Archive of Our Own ^beta

The calculus of desperation yields
everything in miniature.

- Kaveh Akbar, Calling a Wolf a Wolf

The first brush with death Will had was with his mother.

He’d been four. Too big for his mother to carry him for a long distance, but when rough voices began sounding outside the hotel room they’d been staying at, knocking loudly on the door with enough force that it seemed they would bring it down, she’d been able to manage.

He remembers that they fled out through the balcony. She wrapped him in a burlap sack, sprinkling flour over the fabric and across her face to disguise him as a loaf of bread—never mind that he was too large; he grew up without enough meat on his bones, a little smaller than he should’ve been, and he curled as tight as possible to help her out.

She ran, disappeared into the streets, her coarse hood tucked deep over her head and her baker’s bag hiding Will tucked against her chest.

Ridiculously enough—not funny, but ludicrous—he always seemed in some sort of danger when he was with her, though he’d gathered that a mother is supposed to be home. They didn’t have a home, though. He never parted from her, and maybe that was the point—chained to each other like that, torn apart by grief and yet still inextricably tethered by the fear it took her death for Will to understand, the thick promise of demise followed at all times.

Perhaps it was his mother who invited death, being the blood of the Lady. Perhaps it was Will, being him.

Either way, the somber lineament of danger wormed out every place they rested at, lurking in the soil itself, through the noxious smear of blood on the wallpaper, in every stranger’s face. His mother, whose face, following her death, Will realized he could not recall with the splintering accuracy that a reproduction would require, could hardly stand to look him in the eyes for very long—and thus she too would always remain a little bit of a stranger.

When you’re always on the run, you’re more difficult to catch. It’s more bothersome for death to draw level.

What he’d yet to learn until after he’d closed off the ancient world, wrenched away from Sarcean’s power, and crumbled the Reborn army, is that death’s jaws snap closer when the world goes still. That in the privilege of comfort, dying seems easier when all you have known is to run.

In the end, killing Sinclair is easy. Will gets to him before any of the others do. It was convenient of him to arrive at the dig, right at his feet. He kills him without a second thought.

The trouble after that comes with the rest of his empire.

Will stands before Sinclair’s limp body, thinking. In the shadows, James waits, a weapon too sharp to wield but too dangerous to stow away. For now, Will has to keep him with him, even though the thought makes him sick, the presence of the collar so near and so malleable, dizzying in its intensity. And still, a lesser part of him admits that he doesn’t want to let James out of his sight.

So James stays, at least for now. It’ll be difficult to get a hold of Sinclair’s men on top of dealing with the Reborn without his magic. It seems that he and James amplify each other, which is another point in their favor.

His gut twists. But still, there is the problem of Visander, who has Elizabeth and Cyprian and… Violet.

“Will, Sinclair’s men will come to investigate soon,” James says. Even partially hidden in the back of the tent where the darkness pools, he is a gleaming knife of stark light amongst the shadows. There’s an intense wrongness of James being forced into the shade, a shifting, uncertain mass similar to holding two magnets of the same polarity to each other. Both so concentrated that it seems one will slip at any given moment to yield to the other. But the strange tension stays in place by the golden circlet sitting around James’ neck, a profound reminder of the sheer power Sarcean held in being able to convert the light to the dark.

“It’s no matter,” Will mutters distractedly, casting his eyes around the outline of Sinclair’s body. If only it were as easy as killing the man in charge and leaving it at that. But Cyprian had to break the staff… “I can simply control them if they do step inside. They are no longer a threat to me.” Not that they ever were, goes unspoken with the reminder of his possession of Tom when he’d been attempting to convince Violet of his good intentions.

“But you don’t enjoy doing that,” says James. Knowing, as he always does, from the close attention he’s paid to Will over their time spent together.

The sickening part of all of this is that James acts, for the most part, like his old self. Still indulgently arrogant, highly opinionated with his own ideas of how to go about things, not muted or dulled by the control of the collar as Will had feared. But there’s something nauseatingly different about the way he speaks, how easily he’ll give himself up for Will. That the first thing he’d called him was my king before he reverted to simple Will. How for the first thirty minutes after the collar had closed around his neck, it seemed as though he was composed more of the past than the present, convinced that Will’s dream was to conquer the world by force rather than to see it prosper despite him.

That had cleared off on its own with time. After a night, it seemed as though James was back to normal, only with an unnecessarily clunky and arresting new accessory. This is what makes it dangerous. Will feels a stirring in his stomach every time he looks at him and catches gold instead of James; he thinks, even brief as it is, that James seems to be himself, even despite the magical subservience, so a command may do no harm.

