"Always liked you, ya know. The other one too." As bitter as it tastes, it's easier to swallow than Kingsley thought.
He can feel that tangled hurt and gnawing want, twisting and writhing beneath his skin; the last breath of someone else still lingering on his lips, their heart beating in the hollow cavity of his pounding chest.
Is it yours, if you don't choose it? If it was there, nesting in your bones, from the very moment you woke? If you knew when you first opened your eyes. If this person, this burning ache and morbid fascination--if they were the one who took your patchwork shell of a soul, all that you are, and made you whole--
“Empty no longer, Mr. Tealeaf.” Is a vow still honored if it’s only sworn to the dead?
"Don't want to die again without telling you," he says, because the words just keep spilling out and it's far too late to stop. "I know what the others think. I know it's--I'm not someone people stay for. I know.” But—
A deep, shuddering breath. In another Plane, another life, Lucien’s wings of claw and bone sink into tender flesh, tearing the light from his Magician’s eyes.
He doesn’t look at Caleb in the eye. Can’t. Doesn’t want to see the crushing disappointment there, the vain, desperate dredges of threadbare hope—
And then, spits like bile and blood, "Did you love him? Cause, fuck--I know he felt for you." I still do—