I didn’t mean to do that.
A voice that was not his. Low and rough, warm, like the graze of hot smoke when you drew too close to a candle.
“Fuck.” Gabe grabbed his head. “Gods damn it.”
Apt.
They weren’t supposed to do this. They weren’t supposed to be this strong. But hadn’t he known something was happening? The singe in his nostrils, the heat in his hands. It’d been growing stronger for weeks.
“You can’t do this,” Gabe murmured into the dark. “We thought You couldn’t do this.”
When Hestraon’s voice came, it was apologetic.You were wrong.
Gabe’s next day was spent in a flurry of aching stomach and jittery hands, trying not to think of what had happened in the night. Finn wasn’t coming to collect them until dark, so he set out before dawn lightened the sky, ranging along the beach until the sun was high enough that he could probably find a fight. Off to the barn, then, where he had his ass handed to him three times before his body told him in no uncertain terms that he’d taken enough beatings for one day. He pulled up his hood as he left, avoiding the bloodcoats that seemed to linger on every corner, and headed back to the boardinghouse, where Malcolm was still poring over the latest book Adrian had sent him.
For a moment, he considered telling Malcolm. Asking about his dreams. He didn’t. If it was happening to Malcolm, too, they were well and truly fucked.
And if it was only happening to Gabe…
He didn’t want to think about that.
His knee bounced nervously as he sat down, arms braced on his knees. Malcolm calmly turned pages and made rows of neat notes. The ledgers he was supposed to be working on had been shoved aside, a drift of paper falling off the edge of the desk.
“Find anything else?” Gabe asked.
“Not really.” Malcolm sighed and leaned back, rubbing at his eyes as if they ached. “The Fount is broken, and It can’t hold all of Its power until someone repairs It. Which means that if we want to get rid of our god-power problem without handing it over to Apollius, the Fount has to get cobbled back together first.”
“I assume the books have no clues about where the pieces are.”
“Of course not. That would actually be helpful.” Malcolm shut the book with uncharacteristic force. “But it seems like our only option is to try looking for them. Myriad hells.”
“If what Finn said is true about the Prime Minister’s interests, maybe he’ll have an idea.” The words sounded hollow. Neither one of them had much faith in this new venture with Eoin Iomare.
His friend raised a brow. “You think it will be that easy? Just ask him, and he tells us? Even if he knows where the pieces are and by some miracle gives us asylum, the chances of him turning over what are undoubtedly some of the most valuable things on the continent—on the damn globe—are next to zero.”
“Maybe if we tell him what’s happening to Bastian—”
“Then he’ll just want to kill Bastian, Gabe. He won’t care that Bastian isn’t in control.”
He was right. Dammit. “So we keep it secret. What’s happening to Bastian, and what we’re looking for. And just hope it somehow drops into our laps.”
“Stranger things have happened.” Malcolm’s jaw worked, his eyes canted to the side like he didn’t want to meet Gabe’s gaze. “Or we tell him anyway.”
The unspoken consequence was clear. Tell Eoin. Let the war start.
Let him try to kill Bastian.
His hands felt like they were on fire. Gabe closed his fists, hard, half expecting smoke to leak between his fingers. “No. That’s not an option.”
“It might have to be,” Malcolm murmured.
“But it doesn’t have to be right now.” Gabe looked up, flame-shadows spinning in the corners of his vision. “Please.”
I was never too proud to beg, said a voice in the back of his head.Not for His sake.
Gabe gritted his teeth.
Malcolm sighed, leaning back in his chair until it creaked ominously, fingertips on his temples. When he spoke, it wasn’t about Bastian. “I lied to Michal. Blackmail isn’t the worst possibility. The worst possibility is that there’s a reward attached to our upcoming warrants and Finn is trying to get it first.”
