and raked a hand through his hair and sat back in his chair, ankles crossed together.
“It can’t go on, Everil. You’re right. The Convergence happened. And I’ve no hunger for power nor desire to take on the Monarchs. But I have to do something.”
“So you play politics.”
“Perhaps, if a sluagh is on the council, unseelie infants won’t be seen as disposable.
If nothing else, it opens a window for others and pisses off the ones with a price on my head.
” Declan wasn’t made for this, the grand, sweeping political games, the historical moves.
“Would you have me give up? Accept this? Hope someone makes a stand as we dwindle each year, and the Council makes moves against our bonds? If you have a better option, Everil, please, tell me. Sincerely.”
The shift in tension was subtle, with Everil. It generally was. A straightening of his shoulders. A tension just there, about his jaw. A glint of moonlight in dark eyes. Everil always did take it poorly, when he perceived Bo to be under threat.
And now he knew that Bo had a target on his back, each time he stepped into Faerie with that handsome crown on his head.
“I wish very much I could tell you to let them all hang,” Everil answered. “I find very little worth saving among the fae these days. But if what you’ve been told is true, Bo and I may owe some debt of loyalty to Faerie itself.”
“But?” Declan prompted.
Everil shook his head. “No ‘but.’ I cannot tell you how to proceed, Declan. You and Nimai were always the savvy ones. Though for what little it’s worth, I can imagine no one more suited to take a stand than you. You have myself, and what little remains of my House, behind you.”
Once upon a time, Everil nearly filled Declan’s whole world. There, over cooling cups of tea, exchanging reassurances and quiet horrors, he remembered why.
“In the immediate, we need a place to stay so I can recover.” He offered Everil a small smile, weak though it was in the face of their newly rewritten history. “You underestimate how much I value your friendship, Everil. Your regard is worth far more than you give credit for.”
“I haven’t always been a good friend to you, but you may trust that my good opinion of you remained a constant, even while I was locked in my own grief.
” Everil rose to his feet, slender hands smoothing the non-existent wrinkles of his shirt.
“And, as your bond would surely attest, I mislike it when my guests are troubled. You will both be safe here.”
That, said so matter-of-fact, was not a statement Declan found himself willing to argue against.