Page 47 of Hexbound
Drake flinched. "Adrian—"
"No. I'm done. I've said my piece." He headed for the door. "The next move is yours."
"Iworry about him," Drake said, gently wiping the mush of potato from the corners of Eleanor's mouth. "There's a darkness in his eyes that I haven't seen before. And I didn't notice it until tonight." Putting the plate aside, he looked down.
What was he doing? He'd lived as the Prime of the Order for over twenty years, confidently making decisions that he'd known might cost lives, and forcing himself to make them because the alternative was unforgivable, but... the loss of Sebastian had cost him more than he'd known, and the damage to Eleanor.... He would never forgive himself for not fighting her harder when she'd insisted on wading into deep waters in order to protect him.
"I don't know what to do," he admitted to her. "I love you so much, and yet this... all of this is my fault. And I cannot ask more of Lucien and Ianthe. They barely got out of the last assault with their lives. But every move I consider involves Adrian, and do I dare? After tonight? I couldn't lose him, Ellie. Not him. He's the one son I was ever allowed to watch over, and he's been through so much."
A hand brushed against his sleeve.
Drake's head shot up."Ellie," he whispered, capturing her wavering hand. The Healers that had treated her after the fatal showdown with Morgana came in every few days and worked their sorcery over her. She wouldn't have survived otherwise, one of them had told him bluntly, but she was improving and would continue to do so, though they couldn't say how much of her cognitive function she would retain.
There was a look of fierce determination on her face. "N-nnuh.... N-Nottt...." Frustration made her look away, shaking herself.
"Not?" He asked. She squeezed his hand with her good one, and Drake's mind raced. "Not my fault," he said, though he didn't believe it.
"F-froen...." Eleanor lurched into an excited babble of words that ran together, and Drake helplessly looked on. "You. You... choy...."
He tried, he really did, but he could see her frustration growing with his inability to understand her.
Reaching out, she tried to capture his hand and pressed it to her shoulder, then looked angry. Drake maneuvered it at her whim, until he finally realized where she wanted it. "Here?" he asked, pressing his palm flat over her heart. "What do you—?"
That fierce look told him everything. "Choy... choyz...."
"Choice?"
Relief showed in her face.
"Choice," he said again, then understood what she was trying to tell him. "By not making those choices, I'm frozen. Which is a choice of its own."
Drake let out a long-suffering sigh. There was a hole inside him that would never fill. He couldn't even remember the last time he'd stepped out of the house. Or bothered to discover what was going on in the world around him. Bishop's emergency call the night Verity showed up, perhaps. Sebastian's death had ripped his heart right out of his chest, and all he could see when he closed his eyes at night was his son desperately reaching for him... and then the look on the boy's face when Drake had to choose whether to save Lucien, who might have had a chance, versus the son who was already dying.
He'd never suffered such indecision before.
"M-move," Ellie told him.
"Make a move." Everyone wanted him to do so. How the bloody hell could he tell them that he didn't know which way to go? Standing, Drake paced. "I cannot accept the mantle of Prime again." He simply didn't have it in him. The others might think that it was a simple solution that would fix everything, but he wasn't that man anymore. "But there is another who can. I just have to convince her she's right for the role."
Eleanor's eyes were wise.
"I'm a fool," he told her. "I cannot let everything that we've tried to build all these years fall to pieces. I cannot lose Lucien or Adrian as well."
Footsteps echoed in the hallway outside. What now?
"Sir," said the butler, rapping at the open door. He was drenched and trying to hold someone upright.
Drake stepped protectively between Eleanor and the door. "Yes?" he demanded, trying to see who leaned against the butler's side.
"There's a young woman here," Milton said apologetically. "She insisted that she see you. I wouldn't have let her in, it being so late and all, but...."
The young woman looked up, her bedraggled blonde hair clinging to her shoulders. Those dark brown eyes flinched away from the faint lantern light, and her aura was bleeding around the edges. "You're the Prime?" she whispered.
"Not anymore," he told her, a flash of uncertainty unknotting within him. He could sense sorcery leeching off her, like a faint mist. "Who are you? What are you doing here?"
He thought he knew most of those who belonged to the Order.
"I need help," she whispered, and her knees gave way as she tried to take a step toward him.
