“We are not what we were then. Neither are humans. The Denver practitioners agreed to help us, and we led them to their deaths.” Perak trembled as he spoke. “It killed them all, Adam, elves and humans.”
With a hard swallow, Adam took Perak’s hand and traced a finger over the smooth skin of his palm. The flesh pinked and faded back to pale beneath the pressure. The flesh felt clammy.
“You’re afraid of it,” Adam said. “The spirit.”
“I’m terrified.”
“Yet you fought it,” Adam said. “At the hospital. You risked your life . . .”
“For you, Adam,” Perak said. “I did it to save you.”
His eyes, so pale, stole the color from Adam’s and turned a little blue. An illusion, a mask.
“You can stop now,” Adam said. “You can show me. Be yourself.”
Another nod, a shift in features, almost liquid. Perak faded. Silver emerged. Not his true form, but probably, possibly, the one he wore most, and as he’d said, his favorite.
Adam let out the breath he’d been holding. Silver gave a sad little smile, his lips bent to a thin line. He looked relieved, like he’d put down a heavy weight.
“What’s going to happen to us?” Adam asked.
“Father has yet to decide,” Silver said, his voice his own, though a trace of Perak’s lilting tones remained. Perhaps they’d always been there, hoping for Adam to hear them. “He is very angry. That must cool before he’ll speak to me again, before I can plead for our release.”
Silver was the Knight of Swords, and his father was angry enough to imprison him. It was that bad, and Silver had cared that much, risked that much. For Adam.
It was almost too much for Adam to bear. Something inside him cracked and most of his anger drained away, fading from red to purpled blue.
“How long will that take?” Adam asked. Squinting, he looked for traces of Perak in Silver’s features. They were there, subtle but present. Adam suppressed a sigh, but could not stop shuddering. Perak had not abandoned him, not willingly, and Adam really didn’t know what to do with that.
“The last time he was this enraged, with Argent, it took eighty years for him to calm.”
“I don’t have that kind of time,” Adam said. “They’ll put me in a hospital. I’ll be dead, or at least really old, when I get back.”
“I’m glad to see your priorities are in order,” Silver said.
“Shut up,” Adam snapped softly. “I’m still pissed at you.”
“Noted.”
A witchlight lantern floated by the window like a bloated firefly.
“Wait,” Adam said, wondering what would happen to Vic while he was trapped. “How much time has passed? I know the stories. Time moves differently here.”
“We’re in the Shallows, not too far from the mortal realm, but if we went deeper into Alfheimr, time would pass on Earth very quickly. Your body would age.”
“Is that going to happen?” Adam asked. “Taking me further?”
“I do not know. My father may order it.”
“I don’t want to die here,” Adam said. Out the window, the waves brushed the beach. The salt air, cleaner than any he’d tasted, scrubbed away some of the anxiety.
Adam examined the room. A bed, low to the ground like a futon, with comfortable blankets, took up most of it. There was a basin, and even a pot that he expected would serve grosser needs, but he could not eat here. He could not drink here. The little table where they were supposed to dine held a few implements of silver. Two pairs of utensils. Two chairs. One bed.
“This is pretty comfortable for a dungeon,” Adam said. He wasn’t going to mention the room’s arithmetic.
“These towers are what you’d call ‘roughing it,’ but we aren’t savages to treat our prisoners poorly.”
“And you are a prince,” Adam said.
“And I am a prince,” Silver agreed.
“Your father left us only one bed.” Adam mentioned it. The blanket looked like velvet, glossy and thick, but it flickered with the light. Adam wondered how they wove it, if the plants they used were unique to Alfheimr. He resisted the urge to reach out and touch it, afraid that the rich texture would tempt him to ponder things, the memory of things, other than sleeping.
Silver sighed. Currents of darker metal swam in Silver’s pale eyes. “He assumes that since we are here together, that we are together.”
Adam exhaled and felt a little churn in his gut.
“I will sleep on the floor,” Silver said. “Prince or no.”
Adam paused. It was right of Silver to respect him, to keep his distance, but a little tug on his heart reminded him of sleeping beside Perak in fields of flowers. But that was then. This was Silver. There was Vic. Adam could not feel him, not over this distance.
He gave a little nod and pulled off his boots and socks. One touch of the fabric confirmed that he wanted to undress completely and feel the cloth all over, but he stopped with his jacket and shirt.
Silver settled onto the floor without a blanket or pillow. He curled into a long C, like a cat.
Adam sniffed.
“Adam?” Silver asked.
“Yes?”
“Do not strike me again.”
“Okay,” Adam said, blushing that he’d had the balls to do it in the first place. Although he still kind of wanted to.
28
Robert
Robert had the day off, but he couldn’t do anything. He needed to shop for a new car. He could rake the backyard or go for a hike. None of those would distract from Annie’s absence, from the dread he felt at having trusted her to Adam’s world.
“Adam Lee!” their mother called from kitchen. The sound was so familiar he almost smiled.
Robert found her at the dining room table, sipping her coffee, her bible open to some verses inked in red. The worn book was her constant companion lately.
