Page 88 of Entangled With You

“And watching Da cry is not easy.”

“That’s what you call him?” My voice was small, full of wonder.

He nodded.

“I’ve been there. If he’s crying I want to do anything to help him.”

“Yeah, me too.”

I watched his face for a few moments. “So you’re his son? You kind of look like him too. Now I see it, not in your coloring, you’re darker and smaller, but in your facial expressions. I don’t know why I didn’t notice it before.”

“I’m glad you didn’t, it would have complicated things a great deal.”

I ran my palms down the leather-wrapped steering wheel. “When did he tell you this?”

“A few nights after my wedding. I knew you died before I was born but he never told me the full story. I think my wedding made him relive it. He talked about it for a long time, told me everything.”

“Did he tell you how it worked?”

“He said he was watching you guys and helping you guys fight. But the fight kept changing: more men, more brutal, bigger storms, and your death came faster.”

“So he was an extra — himself?”

“Yeah, that’s as good a reason as any to not jump into your own past, huh?”

“Totally.”

“He watched you die and he saw himself die. And to call him broken-hearted would be an understatement. He called Zach, said goodbye, and left for good.”

“So I died and he never got to go back to Florida?”

“And my whole life he seemed very broken and I never understood why.”

“For twenty-some years?”

“Yep. I mean, kind of. I don’t think it was a straight twenty years for him. He took his throne from Samuel, but after a few years he left grandmother in charge and he⁠—”

“Grandmother?”

“You know her as Lady Mairead.”

“Oh Jesus Christ.”

“Yeah, she was very different from how I know her.”

“I bring out the worst in her. Go on, I’m sorry I interrupted.”

“He began traveling, looking for the men who killed you, and fighting anyone that might want to claim our throne. He fought to protect me mostly. I worried about him a lot.” He flicked the air vent on the dash, up and down and back up again.

“For twenty years he just fought people?”

“Well, he and Lady Mairead have a way of jumping in and out of years, checking in, so they don’t age as fast.”

“So Magnus just checked in with you?”

“Yes, for a couple of months every year. The rest of the time I lived with my mom.”

“Oh. And he didn’t live with, um, your mother?”