But that would be how it starts. Give way to one selfish need, and another will take its place. Will already craves the feeling of control over James like he shouldn’t. It’s a greedy, cannibalistic feeling, and he can’t tell if it’s him or Sarcean thinking it.

“Will, we need to go,” James says, more urgently this time. “I appreciate that you always take the time to think things over, darling, but maybe you can do that when you’re not currently standing over the corpse of whom most of the world incorrectly thinks to be the most influential person. Well, the person behind the most influential individual. Jesus, imagine what people would say if they found out they were both dead!”

“No,” Will says, a calmness overtaking him. Outside, he can hear a faint commotion—hopefully, it’s who he thinks it is, who it should be. “We’re going to wait here.”

“Why?” James asks suspiciously, then blinks, his head bowing slightly. “Not that I mean to question you, but—”

Will abruptly despises that, the forced deference, and he speaks to cut James off. “We have to join forces with Violet—and Visander,” he says, speaking the name with distaste. “I have to make them see that we both want the same thing. Hopefully, the state of Sinclair’s life will be a good point in my favor.” He nudges Sinclair’s arm with the toe of his boot, wrinkling his nose.

“Visander is going to want to kill you,” says James. “And he might be the only one who stands a chance at doing that.”

“Oh, he can do that if he wishes,” Will says, staring hard at the entrance to the tent. The clamor comes closer. “Only after we get rid of this army.”

A figure bursts through the opening, her hair whipping around her shoulders. She stops abruptly, shield held before her body, wary. “Will?” Violet says, mistrust leaking from her voice, and her body immediately stiffens. She gasps. “Is that Sinclair?”

James comes to Will’s side in his defense, his golden guard. Will puts one careful hand on his forearm, warning him not to advance any further. “We need to talk.”

“You want to join sides,” Violet repeats dully, her face still incredulous. It doesn’t escape Will that she and Elizabeth are as far from him and James as possible, Sinclair’s dead body standing between them as a border.

“Have you forgotten that you’re the Dark King and none of us trust you?” Elizabeth cuts in. Will closes his eyes to compose himself.

On the caveat that Visander stays outside the tent—the entire first half of their interaction, he had been yelling that they ought to cut Will down where he stands until Elizabeth ordered him to remove himself so they could attempt a civil conversation—he has to deal with her for now.

“I know that I’m the Dark King,” Will says, leveling his gaze coolly at Violet. “But I’m not him. And I wasn’t—” He looks away then; he doesn’t want to see what expression will cross her face. “I wasn’t given the chance to prove myself.”

“You’re lucky that you aren’t dead now,” says Violet, but even out of his field of vision, he can hear the undercurrent of pain in her voice. This is as uncomfortable for her as it is for him. He knows what it’s like to have your trust ripped away at the last moment. But all that he’d wanted was a second chance.

Will dips his head diplomatically. James is a rigid column of tension beside him, only silent because Will had asked him to be. Will knows James—the uncollared James—would appreciate that he didn’t order it of him. It makes his stomach turn to think of the fact that, out of gratitude, a request works as well as a command.

All four of them in the tent—and the two outside of it—know that with one snap of his fingers, Will could kill all of them, order the army waiting under his skin to attack and escape in the fray. He knows that the fact that they’ve survived this long in his presence confuses them.

Will says, “I killed Sinclair. Of all people, he couldn’t have control over the army. Is that not enough to hint at my trustworthiness?”

“The Dark King wouldn’t want anybody else wielding his power but him,” Elizabeth says, bristling. “Visander said that you would kill anybody who tried to take it from you.”

“I killed him so that he wouldn’t use that army to take charge of the kingdom,” Will says sharply. “Can you not see that I can make a difference? That with the right intentions, such terrible power can be used for good?”

“There’s no way to trust you,” says Elizabeth. “Cyprian was right to break the staff.”

“Cyprian signed his death sentence, along with countless others across the world, when he drank from the cup to follow me,” Will says, and Violet flinches. “He’s being turned by the same being that gave me my power, but you trust him. And I—”

Realizing his hands are shaking, he folds them behind his back. It’s terrible enough that he has to convince his best friend that he isn’t the genocidal murderer his power paints him out to be, and that she doesn’t believe him, but to do it in front of Elizabeth as well feels nearly unbearable.

Beside him, James shifts on his feet, moving closer to Will’s side. The knot in his stomach eases slightly, as if by proximity, his presence is enough to comfort. It’s difficult to comprehend the audacity of Sarcean to force a being like James to become a creature of the dark when he has always so closely resembled the sun.

