Authors: Anah Crow,Dianne Fox
“I thought being wrong was a momentous enough occasion to warrant the trip.” Ezqel’s words should have been light with the eternal indifference of the fae, but they sounded as tired and old as Dane felt. “I owed you an apology, anyway, and you know how I feel about debts.”
“If you wanted to say you were sorry, you should have come here a few weeks ago.” Dane dried his healed palms on his thighs and turned to face Ezqel. “That would have been useful.”
“I wasn’t sorry then.” By the light of the moon, Ezqel looked like he was made of white marble, his hair and robes painted on with blood.
“Are you sure you weren’t?” Dane had always wanted to know, and he’d take his restitution in answers. Ezqel’s glare was defiant, then he looked away.
“No.”
“At least one of us was sorry for it.” All those years under a curse, all for putting Cyrus first—that had been nothing. Dane would do it all again, without hesitation. It didn’t come close to the rest of his life without Cyrus. Dane had to shake his hair back as the empty wind pulled it across his face. “Was there anything else?”
“Only that.” Ezqel stood and straightened his robes. Dane was still getting used to being eye-to-eye with him, after the decades he’d been bent and deformed, trapped between beast and man. “And I brought you this.”
Dane knew what it was before Ezqel held it out. “I don’t want it.”
“It is yours. And you belong to no one now.” This close, Ezqel’s eyes were like emeralds, hot and glossy green. Yzumrud, the ring he offered, held a stone shot with that same green, and the red of his hair.
The right words would unleash a spear of power from its core. This wasn’t the first time Ezqel had forced it on him. Dane had tried to refuse it, but in Mexico he had needed it to save Lindsay’s life. “You betray no one by taking it.”
Only myself
. Dane’s pride had done damage he couldn’t begin to fathom. Again, he took the ring from Ezqel’s cool fingers and tucked it away in his pocket. He could throw it away. Give it away. Once he knew he wouldn’t need it again.
“I have to get back to the boys,” he said, instead of anything else he wanted to say. None of it was good, none of it would help, and much of it wasn’t even true. But it was habit to hurt something instead of hurting.
“To...” Ezqel raised an eyebrow. “I was given to understand that the fire starter had met a sticky end.”
“The Quinns are fucking cockroaches.” Dane stepped around Ezqel and started walking back toward the path, one tired step at a time. Yzumrud bit into his thigh with each step and the wind shoved the clouds over the moon, making everything grim again.
“Said the devil himself.” Ezqel’s voice trailed after him. Dane turned back to see Ezqel looking over his shoulder.
“You’re one to talk about devils,” Dane said dryly. Perversely, he felt better now, like he could breathe again.
“For all my sins, how could I be anything else?” When moonlight slid through a rent in the clouds, Ezqel shone with a red halo. It could have been a trick of Dane’s eyes, but he was sure the bastard was smiling. “Tell the little one that Taniel and Izia send their regards.”
With that, he was gone, huge wings launching his raptor form into the clouds and beyond in a few beats.
Dane waited until he couldn’t hear the bird any longer, then he let himself drop to all fours, relishing the ease with which he slid from shape to shape. The wind was voiceless in his ears, but he listened anyway. Someday, the wind would speak again, when it was time for him to go. He wasn’t ready for that day yet. He had too much to do, and a place to fill in a bed somewhere in this new city.
The shifting of the bed woke Lindsay. It came with a curl of cool air on his back as the sheets were lifted and brought back down.
“Go to sleep, little bunny,” Dane grumbled. He rolled close, a warm, bare wall of soft skin over solid muscle.
Lindsay turned toward him, but caught one of Noah’s hands in his and laced their fingers together, drawing Noah’s arm over him as he put his back to Noah’s chest. Noah pulled him closer, and sighed against the nape of his neck, relaxing into deeper sleep again.
Headlights arced through the window, lighting Dane’s face as a car outside turned the corner. He looked older and wiser and infinitely sadder. It felt like months since the last time Dane and Lindsay had fallen asleep together.
Lindsay touched Dane’s scruffy cheek and leaned up to kiss him on the lips. “I love you.”
“I love you too. It’s good I told you,” Dane said roughly. “Couldn’t add that to the things I have to be sorry for.” He kissed Lindsay back tenderly. “Didn’t think you’d catch on this fast, mind.”
“It’s amazing what a little terror and loneliness will do for my powers of perception,” Lindsay muttered.
Noah had taught him as well, without either of them knowing it, every time Lindsay had watched him remember his wife. Lindsay had wished, all this time, that he had known to say the words. They were such
small words, but they meant more than he could explain. The chance to say them was a gift Lindsay would never take for granted.
Lindsay drew Dane in for another kiss, and another and another, until he couldn’t stay awake anymore. Dane held him and petted him—like always—and he fell asleep again, wrapped up in warmth.
For better or for worse, they were home.
About the Author
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