Page 218 of Seer Prophet

I gripped him tighter. When he opened his light more, merging into me, I sighed, resting my chin on his back, rubbing his shoulder with my fingers.

“So you don’t wish I was… I don’t know… different? More feminine?” I swallowed, remembering Kali on the beach. “Softer, like them?”

Disbelief left his light, confusion. “What?”

I shook my head, biting my lip.

“Why don’t you want me to see it?” I asked finally.

He caught hold of my hand, bringing it down to press against his chest, so that he half-lay on my palm and fingers. He exhaled, and I felt him fighting to control his light. Even so, whispers of his mind reached me, things he might have meant for me to see, or might not have.

After looking at those images for a few seconds more, a denser pain slid through me.

That time I felt sad. More than sad. Defeated.

“Dalejem,” I said, quieter.

He shook his head, vehement that time, almost angry.

“Not like that,” he said, his voice harsh. “Not likethat,Allie. Gods––”

“Then how?” I kept my voice even with an effort.

Revik exhaled, opening his light to me more.

“He left me,” he said finally. “He just fucking left me.”

I lay next to him, gripping his fingers where he held my hand.

I turned over his words. I could feel it, what he’d just said. Without knowing any of the details, I could feel the hole Dalejem left behind when he disappeared, the inevitability Revik built around it, if only to protect himself from being surprised like that again. I resonated with that inevitability, with that self-protection.

I’d gotten mine from my parents, I realized.

Not Carl and Mia Taylor… my biological parents, Kali and Uye.

Weirdly, I’d gotten it partly from Dalejem, too.

They’d left me. All three of them left me under that overpass.

We lay there, silent, for what felt like a long time.

“I’m sorry,” he said finally.

I shook my head. I didn’t want to hear that.

“What do you want to hear?” he asked.

There was another silence while I thought about that.

“I don’t know,” I admitted.

I really didn’t know. I still didn’t know how to end this.

I felt him hear me. He nodded without looking at me.

Gradually, as he lay there, his pain worsened. That time, it felt a lot more like separation pain, but I still felt flickers of the other, of what I’d picked up on before, whenever he remembered his time in San Francisco, when he thought I was lost to him forever. Even as I thought it, he closed his eyes. He fought to shove the memory away, but I couldn’t tell if he really succeeded.

After a few more seconds, he let out a low sound.

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