FoM02 Trammel (9 page)

“It was my fault.” Noah’s words sounded like they came out reflexively.

“It always is.” Dane remembered that feeling now, as well.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Dane could smell Noah’s temper fraying. All that fear and rage coming apart at the seams. He laid bacon in the pan and watched it sizzle, picking his words carefully so as not to provoke a similar response from Noah.

“No matter what really happened, it will feel like your fault. Doesn’t mean its true. Might be, sometimes, but my experience is that humans always feel that way. Makes it hard to know when it’s true.”

He looked over his shoulder and his animal sight could make Noah out as though he were lit from within, the way he was so full of magic and heat. Noah had his elbows on the table, head in his hands. The bacon cooked through halfway before he spoke again.

“I don’t want to think it’s not. In case I’m wrong,” he said at last.

“Noble sentiment.” Stupid, but noble. The two usually went together. Dane turned his attention back to his cooking.

“That’s a euphemism for stupid,” Noah muttered.

At least they were on the same page in that regard. “Well, I was trying to lean more on the positive side of the concept,” Dane said. “Giving you the benefit of the doubt. Don’t make me regret it.”

“Thanks. I think.”

“You’re welcome. And you think too much. Do less of it.”

“What?”

“Think less.” Dane shoved the bacon to the side of the pan and went back to the fridge for beer.

“Drinking less wouldn’t hurt, either, but do what you have to do.” Without a twinge of hypocrisy, he opened the beer and took a drink.

“How the hell am I supposed to think less?” Noah reached for the bottle on the table in front of him and sloshed more scotch into his mug. “Especially without drinking more.”

“Let other people do it for you.” Dane drained most of the beer at once and decided to grab a second before going back to the stove. Thinking ahead was a benefit and a curse of having a human mind again.

“You’re not with Lindsay for his betterment, that’s certain. Let him do it. You’d get more sleep.”

“Is that an official recommendation?” Noah snorted softly at that idea.

“If you want to stand on ceremony, yes.” Dane cracked half a dozen eggs into the pan and gave them a rough stir before he turned around. “If you want to stand on ceremony, I can tell him to give you seven impossible tasks to do for the next forty-nine years and one more. You trust him enough to let him keep your magic from you. Stop being ridiculous about asking for more. I bet you haven’t really slept since it happened.”

“No.”

“Well, cut it out.” Dane finished his first beer and left the bottle on the back of the sink so he could pull out two plates.

“I forget.” Noah sounded like he was younger than Lindsay. “And then it’s night.”

“So?” Belatedly, Dane thought of potatoes. Damn. Tomorrow. Vegetables weren’t his strong suit. He shoved the eggs around the pan and decided they were cooked.

“I’m not about to tread on your territory.”

Dane nearly dropped the pan. “What?” He managed to keep hold of it and started maneuvering portions out onto each plate. “I haven’t even been here.”

“You may not have been here, but...” Noah took another drink. “You are the threshold of your house.”

It was a phrase that sounded better in the original fae tongue, but Dane knew what Noah was trying to say. Lindsay shared a room with Dane, and Noah would be trespassing if he sought Lindsay out at night.

The Quinns had damnably good manners—and more sense than to go tromping into a feral den. Dane had forgotten what it was like to deal with people who knew the old ways, who knew what he was.

“That house includes you, so you’re welcome. Whether either of us likes it or not.” Dane grabbed knives and forks from the drawer and brought Noah’s plate to him first. “Eat.” He set the plate in front of Noah.

“I said I wasn’t hungry,” Noah said wearily.

Dane took a firm grip on his temper, collected his plate and his beer, and came back to the table. He put everything down carefully and took a seat across from Noah.

“I don’t care if you’re hungry right now.” Dane picked up his fork and pointed at Noah’s plate. “I’ve provided for you, so you can stop wondering whether or not you can come knocking on my door. Eat it, or I’ll bring back the first thing I find in the yard and you can have it raw.” The old ways were good for something once in a while.

Noah stared at him, heat flickering in his eyes.

“Keep your temper or you’ll wake Lindsay,” Dane warned. The threat of waking Lindsay was enough to settle Noah down, and that pleased Dane a great deal.