“Wouldn’t it be better to keep an eye on him instead of letting the two of us run off and murder babies?” James says, cocking his head to the side with what Will knows is a mocking grin. “As far as I see it, this is a pretty good deal for you guys. Will has a lot of power, but he’s the one taking a knee to you. A king deferring to a lion. Huh. Never before seen.”

“Please,” Will says, and in that moment, he isn’t quite sure what he’s asking for—mercy; forgiveness; the second chance he’s never been offered in his life before James; a friend—but the word trails out between them, a wavering, vulnerable, foolish plea.

Violet sighs deeply, closing her eyes so tightly that Will can see the way her skin wrinkles around her apprehension, and then she says, “Elizabeth, I know you aren’t going to like this, but I think we should give him a chance.”

Relief blows through Will as absolutely as a tornado whittles the earth to its core. He almost sags with it. As terrible as it is that they know, at least he doesn’t have to figure this out with only James by his side, company that’s only been guaranteed by the collar. He still remembers his mother’s fingers at his throat, as terrible and cleaving as if they had been knives. Sometimes at night, he wakes with a start, feeling them close around his neck again.

Elizabeth gasps and immediately begins arguing, this time with Violet. Weary, Will turns to James, who looks as leisurely as he typically does. A shocking relief in the damp darkness of the tent, a reprieve dipped in gold leaf. James raises one eyebrow when Will does not look away, though he can detect a faint flush lining his cheekbones the longer the gaze lasts.

“James,” Will whispers, and that one word is enough. James’ gaze narrows in understanding, not quite sympathy, but the shuddering shared disbelief of not being turned away.

James scoffs, reaching up to casually rearrange the collar of Will’s shirt, which he knows for a fact does not require any fixing. “What, did you think they wouldn’t agree? You’re Will. You’ve always been convincing, and I’m sure you’re aware of that. Besides, how could they not? You’re impossible not to love.”

The parting sentence, quiet as James’ voice had grown softer through the course of his words, slips against Will’s cheek as tenderly as water. A small sound escapes his lips; a hitching of breath. It glances against his skin, drips into the soil underneath their boots. Will stares at James, wishing that the words were true. Wishing that the collar, the damning, gleaming bit of gold that renders each statement out of James’ mouth a little haunted from the past, had never been discovered in the first place.

“FINE,” Elizabeth says, louder than the rest of the conversation had been, and the two of them look to the side, startled. She stands with her arms crossed, looking every bit the petulant child she should’ve been before she got taken into the mess. “He stays. For now. Just know that Visander will NOT be happy about it, and neither will I. I’m going to have to listen to him ramble on about how much he wants to put that blade of his through his neck, and it’s going to be all your fault.” She glares at him.

“I’m telling you,” Will says seriously, “I do not intend to make a liar out of him. He can kill me, but only once we’re through with this.”

James shoots him a look that he can feel even without turning back to him, but Will ignores it, following Violet and Elizabeth out of the tent and under the graying sky, one foot after the other into the sodden dirt as he walks into what he is sure will be the beginning of the end.

They leave the dig. Deciding that it would be supremely Dark King-esque to retain control over those with the brand, Will lets all of them free, though he is not so much of a fool as to release them without any restraints. In the end, after a long conversation between him, Violet, and Tom, they leave Tom to act in Sinclair’s stead, covering up his death and appointing Tom as his spokesperson. It’s a solution that will reach its breaking point in due time, but it will have to hold for now.

The plan to defeat Sarcean is simple. With James’ powers, they reopen the gate back to the Hall, where they will explore the remaining gate and hope to find a lead there. And—that’s about as much of a plan they’ve got.

In the end, with all of the planning and unease they arm themselves with, it’s simple. Killing what remains of Sarcean is easy. A wrench, a twist—with a great heaving, the earth shuddering greatly under the force of his power, something inside Will simply snaps, and the Reborn crumble.

The trouble after that comes with what becomes of Will.

Collapsed onto his knees, he struggles to catch his breath as the shouts around him die down. Somewhere before him, he hears a gasp from James and a soft clinking sound as what he can presume is the collar falls to the ground. Then after that, there is a stunned, still silence, one so quiet that he almost expects the world to break once more.

It doesn’t. Instead, Violet laughs, one short, disbelieving huff, and then the rest of them—Cyprian, Elizabeth, Visander, Tom—all break the silence, swiveling about. It smells of ash, like broken things. Will keeps his eyes closed. It’s as if he can feel his heart pounding in every facet of his body, through every limb. There’s an aching emptiness in his chest that alarms him, terrified of the idea that Sarcean had taken up so much space in his being that he would be able to mourn his loss. He feels weak without him, though that could also be from the tremendous amount of power he’d had to exert—only time will tell. Time that he doesn’t have.

