Blue Bubble (Niels)

The following fictitious events take place in Reality D (Blue)

Chapter 1

  It had been a hellish few days. Niels hadn’t even had time to grieve Hattie or verify that this wasn’t some ongoing nightmare mess.

  There was something eerie and permanent about driving through the security checkpoint on the bridge to Rikers Island. It was so notorious, so isolated in the middle of everything Niels loved best about the city. 

  He wasn’t sure he loved the city anymore. It was one thing to be helping it thrive, or at least on the sidelines while tabloids reported about his secret alien baby he was ashamed of.

  It was something else altogether to be vilified, to have his band’s name twisted from fame to infamy, to see pictures of his closest friends along with statements like, “-declined to comment.”

  The worst was the headline, “What Did They Know?” in bold print over a picture of the band at a charity concert, as if Niels was deranged and the whole band had been covering for him in public, like they were complicit in Hattie’s murder.

  The ride across the bridge, over the choppy tumult of the East River, was uneventful. The indignity of the prison admission process was a humiliation Niels did not care to think about, so he made his mind as numb and cooperative as possible. 

  By the time he actually got into a cell block and a cell, he was pretty desensitized to everything. He wasn’t sure if a nuclear bomb or a cabaret line prancing down the cell block would have surprised him at this point.

  “Stand against the wall!” one of his guards ordered whoever was in the cell, because of course he would have a roommate here. His protective status, like everything else, had been stripped.

  They ordered Niels to shuffle into the cell. He caught a glimpse of a super skinny guy with cotton candy blue hair (where did he get dye in prison?), and then the guards had Niels against the wall too. They unlocked his shackles while he stood there spread-eagled and then they ran through some rules before they shut the door behind him.

  He was alone in the cell, with someone who could have been an actual murderer, or a drug lord, or…a child mutilator.

  “Hey,” the guy said, like this wasn’t awkward as fuck. What did you even say to a cellmate? What kind of dynamic would there be? Would the guy steal Niels’ crap?

  “Hej,” he said. He tried to seem steely and like he belonged in this place, even though now that he had a better look at his cellmate the guy definitely did not look like he belonged here, unless he’d been arrested for a peaceful protest of cruelty to zoo animals or something.

  “Carver,” the guy said. He offered a hand for Niels to shake. Niels stared at the hand and wondered what, exactly, he had carved. Was Niels rooming with the next Dahmer or something?

  He had to shake the hand. If he didn’t, he’d look weak and edible. He forced himself to shake. “Homicide. I’m Niels.” If he came off like a murderer, he’d probably be safer in here than if he went around whining about how innocent he was.

  “Kidnapping,” the guy added. Okay, so he’d kidnapped someone and chopped them up.

  Wait, though…”Kidnapping?” Niels verified. Had this guy eaten a little kid?

  Niels’ heart skittered in his chest. He couldn’t do this. He would die here, just from the stress of knowing these people.

  “He was a legal adult,” the guy defended. “Apparently kidnapping legal adults is still illegal.”

  This man was insane. Niels took a step back, but not before his secret fairy fire magic revealed his angst. Hopefully the kidnapper-carver hadn’t seen it.

  “No shit,” Niels growled, to force Creepy Cotton Candy Guy to look at his face. 

  “He got home after we went camping, told ghost stories, and got tattoos,” Carver said pleasantly. He could have been talking about a vacation or a camping trip with a good friend. Not…

  Ja. Niels was insanely out of his depth and this guy was just insane.

  “Then what was the problem?” Niels joked, like all of this was no big deal.

  The guy met his eyes. He had crystalline blue eyes and a quirky, pleasant smile. He seemed more like an enthusiastic summer camp director than a killer. The guy, calm as a clear winter night, said, “He didn’t want to go camping.”

  Yes, that was why it was kidnapping and not a chummy little outing on the river.

  “Fair.” Niels took another step back, but his body protested it. What was the deal with that? “Try not to kidnap me?”