“Go check on him for me,” she said, her voice taking on the impatient edge he’d heard too often in the trailer, when he’d come home from school for the weekend and found her angry with Adam.
It had been almost too easy, filing the paperwork, letting Mrs. Pearce, the guidance counselor at school talk him through the options. Adam had been more an inconvenience than a risk, but at the time it had felt like the perfect solution, the best way for Bobby to move on, to escape.
His teenage brother had been sullen and spacey. It had driven both of them nuts. He’d leave the water running, threatening to break the well pump. Or he’d open the refrigerator and just stare into its light, running up an electric bill that their mother could barely pay.
“You know, I never thought about what it must be like for you,” he said. “Being stuck in a metal box with the two of us.”
She grunted. “It was better after your father left. But you two were never quiet. And when you started fighting, you’d shake the whole damn house. More than the wind.”
Despite her mention of their dad, Robert smiled as he marched down the stairs. He and Annie had joked about the basement, that it would be the perfect place to banish a brooding teenager to when the time came. He’d never thought that his adult brother would be the occupant.
Already the place felt more Adam’s than Robert’s. It had always smelled new, fresh paint and unused space. Now it carried the odor of another man, a combination of body spray and sweat that should not have been able to saturate the air in so little time.
Adam lay atop the narrow guest bed. He didn’t move when Robert turned on the light. He didn’t stir when Robert moved nearer, and something cold and prickly walked up the back of Robert’s neck.
“Adam?” he asked.
He slept, fully dressed, even in his shoes, atop the blankets, arms straight, fists closed, like he gripped an invisible bar. Robert shook his brother. He didn’t stir. An old, rising ache move
d up Robert’s spine.
“Adam,” Robert repeated, shaking his brother with more force. It had no effect.
Adam had to be spirit walking, Robert felt certain of that. He was alive, but his breath was a whisper. Robert took Adam’s pulse, found it steady if weak.
He peeled back Adam’s eyelid, checking for activity and found his eye shot with red.
“Shit,” he said, leaning in closer. “Mom!” he called over his shoulder. Adam did not stir at his shout.
Tilla shuffled down the stairs.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, concern putting an extra buzz into her table saw of a voice.
“I can’t wake him,” Robert said.
“Your dad talked about it, how Sue would get like that,” she said. “Spirit walking, she called it.”
“Yeah, but did she ever—” He waved for her to see Adam’s eye.
“Jesus,” his mother said. She clamped her hands over her mouth and shook her head.
“It’s a subconjunctival hemorrhage,” Robert said. “Not as bad as it looks. They usually clear up in a few weeks. You can even get them sneezing.”
“You think he’s sneezing on the Other Side?” she asked.
“No, no. I just wanted to know if you’d seen it before. If it was normal.”
She barked out a bitter laugh and said, “My daughter-in-law is possessed and locked in a clock tower. My youngest is sleeping in his shoes and bleeding out his eyes. None of this is normal, Bobby Jack, not even for our family.”
“I can call an ambulance,” he said. “Put him back in the hospital. It might be safer if he’s monitored.”
“No,” she said, calming after her moment of panic. “Don’t move him. Sue told your father it could be hard to find her way back if they moved her.”
It had been the same way when Adam had collapsed at the hospital. He’d lay in a coma-like state, unresponsive, but alive. There would come a point, Robert figured, when they’d have to tube feed him, but that time hadn’t come yet.
First Annie, now this. The spirit, the thing, seemed determined to take them all. He stared at Adam’s pale face. He remained too thin, almost sickly.
“Do you think Sue was right? That we shouldn’t move him?” he asked when the silence went on too long, when his imagination had colored the situation with a greater darkness.
“How do I know?” his mother snapped. More quietly she added, “She’s nuts.”
“What if he wets the bed?” Robert asked.
“Wouldn’t be the first time,” she said. “Not for either of you.”
“Mom . . .” he said. Then, after another long silence, he suggested, “We could call her . . . Sue.”
“I don’t think she could help us,” his mother said, her tone ratcheting toward the bitter.
As far back as Robert could remember, his mom had hated her husband’s aunt. Tilla had tried to keep Sue away from them, afraid perhaps that her backwoods hedge-witchery and oddness would infect them.
Robert felt much the same, though he stopped to consider his feelings. He’d taken what he felt about Sue from his mother, but that didn’t mean Tilla was wrong.
“She’d probably just suggest drugs. I don’t think she’s been sober for years.” Tilla reached down, ran a hand over Adam’s scalp. “I found some in his things you know.”
“He’s not on anything,” Robert said.
They exchanged glances, a guilty look over their prying and snooping. The silence stretched out again, too loud and long for comfort, like it often did when Adam was the topic.
Robert cleared his throat and said, “It’s just . . . I brought him here. If he dies—”
“You don’t talk like that,” she snapped, calm again. The strong one, the one who always knew what to do. “About him or Annie. Where there is life, there is hope.”
Robert nodded, but still, to see Adam lying there, unmoving. After all he’d done, everything he’d put them through.
“I’m sorry,” Robert whispered. He’d been wrong to send Adam to Liberty House. He knew that. He remembered Mrs. Pearce, the kind smile as she pushed the papers across her desk. “I need to tell you that, somehow.”
