Chapter 33
August sifted through memories, searching for another to show. It was a strange, blissful kind of feeling, sharing this with Felix, and he couldn’t help noticing how intimate it felt. How much he liked how intimate it felt.
August picked one—this time of Callum because he was far less creepy—and nodded.
“Ready.”
When Felix’s hands slipped into his hair, pressing gently against his temples, a shiver ran through August, lifting goosebumps on his arms. His cheeks warmed, and a different memory filled his head.
He saw Felix at The Raven’s Perch, the third time he’d snuck out to meet him.
Maybe the fourth? They’d spent an hour tucked into one of the booths, talking about food and cooking, and Felix had eagerly offered to teach him someday.
After clearing their plates, Felix dropped them off in the kitchen and swung by the bar on his way back.
He leaned in to say something to Petra, then laughed at her reply.
It was an unguarded, carefree sort of laugh that lit up his entire face, the heady sound carrying over the din of the pub.
August hadn’t realized he was grinning like an idiot until Felix turned to come back and paused, blue eyes holding his gaze with a look that was soft and thick as sleep.
August’s world narrowed to only him.
I think I might have accidentally fallen for you. It was the thought that had occurred to him then, in that shared moment, made even truer with the passing of weeks.
“That’s not an anchored,” Felix said, dragging August abruptly from the memory.
His stomach dropped to the floor as his eyes popped open. “I wasn’t ready.”
How much had Felix seen? Had August thought the words? Did he hear?
Baellas tell me he didn’t hear.
A knowing smile spread across Felix’s face, and his voice reverberated inside August’s head. “You like me.”
Panic flooded through August, and heat crept up his neck, pooling in his cheeks. “What? No. Why would you think that?” He wrinkled his nose, which felt like overkill, so he forced it smooth.
“I’m sorry, Auggie.” This time, Felix spoke the words. He tried for a serious look, but his mouth twitched, betraying his attempt. “You said you were ready.”
“I didn’t, I don’t—” August slid off the bench, putting distance between them. It did nothing to cool the fire scorching his cheeks.
“I swear, I didn’t mean to peek.” The smile finally broke through. “You do, though.”
“Oh gods, stop.” August’s voice was too loud in the empty pub. “I have to go.” He spun around, tripping on the leg of a chair, nearly losing his balance.
“Wait! August, please.”
August forced himself to stop. He drew in a sharp breath, but couldn’t gather the nerve to turn.
Felix rounded him, head dipping to meet his dropped gaze. “I’m really sorry.”
August shrugged, aiming for casual, even as his insides liquefied with embarrassment.
“It’s fine,” he said, his voice an octave too high. “Because I don’t.” Just stop talking. “Can we just pretend none of this happened?”
“I think we should talk about this. If you—”
August threw up his hands. “No, absolutely not.” He shouldn’t be feeling any of this.
“You don’t have feelings for me, then?”
“I didn’t . . . I just . . . ” His heart stuttered as he tried to think of something to say. Feelings weren’t meant to be shared; they were meant to be pushed down until they went away. Especially ones this intense.
The space around Felix was charged like the air before a thunderstorm, a silent thrumming that wrapped around them both.
“Stop doing that,” August said.
“What am I doing?”
“You’re being distracting. I can’t think.”
“Why?” Felix grinned broadly. “Because you think I’m pretty?”
August rolled his eyes. “You’re a terrible person, you know that?”
“I do yeah. And yet, you like me.” Before August could snap a response, Felix laughed and held up his hands in surrender. “Sorry, I’m done. I swear it. If you don’t want to talk about this, you don’t have to.”
August bit his bottom lip, on the verge of a reply, but when Felix’s eyes flicked briefly to his mouth, whatever he had planned to say crumbled like parchment held to flame, the ashes drifting away before he could grasp them.
Felix hummed thoughtfully, his smile dimming. “However, that does present a rather unfortunate problem for me.”
August frowned. “Why?”
“Because I think I’d like to kiss you,” Felix said blithely, as if it were nothing more than a passing thought.
As if he hadn’t just shattered August’s reality and left him utterly off balance.
“I . . . ” August faltered. The heat spread from his face to every inch of his body. “Why is that a problem?”
“Because you don’t want to talk about it, and I have a strict rule about consent.”
