Chapter 22
22
T hat night had been the last night they’d all been friends.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” Asterion had said. He’d been hanging off Jonas’s shoulder by then, drunk enough that his words were beginning to slide together.
“The evidence supports—” Jonas replied, eating a cracker as he glanced at Asterion over his shoulder.
“I’m not worried about the evidence, Jonas,” Asterion interrupted, his fingernails digging into Jonas’s arm. “And I like a human as much as anyone.”
“Believe me,” Jonas rolled his eyes. “I know.”
“But he’s cleverer than you,” Asterion said. Jonas could still hear it in his head. He’d liked that Edmund was clever. And that Edmund was always pushing the limits of Jonas’s knowledge. If Jonas said magic could grow a flower, Edmund wanted to know if it could grow a tree. Jonas had been too young, too foolish to see how that desire for more could be a bad thing.
“He’s not cleverer than me,” Jonas sputtered, almost laughing at the absurdity of it, his ego too long untested. “You’re more drunk than I thought.”
“You give him your magic, and then what?”
“Just enough so he can build his own portals if he needs them.”
“Enough to come visit you in Z’ahrend, you mean?”
“I’m going to stay here,” Jonas said. He was drunk too, or he would have hesitated before he said it.
“Here?” Asterion released Jonas’s shoulder and stumbled backward, sloshing some golden bubbling drink down his arm. “You’re not serious.”
“Edmund needs my help. I’m still teaching him.”
“Did you talk to your mother about this?” Asterion asked. Jonas turned to pick up his flagon from the table.
“I’ve made my choice. She’s aware of it.” Were the same conversation to happen today, he would have known better than to look back at Asterion. To see the distress writ large over his best friend’s handsome face.
“Jonas…”
“I’m not welcome back in Z’ahrend.”
“What did Karolina?—?”
“She doesn’t know.”
“She’s your sister!” Asterion blurted.
“You never tell Kephisto anything.”
“Because he’s a massive prig, isn’t he?” Asterion ran his hands through his hair, midnight blue tinged with teal, shining against his fair skin. His golden eyes were wide in distress. “This is a huge mistake,” he said finally.
“I know what I’m doing, Asterion.”
But he hadn’t. He hadn’t known how quickly giving some of his magic to Edmund Morrow would backfire. How Edmund would use it against him. How quickly Edmund would leave, and how much damage he would do before and after he went.
Jonas knew now that not all humans were this way. He lived among them easily, if not comfortably. He’d worked with them and collaborated and gotten drunk. Karolina had married one. But Jonas had been careful not to get too close. Not again. They always wanted something, even if they didn’t understand what it was going to really cost to get it. And sometimes even if they did.
Jonas put the photographs back in the wine crate and stuck it in the gap beneath the desk left by Delilah’s magazines. He tidied up the eternally messy attic, a pang of distress vibrating in the center of his chest.
Thankfully Sidney hadn’t seen what was right in front of him; honestly, the true circumstances of Jonas’s life were so absurd they would have been impossible to conjecture from a single image alone. But Sidney had said he liked Jonas’s horns. That was nice, at least, he supposed. Perhaps the sight of Jonas without his glamour might not send Sidney screaming from the house right away. Jonas considered his reflection briefly in a dusty silver platter that sat atop an ancient sideboard. A creature with two worlds, two houses and no home. Ridiculous.
Jonas climbed down out of the attic, but hesitated on the landing. Sidney and Delilah were both downstairs, not waiting on him for anything. He didn’t want to seem upset by staying away for too long. He was upset, but it wasn’t Sidney’s fault. It wasn’t anyone’s fault but his own.
Remnants of Jonas’s old life were everywhere. He didn’t focus on them, generally, and so over the years they had faded into the woodwork. The side table Asterion had bought when he lived here was now covered with books and bric-a-brac and dust. The vase on the windowsill had been a gift from his mother, back when she tolerated him enough to give him gifts. Jonas had never really bothered to go through his things and so many of them had lost their emotional attachments. It made him uncomfortable to think of how divorced he’d become from all of it. And yet his past still had the power to reappear and turn his mood sour all of a sudden. Perhaps that was the way with unfinished business. Business that would always remain unfinished.
Jonas shook his head, a weak attempt to derail his extremely depressing train of thought. He walked into his bedroom and then the bathroom, fully intending to splash water on his face and snap himself out of this, whatever it was. Miasma of emotions. Silly, self-indulgent. He tripped on the leg of Sidney’s still soaked trousers, and bent over to scoop them up, hang them over the side of the tub. As he did, Sidney’s pocket watch tumbled to the floor with a clatter.
It was sort of a miracle that it hadn’t gotten swept away into the bay, but as Jonas grabbed it up, his heart sank as water trickled out over the hinge.
It was a pretty little watch, and the hinge and the latch looked clean which meant it was likely fairly new. Jonas grimaced down at it. Based on the state of Sidney’s wardrobe, the fact that he was still living in undergraduate housing as a professor, and that Karolina had explicitly said that he was poor, Jonas inferred Sidney didn’t have very many nice things, and it was such a shame that this one was now likely broken. One more good thing that Jonas had destroyed.
Jonas opened the watch, thinking he could at least assess the extent of the damage. There was no water under the crystal, which was a good sign. But an engraving on the inside of the cover, a series of stars Jonas didn’t recognize, and the words ‘ May you always find your north star. Love Mom and Annie ’ made Jonas feel worse. A gift from Sidney’s mother; Jonas was going to have to try to fix it.