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“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?”
