Page 36 of Changeling (The Incubus Saga #2)

“Get out!” Nathan screamed in Jim’s face.

No, not Jim’s . It was the amber eyes. It was their fault.

“Get out of my brother!” Nathan yelled. “Be Jim. You’ve had your fun, now be Jim . Stop trying to save me. I’m not worth it. I’m not worth any of this. You don’t… do things like this, Jim, sending Sasha out to do your bidding. You can’t let the dreams be right. You can’t . Just be Jim. Be Jim .”

It was too much for Nathan, all that emotion welling up inside him and trying to claw its way out. In the end he wasn’t yelling anymore; he wasn’t holding Jim in place. He was sobbing and clinging to Jim’s shirt.

This was too messed up. He didn’t want Jim doing these things for him. Not for him .

The amber-eyed Jim, so strange and different but a part of Jim too, looked on with his slit stare and Nathan saw an answering tear fall to match his own.

Jim’s arms shot out and pulled Nathan in against him, crushing him to his chest for another desperate hug.

Nathan sobbed harder through the sting of pain, dampening Jim’s shirt.

Softly, he heard, “I’m sorry, Nathan,” and then the strong body holding him went lax and fell straight to the floor, taking Nathan down with it.

A sob wracked through Jim as they hit the carpet.

Nathan didn’t have to look; he knew the amber eyes were gone.

Jim clung harder to Nathan and it seemed so wrong somehow for them to be crying in each other’s arms like that.

There had to be a breaking point somewhere, Nathan knew that, but he hated how they kept finding new ones.

“Nathan…I…I’m sorry,” Jim choked out, “I’m so sorry.”

“Jim…”

“I remember…everything this time. Everything ,” Jim admitted. “God, Nate…I don’t want to scare you like this. I never…never want you to see me like this.”

“ Jim ,” Nathan said more firmly. He sensed the angst, the self-loathing that was coming, and he didn’t want Jim to keep doing that to himself.

Nathan knew he wasn’t one to talk, but it was his job to get on his brother’s case, damn it.

“Don’t go blaming yourself for this, Jim.

I don’t care if those amber eyes are a part of you, they’re not you. They’re not—”

“They’re me , Nate,” Jim broke in. Both their bodies were leaning into each other for support, with Nathan’s head held against Jim’s chest and Jim’s face pressing into Nathan’s hair.

“This is my fault,” Jim said. “Every time I think I can let the walls down a bit, it feels so open…so bare. I can feel everything I’m capable of, Nathan, and I can’t stand it.

That’s why I keep putting the walls back up. ”

“It’s okay, Jim,” Nathan tried, “I get why you—”

“No. It’s not okay. I can’t keep running scared, Nathan. I have to give in, like Sasha said. I have to fight.”

“Giving in is fighting?”

“I can beat this,” Jim said with conviction.

“I can control it, Nate, I know I can. I have to, because if I don’t…

I’ll just be that forever…and not me. And then maybe I will Awaken fully, and I’ll be exactly what we’ve always feared.

But if I take this head on, if I give in to what I am…

maybe I can Awaken and stay me at the same time.

” Finally, Jim pulled out of their embrace—Nathan doubted he could have done it—and looked at his brother resolutely with red-rimmed, dark blue eyes.

There was no denying that Nathan liked the sound of Jim being Jim , Awakened or otherwise.

Jim having these powers didn’t have to be bad, he reminded himself, thinking back on his parents’ words from long ago and everything he’d learned the past few months, but only if all conscious and unconscious parts of Jim were in control.

Nathan remembered with a start that Sasha was still with them, and looked up to find the incubus standing stone-still above them, on autopilot, still awaiting an order.

Jim looked up at Sasha as well, and his expression shifted once more to anguish. “I’m so sorry, Nathan. How can you ever forgive me for doing that to him?”

“You heard him,” Nathan huffed, glad that both their tears were drying. “Apparently he’s fine with being used if it’s for me.” He scrunched his face in distaste. “ That didn’t sound right.”

A choked laugh found its way out of Jim.

“Think we might get ourselves up off the floor and stop acting like girls long enough to snap him back to normal?” Nathan asked.

Jim nodded.

Once they were on their feet, and had brushed any remaining tears away, all Jim had to do was look at Sasha and the incubus blinked back to himself. He looked surprised at first that clearly he hadn’t actually been sent off this time, but then he smiled.

