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“We can find something to sell if it comes down to it.”
Grey’s head fell into his hands, and he sucked in a deep breath. “Like?”
“We’ll figure it out.”
He spun around, his fingertips grazing his pants again. “If that fair folk wasn’t chasing me, you would’ve been able to find something to trade by now. You shouldn’t be so focused on helping me when I’ve been nothing but a burden since?—”
Noel’s mouth fell open in time with the coin pouch thumping against the bed. “Burden? Grey, we’ve only made it this far because we’ve been looking out for each other?—”
“And I’ve been siphoning your resources?—”
“Our resources.”
“No, yours,” Grey snapped, his voice rising as his vision glossed over. “Yours because nearly every step I’ve taken further from home, I’ve been met with nothing but rejection and distrust. The only reason we’re here together is because you saved me.” He pointed at Noel’s chest the second he rose. “I’m a thing—a monster wearing someone’s skin according to them, all because of this corrupted magic running through my veins. If I were you, I’d cut your losses and trade me, just like when they offered you shortly after we met.”
Noel paled when Grey held out his wrists, expectantly waiting for him to bind them together. Hot tears threatened to spill with each passing second. Grey’s gut knotted with anger—anger at himself for drawing everything out this long. Anger for telling himself things would get better somehow, despite always getting worse. Anger because he couldn’t remember his parents’ faces anymore, and their loving words, gifts, and sentiments were all too far out of reach for him now. He had nothing.
Nothing to gain.
Nothing to fight for.
Nothing to love or be loved by in return.
“Sell the supplies,” he rasped, swallowing back the hollow feeling seizing his throat. “I’ll give you the name the fair folk told me, and?—”
He tensed as Noel grabbed his upper arms and forced them to stand eye-to-eye. “No.” That single, sharp word radiated through him like venom, paralyzing him with his hands clumsily folded between their chests. “I already told you?—”
“I don’t want to die, but the world doesn’t want me to live, Noel.” A trail of warmth slid free, running along his jaw before another joined. And another. And another. “The more I fight back, the worse it gets, and I’m not strong enough to keep going. So please?—”
“Please what?” he growled. “Please save myself? Fuck that, Grey. You’re probably the gentlest person I’ve ever met, and you really expect me to drag you over to the fair folk and sacrifice you like a sheep to a den of wolves?”
“Ye—”
“No.”
Grey choked back another sob and squeezed his eyes shut. His shaking legs buckled against the wall, and his back threatened to slide against the window with only Noel to keep him pinned in place.
Noel’s drawn-out exhale tickled his skin as he greedily gulped down breaths between fits. “Look, Grey,” he whispered, his vice-like grip slowly losing its pressure. “I… God, I wish you and I met in another life. You have no idea how much I’ve stupidly thought about it since we’ve started working together, but I know that I wouldn’t want to trade meeting you with anything else in the world.”
Grey forced his eyes open and blinked back the blur to find the remorse written all over Noel’s face.
“I don’t have many friends,” Noel continued, “but I consider you to be one, even if you’re unsure about me. I hate seeing you like this, so if you can’t press forward for yourself, do it for me, please?”
A friend.
The very last thing Grey expected to gain after cutting himself off from so many people—so many hemomancers for so long. Even those relationships had been difficult with the ups and downs of people coming and going day in and day out while he kept to his perch in that dreary apartment and darkened his hands with charcoal. It’d been impossible to consider trusting anyone to that extent after witnessing the cruelty he had, including seeing hemomancers turn on each other for the sake of image amongst their other mancer neighbors.
Grey fell forward as pressure built at the backs of his eyes again and buried his face in Noel’s shirt, savoring the embrace that followed—a touch he’d missed after so long. One that was just as comforting as his uncle’s before he’d left.
* * *
The hot meal had forced Grey into bed the second the last bite had been scraped off his plate, and he succumbed to the dark for a flickering instant before jolting awake to voices drifting up from the window. Every muscle went taught—his entire body on high alert while he slowly pushed himself up and locked onto the swaying bulbs piercing the sheer curtains.
He glanced over his shoulder to find Noel’s back nearly grazing his, but he didn’t stir in sudden agitation like Grey feared he might. Instead, his chest evenly rose and fell, even as Grey shimmied from the covers and attempted to peer down to the source of the voices below. The proprietress’s frame stood mostly obscured by the street-side awning, along with that of another woman, baring a patched sleeve he couldn’t make out.
Grand Capital?
Grey stole another glance at Noel’s undisturbed form and tiptoed over to his shoes. The last thing he wanted to do was wake him for a foolish false alarm after travel fatigue and this place likely being their final comfortable room to sleep in a long while. He cracked the door shut behind him and crept down the narrow hallway, winced at the creak of his weight on every step, and pushed open the door to the alley, where the crisp night air greeted him, laced with the fresh scent of river water.
