Page 12 of Xerxes Ascendant
“It’s too late for that,” Kyle said tiredly. “If you’re fine, you can leave now.”
“Kyle, you know it’sEpsilonyou’re talking to? Your head injury might be-”
“I don’t want him here,” he told his cousin, turning his face away in a juvenile attempt to block the man out. But the blank wall mocked him, his eyes still picking out Akira’s visage on its pockmarked surface with the vividness of affectionate memory. Closing his eyes achieved the same result. Akira – and what they’d had together for that fleeting moment before Kyle had learned what he’d been deliberately keeping from him – was haunting his shattered mind.
“Kyle?”
He took a deep breath and looked back at his boss. Hisboss, and nothing more. “I have nothing else to say to you.”
Akira exhaled sharply. “But there’s so much I need to say toyou, Kyle. To apologise and explain and assure and promise…and anything else in the entire world you need from me. Anything at all, it’s yours. Please?”
“I don’t need anything.”
“I needyou,” Akira whispered, pain lancing the words. He took a desperate, stumbling step towards him. “Please, Kyle.”
In Kyle’s responding silence, Indira stepped between them and pulled her runing wand from her pocket. The pale blue metal glinted in the overhead light, its bladed tip pointed menacingly at the Master of House Epsilon and stopping him from moving closer.
“He told you to get out,” his cousin snapped, coming to Kyle’s defence even in the absence of an explanation for what the other man had done.
He’d have done the same to anyone who had hurt her. They were family and had each other’s backs, no matter what.
Just as Akira had his own family…who weren’t Kyle.
“Indira,” admonished Akira, but that intolerant dominance shit didn’t work on her. She just scoffed derisively and adjusted her grip on the makeshift weapon.
“You ever seen what one of these does to a person’s skin, Master Epsilon?” she asked in a low tone. Both men regarded the brandished wand with appropriate wariness.
Kyle imagined nothing good would come from touching that magical blade to vulnerable flesh, yet Akira didn’t shy away. He lifted his chin, baring his throat to her, and turned those soulful eyes back on Kyle.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you. Believe me, it was thelastthing I wanted. I love you.”
Kyle choked.
A low growl erupted from his cousin’s throat, and then she reached over to jam her thumb down onto his call button. The nurse instantly appeared at Akira’s shoulder, her impressive height making her tower over his slumped form.
“This man isn’t welcome,” Indira told her fiercely, jutting her chin in his direction. “Please escort him out of the building.”
The woman sneaked a look at Akira’s face. He glanced back at her with weary, unconcerned resignation.
“Master Epsilon,” she murmured deferentially upon recognising him. “Is Mrs. Randall bothering you? Shall I have her removed?”
Akira gave a mild shake of his head, and the nurse glared at Indira before scuttling away down the corridor.
“Because of course they won’t do anything to him,” Indira commented bitterly to Kyle, slashing her wand through the air in frustration. “He’s the one paying the hospital’s bill. They’d sooner kickyouout.”
Stars, how much did eleven days in a hospital cost? Enough to have drained every last credit from Kyle’s account and put him into the kind of debt that would see him selling favours ororgans to the Lower gangs, if had he been the one to bear its weight. He owed his employer gratitude for covering the credits, but it didn’t mean Akira couldbuyhis way to forgiveness.
“I don’t need your charity,” Kyle said.
Annoyance shadowed Akira’s expression, the first time since his arrival that he’d looked like himself and not a pale, reduced copy. “It’s not charity. And what are youdoing?”
“Leaving,” muttered Kyle, prying out the needle lodged in the back of his right hand and wincing at the nauseating sensation it produced. “If you won’t, I will.”
He couldn’t…even across the room, Akira was too close. Kyle couldn’tbreathe.
Indira stuffed her runing wand back into her pocket and grabbed his wrists, wrestling him back down onto the bed. “You’re not going anywhere, you idiot. You’re staying here where you and your injured head can be cared for.” She blew a lock of blonde hair from her face with an irritated huff and turned to glare at the man looming behind her.
“Still here, asshole?”
