30. Killian

CHAPTER THIRTY

KILLIAN

F ucking Avianitis.

I'd warned him. I'd told myself, over and over again, that I shouldn't so much as lay a finger on him because it would endanger his life. Somehow, I didn't want to crow about how I'd warned him.

Being right didn't matter anymore.

Hector being alive was what mattered.

I did want to wake him up so I could yell at him, but that wasn't going to do anyone any good. No, only actual care could help, and lying in a wagon, barely sheltered from the elements, wasn't going to do it. Thankfully, it was high summer, so we didn't have to worry about snow, but that didn't mean it couldn't rain.

Besides, we were eating travel food, and it wasn't the healthiest. No fresh vegetables, not enough water, constant work to keep moving. Nothing about it was right.

It took nothing to get Hector into the wagon, but even with both blankets and packs under and around him, it wasn't stable enough. He was going to flop around, his head bumping against the wooden slats of the wagon as I drove. So instead, I pulled him onto the bench and held him against me as I drove the damned thing. It still wasn't good enough, but at least he wouldn't arrive at Brett's home with a head injury as well as Avianitis.

We clattered down the cobblestone streets of Brett's little village in the middle of the night, but fortunately, it was summer, so a few people were already up. The cute kid—now a young man—who'd followed Brett around like a puppy every time I'd seen him before, Brandon or Brendan or something like that, jumped down the stairs of the house next door, rushing over to us.

I wasn't sure why he was in a hurry, but it worked for me. "Get Brett," I demanded, no time for pleasantries. "And a healer. He's sick."

The boy clearly took me at my word, because he rushed off a second later, almost leaping up the stairs of Brett's home and throwing the door open, shouting for his clan chief as I was still pulling the horses to a stop.

By the time I'd managed to stop the wagon and wrangle Hector's limp form to the street in my arms—without dropping him—people were hurrying out of the building. Brett's lovely cousin Rosaline, Brett himself, and worst of all, Paris.

The man whose brother I had completely failed to protect.

I could have laughed in that moment. I hadn't wanted Hector on the wall because I'd thought he would catch a stray southern sword, and I'd have to feel responsible for his death in an abstract, distant way.

Instead, here I was, having literally caused it.

He's not dead yet , my brain reminded me. His brother and sister had survived it, after all. Why shouldn't he? No offense to either of them, but I'd spent months with Hector now, and he was sturdier than both of them combined. Stronger, I'd assumed. He was certainly stronger in other ways—both of them like downy feathers on the wind, frail and fragile, blown where the wind took them. Hector wasn't that. He was a flight feather. Soft, yes, and beautiful, but also sturdier than he looked. Capable of carrying the weight of his entire family on the wind for years before he'd left Urial.

Still, Brett was pale when he came to meet me in the street, motioning me to follow him.

And Paris might have seemed weak when he almost collapsed in the doorway to the house, staring at his unconscious brother as I carried him past, up the stairs where Brett led us to an empty bedroom... but he seemed rather less weak a moment after I'd set Hector on the bed, when he was throwing himself against my chest, striking at me as though it would change anything.

"You said you wouldn't see him dead," he shouted, his smallish fists carrying surprising weight as he beat them against me. "You lied. You... you..."

Brett came up behind him, wrapping arms around his waist and burying his face in his husband's neck, whispering soft, soothing nonsense into his skin as Paris glared at me as though he could run me through with his gaze alone. I almost wished he could.

Rosaline, slip of a girl she was, who hadn't even spent a year on the wall, but been assigned one of Brett's proxy years, took charge like I'd never imagined she could. She barked out orders to the puppy who'd followed us inside, pushed Brett and Paris into a chair in the corner, then gave me a hard look. "Are you going to be useful, or not?"

"Anything I can do," I promised, trying my best to seem earnest, despite how Paris had just pointed out that this whole fucking mess was my doing.

She didn't seem to hold it against me, simply nodded and motioned to Hector. "Strip him down to his underthings and get him into bed. I'll be back with soup and water. Brandon is getting the healer. You can feed him while we work."

"Of course," I agreed. I'd fed people who were badly injured before, during my stint with the healers back home. I was no healer, so busy work had been the best I could do. If they let me do that now, I'd do it, and I'd be fucking grateful for it.

As Rosaline left us alone, I set to work on Hector's boots, trying to ignore Brett's soothing noises and Paris sobbing in the corner.

An hour—or maybe fifty of them—later, when Rosaline and the boy and the healer had come and gone, I fed him the broth they had given me, a spoonful at a time, first careful to get it into his mouth instead of down his cheeks and into the bed, then rubbing his throat to get him to swallow it down. It was slow work, but it wasn't as though I had anything better to do.

Paris had stopped sobbing, asleep in Brett's arms—or at least, I assumed so. I almost asked Brett to take him away, so I wouldn't have to look at his slumped shoulders and messy hair. Wouldn't have to be reminded that I'd failed him, just as I'd failed Hector.

Brett, though, wasn't the sort who would hold it against me. He'd given Paris Avianitis without even warning his husband that it existed, before he had realized that his lover's family could be trusted with our people's most guarded secrets.

On the other hand, that didn't stop him from twisting the knife in my gut in other ways. His soft voice came from across the room, aimed at me like an arrow, even though he was still looking at his husband's sleeping face. "At least you can't say love isn't real anymore."

I almost fucking hit him.