  “It could be fun…” the guy offered. His eyes trailed down Niels’ body like it was in the cell just for his benefit. The attention had an unsettling (in a good way) effect on Niels’ stomach. 

  “Wait,” the guy amended. “That sounded predatory.”

  No shit, buddy.

  The question was, why did predatory make butterflies dance in Niels’ stomach like his body was at the cusp of being very intensely satisfied?

  He took another step back, and his heart protested again, almost like there was a cord connecting him to his cellmate, binding them together, and every time he took a step back that cord stretched.

  Binding.

  His stomach plummeted. He had a bond to this asshole. That was the problem. When he’d visited the fairies, right before Hattie was murdered and his whole life fell apart, they’d given him the ability to form an undine bond. It basically gave him a way to know on a much more conscious level people he was deeply compatible with.

  This wasn’t one night stand material (not that Niels was into that anyway), this was one true love material.

  But this guy was a guy. And a murderer. “I’m not really into tattoos anyway,” Niels assured him. Not that it mattered: If the guy was insane, nothing would stop him from doing whatever he wanted to Niels.

  The guy’s lip did that quirky smile thing. “What if you needed one because you were cursed by seals?”

  What if he needed one because he was cursed by this guy into having a bond? “That would really suck.”

  The guy sat on the lower bunk and hit his head on the bunk above. It had never crossed Niels’ mind, probably because most killers and serial killers were portrayed by actors when someone made a move about them, that there could be clumsy killers. He’d always pictured killing as a graceful, if dark, art.

  This guy — Niels decided to call him Carver since he hadn’t said his name yet and Niels figured if he reminded himself of the guy’s crimes every time he thought his name he’d be less likely to accidentally feel safe around him — was not a graceful killer. Niels wondered if that meant his victim(s) had suffered more at his hands, if graceful killers were more efficient.

  “Who did you kill?” Carver asked him.

  This was it: He had to be careful, in case Carver was an informant. He had to imply things, like that he was capable of murder and should be left alone in prison, without explicitly saying he’d done anything.

  “My girlfriend,” he said flatly.

  In a horrible, grievous way, it was true: The fairies had warned him that if he dated Hattie she would die. But…who heard something like that from a fortune teller and went oh I guess I better not date my girlfriend anymore?

  Nobody believed that shit.

  It had cost Hattie everything.

  It had cost Niels everything.

  “Why?” Carver asked.

  Because he hadn’t!

  “It was the only way,” Niels said wryly. “She was cursed by ducks.”

  This made Carver laugh way harder than the joke deserved, especially since he hadn’t explained the cursed by seals comment. He had a nice laugh — so nice that the bond kept pointing out how nice it would be to wake up next to this laugh every morning, to be the one who caused it every time Carver laughed.

  Carver, as in, legal adult mutilator. Niels couldn’t let the bond skew his sense of reality.

  “So you’re not guilty?” Carver verified.

  This was practically a double bind: If Niels admitted to doing it, Carver could testify against him at the trial; if Niels denied it, he looked weak and non-homicidal and he probably wouldn’t survive prison. He treaded carefully. “I think that’s up to a jury at this point, and pretty damned subjective.” His fingertips sparked, fire and angst desperate to escape.

  Tears filled his eyes as he fought the sparks. Shit. He couldn’t be emotional right now, not in prison, not in front of a people-carver.

  “So you did do it?” Carver tried again. He was definitely an informant. 

  Niels narrowed his eyes at him. “I think we’re in a situation where you could be spying on me for the cops. Informant person. And I shouldn’t talk about this without my lawyer present. Which.” The lawyer situation was bad. “So. Yeah.”

  Carver flopped back onto the mattress. “I’m not. But that is a valid concern.” He stared at the underside of the top bunk. “I’ve never been in a prison before,” he mused. “It’s exciting.”

  Never before? Niels was sure he would have heard about a people-carver in the news if one had just been caught, but…Niels’ story had dominated the news, because the news was more interested in what sold than in what mattered. “Wait,” Niels asked him. “How long have you been here?”

  “Not long,” the guy said.

