Chapter Thirteen #3
Pel grimaced. “I know it wasn’t just them.
I could have reached out. The longer it went on, the more I resented it, and it was probably the same for them.
I can’t imagine I would ever have ruined it for them, but I’d just come from Terila dismissing me and Sovereign Gornexi being utterly furious, and I wasn’t in the mood to hear any excuses.
Who’s to say what might have happened?” Pel sighed.
“I understand. I just feel like we wasted a lot of time.”
Tor gave a gentle tug, and Pel lay back down on Tor’s shoulder, just where he wanted him.
“I understand that,” Tor admitted quietly.
“I feel like most of my adult life was wasting time and trying to convince myself and others that that was exactly what I wanted. I think that’s part of why Varex kept trying to fix things.
Which, of course, I resented, which just made it worse. I made a terrible mess of everything.”
“Not everything,” Pel said softly. “You found me.”
“Thanks to the worst plan ever,” Tor made himself admit.
Pel knew that, of course, but Tor had hidden it for too long, and he didn’t want anything to come between him and Pel again.
“It wasn’t a good idea,” Pel agreed. “It had the potential to hurt me, but I know you didn’t set out to do that. You didn’t intend to be cruel or malicious.”
Tor blew out a breath. “I didn’t—but I recognize now that doesn’t mean those aren’t the effects you felt.”
Pel sighed again, his breath a warm gust across Tor’s skin. “It wasn’t really you, you know. It just had some uncomfortable parallels.”
Frowning, Tor demanded, “What did Terila do?”
Pel had talked about this a little, but it was clearly worse than he’d said.
Pel shook his head. “You know, it’s probably not as terrible as I remember.
But I was only twenty-five, and it was the first thing my father had ever asked me to do after I Manifested, a real task.
” He made a disgruntled sound. “Like a naive fool, I imagined that I could do what he wished and he’d actually be proud of me.
We both know that would never have happened. ”
Tor, unfortunately, was sure Pel was right, that Forex would always have found something to be angry about.
He didn’t think it would be helpful to agree, so instead, he ran his fingers through Pel’s hair again, ruffling the plain brown strands.
Neither as light as his brother’s nor as dark as his sister’s, it was a color that Tor was now prepared to declare was his absolute favorite.
Everything about Pel was his absolute favorite.
Pel leaned into the caress for a moment and then continued, “If she’d just…
tried to get to know me and we’d realized we didn’t suit, it wouldn’t have smarted quite so much.
It was like I ceased to be a person the moment she heard my name and knew I was Unremarkable.
She literally ignored me and spoke about me as though I wasn’t there.
It was humiliating. It felt like it was a personal attack, though really it was quite clearly about my magic and nothing else.
She didn’t know me enough to make any other assessments. ”
Tor was filled with fury—but he distantly recognized that some of that anger was at himself. Pel didn’t need Tor marching to Vayrin and giving Terila a piece of his mind—especially if it was partly to assuage his own guilt.
Swallowing thickly, Tor made sure he spoke calmly. “I’m sorry she did that to you. And I’m sorry for the ways in which my own behavior may have been similar.”
Pel was silent for a moment. “When you got here and you actually met me, you chose to get to know me.”
“Mostly because you’re stubborn and made me work for it,” Tor admitted, feeling his face heat as a burst of unfamiliar shame washed through him.
It was so easy to condemn Terila, but Tor had originally picked Pel based on his name, making the same assumptions Terila had.
“You were stubborn, too,” Pel pointed out.
“You kept trying, and as you got to know me, you abandoned your asinine plan. You adjusted. I can even understand that you wanted to protect me—as long as you acknowledge that it was a terrible idea and you will never, ever try to hide something like that from me again.”
“Not ever,” Tor agreed, pressing a kiss to the top of the man’s head.
“I was protecting myself but wrapping it up in claiming that I was protecting you. Rin and Ada knew why I was really in Tond, your siblings knew I’d come down to try to get out of an undesired match, and obviously, I was going to have to tell my brother something.
Thinking I could simply never tell you and you’d never find out was the height of foolishness.
I should have just sat you down and explained the whole thing, but if I’m being honest, I was afraid of how you’d react and what you’d think of me.
So I kept putting it off—until I managed to make it the most epically terrible confession that ever was. ”
Pel snorted inelegantly. “It was quite possibly the worst way to learn, but if I’m being honest, I don’t know how I would have reacted if you’d told me sooner.
I like to think we would have figured it all out eventually—but what if you’d gone up the mountain or back to Alossa by yourself?
” A shiver ran through Pel’s body. “I don’t want to think about what might have happened. ”