Chapter 31 #6
This was an impossible task that had been set on his shoulders.
“Is there anything I can do?” Sean asked, his voice rougher than it had been.
“Train. Become the best you can be. You’re going to need these people on your side, Sean, and you’re going to need David, too. I don’t know what that Sending means, but I know a war is coming. The Followers are quiet, but they’ve been waiting same as us. David is their hope just as you are ours.”
Too much.
It was all too much.
“I—I need to get out of here.”
Kywyn let him go. Sean swiped up the book and burst through the door. When he spilled into the hallway, he stopped short at David leaning on the opposite wall, still pale but standing. Sort of.
David’s blasé expression belied the fatigue that ran rampant inside. He asked what happened with a raise of his eyebrows.
“It was nothing,” Sean said.
“Didn’t feel like nothing.” It appeared to take him a great deal of effort, but David pushed off the wall. “Autumn nearly strangled me when I ran up here.”
“Why—”
“Here’s a fun new fact: When you have a panic attack, I can feel it.”
Sean’s shoulders dipped. “That’s—annoying.”
They fell into step together, but David’s were slow.
“Are you okay?” Sean asked.
“Would be better if half my soul wasn’t over here hyperventilating.”
He surrendered a soft laugh but peered more closely at David. “Seriously. Are you okay?”
With a curt nod, David said, “I think I spent a week’s worth of energy to pull that stunt back there.”
“You saved us.”
David shrugged. “That was the point.”
Glancing up and down the hall, Sean lowered his voice. “I didn’t realize how powerful your magic is. That whole mob the other day, and the Indies today. It’s—”
“Deeply disturbing?”
“Comforting, actually.”
With a smirk, David said, “You only say that because I can’t do it to you.”
A laugh worked its way up Sean’s throat. “I do wonder why it doesn’t work on me.”
“Didn’t work on Lhynion, either.”
True. Still weird though.
In David’s presence, the quicksand released its sticky hold on Sean, and he took his first real breath since…he couldn’t remember.
Strange to find comfort in this man he’d detested for so long.
David remained quiet, but Sean sensed his growing curiosity as they took the stairs downward. “It’s not good, I take it?”
A few strangers passed by, eyeing the two of them. Sean opened the book to the right page and handed it over.
David read as they walked, and when he finished, he asked no questions.
They reached their suite, moving tacitly toward the more comfortable sitting room connected to the balcony.
Sean stretched out on a sofa while David drifted to the window, the women nowhere to be seen.
Sean knew he should check on Isobel—she’d been stabbed in the stomach earlier—but she’d healed in seconds, and he couldn’t find the energy to stand as his soul gave way to David’s fatigue.
The quiet expanded, filled the room. David’s preternatural stillness at the window, his empty expression, it eroded Sean’s defenses, an ocean eating away rock—slow and steady. Unrelenting.
“David? Aren’t you tired?”
The man turned, and Luster glinted over his hair like a halo. “It doesn’t even mention me.”
Sean sat up. “What?”
David’s gaze dropped to the book still open in his hand. “I’m not in this.”
Sean wasn’t sure what to say. He swallowed and broke the silence with an awkward throat-clearing. “I don’t think that matters, David. Galadaine is dead, and you’re what’s left of him. They think you’ll spread the plague.”
David shrugged and returned to his post, eyes scanning the darkening horizon. “I’m not a plague,” he said so quietly, Sean barely heard it.
“And I’m not a savior.”
David released a soft, bitter laugh.
“What do I do next?” Sean asked.
“I suggest you start with improving your aim.”
That provoked a smile. “Fair enough.”
David’s gaze slid to Sean. “Do what Lhynion did: Control what you can. Train. Take your place as Sovereign. Surround yourself with people you trust. If a war is coming, you want an army that will win.”
Sean dug his knuckles into his temples, fighting a headache. “You see the next steps so clearly. You should be the one doing it.”
Green eyes didn’t waver. “I’ll be there with you. Every step of the way.”
“Til the end.”
David twisted away from the window and crossed his arms. “By the way, your girl is as irritating as she is pretty. As soon as you were gone, she was yelling at me, telling me your injury was my fault.”
“Uh. How’d she reach that conclusion?”
He made some move with his hand that said, How am I supposed to know? “Maybe you could keep your dick out of her long enough to ask.”
Sean smirked and leaned into the joke, even though he couldn’t actually remember the last time he’d slept with Isobel. “That doesn’t seem to be in my best interest.”
David shot him a vague, strained smile. “Sean. I think she was born with a special gene just to piss me off. I swear she wants me to snap.”
“What exactly would it take to get you to snap?” Because for as long as Sean had known him, David had done nothing without absolute control.
“A lot.”
Curiosity was a dangerous thing. “I think I might like to see that…”
“You don’t,” David said, “but if you lie to yourself long enough, you might start to believe it.”
The headache eased with Sean’s laughter. “You can’t really believe that.”
Pressing a hand over his heart, David made an offended noise. “These are the one-liners I live my life by. You want to share my soul, you have to get familiar with them.”
“Alright, give me another one,” Sean replied, perfectly happy to substitute dire prophecies for nonsense.
“It’s always acceptable to replace reality with heavy drinking. My father used to say that.”
Sean nodded. “He might have been a low-level genius.”
“This is one of his favorites: Regret the crash, not the high.”
Hmm. When would the memories of David’s past began to creep into his own brain? Sean swallowed. “There’s a life lesson somewhere in here.”
“Yeah.” David rubbed a hand over his tired eyes. “Don’t ever listen to your parents when they’re stupid as fuck.”