  So he was emotionally in the same place, more or less. He wasn’t hardened to prison life yet. Maybe they could bond and be friends and avoid all the other people. “Me neither.”

  He couldn’t bond with this guy — that was the bond again, begging him to want to be close to this crazy stranger.

  Carver laughed under his breath. “I saw you come in.”

  Niels looked at the narrow stone window to their cell. He doubted Carver could have seen anything through that, and he wasn’t sure it faced the direction of the bridge anyway. “Through the window?”

  Carver laughed harder. When his breathing settled (it took an obnoxious amount of time) he met Niels’ eyes and said, like he was talking to a little kid, “I know it’s been awhile since you got here, but I was referring to that one time you walked into the cell under police escort and said ‘hej.’”

  “You literally mean…” Yes. This individual was straight-up nuts. “You saw me come in. Just now. When I saw you.” When we met. Ten minutes ago.

  “Yeah. You said you hadn’t been here long, and I was reminiscing on the time you arrived.”

  Batshit crazy.

  “Ja,” Niels argued anyway, even though the logical part of his brain knew that arguing with insanity was probably also insane. “But I could’ve been a transfer from a different prison, or…spent a lot of time at the Tombs before I came here. You didn’t know.”

  Carver blinked. “Didn’t you ask how long I’d been here?”

  “Yes.”

  “So, here might refer to this location — even this cell — as opposed to here as a soul’s embarkation to prison?”

  Niels replayed the word in his mind three times, but it didn’t help him not want to look to Jace or Li and go what the actual fuck did he just say?

  Jace and Li weren’t here.

  Niels held his head in his hands. “I can’t believe I’m having this conversation.”

  Carver laughed again, but this one sounded more pained. “Neither can I, but we started off with the assumption that my name was a crime, and here we are.”

  “Your name?” Niels didn’t even know his name, that was why he called him Carver.

  Carver smirked. “My name is Carver. My dad’s basically a hippie.”

  Niels reviewed when he’d first walked into the cell, the way Carver had offered his hand. He’d said his name, not his crime?

  Niels was way too paranoid.

  Ja, the guy had still kidnapped someone, but from the sounds of it they hadn’t even died or suffered beyond a tattoo. The bond wasn’t evil, and his soul wasn’t attached to a crazed killer!

  “How’d he react to you having a record?” Niels asked, about Carver’s dad.

  He was infinitely more relaxed, knowing he wasn’t talking to a people-carver.

  “He incriminated me,” Carver said, in a tone that suggested it was amusing and nnot tragic, “even though he was part of the camping trip.”

  In other words, Carver was a victim here. His dad had kidnapped someone and blamed Carver.

  “Ouch,” Niels said.

  The bond rejoiced at the spot of tenderness and worry Niels now felt.

  “Yeah,” Carver said. He sat up, elbows on his knees, and studied Niels more directly. “I’m only in for a little.”

  That was fucking awesome. Niels had a bond. Carver would leave and hook up with someone and Niels would die.

  When he died, he was going to haunt every fairy involved in him having a bond. 

  He leaned toward Carver. “Can I make you a weird offer?”

  Carver tried to flop again — this time against the wall — but he must have miscalculated how far away it was and he ended up bent in this awkward position that made Niels want to laugh.

  “Prison weird?” Carver asked, “or normal-people weird? I’ve heard there’s a difference.”

  “Weirder than both.”

  Carver sat up again, back to the elbows-on-knees position. “Okay?”

  “In here…out there…everywhere…I’ll give you a hundred bucks a day for avoiding sex, kissing, relationships, all that shit. But you don’t get anything if you lie.”

  He wouldn’t get anything because Niels would be dead and no way would his estate pay out to the guy who had killed him, even if it was inadvertent.

  “You want to pay me to be single?” Carver articulated.

  “Not just single, like…not even a prostitute or anything.”

  Carver contemplated this, a smirk on his lips. “What about my hand?”

  Great. Not even twenty minutes in prison, and the conversation had already progressed to masturbation. It was Niels’ fault. “Hand is fine.”

