Those Words I Dread (Tales of the Tuath Dé #1)

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Julien didn’t know how much a hospital could do for Noah, but it was definitely more than he could have done on his own. As soon as he reached the lobby of the building, he shouted at the doorman to call an ambulance, and he held the smaller man against his chest to make sure he was still breathing. When the paramedics arrived, they took Noah from his arms and laid him on the floor. One of them began gathering equipment and leaning over the young man to inspect him, but the other blocked Julien’s view and snapped his fingers to draw his attention from the boy on the floor.

“You’re his friend?”

“Ouais. He’s helping, right?” He leaned around the man’s shoulder to try to see the paramedic kneeling on the floor.

“He’ll take good care of him, don’t worry. I need to ask you some things.” He glanced down at a clipboard in his hand. “What’s his name?”

“Noah,” Julien answered, though he had to pause to search his memories for the boy’s last name. “Clark. Noah Clark.”

“What was he doing when this happened? It came on suddenly?”

“We were...visiting a friend. We were leaving, and he fell in the elevator. Quite sudden.” He hoped he wasn’t saying anything that would cause them to treat Noah incorrectly, but he couldn’t exactly tell them that he was a witch who had been casting a very dangerous spell.

“And was he complaining of anything lately? Any signs you noticed?”

“Not before this, no.”

“He allergic to anything?”

“I—not that I know of, no. He never said.”

“On any medication?” The stranger glanced down at Noah, clearly taking in his torn jeans and facial piercings. “Legal or otherwise?”

“No,” Julien growled. “Nothing like that.”

“Any drinking?”

“He had a beer last night. Just the one.”

“Smoker?”

“Yes.”

“When did he eat last?”

Julien frowned. “Not since last night.” Noah had spent the entire day reading and preparing spell components, or shut in his bedroom to meditate. He had done everything he could to prepare his body and mind for casting the spell, and it had still nearly killed him. Maybe it would kill him yet. Julien tried to push the thought out of his head. The paramedic asked him more questions about Noah’s history that Julien didn’t really know the answer to, and by the time they finished, Noah had a needle in his arm and a tube down his throat attached to a large plastic bulb. The medic slowly pressed the bulb in his hand, helping Noah to breathe as he was lifted carefully onto the stretcher.

Julien wasn’t allowed to get into the ambulance with him, but he got on the first bus toward the hospital and sat anxiously in his seat for the entire ride. The thought that the fairy was still a threat barely entered his mind. He didn’t know why the spell hadn’t killed it, but the creature clearly wasn’t in good shape when he left. Perhaps it had already died regardless.

At the hospital, Julien rushed down hallways to the information desk, where he had to restrain himself from barking at the nurse. “Clark?” he asked her, and he let out a sigh when she nodded in recognition .

“Are you family?” she asked him.

“No, I’m…his friend.”

She looked up at him with a slightly skeptical look that he didn’t appreciate, but she said, “He isn’t allowed visitors yet. I’ll let them know you’re here, and as soon as he’s stable, you can go back.”

“Que veux-tu dire stable? Is he unstable now?”

“Sir, he’s being taken care of; you’ll just have to wait until there’s more news. Please.”

Julien clicked his tongue in frustration and moved away from the desk. He patted his pockets, but he had no cigarettes, so he paced in the waiting area. He had caused this. If Noah died, it would be his fault. It would be because he had been blinded by his need to catch and kill the fairy. The witch had been right—it was an obsession. One that Julien had allowed to endanger someone who he hadn’t realized meant a great deal to him.

He had panicked, seeing the boy bleeding on the floor. Noah had known it was dangerous, life-threatening, and he did it anyway simply because Julien asked him to. And Julien had asked knowing the risk. Selfish, stupid thing to do. He had been impatient, and it might have cost Noah everything. He wouldn’t make that mistake again.

After what seemed like hours, the nurse from the desk approached him in the waiting room.

“Your friend is stable,” she said with a faint smile that was meant to be encouraging. “But resting. As soon as he’s awake, I’ll let him know you’re here.”

“Merci. Merci.” As she turned to leave, Julien sunk into the nearest chair and put his head in his hands. Stupid. Selfish.

He waited and waited. He didn’t dare leave the building in an attempt to bum a cigarette despite how anxiously he was forced to press his hands between his knees. He barely forced himself to walk to the vending machine for a drink, and even then he hurried back to the waiting room in case he missed the nurse’s return. He only knew that it was morning by the clock above the nurse’s desk; each minute that passed seemed hours long.

