“It’s notthat,” Sebastian said. “I just—it’s nothing.” He set his rucksack on the floor next to the settee.
It obviously wasn’t nothing, and now the man was back to treating Wesley like he was made of glass. “Dare I ask why you seem to assume I’m taking the bed?”
“It’s your home,” said Sebastian.
“Which makes you my guest,” Wesley snapped. “If you’re giving me the bed because you think I can’t handle a settee—”
“You outranked me.”
Wesley blinked.
Sebastian gestured at himself. “Corporal,” he said. “Medical department.”
“You were in the army?” Wesley had learned on the front that the Americans had given Puerto Ricans citizenship and then promptly drafted them. He hadn’t put it together that Sebastian had been one of those soldiers. “Why didn’t you say something earlier, at the train station? Why did you let me think you hadn’t gone?”
“Because we were talking about Powderpuff,” Sebastian guilelessly. “I didn’t think my history mattered.”
Didn’tmatter? He’d let Wesley think he was even softer than he actually was. Did it not even bother him, to be seen as weak?
“I wouldn’t have thought a paranormal would enlist,” Wesley said.
“Maybe I was an idealist.” Sebastian leaned against the high back of the settee. “I was in school in America when we joined the war. My father wasn’t happy, told me to come to him in Spain. But I thought I could use my magic in secret, maybe ease the pain for hurt soldiers.” He made a face. “I’m not sure how much help I was.”
What was he, an actual angel? Wesley would have scoffed, except he’d been in the medical tents and seen the suffering firsthand. Sebastian’s magic would have been a godsend.
“I imagine you were quite a bit of help. You pack a far harder punch than a shot of whiskey, which is all the anesthetic most soldiers got.” Wesley tilted his head. “So you’re, what, thirty?”
“Twenty-seven.”
That meant he’d enlisted at eighteen, nineteen at the most. “I assumed you were older,” Wesley said, to cover his discombobulation. How was Sebastian not a relentlessly jaded cynic? Wesley had been twenty-one when he went to war, was thirty-two now, and despised nearly everyone and everything.
“Well, now you know, and it is yet another reason to give you the bed, yes, Captain Fine?” The tenseness was back in Sebastian’s shoulders. “And I will sleep here. In the same room.”
“I was Captain Collins then. And why are you so wrong-footed over this? Do we need to sleep in a different room? There’s a nursery down the hall.”
It came out sharp, Wesley’s always-harsh voice turning what he’d meant as a tease into mockery. But so what? Wesley had been afraid of the snarling tiger rug as a child, and his father’s mocking had pushed him past that. He was doing Sebastian a favor, really, mocking what deserved to be mocked, toughening the soft touch up.
Sebastian had looked away. “It’s not the animals,” he said, flatly enough that Wesley believed him. “I’m just not a good sleeper.”
Now Wesley did scoff. “Is that supposed to be less embarrassing than crying over the animals?”
Sebastian didn’t snap back. He didn’t even seem rattled by Wesley’s jabs, simply turning away and heading over to the fireplace.
Not that he wastryingto rattle Sebastian. Wesley was a grown man, after all, not a schoolboy pulling the pigtails on a pretty girl. Or a pretty,magicalboy, in this case.
One who had saved Wesley’s life.
Wesley’s gaze went from his handsome guest to the fireplace. The healing blisters on his forearms prickled with echoes of remembered pain, a reminder that the previous night would have gone very differently if Sebastian hadn’t appeared in that alley.
He’s here for you,the little voice in Wesley’s head pointed out.Not for reward, not for status, but out of the goodness of that bleeding heart you just mocked. He came for no reason except to keep you safe, because he has magic and you don’t. He doesn’t care if you think he’s weak because he has nothing to prove: you need his protection but he doesn’t need anything from you.
Good thing too, because you won’t give him your gratitude. Or even your manners.
He watched as Sebastian checked the wood box next to the fireplace. They’d both gone to war, but Wesley had spent the years since avoiding parties while Sebastian was enslaved by blood magic because he was trying to protect the nonmagical.
So perhaps he wasn’t rattled by mocking because on the long list ofshitty things Sebastian de Leon had had to deal with, Wesley barely registered.
He was a prisoner of war?Wesley had asked Jade.