He gave Felix a questioning look, to which Felix responded with a shrug.
“When you can bend people’s will, you never want to question if you pushed someone into something they didn’t truly choose. There are plenty of things I’d love to use compulsion for, but not this. Never this.”
August’s nerves were fluttering insects in his stomach. This moment felt like standing on a cliff over the rocky coast of the Aere Sea. This felt perilous. The tipping point of something big.
But it also felt real. And for August, who had been hiding and pretending for so long, Felix was the only thing in his life that had ever felt truly honest.
“Ask me.”
The corner of Felix’s mouth tilted. “Do you want me to kiss you?”
“Yes.” The word escaped before he’d even finished the question.
In the space of a heartbeat, the distance between them vanished. Felix touched beneath August’s chin and tipped his head gently back, halting just short of kissing him. His lips were so achingly close, and his stare was heavy enough to crush August into dust.
The pounding of his heart was a violent thing, threatening to crack through his ribcage, and August flinched at the force of it.
“You’re not sure,” Felix said, barely a whisper.
It took a moment for August to find his voice. “I’m never sure about anything.”
A pause, and then Felix’s hand fell away. “I can wait until you are.” He lingered close for a long moment, then pulled back, letting the space settle between them.
Left with the echo of Felix’s touch on his chin and a yearning to have it back, August watched in stunned silence as he circled the bar, filled two glasses with something clear, and carried them back to the bay window with his usual ease.
“Tonight,” Felix said, holding one up toward August, “I’m content to have a drink and a chat.”
It took another handful of breaths before August’s thoughts were coherent enough to accept the offer. He perched beside Felix, clutching the glass, but he didn’t drink it.
Felix sipped his own slowly, looking lost in his thoughts as August replayed the almost-kiss in his head until he felt dizzy.
“Wait,” August said, the realization hitting him suddenly. “You spoke inside my head.”
“I did, yeah.”
“How?”
“Telepathic communication,” Felix answered.
August’s tutors never mentioned that ability. “Can all listeners do that?”
“I think so. It’s not really mentioned in the textbooks, but the few listeners I’ve met could do it. One from a distance, even.”
“I don’t like it,” August said. “Maybe we should stick with regular talking.”
Felix’s mouth tipped up. “Alright. Mouth speaking only.” He finished his drink, then asked, “Does anyone else know what you can do?”
August let out a short, humorless laugh, the sobering weight of yesterday’s events fracturing his blissful daze. “Yeah. Everyone, now.”
“I mean before all that.”
He was asking about the aesran, August knew. He wanted to know if she had broken her own laws.
“My mother takes nothing I say seriously,” August answered.
“When I realized these people weren’t actually there, that I was the only one who could see them, I tried to tell her, but she refused to see it as anything more than make-believe.
My father believed me, but he wasn’t really sure how to help.
I think it made him uncomfortable to talk about it.
He’d always change the subject. I think, on some level, he was afraid of me. ”
Felix set his empty glass on the floor. “And your sister?”
“Lottie knows about the anchored. Not the other thing.” He finally took a sip of his drink and winced at the awful taste, then set it on the floor beside Felix’s, still full. “She used to push me to talk to them.”
“What do you talk to anchored about?”
August smiled at the memory that popped into his head. “There was this one time she convinced me to sneak into the castle’s armoury. She wanted a sword to practice with, and our mother refused, so she went and got it herself.”
“They didn’t want her to learn to fight?”
“Well, she was seven,” August said with a shrug. “But there was a soldier there, and he stayed with us, giving Lottie tips on sword fighting through me.”
He couldn’t remember the soldier’s name now. He’d stopped showing up after a few months, and August hoped that meant he had untethered himself and moved on to whatever it was that came next.
Lottie had been heartbroken, and he remembered thinking it was silly to grieve someone who had been dead for years.
She used to call what he could do a bronas. A gift bestowed by the gods. She thought it was amazing, that there was a reason for it. For the longest time, August let himself believe she was right. It made his power tolerable. He actually quite liked the word.
There was one day during a lesson about wielders, Lottie had asked why people feared them so much.
The tutor, an elderly man with drooping skin, had answered in a matter-of-fact tone. “Wielders are capable only of chaos and destruction. They are unnatural. An abomination. If left unchecked, they will destroy us all.”