“I should’ve been there for you, and I wasn’t. I should’ve been a better brother.” He looks at me, surprised. “I was selfish, Seth. For years I looked at the three of you and let myself feel robbed of something that was never yours to take. You didn’t deserve any of that from me. None of it.”
He searches my face for the lie in it. “You’ve never been this nice to me.”
I take a step toward him. He steps back and shakes his head, and I stop. I wish, for once, I had Mara’s nose. I wish I could read whatever’s moving through him the way she’d read it off the air. But I don’t need it. His face does the job fine.
“I’m sorry,” I say again.
He looks off into the trees instead of at me. Then he pulls in a breath and squares up. “I came here to help you.”
That gets a smile out of me. “Help me how?”
“Well. I can distract Ma.” He scratches the back of his neck. “You know she’s waiting on you in the Market, right? She got a stick. Said she’s gonna beat you with it when you show your face.”
I keep the grin on for Seth, but my mother with a stick has never once been bluffing. “Course she did.”
“I know exactly what’ll keep her busy long enough for you to slip through.” He shifts his weight. “What do you even need to go in there for?”
“I can’t explain it.” I shake my head. “I just know there’s something in the Glen that can help us. With Eric.”
Seth nods slow, looking at the ground. Then he gives me a look I don’t like.
“I saw what you did at House of Zorah yesterday. With your magic. What you can really do.”
“Yeah.” Something in the way he won’t look up has me watching him closer.
“So you can really take it? From other people?” He won’t meet my eyes. “Magic. You can pull it right out of somebody?”
“Where are you going with this, Seth?”
He lifts his head and looks at me dead-on. “What if I gave you mine? Would it help you stop Eric?”
I laugh, short and ugly, and it dies in my throat when I see Seth isn’t laughing. His jaw’s set, and he’s waiting on an answer.
“Seth, no.” I shake my head hard. “I’d never be that selfish. I would never?—“
“What if I don’t want it?” He cuts clean across me. “What if I don’t want my magic and I want to give it to you?”
“Huh?”
He closes the distance I put between us, slow. “Aaron. I just want to be a wolf.”
“You’re more than just a wolf, Seth.” I put my hand on his shoulder. “You always have been, whether you see it or not.”
He shrugs my hand off. “You don’t understand. I’ll never fit. Not anywhere. The wolves don’t want me around because I’ve got warlock in me. The witches and warlocks won’t have me because I’m half wolf. I was born into both worlds, and I spend every day trying to earn a place in one. Neither one’s got room for me.”
“I know it’s hard, Seth, but?—“
“Aaron.” He says it raw, almost a whisper, and I can’t do what I’ve spent years doing and look right past him. “I don’t want it. Please. I don’t want it.”
I go quiet. He’s begging me for the one thing I shouldn’t do, and the worst part is how badly I want to do it anyway, just to make the hurting stop.
“Seth.” I keep my voice level. “What you’re asking for has consequences.”
He frowns, confused.
“We’re born with our magic. It’s not a coat you take off because it doesn’t fit. Mother Fate chose you for it. You don’t get to hand that back.”
“I don’t want it.” And then the tears come up into his eyes and stay there. “I don’t want it, Aaron.”
