“Only I get to call herbeautiful Layla.” Josiah’s smile sharpens, then he smooths it away. He folds his hands behind his back, mimicking Amir to the inch, and circles us. “Word on the wind says you’re in the market for a king, Majesty. It’d be a shame to leave a perfectly good throne sitting empty.”
“Not in you.” Amir doesn’t even look at him.
“And why ever not?” Josiah spreads his hands, wounded. “I’ve saved Wintermoon more times than its king has bothered to thank me for. I love every soul in it. All of them—not only the ones I’ve judged worth the trouble.” He leaves it there.
Amir crosses to him in a blink and stops with his face an inch from Josiah’s. “I would rot on the throne of Wintermoon for eternity,” he says, soft and venomous, “before I would let your hands anywhere near it.”
Josiah only grins back at him.
Amir steps away, his face hard and furious. “I must be on my way.” He looks back at me. “Good luck, Aaron Blackwood. I hope to Mother Fate you know what you’re doing.”
He doesn’t turn to leave—he’s just gone, and there’s only dark where a king stood.
I look at Josiah. “You get under his skin like it’s a hobby.”
“He pretends to despise me.” Josiah stares after him. “He doesn’t.” He turns his hands over and studies them. Magic flickers up at his fingertips, red and blue tangled together, like nothing I’ve seen on another soul. “I don’t know the whole of that man’s story. But I’d wager he and I are the same kind of creature underneath.”
“I’ve got to go, Jo.”
“Another visit to the Glen?” He falls into step beside me, easy. “My Layla’s in her slumber again. I’d be happy to join you, if you’ll?—“
“No.” I stop and turn to him. “Not this time, Jo.”
He stops beside me. Every bit of the performance drops off his face. “You aren’t coming back.”
I don’t answer. I close the distance and throw my arms around him.
He stiffens, but he doesn’t lift his hands or push me off—just stands there in my arms like he’s never once been held. Then his arms come up around my back.
“Thank you for everything, Uncle Jo,” I tell him into his shoulder. “I’d never have made it through any of this without you. You know that, right?”
“You owe me nothing, Blackwood.” His arms tighten on me when he says it.
“I owe you everything.” I pull back enough to look at him, and his eyes are shining. “All of Wintermoon owes you, whether a single one of them ever says it out loud.”
“I love Wintermoon,” he says.
“And I love you.”
The words reach a place in him nobody’s touched. Everything theatrical about him falls away. He just looks at me, like a man hearing a word he’d long stopped believing was meant for him. His red eyes hold mine, open all the way down.
“Can I ask you for a favor, Jo?”
“Anything.” He doesn’t dress it up. “Anything, brother.”
“Watch over my mother, my sisters, and Seth.” I have to stop and steady myself before I can finish. “And House of Zorah, hell, all of Wintermoon while you’re at it.”
I study him, ready to needle him. “Here’s what I can’t figure, Jo. You haven’t hit me with a single line out of that Healthy Habits book all night, not one chapter and verse. All the time I’ve known you, I never figured you had it in you to go this quiet on it.”
He adjusts his tie and looks away from me. When he answers, the quote comes after all, quiet. “‘No man is born belonging. He belongs the first hour someone refuses to leave him standing outside the door.’ Chapter twenty-two.” He clears his throat. “You have no idea what it means to me, Aaron, to be your brother, after everything I am.”
“Whatever, man.” I shrug. “You’ve always been family. We just never said it out loud.”
He gives in all at once and pulls me in hard. I hold him back.
“There’s one more,” I say against him. “It’s a long shot, and I’ve got no right to ask it. Watch over Mara for me.”
“You’re really not coming back?”
