31. Hector

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

HECTOR

I remembered being fourteen, trapped in bed every night with the worst cramps in my legs. At first, I'd been terrified. I didn't know what was happening. But Father had said it was simply growing pains. He'd been unconcerned.

In a way, that had been a comfort. If the surgeon was going to have to take my legs, surely Father would've felt something about it.

And this pain, as I drifted on the edge of consciousness, was a thousand times worse. Even the marrow in my bones seemed to ache, pulsing and hot.

I tried to sleep, but it wasn't restful.

Still, I must've managed, because I woke in a proper bed, a body curled up beside me, a face pressed against my arm.

I cleared my throat. It was dry, but not as terribly as it might've been.

The room—it was familiar to me. I'd stayed with the Hawk for months while I'd recovered from poisoning. Killian had gotten us here.

But it wasn't him, pressed against my arm. That was Paris, and when I turned my head, he was already staring at me, waiting for something.

"Are you all right?" I asked.

He snorted. He looked like he'd been crying, but he was warm there, tucked beneath the blankets with me, like when he was little and he'd had a bad dream. He'd wake Helena up and they'd both crawl into my bed to sleep for the rest of the night, which was the very last thing a teenage boy like me would've wanted but it was sweet all the same. I'd never forced them back to their own beds.

I'd missed having them so close. They'd grown out of it.

Apparently, the walls we'd put up in Urial had come down in Nemeda, though. He wiggled closer to me. "Do you want some water?"

I nodded, and he helped me drink before lowering my head back onto the pillows.

"Is Killian...?" I glanced around, but there was no immediate sign of him. I didn't think he'd leave me in Hawk lands?—

Well, unless he was berating himself for this whole mess and had made the unilateral decision that I was better off without him. That... did sound like something he might do.

Paris tucked his head deeper in the crook of his arm, only half his face peeking out at me. "I think I scared him off."

"Back to the wall?"

Paris blinked. "I don't... think so. He wouldn't stop pacing, so Brett sent him off to try and sleep. I mean, it wasn't quite that simple "

I bit my dry lip against a smile. Paris cowing Killian was hard to imagine. More likely, the ramifications of the choices we'd made were hitting him hard, and he needed time to process them. Or regret them, little as I wanted that.

"What did you say to him?"

Nervously, Paris chewed on his bottom lip. For a few moments, I wasn't sure he was going to confess at all. When he did, I had a feeling he wasn't telling me the whole story.

"I... called him a liar. All but accused him of killing you."

"Paris—"

"I know ," my brother huffed, flopping back onto the pillow at my side. "You were unresponsive and I—... It was the middle of night. I was disoriented. I shouldn't have said it."

I watched from the corner of my eye as his trembling lips disappeared between his teeth. His nose flared when he inhaled shakily.

"I was scared," he whispered.

Like nothing else in this world, that prompted me toward action. The problem was that I could only reach for his hand and squeeze it tight. Just the idea of doing more, of sitting up and hugging him until he felt secure, or being there the way I always had been—it was too much.

"It's all right," I promised. "I understand. He'll understand."

Paris nodded. He closed his eyes, and a tear tracked down from the fan of his black lashes.

All of this, because I wanted more and more and more. I couldn't simply satisfy myself that my family was safe and had a home, even after abandoning Urial.

I waited, brushing my thumb over his knuckles until Paris's breathing evened out and he opened his eyes again. He looked at me with a wavering smile. "I'm sorry."

"There's no need."

Paris's gaze slipped over to his husband, snoring in the corner of the room.

I turned to look at Brett there too. "Do you blame him for your illness?"

Paris wrinkled his brow and stared at me. "Of course not."

"And would you change anything if you could?"

He swallowed roughly. "No."

With a slow breath, I let my eyelids slip shut. When I opened them again, Paris's eyes were shining with tears.

"Good," I croaked. "Remember that."

Paris fell silent, and I couldn't tell if he was pouty or contemplative, but I was too exhausted to put much energy into figuring it out. I'd simply wait for him to sort it out in his own mind.

"Do you love him?"

My breath caught. I'd expected questions, but somehow, not that one. How could I admit that to Paris if I couldn't say it to Killian?

The easy answer was that admitting the truth to Paris required nothing in return—no guilt or reciprocation or refusal. I wouldn't pressure Killian toward feelings he didn't even believe in.

"I do. I mean, I want to."

Paris frowned. Making sense wasn't my specialty right then.

"It's not that easy," I said. "I've never had the kind of responsibility that presses down on Killian. He can't afford distractions, or... I'd imagine that, when you face death every day and have, always, since you were a child, wanting something seems like tempting the gods to take it from you. His focus is on the war, on keeping Nemedans safe. It must stay there."

"That... is bullshit," Paris griped. "Even war doesn't demand everything of all who fight it."

"Yes, it does. What would you or I even know of it, Paris? Losing a life is losing everything—maybe not for everyone every time, but for someone? Always. It is loss upon loss upon loss."

The weight of hundreds of feathers, threaded through Killian's beautiful silver hair.

I sighed, trapped between an ardent argument and the heaviest exhaustion I'd ever felt.

"It doesn't matter," I mumbled. "You probably don't remember when you came back to Urial. There was much happening, but you brought Killian. Delirious as I was, he is... ethereal. Striking and otherworldly and so, so beautiful. And he said—he said that the work I'd done, the responsibility I'd shouldered, was valuable. That I was worthy." Roughly, I swallowed. "He gave me a reason to pull myself back, to fight on. I'll admit, I was... besotted, at first. Killian takes up all the air in any room he inhabits."

"For you," Paris snipped, petulant as he'd been at fifteen.

I laughed softly. "Yes, for me. I wanted him from the first, but then... He's so careful, so diligent. Loyal and steadfast and capable and—now, it's more than just wanting. I'm not in some kind of rosy-pink haze. I see him, as I think he saw me. So I do love him, as much as there's space for love in the midst of a war. I want to make his life easier. I want to make him happy. I want him to look at me and see something other than the specter of impending loss. I wish I could be—" Everything he needed.

I sighed and looked up at the ceiling. "Well, right now, I wish I could be up, convincing him I'm not weak or a liability."

"No one thinks you're weak," Paris said.

I glanced sidelong at him. "Then I wish I could show him that it wasn't a mistake to let me close to him."

But there I was, in bed, too weak to move, and it wasn't even the first time.

"Will you do something for me?" I asked.

"Of course. What?"

"If anything happens?—"

"Nothing's going to happen to you," Paris insisted, pushing up on his elbow. "Helena's fine. I'm fine."

"I know." I squeezed his hand. "I know I'm going to be fine. But if I'm not, please don't let him carry the burden of this alone. From the first time I saw him, he was my choice. Not Avianitis, not feathers or birds or loss or any of it. Just him, and knowing that he saw me as I wanted to be seen. If I cannot tell him, you must. I have no regrets in this."

Paris swallowed hard, again. A few seconds passed before he nodded, blinking too fast. "You're going to be fine," he muttered again.

"I am. Now," I sank back into the pillow and shut my eyes. "I've talked too much. I'm tired."

"Do you want me to go?"

I peeked one eye open. "Not at all. You won't get off so easily."

While Paris blinked at me, I settled back, some of my pain lightened by the smile that played on my lips.

"Tell me a story," I said. "One of the ones Father read to you and Helena."

The bed jostled as Paris sat up. He cleared his throat. "I can do that."