Chapter 267 Just Damien
ADRIANA
The new doctors appeared in the afternoon to check on Elijah, who had been increasingly vocal about his dissatisfaction with the IV situation and the number of times he’d been asked to rest today.
“There are irregularities in his blood,” the doctor told me, “but nothing the new medication won’t address. He needs to finish all three remaining IVs and then he can start moving properly. His nurse has the schedule.”
“He’ll complain about the needle marks,” I said.
“He already has,” the doctor let out a small chuckle as he added. “Twice.”
I thanked him genuinely and went to Elijah’s room.
He was sitting up against the headboard with the IV in his arm and the expression of a man tolerating something under protest, and when I came in he looked at me and then at the IV and said with a serious face. “I don’t suppose there’s a pill version.”
“There isn’t.”
“I had a feeling.” He mumbled.
I sat on the edge of the bed and turned to face him. “Damien is downstairs,” I said. “He wants to see you. Or he’s ready to see you — I’m not sure those are the same thing.”
Elijah was quiet for a moment. “How is he?”
“Considering everything he’s been through? He’s standing.” I shrugged. “He knows you know. He’s been waiting for the conversation.”
“I know.” He looked at his hands. “I almost killed my brother because someone who hated both of us built a story designed to make sure I would.”
“You were deceived by someone who spent months planning exactly how to deceive you.” I met his eyes. “That’s different from making a mistake.”
“Not from where Damien was standing in that cell.”
“No,” I said. “Not from there.” I stood. “Which is why you should probably go have the conversation rather than sitting here constructing it in your head.”
He looked at the IV.
“I’ll ask the nurse to extend the line,” I said.
He almost smiled. “I love you.”
I smiled now. “I love you more.”
I brought Damien up twenty minutes later and left them at the door, because some things didn’t need an audience for the first part. I went to feed Lana and came back to find both of them inside, Elijah in the bed and Damien in the chair, talking.
“— should have told me the moment you found out,” Damien was saying.
“I know,” Elijah said. “I handled it badly.”
“You almost had me executed.”
“I’m sorry about that.”
“I’m just saying.”
“You can say it as many times as you need to.”
I came fully into the room and Damien looked up. “He told you,” he said, not quite a question.
“Just now,” I said. “Although I’d worked most of it out.”
“She usually does,” Elijah said.
Damien looked between us with an expression that was doing several things simultaneously, something like warmth, something like grief for time lost, something like the tentative beginning of what happened when a person decided to let something good be good instead of waiting for it to be taken away.
“It’s a good thing I didn’t let you die,” Elijah said.
“Your wife didn’t let me die,” Damien corrected with slight humor in his voice. “You were unconscious.”
“I was getting there.”
“Seven months is a long getting-there.”
Elijah looked at me. I looked back at him. Something passed between us that didn’t require words.
“You should know,” I said to Damien, “that the kingdom owes you more than an apology. We’re going to spend some time figuring out what that actually looks like.”
He shook his head slightly. “What I want is for Nancy to heal,” he said. “That’s what I want. The rest we can figure out.”
Elijah looked at his brother and said. “It’s good to see you, Damien.”
Damien looked back at him. “Likewise.” Then he added in a stern voice. “Don’t do that again.”
“Which part?”
“Any of it.”
Elijah leaned back against the headboard and for the first time since waking up, the tension in his face settled into something that resembled rest. “I’ll do my best.“
Damien and Nancy wanted the boys.
He brought it up the morning after Thomas had been locked away, sitting across from me in the sitting room with Nancy beside him. She was quieter than usual. She had her hands folded in her lap and she was looking at Damien the way she always looked at him, like he was the fixed point everything else oriented around.
“We can’t have children,” Damien said. “We’ve known that for a long time. Those boys need somewhere permanent and we need something to build toward.” He held my gaze. “What’s wrong with that arrangement?”
Nothing was wrong with it. I’d been intending to track down their family, but the reality was that Kyle had been their family for years. He had been doing the work of a parent since before he was old enough to be one and the idea of sending all three of them back into the world to figure it out alone didn’t sit right with me. It clearly hadn’t sat right with Damien and Nancy either, which told me something about both of them that I already knew but was glad to have confirmed again.
“I think it’s exactly right,” I said.
Elijah came in halfway through the conversation. He sat down and listened to Damien’s explanation and then looked at his brother with the expression I was learning to read as the one he used when he had a great deal to say and was choosing his opening carefully.
“The boys, I understand,” he said. “It’s a good idea. What I have a problem with is you leaving.”
Damien looked at the window for a long, still moment.
“Elijah—”
“You’ve been cleared. Everyone in this kingdom knows you’re innocent. You have nothing to run from.”
“I’m not running.” Damien turned back to him, and his voice was direct but not unkind. “I am choosing peace.” He leaned forward slightly. “These people watched me be dragged through a trial. They heard me called a traitor and a conspirator for months. And now they’re supposed to look at me differently because the verdict changed? Some of them will. Most of them will carry the first version.” He shook his head. “I can’t build a life in a place where I will always be the man who was almost executed. I need to start somewhere that doesn’t have that story attached to my name.”
“You’d be under my protection—”
“Which means I’d be under your umbrella. Permanently.” Damien’s jaw tightened slightly. “I love you. You’re my brother and I didn’t think I’d ever be able to say that out loud and mean it. But I am not going to spend the rest of my life being described in relation to you. Not as the illegitimate son, not as the King’s brother, not as the man who was pardoned. I want to be Damien. Just Damien. My own thing, in my own place.”