50. Ben
50
BEN
The cover drops on the piano keys, and I’m startled to realize I’m no longer alone in the room.
This part of the house is out of the way enough that I’d chosen this piano as my favorite to let the chaos of my heart free since I’d begun living with Kalos. No one disturbs me here, and though it’s a shared space, I thought of it as mine.
But it’s really another place that doesn’t truly belong to me.
Stoneheart offered you a piano , the thought is a whisper and is easily waved away.
It’s no loss to be interrupted now. I haven’t been able to touch the keys since leaving my heart in another territory.
“Do you need something?” I ask my boss.
Kalos’s brows furrow in frustration. “No, but you do, and you’re not going to find it while staring at a piano.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He tilts his head. “I’ve always loved your tenacity, but this is ridiculous.” His voice is gentle and that takes out the sting from his words. “You don’t eat. You don’t sleep. You’re miserable, Ben. You’ve made the wrong choice.”
I thought for a moment Stoneheart wasn’t going to give me a choice, but it’s been a week since the call where he threatened to hunt me down. If he really needed me, I wouldn’t be here anymore.
“They’ve done fine without me.”
“Aren’t you curious about the results of the voting?” Kalos asks.
I refuse to be tempted into asking. “They have it handled.”
“You don’t want to know if that councilor was successful in removing them from power? I hear he wanted to put Stella on trial.”
The outrage rises so quickly, it makes me nauseous. Which isn’t unusual of late. Kalos is right that I haven’t been feeling my best. “They wouldn’t.”
“They would.”
Violence lashes my insides at the idea that anyone would dare target my—what? Stella and Stoneheart don’t belong to me. All that’s left between us is a bond I can’t bring myself to let go of.
“The vote was in their favor,” Kalos says, interrupting my emotional upheaval.
I blink in confusion. “But why?—”
“Because apparently the only one who is going to give you a wakeup call about ignoring your feelings is me. Maggie wants to give you space to heal, and Katarina thinks you should suffer for abandoning her friend.”
I flinch and focus on the glossy piano in front of me instead of the sear of pain I feel when Stella enters my thoughts. I hurt her, but she’s better off without me.
“I care deeply for you, Ben. Enough to let you go, but you have to act before it’s too late.”
“They don’t need me.”
“Do you think I need Katarina?” Kalos asks.
“Yes.”
Kalos would burn down the whole world if anything happened to her.
His lips twitch at my quick response. “That’s fair. Do you think that she needs me?”
I pause, because I wouldn’t say that. Katarina could survive just fine without Kalos. She wouldn’t want to be without him, though.
Kalos sighs as if sensing he’s making headway. “Loving someone isn’t about what you do for them.”
His scale covered hand grips my shoulder with meaning. “I know what it is to lose a mate and child, but yours are still here.”
The understanding in his golden gaze makes it hard to speak.
He continues, “Don’t make me fire you to get your priorities in order.”
After a moment I clear the ache from my throat.
“That sounds rather high-handed. I don’t have a place with them,” I say, and the excuse sounds terrible to my own ears.
Kalos snorts. “Did you ask?”
My phone buzzes, and I check it, frowning as I read the message.
“What is it?” Kalos asks.
“Zena. She’s calling in a favor.”
Kalos rolls his eyes, but with how valuable of a resource Zena is, neither of us would dare ignore her. “We aren’t done talking about this.”
“Repeating yourself doesn’t change anything,” I say even though something has shifted the doubt lodged in my chest.
“If there’s a chance to make you happy, I’ll repeat myself until I lose my voice.”
I blink, losing my ready reply in the face of his honesty, but Kalos only nods with satisfaction.
I teleport to my favorite potion master’s shop to escape the screaming demand in my soul that he’s right.
I made the wrong choice, and every action since then compounds that.
“I’m here,” I call out, needing a distraction. The eclectic mix of the shop isn’t enough to pull my thoughts away from the people I should be talking to.
Something falls in the back, and Zena bustles out. Her hair frizzy with energy and her eyes bright with obsession. I’ve never seen her so in the zone.
“Oh good!” she says. “I’ve been reading about this mushroom that needs to be harvested from a Nordic forest.”
“You want to go mushroom hunting together?” I ask, trying to temper her excitement. I don’t want this to be multiple days of trekking through the woods because she’s on the hunt for something she can’t live without.
I owe her a favor, but I do have my limits.
“Yes!” she exclaims, showing me an illustration of what looks to me to be an average looking mushroom. “I’m pretty sure that this one will help in the next attempt.”
“What next attempt?” I ask, but I should know better. If she’s on the tear for a specific thing, she’ll talk my ear off about it before we go, and I have places to be. Apologies to make.
“The attempt to break the curse on your gargoyle, of course!”
The bottom falls out of my stomach at the mention of Stoneheart. Dread and alarm buzzes in my ears.
“What curse?” I ask carefully.
Her shoulders drop, and her look of shock only adds to my foreboding.
“You don’t know?”