  “Fleshlight?”

  What even was that? “Let me talk to my lawyer. I’ll get back to you on that one.” He couldn’t wait for that spectacular conversation: Hi, lawyer, what is a fleshlight?

  “You have an incredibly understanding lawyer,” Carver said.

He had a nonexistent lawyer. “Yep, he’s fucking awesome. He’ll love this one.” He wished there was somewhere to sit besides right next to the source of his bond angst, but the only other option was the toilet and he was so repulsed by that disgusting idea that he was probably days away from death by impaction. He leaned against the wall instead of sitting. “So…you want a hundred bucks a day?”

  Carver grinned and traced his eyes down Niels again. “Yeah. But first…100 bucks. Is that American dollars or a sex act?”

  The bond danced to the beat of his racing heart while his body woke subtly to Carver’s joke. It would love a sex act. “The point is,” Niels said firmly, at least as much to himself as to Carver, “no sex acts.”

  He could picture his next visitation session with the various people in his life, casually mentioning he’d been intimate with his cellmate.

  It was a hard no.

  “You haven’t committed to a currency,” Carver pointed out. “Bucks is so subjective. What about deer bucks? I could be agreeing to be kicked in exchange for celibacy.”

  “One hundred USD,” Niels enunciated clearly. “Daily.”

  “Okay.” Carver stood up again, in case Niels had forgotten what a string bean he was. “We should submit a formal agreement in writing with a maximum duration. However, a handshake shall suffice while we’re here?”

  Niels nodded. “I’ll have my lawyer um…draw up the papers.” Once he got a lawyer, he would make that a priority along with getting out of prison.

  “But shake on it for now,” Carver insisted. He offered his hand. “No bodily fluids, please.”

  It was like he knew about the bond and was just toying with Niels. 

  Niels scowled to cover his obnoxious blush, and shook Carver’s hand.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Carver said as they shook hands.

  At the word pleasure, Niels’ fingers sparked again, fire magic revealing himself to Carver.

  Carver looked at the sparks. Then, like he’d consciously decided to do so, he jumped away from Niels. “What was that?”

  Niels panicked up a lie. “I got…electrocuted. And sometimes some of the electricity jumps out. In flames. It’s just a weird thing, you’ll get used to it.”

  “You too?” Carver said, amazed. “I thought I was the only one.” He held his hand up and sparked.

  What the hell? “How did you do that?”

  “I was electrocuted too,” Carver said. “I thought I was the only one.”

  “That’s bullshit.” This guy was a fairy. He was…he was one of them, and he was probably here to make sure Niels didn’t talk, or didn’t survive long enough to talk, and why the hell had Niels bonded to someone who wanted to kill him? “Being electrocuted doesn’t do that.”

  Carver leaned against the bedpost. “How did you do that, then?”

  What if the guy wasn’t a fairy? What if there was some fucked-up type of electrocution Niels had never heard of like…being a human battery or something?

  “It was a weird type of electrocution,” Niels lied. The last thing he wanted was to be in trouble for telling someone about magic, on top of everything else. “Most people get electrocuted the normal way.”

  “Yeah,” Carver mused. “That’s why I thought I was the only one. It’s rare.”

  He was so full of shit. “Who the hell are you?”

  “Carver,” the guy said, like that meant anything in the conversation they were having.

  “Carver Alandrial?” Niels demanded, giving the surname of the fairies he’d met. Obviously the guy worked for them. The blue hair was probably their sense of humor.

  “Carver Floccinaucin.”

  “Huh.” Niels didn’t know that name. He’d been wrong about the magic thing, apparently. “I don’t know.” He turned to sit, but the only thing was the toilet still, unless he wanted to be closer to Carver. He didn’t.

  “It’s a unique name,” Carver offered at Niels’ disappointment.

  If the fairies had been behind framing Niels, there was a chance he could find a way out of it. Now he was back where he started, with all the evidence stacked against him and no way out. “Ja,” he said, noncommittal. He felt deflated, suddenly exhausted.