Will braces himself, staggering to his knees. He wipes off a dripping of blood from his mouth, uncaring when it doubtlessly smears across his chin, a bright crimson stain of guilt. “Kill me,” he manages, making his way toward Violet. “We’ve done it. Now it’s time to fulfill your end of the deal. Kill me.”

Violet looks at him, horrified as she had been when they first cracked open the ancient kingdom. “What?” she says, a short twist of incredulous amusement in her voice. “Will, I’m not going to do that.”

Will pauses to catch his breath, a rasp in his throat. “You said you would.” He turns to Visander next, who still wields Ekthalion like a threat. “You’ll do it.”

Visander looks triumphant.

“No!” Violet cries, dashing in front of him. She frowns at him, her eyes surveying him up and down. She’s bedraggled, her clothing torn in places, dark matter smeared across the shield forgotten in one hand. He figures he must look worse. He feels worse, at least. “Look at you. You’re delirious; you’re not in the right mind.”

“I,” Will begins, swaying on his feet, and then the darkness ribbing the edges of his vision threatens to cloud the whole world in black. He feels himself pitch forward, hears a shout, but instead of hitting the dirt, there’s only—James.

James, staring down at him in where he’d caught him in his arms, his eyes unreadable, his eyebrows furrowed. Will can’t help it—he looks to his throat, which gleams pristine, bare, beautiful. Naked. The collar is off.

His eyes flick back to his face, desperate to scour the emotion from the shape of his mouth, looking for princely disgust, fury, haunting sorrow—anything, anything but the blank nothingness he’s met with. Strangely, a boy could look so beautiful when the world is meant to be ending. But James has never looked as though he belongs to this world, an unearthly being. It was cruel of Sarcean to drag him back to the mortal plain. Cruel of Will to wrest him into this life, too. Cruelty, Will is good at. It may be the only thing at which he excels.

“Please,” Will whispers, so quietly that he’s almost not sure that James hears it until he sees the plea register briefly in the other’s eyes, a luminous reflection of bitter pain, and then the world goes dark.

Will comes to amid the swaying glow of amber light.

His head pounds as if he’d drunk an entire bottle of the whiskey the men at the docks used to pass around, and when he blinks, somehow he can feel it all the way through his body, heavy as his limbs. Still, he pries his eyes open anyway, disconcerted. Above him is a set of arched wooden beams scattered with the same wavering glow he now recognizes as lamplight—he’s inside, then.

Slowly, as if recollecting his senses one by one, he becomes aware of the din around him; quiet debate, fluctuating up and down the way passion spikes and recedes, still thinking Will to be unconscious. There’s the clear, high sound of Katherine’s lilt with Visander’s words, Cyprian’s low inflection, even what seems to be Devon’s reedy timbre—and threading through it all, Violet’s familiar, impossible voice.

Where’s James?

The thought spurs him into clear waking, the first quietly guttural gasp that clears his throat, feeling as though it's ripping the membrane. He sits up, wincing as his head settles, and when he looks up, it’s to the sight of everybody going quiet to stare at him. “Hello,” Will rasps. “Don’t mind me.”

“Oh great, he’s awake,” says Visander. “Now he can make his case as to why he should stay alive.”

Violet, who had gotten half out of her seat upon seeing him, turns so viciously that her hair whips around her shoulders. “We’re not killing him because he saved the world, and he did exactly what he said he would do, which was to use his power for good.”

A quick scan of the room reveals to Will that James isn’t in the room. Disconcertingly, he feels an ache twinge in his chest—where is he? Had he left before Will had awoken, before he knew if he would wake? Or did he also suffer similar consequences as Will, lying elsewhere in this inn as he recuperates?

“We don’t know if he has residual power or what he would do with it,” Cyprian says from the other side of the table. His eyes, dark, seem to pin Will against the chair he’d awoken in. “He’s—” Cyprian bites his lip, looks away. “I don’t want to say it, but it’s similar to the Steward oaths. We kill each other before we lose our sense of who we are to prevent the power from turning us.”

Violet swings toward Cyprian, swaying unsteadily on her feet. To Will’s surprise, there are tears in her eyes, glossy luminescence trapped between her eyelashes. “Cyprian,” she says, a dangerous twist to her voice, “I know you are not suggesting that we kill my best friend right now. You know him. You love him, too. Don’t throw that away for a Steward ideal.”

