Beauclaire shook his head. “She didn’t care that Neuth and órlaith tortured him,” he clarified. “She only cared when he left her influence. Had I realized that, I would have taken him under my protection in the first place. But it would have cost me political power I needed at the moment, to step in to rescue a human—no matter how altered. So—” He stopped speaking.
“Don’t worry,” said Goreu. “I knew you helped the Dark Smith and his son escape with the Fire Touched. No one had to tell me—who else would have done it? Don’t worry, most of them are blinded by the fact that the Dark Smith killed your father. They wouldn’t forgive someone’s sneezing on them, and couldn’t comprehend you in a million years, my friend.”
“We won’t send the boy back,” I said.
“Do you doubt me?” asked Beauclaire. He didn’t sound offended, but it scared me all the same. It didn’t change my opinion, but it did scare me.
“No,” I said firmly. “But he wakes up screaming in terror on the nights he can sleep. He’s afraid of you—all of you. If you’d stopped the Widow Queen and her ilk when he first escaped Underhill, if someone, if anyone had cared for him, he wouldn’t have come to us. I don’t think that he’ll go back willingly. And I think he has suffered enough. I won’t encourage him to go back. I trust you and your word, Beauclaire. But I don’t think that he will survive if he’s forced back to you. I won’t force him, and I won’t allow anyone else to, either.”
Beauclaire turned to Adam. “Does she speak for you?”
“She speaks for herself,” said Adam. “But I agree. He cannot go back.”
“You will risk the survival of the pack for the happiness of a boy who will not be harmed,” said Goreu. There was no judgment in his voice. “A boy who is not a child at all.”
I looked at Adam.
He smiled. “My wolves would not thank me for sending a scared kid to the people in his nightmares just to keep them safe. Safety is not always the key. He belongs to the pack now, and we take care of our own.”
And that right there was one of the differences between Adam and Bran. Bran kept his eye on the end game. Adam understood the end game all right, but to him, the people mattered more than the game.
The werewolves needed Bran, who could make the tough choices to make sure they survived. I needed Adam because he would never abandon someone who loved him, the way that Bran had abandoned us. Abandoned me. Twice. I swallowed and reminded myself I was a grown-up. But I was so grateful that I had Adam. “Name something else,” said Adam.
Goreu turned to Beauclaire, and said, “I told you that would not happen.” He looked at Adam. “I’m afraid, then, it is up to you.”
“You can’t give us a better clue about what we could offer you?” Adam said.
“Ask Zee,” said Goreu. “Our people are hungry for magic, and Zee has been collecting the weapons he has made.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Now, that makes sense. We find ourselves on opposite sides in a conflict—and to stop it, we give you a powerful magical artifact, a weapon?”
Goreu grinned at my logic. “It might work.”
Uncle Mike, who’d been a silent witness to it all, shook his head. “That old man has been destroying his toys ever since his wife died. I’m not sure he has anything big enough to matter.”
I looked at him, and Uncle Mike shrugged. “He was forced to marry her, and he thought it would be easy so he allowed it. Then he fell in love for the first time in . . . for the first time, I think. When she died—he was very angry. Angry at the Gray Lords who made him make himself vulnerable. So he started to destroy any of his own work that came back to him—and most of it does, eventually. He also destroys other things when he can, too. The Gray Lords would stop him if they could.” He gave the two Gray Lords present a merry look. “But they can’t. So they pretend not to notice.”
—
“This is weird,” said Jesse at dinner two days later. “Last week, I was a social pariah at school. Hell—”
Her father cleared his throat.
“Heck,” she said. “Heck. Since the troll died? I could run for class president and win.”
“Don’t fret,” Aiden said, eating the spaghetti I’d made as if he was afraid it would run off his plate, “I’m sure you’ll be a pariah again soon enough.”
“That was pretty good,” Jesse said, dumping another helping of spaghetti on his plate without his asking. “It would have been better, though, if you’d swallowed before you started to talk. We eat with our mouths closed around here.”
“How do you get the food in?” asked Aiden.
She stopped eating. Opened her mouth, then shut it again.
“Gotcha,” he said happily, still talking with his mouth full.
Adam, I noticed, was looking pretty worn. He hadn’t said much since we’d sat down to eat. Tonight, it was just Jesse, Aiden, Adam, and me.
Joel, who was still experiencing better control of his shapeshifting, had taken his wife out to dinner. No one knew he was a pack member, so they didn’t have to worry about reporters following them around.