  Carver, weirdly, was energized. “I can’t believe I met you, with the same type of weird electrocution as me.”

  “I can’t either,” Niels said. It was almost like it was unbelievable because it wasn’t true. He glowered at Carver. “Is this some kind of set up?”

  Carver flopped on the bed again, eyes on the bunk above him. “For what?”

  “Because I left? Is this like…extra banishment? If I’m in prison, I can’t go back?” He didn’t actually mention fairies, so if he was wrong he at least wasn’t causing more trouble.

  Carver shook his head. “No. I was considering kidnapping you, though.” 

  Wait, was that a confession that he was a fairy? Niels gaped at him.

  Carver added, “Your charges are bullshit. But the evidence they have? It isn’t.”

  Niels tugged at the skin on his face. Something about digging his nails into his face made him feel better, even though it hurt. “Bullshit enough that someone planted it,” he pointed out. “And I don’t know anyone else with the magic and motivation.”

  Nobody hated him like the fairies probably did for leaving their princess.

  Carver looked at Niels. This time he came off less like a summer camp director and more like a professional negotiator.

  Maybe even a little like a friend. 

  “The offer is on the table,” Carver said. “I’m a bullshit eliminator via kidnapping.”

  Niels got it: Carver wasn’t in prison for kidnapping, he was in prison to kidnap Niels. The problem was that he hadn’t said who he worked for, or what his plan was.

  Niels wanted answers before he agreed to anything. Agreeing to things he didn’t understand was why he was here to begin with.

  This time, he would handle things better.

Chapter 2

   For starters, if Niels intended to let Carver kidnap him then he would need to set some ground rules, make it clear they were equals and not rescuer and rescue-e. “I told you I don’t like tattoos,” he said. That was one boundary he’d set. Now to think of others, of protections and conditions.

  “I told you a seal may have cursed you, just like Jace,” Carver protested.

  Niels should have been relieved: He didn’t have a magic bond to a child-murderer or an insane person. But the seal curse thing was back, and it was insane, and clearly Niels’ bond thought he was into crazies.

  “Seal agenda,” Niels snarked at him. “Swim, flop on beach, curse random people.”

  Carver laughed. “You’re Jace’s nephew.”

  The hell he was. Even if Jace wasn’t younger than Niels, he had a mor who was definitely younger than Niels’ parents and he looked nothing like Niels’ family.

  “You both have Gancanagh genetics,” Carver rambled on, “and if you were activated you’d get into trouble.”

  Activated like an espionage sleeper cell?

  Niels tried to wrap his mind around any kind of response, but all that came out was a low, growled, “Stay away from Jace.”

  Carver shrugged. “I already let Jace go.”

  Let Jace go?

  Niels remembered when he’d finally seen Jace again after Jace had been missing for several days. He’d said something about being trapped in the woods with some people.

  Camping. “You,” Niels muttered. “Holy shit.”

  Tendrils of ice swirled from Niels’ palms through the air like he was a power-crazed ice princess on a mountain.

  “I told you,” Carver said, in a tone that said he’d already explained this once and shouldn’t have to again. “He didn’t want to go camping.”

  Jace probably protested everything about that trip: Being forcibly removed from his life in New York, knowing the band (especially Li) would worry, being stuck in the woods away from everything and everyone he knew.

  Niels turned his growl into a full glower. “Did you make him bond, too?”

  “No,” Carver smirked. “That was all you. But I am happy to accept the payoff for as long as you need.”

  The payoff, as in…

  Niels’ whole being warmed at the idea. It wasn’t like they had anything else to do in this cell anyway, and he knew sooner or later he would cave to the bond. He’d tried fighting a bond before and it hadn’t come close to success. He had less to fight with, too: He’d been worn down by Hattie’s death, by hours of interrogation, by the numbness of losing everything in a matter of hours.

  He had nothing left but the moment, and right now the moment wanted Carver.

