Page 34 of Harvest of Sighs (Thornchapel 3)
“You’re still related.”
“But what does that even mean? We’re not breeding stock, Bex.”
“It means something, Auden, because if it didn’t, you wouldn’t be here drinking all my Bombay Sapphire and moping at the rain. What did Saint say when you told him?”
Auden frowns down at his glass. “Well, I didn’t tell him so much as he sort of . . . found out. On his own.”
The hand comes out from underneath my thigh to flap at him—sternly this time. “Are you telling me that I didn’t tell him at first actually meant I didn’t tell him at all? You knew he was your brother and you didn’t think he needed to know? Auden Isaac Guest!”
Auden takes a drink, and then says, in a voice that’s trying not to be defensive and failing, “I was trying to determine the best approach. I didn’t want him to react . . . badly.”
“But he still found out, and I’m supposing, based on your expression, he reacted badly anyway.”
Auden’s shoulders slump. “Yes.”
“You shouldn’t have lied to him—”
“It wasn’t lying!”
“—about his own bloody DNA, no matter what it meant for the two of you. And you definitely should have told him before Beltane and all that antler nonsense.”
If it’s possible, his shoulders slump even more. “But then he wouldn’t have been mine.”
I set my glass on the table and stand up, walking over to where he stands in front of the window. The flat is all steel angles and wood planes—brick and glass everywhere else—and the space is filled with the ceaseless, echoing drum of the rain and the practically ceaseless sluice of Delphine’s shower.
And still, over all that, I hear the broken sound my friend makes as he exhales.
“Have you talked to him?” I ask gently. “Since he found out?”
“Yesterday. He—he’s angry.”
“You can fix angry.”
He takes in a long breath, staring at the rain. “Maybe. But I don’t think he’ll ever forgive me. And I don’t think—well, it’s just that he doesn’t see it the way I do.”
“And how do you see it?”
Auden closes his eyes. “That it doesn’t matter.”
I take his drink from him and have a sip out of habit, forgetting that it’s all warm, limey gin. “Ugh,” I say, and then I set the glass far away from him, coming back and patting him on the shoulder.
“You need to tell him you’re sorry.”
He sighs. “Yes.”
; “And you need to let him go.”
“What?” Auden turns a betrayed look on me. “No! Absolutely not!”
“Auden, the two of you are related by blood. You share a father. There’s no happy ending here, and honestly, maybe there never should have been one to begin with. You have too much history between the two of you, and too much pain, and now there’s this on top of it all? You may not think it matters, but you certainly can’t make it not matter to him. It should matter.”
“But why?” he asks, pained. “Why? When we love each other? You didn’t see him by the river this weekend, Bex, you didn’t see the way he looked up at me after I caught him. Like he wanted to be in those bluebells forever. Like he wanted to stitch his soul to mine, and I can’t—”
He breaks off, a ragged breath shuddering through his body, and I pat him again on the shoulder. We stand there for a moment, and I keep my eyes fixed on the rain as I feel his shoulder hitch and stutter beneath my palm, like he’s swallowing down noises he can’t bear to let out. I know I should hug him, but I’m not a hugger—and anyway, I sense he doesn’t want it. The only embraces he wants right now are from St. Sebastian. Or Proserpina.
Speaking of . . . “What did Poe say? You didn’t hide this from her too?”