When the woman finally reappeared, she offered him a small smile that helped to unknot the tension that had been settled in his stomach for hours.

“He’s awake,” she said first, “and he’s asked for you. Follow me.”

“Merci, madame. Merci.”

The woman smiled at him and led him down a few winding corridors to Noah’s assigned room. Julien quietly opened the door and looked inside, pausing at the sight of Noah in the narrow hospital bed. He’d been dressed in a pale blue gown and tucked into the thin blanket, and he was still attached to the IV bag above him, dripping liquid down the tube into his arm.

Julien clicked the door shut behind him and took a seat beside the witch, tugging the chair closer to the bed. They had removed his piercings. Julien had never seen Noah without the silver hoops at the corners of his mouth, and he somehow seemed younger, more vulnerable without them.

“They said you were here all night,” Noah said softly. His voice sounded weak and slightly strained; Julien wondered how long he had needed a machine to breathe for him.

With a soft sigh, Julien reached out for the witch with both hands, gripping his fingers as he brought the boy’s hand to his lips. “Je suis désolé, mon raleur,” he whispered. He touched a light kiss to Noah’s knuckles and shut his eyes with the boy’s hand held against his forehead. “Tellement désolé.”

Noah froze, instinctively wanting to pull his hand away. He had never seen such an outpouring of emotion from the hunter before, and it embarrassed him, but at the same time, Julien held his hand so gently that his stomach fluttered despite his nausea.

“Of course I was here,” Julien murmured without looking up at him. “This is my fault.”

A faint frown touched Noah’s lips. “I knew what I was doing.”

“You did it because I pushed you,” Julien sighed. He pulled away, leaving Noah’s hand feeling cool in his absence, and he laced his fingers in his lap and shook his head. “I shouldn’t have made you think I didn’t trust you. I thought I would protect you, and I—used your affection for me to my own ends. I put my obsession before your well-being, and I shouldn’t have. That isn’t how you treat people you care about. It’s been so long since I had anyone I could trust, that I…forgot that.” He looked back up to the other man’s softly frowning fa ce. “I was wrong. I’m sorry, Noah.”

Noah didn’t know how to answer. His stomach was still churning, each breath was a struggle, and his vision was blurred, so for a moment he wondered if he had imagined the hunter’s heartfelt apology.

“I don’t expect your forgiveness,” Julien went on, “but I hope you’ll let me do what I can to help you while you recover.”

“I’m not your responsibility, Julien.”

“I am making you my responsibility. I was the cause of this, and I would owe you a lot even if I wasn’t. You’ve done a lot for me since I’ve been here, and I took it for granted.”

Noah felt his face flush slightly, and he turned his head away to avoid looking into the hunter’s solemn eyes. “I shouldn’t have said the things I said to you. It wasn’t the time, it…will never be the time, and I was just so frustrated. So just…forget about all that, okay?”

Julien paused. “Is that really what you want?”

Noah’s chest ached almost as much as his stomach. He felt split in two. On one hand, he wanted to tell Julien to ignore his emotional outburst just so that they could go back to the way things were before he embarrassed himself. On the other, he wanted to shout and say of course he didn’t want him to forget, that now more than ever he wanted the hunter at his side. That he didn’t know what he would do without him now that he knew him. That he didn’t trust him not to do more stupid, dangerous things, and he wanted to be there when he did.

Julien tilted his head to catch the younger man’s eye, interrupting his rambling thoughts. “We can still have that talk, if you want to. When you feel better.”

Noah’s throat tightened, but he swallowed it down. “When I feel better,” he echoed softly. “Yeah. I’d like that.” That would at least give him time to think about what he could possibly say that wouldn’t make him sound like a lovesick idiot.

“Do you want me to let you rest?”

“I’d like you to stay,” Noah answered without thinking. “Please.”

Julien stayed, sitting quietly in the room even after the witch drifted off to sleep. He watched the boy’s chest slowly rise and fall with each breath as he rested, and he moved out of the way when the nurse came by to change the bag hanging above him.

“You’re the friend who brought him in?” the nurse asked softly, glancing to Noah’s face to make sure she wasn’t going to wake him. Julien nodded. “Do you know if he’s been in contact with anything hazardous? Chemicals, things like that?”