“Leave it to you to find a compromise,” Sasha said, patting Nathan on the back as he stepped closer. “So I guess we’re heading to Pittsburg together ?”

Nathan wanted to smile in reply, but he knew Jim wouldn’t let the redhead get away with acting so nonchalant about this. Jim jerked forward and pulled Sasha into his arms for a sudden embrace.

“I’m so sorry. I’ll never do that to you again.

It is worth it to save, Nathan, but I can be better than that.

I can do this better . I…love you both so much; I don’t want to lose either of you, to anything.

Especially not to me. So I’m taking your advice.

” Jim pulled away from Sasha with a strained smile.

“No more trying to push the powers into some tiny corner in my head. I have to accept them, because no matter what comes next, they are a part of me. The only thing that’s ever really hurt me or someone else because of them was from me trying to keep them away.

That doesn’t mean I’m going to just open myself up without being cautious, but…

no more holding myself back. Something I should have accepted back in the Gatehouse. ”

Sasha smiled wide at Jim’s proclamation and nodded.

Part of Nathan wanted to believe in another outcome, but there really wasn’t a nice third option hiding somewhere in which Jim could just be normal.

It was either let the amber eyes run amok or deal with the powers directly and pray that Jim really was capable of being the first changeling to be different.

Then Nathan thought of what Jim had said when they sank to the floor. “Jim…when you said you remembered everything this time…”

“Everything from while my…other side was in control,” Jim said. “I never could before. It was always like some hazy dream. But this time it’s clear.”

“And what about your time in the Veil?”

Jim hesitated, and Sasha turned to look at him curiously as well, while Nathan stared into his brother’s eyes, waiting for an answer.

“I…I do remember more, but not much. I was there for months. I felt different. All these powers…while I was in the Veil, I could control them, all of them. Someone… someone taught me how.”

“The fae with red on black eyes?” Nathan asked.

Jim nodded. “He told me I was important. He showed me what was going to happen, and what I needed to do. He told me…to do things, but…I can’t remember what any of it was. And it wasn’t always just him. There was another too. With different eyes. I…I can’t remember, Nathan.”

“It’s okay,” Nathan smiled reassuringly, gripping his brother’s arm. “Whenever these powers of yours hit 100%...I think you will remember everything, and by then, you’ll be in full control, I know it.”

“No doubt in my mind,” Sasha added with his usual blinding smile.

Nathan wished he could say that just as confidently—no doubt in his mind. But there was still a sliver a doubt that he couldn’t shake away.

He sunk into bed that night feeling bodily and emotionally wiped.

It felt kind of liberating, having gotten all of that off his chest, even if it did nothing to stop the others from wanting to save him at all costs.

Maybe things would be better now. Different .

Nathan trusted that during the night there would be no more strange encounters with amber eyes, and if there were, at least Nathan knew now that even the beast in Jim didn’t mean him or Sasha any harm.

Still, that didn’t keep Nathan’s dreams at bay, which seemed to rear their ugly heads at him with a newfound vengeance.

Nathan woke up shivering in the middle of the night with Sasha’s arms wrapped protectively around him.

He didn’t remember what he had dreamed, only that it included red on black eyes, and another pair now too—yellow on black—along with pain, and terror, and the horrible haunting laughter of his own dream self.

Nathan must have been thrashing in his sleep, or done something to reveal that he was having a nightmare, because Sasha, faint as it was while holding Nathan tight, was softly singing to him.

“And true be the hearts that love you...”

Nathan felt tears well up in his eyes immediately.

Sasha had called him out of his nightmares with the lullaby, and Nathan shivered even harder to hear it consciously.

He saw no truly restful nights on the horizon.

His time was too short. The future too bleak.

But in Sasha’s arms, wrapped in the lullaby he remembered from his youth, with Jim sleeping peacefully in the next bed, Nathan wanted to believe.

He darted his eyes around the room in search of Walter, who was usually visibly nearby whenever Nathan had one of his nightmares, but the Spirit Guide was nowhere to be seen.

Then Nathan realized…he hadn’t seen Walter since Jim changed.

“Walt?” Nathan called out, quietly waiting in the hallway the next morning, which was thankfully empty, and not too close to the front desk to alert Ula, who had gone to her shift after they’d all shared breakfast together.

At last, Nathan’s Spirit Guide flickered in and appeared beside him, if a little unstable. “Nathan,” he said in a concerned tone.

“It’s Jim, right?”

Walter merely pursed his lips. “What happened?”