  “I don’t think my lawyer can slip me anything to fix that in here,” Niels said as a way to bring up so let’s just do this and we’ll both feel better. He stepped closer to Mr. Crazy and then took a step back. He was magic. “Why don’t you just leave, if you’re magic? And who pressed charges? Jace didn’t.”

  And what were the odds of ending up not only in a cell with a fairy, but in a cell with a fairy he could bond to?

  It didn’t add up. Or, to put it another way, it did add up, but what it added up to was suspicious as fuck.

  Carver straightened. “Because my people are uniquely interested in making sure you don’t get roomed with a real criminal.”

  So they’d put Carver here. “Why?” What did the fairies in the Dells care who Niels lived with while he suffered?

  Carver dipped his head. “Banished from the Dells does not mean abandoning you to the Rhoganoi. We know you didn’t do it, and we know you’re being framed. I’m here to protect you.”

  “Well.” Protection from people he thought hated him…that was a surprise. “Thank you.”

  “Any time.” His eyes skimmed over Niels’ body for a third time, more appraising this time. “If you ever need a hand for your bond, I have two.”

  “The thing is,” Niels said, because it was one thing to consider sleeping with a guy and another very panic-inducing thing to talk about actually doing it, “I think it might be part of whatever framing magic happened.”

  Because at the base of it all, Niels was straight. He’d never even glanced at a guy before. He knew what happened to gay men, and no way was that happening to him.

  “I think,” Carver said with deliberacy, his eyes on Niels’, “you’re afraid to be interested in me.”

  Truth.

  Carver added, “Jace and I didn’t do anything together. If that was a hurdle you’re thinking about. Not a kiss or a cuddle. Come to think of it, I don’t even know if we’ve shaken hands.”

  Jace would be so disappointed to know how Niels reacted to having a bond to a guy.

  Actually, Jace wouldn’t care. Niels was disappointed in himself on Jace’s behalf. He tried to work out what kind of person that made him on the bad-good spectrum. 

  “And,” Carver continued his argument, “it’s nothing to be ashamed of. Fairies of all sorts tend bisexual. Some lean, some sit in the middle. It’s normal.”

  “I’m human,” Niels said. He refused to get into some kind of debate about whether he was gay or not. The bond said he was at least bi, unless someone had messed with a bond. It was news to him, but he didn’t have to act on it.

  Even if he wanted to.

  “And my far…” He had to explain, so Carver at least wouldn’t feel rejected. “Ran into some trouble being not straight.”

  Carver angled his head. “Like?”

  “Like he caught something fatal.”

  Carver inched closer to Niels. “I don’t have anything fatal.”

  “Ja.” Awesome, so now that they’d established that Niels wouldn’t die in prison right this second, and they’d known each other at least half an hour, it was time for sex. Obviously.

  The worst thing was that Niels wanted to.

  He turned away.

  “Bond aside,” Carver said, “Welcome. You’re safe in here with me. I can read minds — no, I haven’t been reading yours — and I will help us avoid trouble.”

  He could read minds? What was he doing, plugging his mental ears so he wouldn’t hear Niels’ thoughts? Bullshit.

  But if he could read minds, he knew everything Niels felt, everything he thought. Hiding from any of the truth was pointless. “What happens if I take you up on being kidnapped? That means I can’t come back, right?”

  He would have to find a way to at least tell the band that he was okay, even if he was trapped somewhere else. 

  “You have to leave this realm behind, yes,” Carver said. His voice was heavy, like he got what that would mean for Niels.

  He nodded. It was so unappealing, but so much more appealing than wasting his life in prison for something he didn’t do or — worse — forcing a complete stranger to waste his life in prison. He would do it, for Carver’s freedom at least.

  He was in a dark place about his own freedom. What was he supposed to do with his life now? Everything he’d had was gone. His life would never be the same. Was he supposed to stoop and rebuild the fragments of his life?

  He understood with painful clarity why some people turned to drugs.

  Maybe he could find a new vision to cling to. “What about that fortune teller? What does he say?”

  “Weston or Bentley?”