Julien suspected that some of the spell components littering the boy’s apartment could be considered hazardous, but Noah knew better than to be careless with anything toxic. Could the dead barghest have passed some sort of venom into him? More likely the doctors were just trying to assign a scientific cause to his magical ailment. If he knew what to tell them, he could lie, but he didn’t want to cause unnecessary trouble.

“No,” Julien answered in a whisper. “I don’t think so.”

She eyed his bandaged wrist and watched him skeptically for a moment, but then she nodded, marked something off on Noah’s chart, and left the room. The beeping machines attached to Noah’s skin made the only sound in the room above the witch’s soft breath. Julien slouched in the uncomfortable chair, folding his arms across his stomach to rest his injured wrist. It felt much better than before, doubtless thanks to Noah’s healing poultice, but it was still sore and stiff in its makeshift splint. He probably should let them look at it. He anticipated spending a lot of time in the hospital over the coming days anyway.

Noah stirred some time later to find Julien dozing in the seat beside him, his head slumped forward. He felt his heart thump uncomfortably. Noah hadn’t expected the hunter to be so guilty or so attentive. He had gotten used to being ignored, teased, or brushed aside. Julien had been kind to him as long as they’d known each other, but he was always at arm’s length. Always working, always focused. Having his full attention was intimidating.

Noah stared around the stark room in the silence, clutching his hands together in an attempt to control their slight tremor. The doctor had told him he seemed to have been poisoned, and though they couldn’t identify the chemical specifically, he was showing all the right signs, and his response to treatment had confirmed their suspicions. Noah had assured her that he had no idea what he could have come into contact with, and she seemed to have believed him. Alone in the room with a twisting in his stomach, fluid in his lungs, and a mercilessly throbbing headache, he felt pretty poisoned.

The spell Julien had asked him to cast was universally acknowledged to be a bad idea—though the reason why was less readily explained. It worked so well on supernatural creatures because it stripped them of their spirit, their soul. Without that, most magical beings were little but dust and bad intentions. As for why it affected the caster so, he couldn’t guess. But his head felt too full, and his chest beat out of time with itself, and he just felt—strange. Like there was too much of him. He lifted the hand that wasn’t attached to machines and put it to his head, wiping away the thin film of sweat that had formed on his brow even in the cool room. Distantly, like a whisper at the end of a long hall, he thought he could hear voices, but he shook his head to push them aside. He didn’t need hallucinations on top of everything else.

A slow weight squeezed around his heart, and he put a palm to his chest and tried to breathe through the crushing pain. He could hear voices, but he couldn’t understand them; he could feel fresh air, but there was none.

Rolling hills, and a lake shore dotted with trees. The earth is green and soft but trembles with the footsteps of armies. The air off of the still lake is clean, cool, a gentle caress on his cheek before the storm. A weight touches his shoulder; a friendly hand that shifts the heavy blade at his hip. “Bid co féchsanach muigi. Ní fríth ní fuigébthar brithem bas fíriu cathroí.”

He shakes his head, feels the smile on his lips. “Ferr síd sochocad.”

Noah was pulled out of his dream by Julien’s hands on his shoulders. The machine at his bedside gave off an angry alarm, and the nurse that rushed into the room checked his pulse, looked into his eyes, and turned the valve on his IV to increase the flow of medicine into his arm. When he could take a steady breath, he turned to look at Julien, who frowned at him and gently wiped away the tears streaming down his cheeks.

“This isn’t right,” he whispered, but he wouldn’t say anything more until the nurse was satisfied and left them alone. “This shouldn’t be—there’s more of me,” he rambled despite Julien’s warm hands on his cheeks and the gentleness of his quiet shush.

“You’re safe, Noah. Don’t get worked up. What are you saying?”

“There’s too much of me,” he sobbed, pressing his eyes with the balls of his hands. He took a labored, rasping breath and looked up at the hunter standing over him. “The fairy, he’s dead? It’s done?”

Julien hesitated. “No,” he admitted after a moment. “I don’t think so. It wasn’t dead when I left.”

“Why?” Noah pressed. “Why didn’t you finish it?”

The hunter’s brow furrowed. “Because you were dying, Noah,” he said with a soft frown.

“You should have killed him,” the witch sighed, his breath hitching into a racking cough that brought blood and bile to his lips. “You should have killed him. He’s still here. He’s here.” Noah put his hands to his head and turned on his side, curling his knees to his chest on the bed. “He’s still here,” he whimpered.