He’d been wrong to send Adam away to where he couldn’t protect himself, where Bobby couldn’t protect him. He could have, should have, found a better way.
He wanted Annie back, to be herself. He wanted Adam to wake up. It—all of it—had gone so damn wrong.
“You can go,” his mother said. “I’ll sit with him, though I don’t know if it will help.”
“No,” Robert said. “I’ll stay.”
“There’s that at least,” she said, turning. “You two talking again. I’ll make some more coffee.”
29
Adam
Adam drifted awake to find Silver’s arms wrapped around him, his bare chest pressed to Adam’s back. He felt like moonlight, cool to the touch. Adam scowled at his body’s reaction to the contact. Damn elves.
Though he hadn’t swallowed the whole of it yet, he had to admit his anger had been misplaced, partly at least. Perak—Silver—had not abandoned him. Or at least, he hadn’t abandoned him without a reason. Adam’s breath hitched in his throat.
And what about Vic? Adam felt inside himself for the thread connecting them. It had grown so faint, so pale, like a tiny root pulled into the light. At least he could feel it again.
There was connection, interest. Vic had made his clear, but it had to be the magic, giving them a window into each other. Did that make the feelings any less real?
The press of Silver against him, steely, smooth, felt so different than Vic’s warmth. Silver smelled of flowers, not the bit of sweat and sickness Vic’s shirt had carried. Still, it had been nice, lying on Vic’s couch like that, not worried if his mother or brother saw them, not stressing about acceptance or the many differences between them.
The door to the cell opened. Argent stepped into the dark, the moon’s glow clinging to her, even more brightly than it did to Silver.
“There you are,” she said to Adam.
Silver sprang to his feet. He looked sheepish, embarrassed even. Adam withered at the sight.
Argent didn’t seem to notice.
“Let’s go,” she said.
“But Father—” Silver said.
“Will brood for a decade or two,” Argent said, peeling Silver’s still-damp shirt off the back of a chair and tossing it at him. “We’ll have you back long before he’s over it.”
“I cannot go back to the watchtower,” Silver said. “I must remain here.”
“Poppycock,” she said, looking at her watch. “Adam has reading to do.”
Silver remained to the side, his eyes elsewhere, but not on Adam. Maybe the king had forbidden the prince from seeing Adam, but he’d gone along with it. It wasn’t the same, Adam knew that, but if Bobby had told Adam he couldn’t see Perak, well he would have flipped him off and walked away.
Holding in a scoff, Adam dressed. “What do we need to do?”
“Follow me,” Argent said. She took a fob from her pocket and clicked it as she strode out the door.
Adam heard a beep outside.
A car waited, parked in the air like it belonged there. Adam was pretty certain it was a Ford, but he didn’t feel like asking her about the make or model as they climbed in. He took the back seat.
“Sister . . .” Trailing off, Silver looked to the horizon.
“I will handle Father,” she said. “He cannot imprison you, either of you, not while that thing is free.”
Argent put the car into gear and light flooded Adam’s vision.
He could feel Silver’s ward hold back the force of the shift, and this time, with his eyes closed, the air wasn’t knocked from him, though his ears popped.
Adam fell back into his body. Finding himself in Bobby�
��s basement, he gulped air.
He wasn’t alone. Argent and Silver stood nearby. The car was missing. It was probably still at the hospital on the Other Side.
Sitting up, Adam felt along his limbs, making sure he could move everything.
“It’s all there,” Argent said. “At least it should be. Silver, go check.”
The elven prince did not seem to share his sister’s amusement.
“Father will be furious,” he said.
“Yes, he will,” Argent agreed. “But he’s right about one thing. It’s time you assumed your role of Guardian. You can’t do that, cowering in a cell every time he has a tantrum. You have to stand up to him. He won’t respect you until you do.”
“Like you did?” Silver asked.
Argent’s eyes narrowed and the siblings exchanged another warring glance. Waves of force slid between them. Adam felt Silver yield, just a little, to his sister. Maybe, he thought, he was starting to understand them.
They didn’t seem so foreign anymore, though they still felt dangerous. He wondered what it would be like, to have a sibling you could disagree with, even war with, but still care for. Because he had no doubt Argent cared for Silver. If she disapproved of him, of what Adam was quickly coming to see as his cowardice, it didn’t run the depth of Bobby’s.
“You could do it,” the prince whispered to Argent. “You could inherit.”
Adam wondered what he had to give up to take up his mantle. Being Perak? His feelings for Adam? Something gray and crawling, like a moth, fluttered over Adam’s heart.
“No,” Argent said. “I cannot.”
Though her words were firm, she looked sad as she said it.
“Father has chosen you as his heir,” she added. “Only he can change that, and he will not.”
Silver’s chin dropped to his chest.
“Besides,” Argent said. “I have a day job. You should get ready, Adam. We don’t have all day.”
He nodded. He needed to tell her about the shard, but a voice called from atop the stairs.
“Adam?”
Adam looked to the elves, but they’d vanished. Bobby came down the stairs, footfalls knocking.
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