  There were two of them?

  Christ, imagine how insufferable the universe would be if either of them had bred. “Bentley. Surferboy.”

  Carver laughed. “He says you’ll be convicted if you stay.”

  Well, no shit. Everyone knew that. He’d already been convicted through trial by media, and the racial tensions over his pale skin and wealth and murderer status versus Hattie’s dark skin and poverty and victim status were insane. Even if he somehow got out of this without a conviction, he was in danger of being assassinated. His life would never be the same.

“They have strong evidence against you,” Carver told him. “Fabricated, but convincing.”

  “So I’m fucked,” Niels summarized. He slid down the wall and instantly regretted how eye-level he now was with the toilet.

  Carver stood in front of Niels, hand extended in an offer to help Niels stand up. Or it was extended in an offer to transport Niels the hell out of prison.

  He looked around the cell. It was a prison, but it was still part of the world he knew, part of the world he belonged to. If he left, he might never see it again.

  “Can…” He couldn’t walk away like this.

  He couldn’t stay and witness his own assassination of character.

  Tears filled his eyes, spilled onto his cheeks. Christ, that was embarrassing.

  “Hey,” Carver said. He slid down the wall next to Niels. “This isn’t sex.” He put his arm around Niels’ back, the first friendly human contact Niels had had in days. None of his visitors had been allowed to hug him and the guards were polite at best. “I’m also here to be here for you?”

  Niels let himself lean into the touch. “Did Bentley send you?”

  “Weston,” Carver said. “His grandfather.”

  Grandfather meant there was one in the middle, which meant there were three obnoxious luck fairies in the world.

  They must have opinions on what his future would be. “What about in like…a decade or two? Can I come back then? Or if I get the dye out of my hair?”

  It was awful, but it was better than what Hattie got: Hattie got nothing. There was that Latin saying — dum spiro spero — while I breathe I hope. Niels was breathing, he was alive, he had hope even if he couldn’t feel anything but endings right now.

  Carver nodded, an encouraging smile on his face. “We’ll work on it, and possibly work behind the scenes to erase all of this mess. Make it a crazy made-up story about you or flip it like…sponsor someone who was innocent being released. Second chances? We can arrange that shit. I can’t, but there are ones that can.”

  Then it wasn’t forever. He braced himself and stood. “Thank you. You…can kidnap me. Whenever.”

  Carver put his hand on the small of Niels’ back and transported them out of prison. They were somewhere up high, in a well-lit windowed room that smelled like forest and mountains.

  “No one here wanted this for you,” Carver said softly. His palm was still on Niels’ back, his face close. “They don’t hate you that much. It’s messy to have to bring you back to Elesara, but you’re allowed, safe, and protected. Okay? And Jace had an idea for a lost last album you can release in a year?”

  “Ja?” Niels said. Something about Jace, about Niels being safe, about Carver’s woodsy scent…

  “Ja,” Carver said, and he hugged Niels.

  “What about you?” Niels whispered. A small part of him realized that the touch had destroyed his last defenses against the bond; another part realized he didn’t care. “Who are you?”

  “I’m a Pixie,” Carver explained. He stepped away, unbearably far, but then he pulled his shirt off so that was okay. Niels took a breath to admire the toned muscles of Carver’s bare chest. Then bring cotton-candy-pink wings unfurled from Carver’s back and Niels forgot all about his chest. “I’m Rylena and Gannon’s son. Rylena used to be married to Nell, whom I believe you have met. That’s where the last name Floccinaucin comes from.”

  None of that meant anything to Niels, except the gorgeous wings and the bare chest. “Ja, but who are you?”

  Carver narrowed his eyes. “I’m a Pixie, and my name is Carver Floccinaucin. I’m a prince of the Pixies.”

  Perfect. Niels totally got why he’d bonded now: He obviously had a thing for royalty. “And when you’re alone in your room, you sit there thinking about what a prince you are?”

  “Oh…” Carver grinned. He finally got it. “We’re bonding?”

  Ja. Bond.