Page 74 of A Subtle Scar
“Johannes must have been quite a powerful magic user,” Chandler said with a dose of acid in his voice.
I curled soothing fingers against Chandler’s back. “You’re jealous? Darling, the majority of Hermes’s flames or flings are dead, and for most of the rest, he probably can’t remember their names.”
Hermes opened his mouth, and I thought he was going to protest. Then he closed his mouth. And nodded. “Ronny is right. But more importantly, it doesn’t matter. Other humans no longer matter to me.” He reached for Chandler’s right hand, so I took our boyfriend’s left. I had an idea of what was coming. “We’re just yours.”
Chandler frowned, looked at the ground.
“You are also ours,” I added. “And we’ll take very good care of you, like last night. Like the night before.”
“The night before, when you forced your way into my apartment?” Chandler asked, but the acerbic note was no longer as pronounced.
“Baby, I saw your couch. I thought there was someone else in the apartment with you, sleeping there. I thought the damn herb witch had forced you under a spell. I wanted to protect you,” Hermes said.
Chandler was still looking at the ground. I wasn’t sure whether that meant his shell was cracking a little more, or whether he was about to retreat into it, but unease simmered in this man. Something ate at him. Something wouldn’t let go of him, or he of it.
I touched his shoulder with my other hand. “Darling, will you tell me why it looked like someone was sleeping on your couch that night?”
The moment stretched. I felt Hermes’s magic, shielding us from any commuters who might have bumped into us, and I added a spell for silence so that even the soothing subway noises turned to nothing more than a hum. After a second thought, I also wove one for not being overheard.
Chandler went from almost open to…not. One moment, there was a struggle written into the lines of his face, and in the next, he lifted his head and looked at me, a neutral expression on his face that sat there like a mask.
“I had a brother. He died. We often slept in the same bed, and when I try to sleep in a bed, I can feel him. Something reaching for me, something there but not there. I know there are no ghosts and that it’s all in my head, but I still find sleeping on the couch to be more relaxing. It’s nothing that you should concern yourselves with.”
“You had…a brother? Oh, baby.” Hermes tried lifting Chandler’s hand to his mouth in order to kiss it, but this time Chandler pulled back.
“As I said, I’m fine. It was a long time ago,” our boyfriend said, but his voice was politely flat, and the brightness I’d seen in those blue eyes was absent, vanished like the sun at night.
I was about to move into a hug anyway when a few more things fell into place, and I gasped. “Wait. You’re a mage. Yet, your magic is difficult to sense in relation to its strength. You feel a presence, or the absence of a presence when your consciousness drifts during the arrival of sleep. Darling, your brother was a mage as well, wasn’t he? And he wasn’t just your brother, he was your twin.”
Chandler’s eyes narrowed. “You know that how?”
Hermes said, “Fuck. Twin mages?”
“Maybe,” Chandler said. “Neither of us had really been tested at the time, and it’s not something we inherited from our parents. We had a maternal aunt who was a magic user.”
I shook my head. “If you’re a mage, so was he. That’s the rule with twins. The powers can differ, but it will be mage power.”
“You didn’t answer my question,” Chandler said. “How did you know he was my twin?”
“Yeah, how?” Hermes asked.
“When twin-born humans have magic, their magic connects. It isn’t something they are aware of, or not that I ever knew they were. Mind, that’s not saying much, given the rarity. Hermes, you must’ve felt that before, the connection of magical twins.”
He shrugged. “Yes, sure. There was a court magician once, and her twin brother was a naval officer, and when he did big spells, she always told me she felt it. What about it?”
“To some degree, the twinborn’s magic is shared. And I suspect there would be quite noticeable effects on that bond when—”
“I never shared any power with my brother,” Chandler said. “We were young, and we wouldn’t even have known how.” He snorted. “Believe me, if I had…” And just like that, his mask tilted sideways, and his bottom lip trembled.
That was as much of that as I could take. I wrapped him in my arms, held him tight. “I’m here, see? I have you. You cannot fall. I’ll catch you, darling.”
Hermes needed a moment before deciding to turn this into a group hug, but that was where we ended.
“Take us to my house,” I said.
Hermes didn’t look excited about the plan, but it didn’t matter. The world shifted, and I felt the familiar warmth of my own wards close around us.
Hermes, ever opportunistic, had chosen to teleport us to my bedroom.