Noah picked up a piece of bacon and ate it with a definite air of defiance, which was a little amusing and a little endearing. “If I puke this back up, it’s still done,” he muttered.

“That’s fine with me.” Dane opened his beer and took a drink. Lindsay had been possessed of the same stubbornness in the face of the inevitable. Dane had a soft spot for that. “Aim for the floor.” As long as Noah ate what Dane provided for him, he’d be part of Dane’s family. The old ways didn’t say it had to stay down.

“As you will.”

Dane wasn’t surprised when that slice of bacon went down and was followed by another, and Noah picked up his fork to eat his eggs, cleaning his plate almost before Dane did. A man couldn’t run all that magic without wearing down his body. The alcohol was probably the only thing keeping Noah from being a skeleton. As it was, Dane could still see why Lindsay found him appealing.

When Noah cleared the table, Dane let him do it, watching without comment as Noah put the scotch bottle away before putting their plates in the sink. Good. It was nice to be right about things once in a while.

Noah was exactly what Dane had expected from one of the Quinns, except that he’d forgotten how traditional the old families could be. The Quinns went back long before Dane’s memory. It must have been

hell growing up dead-headed in that family. Made sense that Noah was expecting to be on the outside looking in.

Dane couldn’t imagine what it was like for someone from a traditional enclave to go through leaving the only world he knew and then suffer the loss of the one person who had wanted him the way he was.

There was a limit to how much losing and leaving a soul could take. A soul like Noah’s, with so much power to wield, could be a danger if broken. Dane had seen it before, and the aftermath.

Noah needed to discover that there was more than one person in the world who would be willing to have him as he was. Lindsay was deeply loyal and desperate to connect. Noah would repay every good thing Lindsay gave him and more. Under all their power, they were painfully human and barely grown ones at that.

Dane would be around for them, and they were smart enough to figure that out. If they didn’t know it yet, they’d catch on in the next fifty years or so. Maybe having a little family would be enough to keep both of them stable. Looking after what had the potential to be a small Armageddon—especially if the two of them went off the rails at the same time—was certainly going to keep Dane on the straight and narrow.

“You ready to go sleep?” he asked, once Noah had rinsed the dishes and put them in the dishwasher.

“Sure.” That was reluctant.

“I mean
sleep
.” Dane finished his second beer and brought the bottle over to put it with the first. “You have to learn to let him give you what you need.”

All he got in response was a subtle shift in tension, and Noah looking away from him, out the window and into the dark. Dane frowned as he re-evaluated the situation, breathing in to test the air. This close, he could see the rigid line of Noah’s throat and the clench of his jaw, the narrowing of his luminous eyes. All that distress and the smell of guilt and betrayal added up to something Dane understood.

“Don’t blame yourself for wanting what keeps you safe,” Dane said, feeling the uncomfortable twinges of empathy in his chest again.

Reaching out, he petted the nape of Noah’s neck the way he’d first stroked Lindsay’s hair to calm him, the way he’d soothe an anxious animal, though petting Lindsay was all softness like petting a rabbit and Noah was all sinew and heat. Still, Noah’s head sank down and his neck curved under Dane’s palm, grudging acquiescence instead of begging for more. It had been a long time since Dane had seen a dragon, but he remembered them well.

“What’s between the two of you is between you,” he said, because it needed saying. “And not for me to decide or deny. It is what it is. If what’s mine is content, I’ve nothing to mend.”

“I don’t...” Noah began, but Dane gave him a little shake by the neck before letting him go.

“Hush. I’ve said what I mean.” Dragons were recalcitrant things. Dane nudged this one toward the hall. “Bed, now.”

Halfway up the stairs, Noah said, “I can sleep in my own bed, you know.”

“You’ll sleep on the couch.” There was a decent-sized one in Dane and Lindsay’s room. “I won’t have Lindsay worrying over you for nothing. He’ll tell you when to go back to your own bed. Don’t mention it again.” Dane wasn’t going through this every night until Noah was back in the habit of sleeping.

“Fine.” Noah stopped at the bedroom door, hands in the pockets of the robe, shoulders up around his ears with irritation. Dane wanted to laugh at him, but knew better than to make things worse.

