Bastion closed his burning eyes.
“I’ve lost her,” he whispered.
Minato stilled.
“No, you haven’t.”
Tears began to flow, a torrent that refused to be dammed.They streamed down his cheeks, collecting along his ears and mingling with the dried sweat crusted in his hair.Bastion shook his head.
“No, you haven’t,” Minato repeated.
Bastion sat up.“You don’t understand!I took everything I know about her, everything I’ve witnessed, admired, loved… been in awe of, and threw it in her face!I may as well have told herI know better!I’m as worthless as every other man in her life.Maybe worse!”
Minato straightened slowly.“That is… particularly insightful.”
“Don’t mock me,” Bastion sneered.
“I’m not.”Minato dropped the sponge into the basin with aplop!From a table beside the fireplace, he retrieved a bottle of liquor and a clean cloth.
“Ulla is a mirror,” Minato said as he returned to Bastion’s side and splashed liquor onto the cloth.None too gently, the Yvri began to disinfect the cuts and scrapes littering Bastion’s body.“When the bond begins to form, there’s a period of exposure.The lies we tell ourselves are burned away, and the other is able to see everything we would rather ignore.Not every couple makes it through this stage.It’s why the bond is so rare, so coveted.”
“I failed that test too, then,” Bastion muttered.
“Did you?”Minato mused.“Every step of the way you’ve showed her who you are, protected her.You even gave her one of the highest honors, and let her have the killing blow.Death is a mirror, too.”
“I didn’t go there to protect her,” Bastion said.“I went to end things.To free her of any attachment.”
Minato’s jaw fell open.
“That’swhy you went after her!?”he exclaimed.He dragged his hand across his face with a groan.“You poor, stupid boy.I never saiddon’tbe with her.I merely wanted you to consider the consequences!”
Bastion stared at Minato for a long, long moment.Was he hallucinating?He recalled their conversation on the stairs at Moonwatch, turning it over in his memory, looking for the lie.Then, a typhoon of emotions hit Bastion, each one swirling around him like wreckage.He hadn’t really been thinking of Ulla, had he?He’d been thinking of himself and the reasons she was better off without him.
“You didn’t, did you?”
Minato shook his head.“I only challenged you.I wanted to make sure you were thinking with your head and not your cock.”
A hot flame flooded Bastion’s face.“I would nev–”
“You’re a man,” Minato cut him off, his tone droll.“Of course you would.We’ve all been there.But this isn’t some fleeting infatuation.This is thebond, Bastion.We’re talking about every thought, every dream, every insecurity laid out before the other.All the darkest and brightest parts of yourself.To be bonded is to beseen.There is no hiding.”
He seized Bastion’s face and dabbed the cloth against his temple.
The thought made Bastion shiver.He had spent his whole life actively avoiding being seen, in every way but one.
As a knight.
Gods, he failed at everything he tried–
“So what if you failed!?”Minato exclaimed, spreading his arms wide.“I failed to be the perfect son.To support my pod.To further our family line.And if I hadn’t, I would have missed out on the greatest gift of my life:Lawrence.”
Bastion stared at him, aghast.He felt like he’d tied his own hands behind his back and jumped into the sea.
“Have you considered that the gods did intervene?”Minato asked.“That if you had succeeded, you never would have found Ulla on that beach?”
He bent to retrieve the soaked book from the floor and slapped it into Bastion’s hands.
“Now, pull it together,” Minato said.He scooped up the basin of dirty water and stalked into the attached bathroom.“Lawrence is bringing you a surprise.”
