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."Please…" I begged again, feeling my pride seep out of me with my sweat."Please don't lock me out.”"You started it, jackass!" And that snapped my temper and melted my resistance because fuck it all, it wasn't true."The hell I did!" I shouted, pounding the door futilely with my fist until it too ran dark and crimson not caring that half the hill, Chloe and Max and my parents included, was gathered at the foot of the staircase, listening to me talking to someone who shouldn't exist."You DIED, asshole—do you remember that? You left ME! My whole damn life I was terrified of leaving you behind and then you go and leave me? How dare you? How dare you come back here and listen to her and comfort her when the one thing that kept me whole this last year is that at least we didn't make her choose…" I was sobbing.The kind of sobs that men, even sidhe, don't like to admit they have, when their chests heave and their tears flow and their noses run."You left me, Adrian." My momentum faded, and abruptly I was the little boy in the garden, begging to fly, except, this time, Adrian simply kissed my cheek and disappeared into the dark without me."How could you leave me?" I finished, wiping my face with my bloody hand.There was a terrible pause, and then the trap door creaked open, and after a heavy moment I heaved myself to my feet and went through the door.He was waiting for me on the other side, shaking his translucent head, bloody see-through tears coursing down his pale cheeks."You really messed yourself up, mate,” he murmured, gesturing to my bloody shoulder."I repeat," I said, trying for dignity, "You started it.”Adrian was about to reply when Cory made a sound and struggled over to me on unsteady legs.She reached out to touch my shoulder just as her knees buckled and I had to catch her before she went down."You're hurt!” she said, breaking, her hands fluttering around my shoulder.I was still buzzing with Green's power, and the cuts and cracked flesh were starting to heal already, as they had been during my frenzied pounding at the door, but she turned a face streaming with tears to me."You're weak!" I returned, trying to distract her, but she bit her lip and shook her head and put her hands on my chest, pressing what was left of my wet sweatshirt against my still tender skin and feeling, I realized, for the giant wound that had healed under Grace's hands a little more than an hour before.She held her palms up to me, sticky with watered blood that I was no longer shedding, and a sob caught at her throat."You were hurt," she repeated in a whisper and she leaned her cheek against my chest, smearing my blood across her cheek, her chin, and her hair.She shivered there in my arms, and I met Adrian's sympathetic gaze.He was growing less substantial even as I looked at him, and I wondered at that, and at what strength of will he must have to stay here for us, to feel our need for his company and to manifest here, where he could feel us love him.How many nights had he come here, knowing I missed him, only to have me deny his existence?"I left you," he said quietly after a long moment of me reading his misery in his transparent eyes, "Because you could survive it.You're strong, Bracken.I was only ever as strong as the people I loved.You're stronger for them—it makes a difference.”"I miss you,” I said nakedly, having nothing else."I miss playing chess and beating the hell out of each other.I miss a thousand things we did that had nothing to do with making love and everything to do with being with my brother." I stopped, and thought, what the hell—I was already baring my soul."I miss knowing if we could have shared her, loved her together…I think it would have worked." I shifted her in my arms as she whimpered a little, and felt her hand come up to touch my cheek."Of course it would have worked, mate," Adrian said gently, dropping an almost invisible kiss on the top of her head, so close to me I could feel the chill of where his flesh should be."We're bound together, the lot of us.You don't abandon the people you love because they love the people you love.”Cory snarked, her breath feathering against my throat and then I laughed against my will and even Adrian smiled."I thought ghosts were supposed to be wise,” I said dryly."I'm very wise." He flashed an extended fang with the insouciance I remembered, then passed a disintegrating hand in front of his face with a pained expression."I'm just not that coherent." He moved his transparent gaze to meet mine, and the light moment was gone."I died twice and my love is still enough to keep me here, Bracken Brine.You may be pissed at me, but please, my brother, honor that.”I closed my eyes and swallowed, and managed to dredge up an unlikely smile of brotherhood."I've always honored you, Adrian.You never knew how much.”I don't know what he would have said next because at that exact moment a dying sprite appeared right over us, to drop, exhausted in Cory's lap even as I held her.She caught the tiny body, like the child of a hummingbird and star shine as it fell and her shocked grief was heard in her indrawn breath.She leaned forward, cupping the sprite as it murmured something in a tiny voice like the buzzing of wings and then, even as its light dimmed she let out an anguished cry."No.No no no no no no no…oh Bracken…” she wailed, burrowing into me for a comfort she could never find, even as she cupped the still, dark body carefully in her hand."Its Davy's sprite…he got her Bracken, Davy's dead.”And I looked to Adrian, my brother, my lover, my friend, for help dealing with this one crisis that I didn't know if I could share, and Adrian gave me a look of profound sorrow, even as he disappeared.I held her.I held her until I felt her shivering with the cold, with reaction, with shock, and then I took her downstairs, where we were surrounded by our people who didn't know what happened.I caught Arturo's eye and he cleared the bottom of the stairs, pausing only when Cory looked up from my chest and said, "Nicky?”Nicky stopped and came towards her, and she held her hands out to his face, his shoulders, his chest, all sheathed in tattered clothing with a few healing wounds.She gave him the same fluttering motions she'd given me."You're okay?” she asked, holding his face in her hands.He closed his eyes and wobbled a little, and I knew he was feeling the same pull I was, holding her in my arms.She was pulling strength from us in giant gulps of skin-on-skin [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]