“Go on.” Dane opened the door and waited, watching as Noah slunk over to the couch. The opening of the door woke Lindsay, as he’d thought it would. “Your boy can’t sleep,” Dane said by way of explanation.

“Oh.” Lindsay yawned and wriggled out of bed, gathering up a blanket and a pillow as he went.

“Anyone who wakes me before noon better be bleeding or on fire,” Dane warned. He closed the door and went to sprawl on the bed, taking up most of it. The blend of new and old smells was strange, but he knew that in days, missing one or the other would begin to be equal causes for concern. The animal in him was forever making decisions like that without his permission.

He could have listened to the soft conversation between Noah and Lindsay, but he didn’t feel the need. They were fine. It was their business and Dane would leave them to it. He couldn’t always be here for them, even if he wanted to be. Rolling over and leaving enough room for Lindsay in the bed, he fell asleep to the sound of their voices.

Chapter Four

Nearly two weeks after being packed out of his father’s house and sent to Atlantic City, Noah was starting to accept that this was home. That bothered him, that he could fall into a new life this easily.

Almost a year had passed since he’d been anywhere he considered home—hospital, a healer’s spare room, his father’s house—and maybe that was making the transition easier.

What was making it harder was Lindsay. It wasn’t that Noah didn’t like him or didn’t want to be around him. He did. He wanted Lindsay there in spite of the fact that Lindsay was a constant—

maddeningly constant—reminder that nothing was the same, while Lindsay’s magic let him wallow in the illusion that nothing had changed. Lindsay’s magic made him feel safe, but there was more to it than that.

Lindsay was good to him with the driven persistence of a new parent, even if he was five years younger. There wasn’t a room Noah found himself in that Lindsay wasn’t in as well moments later. Even when he went outside, wandering the streets, he was never alone. He and Lindsay were bound together in their strange little gestalt awareness and married by the choices of their elders.

Noah could feel Lindsay’s sincerity flowing down the bond that kept his magic in check, and he knew that Lindsay was genuine in his intentions and his actions. He would have tried to be obedient for the sake of his family’s reputation, but it was easy to yield when he was faced with such unsolicited devotion. That it comforted him was rending sometimes. He didn’t want to be comforted. Hurting was penance for being alive.

He healed in spite of himself, his skin itching and peeling, and cried bitterly over it during brief moments of privacy in the shower. Knowing Elle would have been happy he was doing more than surviving didn’t ease the guilt. He kept that inner pain from Lindsay as best he could, hiding it away like a stolen talisman, and felt guilty for that, too.

There was no way Noah could have healed like this before, trapped in his rage and grief, homeless in spite of sleeping under his father’s roof. That house had stopped being his home, slowly and irreparably, over the years that his magic failed to manifest. His magic had rejected his family as they had rejected Noah. What Noah might have tried to forgive, his fire could not.

Cyrus had brought him in and given him a home; his fire breathed and grew at the mercy of the air, just as Noah lived and healed by Cyrus’s acceptance. Lindsay and Dane had given him a family—not one to replace the one he’d tried to make for himself with Elle, but a family nonetheless. Here, where his magic was welcomed and nurtured, it was finally willing to let him heal.

The summer was as relentless as Lindsay when it came to making Noah feel better. He had always loved the sun and now he thought he could hear it burning if he listened long enough. He took a break from building the new back porch, leaving Lindsay to sit in the shade of it, and soaked the distant fire into his skin. Maybe soon he would ask Lindsay for his magic back. Once he was finished repairing the damage he’d done. Once he was ready to be alone again.

“Inside, now.”

Noah was on his feet before he realized it wasn’t his father’s voice. Dane disappeared from the doorway as fast as he’d appeared, leaving Noah and Lindsay to follow. The stairs weren’t in yet, but the risers were in place. Noah stopped at the top to check on Lindsay, who was scrabbling for a handhold.

Lindsay gave a frustrated sigh as Noah helped him up the rest of the way.

“Thanks.” Lindsay didn’t let go, leaving Noah to trail after him down the hall, drawn along like a lost child.

At least this way, he wouldn’t have to work out where they were going. Lindsay seemed to know where they were supposed to be—the other side of the house, the front room. By the time they arrived, it was surprisingly crowded. Then again, Ylli’s wings took up a good deal of space all on their own.