Counting Shadows (Duplicity)

know. I
deserve
to know. Ashe was my friend. He was my… everything.”
    I look down, afraid to meet Lor’s gaze. I shouldn’t have let the truth slip out like that. It makes me sound weak, helpless… empty.
    “Yeah,” Lor says softly. “I get it. He was everything to me, too.”
    I slowly look up. “You were close?”
    “We were twins in every sense of the word. I thought I was going to die when he disappeared.” He looks away and grits his jaw. “And I think part of me did.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “Don’t be. Jay got the worst of it. Be sorry for him.”
    “I am.”
    Lor sighs and looks to the ceiling. “Yeah, I can tell. You’re hurting. Looking in your eyes is like looking in a mirror. You’re in as much pain as I am.”
    “So… You still hurt?”
    “I don’t think I’ll ever stop. But I’ve learned to function without him.” He presses a hand to his forehead and shakes his head. “I shouldn’t be telling you all this. I hardly
know
you.”
    “But we both knew Ashe.”
    He smiles a little, the expression soft. “Yeah, we did. I guess that makes us similar, in a way.” He suddenly frowns. “Why… Why didn’t Jay ever talk about me?”
    “He didn’t remember you,” I say, making my tone as gentle as I can. “His memory was wiped by some sort of magic. He couldn’t help it.”
    Lor’s expression tumbles into one of grief, but then he shakes his head and grits his jaw. “At least he had someone.” He nods his head to me. “I guess that’s good.”
    I nibble at my lip and then say, “Then tell me about Ashe. Everything.”
    Lor raises an eyebrow at me. “You’re going to insist on calling him Ashe? Even though that isn’t his real name?”
    “Yes.”
    Lor says nothing, and there’s a pause. I count my heartbeats, which have slowed in the past few minutes.
One, two, three…
    I take a deep breath and add, “He’ll always be my Ashe.”
    “And he’ll always be Jay to me,” Lor murmurs.
    “So are you going to tell me about him?”
    “Maybe. But not tonight.” He leans further back in the pillows. “Right now, I say we change the subject.”
    I open my mouth to protest, but Lor points to the wounds on his chest. “The injured guy gets to pick the subject.”
    “Since when?” I demand.
    “Since now. And I’m saying we change the subject to resting. In other words, you stop asking questions, leave, and let me sleep.”
    My mouth drops open just a little, but Lor’s eyes are already closed.
    “Promise me you’ll tell me more about Ashe tomorrow,” I plead.
    “Angels don’t make promises.”
    “What? Why?”
    “Once we make a promise, we have to go through with it, no matter what happens. If we don’t, we die.”
    My gut clenches as I think of Ashe’s one and only promise to me. Had he known the significance of it? Had he known he was putting himself in danger when he swore everything would be okay? Probably not. But I can’t help but to think that Ashe still would have promised, even if he knew.
    “You’re on my bed,” I say quietly, hoping Lor will move.
    “I’m a prince, sweetheart,” he replies, as if this is an excuse for everything.
    I sigh, knowing that I’ll be sleeping in the spare room tonight.
    “Fine,” I mutter. “Sleep here, if you really have to. But on one condition.”
    “What’s that, sweetheart?” he mumbles.
    “Take a bath tomorrow. You smell like a pig sty.”
    He chuckles, although the sound is groggy and cuts off short. “I usually don’t work with ‘conditions’, but I’ll accept yours. On one condition of mine.”
    I open my mouth to tell him to shut up and go to sleep, but he interrupts me.
    “You should also take a bath tomorrow, sweetheart. You smell like fear.”

Seventeen
    I stare at the ceiling of my guest room, counting the stone blocks. I reach twenty-eight—an even number, a good number—when Lor’s words echo through my head again.
    ‘You smell like fear.’
    Twenty-nine. Thirty. Thirty-one…
    I continue counting the stones, but my mind drifts away from the easy task. I wish I had something more difficult to do, something other than lying in an unfamiliar bed and counting stones. Something that would distract me.
    But I have no distraction, and all I can do is grit my jaw while my mind examines Lor’s words. No, it doesn’t examine them—it dissects them, tearing each syllable apart, slicing into each word in search of meaning. But no matter how I look at them, I keep coming to the same