Will remembers the taste of the words I’m Will dying on his lips, rotten. He swallows, growing unease rising in his body. There’s a slight ringing in his ears.

“I don’t want to kill him, either!” Cyprian bursts, jumping to his feet. Will can tell they’ve been having this argument for however long he’s been unconscious, running the same grooves in the conversation. His chest is heaving with effort. “Do you think I want to lose somebody else?”

“If you won’t, then I will,” Visander says, standing, and both of them turn on him.

“Where’s James?” Will inquires, wobbling as he gets to his feet. Not letting it show on his face, he stomachs the sudden dizzy spell instead, casting his gaze wildly around the eclectic mix of fabric-lined chairs and odd wooden stools for something to focus his vision on.

“He went out a while ago,” Violet says, turning to him with an unbearably gentle look on her face. It makes the twinge in his chest so much worse with the knowledge of what he’s going to do. He doesn’t deserve her mercy or her arguments for his sake. “Said he wanted some air.”

Will swallows, straightening to the best of his ability. He hadn’t wanted to leave without seeing James again, even if only for a brief moment, even if now he hated him. He hadn’t wanted to leave without—

“I’m going to go find him and a glass of water,” Will mutters. The world is a little steadier now, even though his muscles ache with every movement. At least he no longer feels as though he’s going to pass out again. He’ll need his strength.

The hallway, when he steps out into it, is thankfully empty. The door swings shut behind him, heavy with omen, and when it does, the silence that greets him is startling. It hadn’t been very long between the day he killed Sinclair and the moment he extinguished the army, but it had stretched on for what seemed to be years, the days stumbling over each other into an endless blur of motion. And in the background of all that, he had gotten used to the sound of bickering, conversation that carried even without a topic. There were even times when it made him feel normal.

Now, he sucks in a lungful of air, squaring his shoulders and venturing deeper into the silence. He’d been on his own for a time following his mother’s death; he’ll just have to remember how it felt to navigate that scraping loneliness, if only for a little while. It’s not a familiar concept.

Outside, Valdithar awaits him in the stables—a rush of relief, then, that he wouldn’t have to abandon all that he’d come to cherish. His steed whinnies when he draws close, huffing when he unlocks the gate and leads him out. It feels wrong to set off without even a bag slung over his shoulder, but he hadn’t had any possessions to begin with. It feels even worse to leave without saying goodbye now that he has people to give his farewells to.

And James. Will pushes down the nauseating ache at the thought, muscling it to the deepest depths of himself where his mother still shrieks a mournful cry: don’t hurt my girls. Deeper, still, into a hastily assembled box to lock away his most grievous sins with the memory of running his fingers along golden gooseflesh and the look of his hair in the daring moonlight and how painful it had been when he finally admitted to himself that he was in love with James.

The damp morning blinks back at him when he looks past the narrow, stonewalled buildings into the countryside. It’s almost ironic that they had ended up back in England, where they first set off with the kind of determination only earned alongside murderous intent, but it works out for Will. It only means he doesn’t have to pay for the ship’s fare after all.

With one uncharacteristically sentimental glance back toward the quiet inn squatting amongst a small town only barely waking up around the world shifting, knowing that everybody he has left to love will remain here, Will digs his heels into Valdithar’s flanks and leaves.

Will doesn’t exactly have a normal to return to—the last year has been strange, existing outside the realm of what should be reality—and the idea of living as he had with his mother, huddled in street corners, staying with strangers who knew his mother’s laugh but whom he could otherwise discern no other obvious connection, working an odd string of jobs, has no appeal. He has little taste for the idea, repugnant as the slick of oil on the tongue, even if all he needs is a way to whittle away his remaining days.

There is hardly any thought for little else in his mind. No more time for schooling, nor would he find a way to fund it without working himself to death—he had quietly come of age during the arduous struggle to overcome the Dark, and is now too old to apprentice for any meaningful position.

Will has never thought very much about his future, at least not while he was still attached to his mother. Time had seemed very narrow, then. He cannot fathom the seventeen years he had spent in her company now; in comparison, they seem futile, wasted. He does not know what kept her from killing him sooner. Sentiment, perhaps. A useless, unneeded thing. Maybe she determined that as long as she could keep the truth from him, the longer she could keep it from the world—better him than some other reborn child who could have fallen into the wrong hands. Desperation is the pill that cures those who think they need it.

He tries to keep himself from thinking of the very things that desperation and sentiment had driven him to do, the inane thoughts he’d had in the name of romance, the singular, frantic kiss he had shared with James before his fantasy tipped over its last grains of sand onto its glass bottom.

Time still seems very narrow, even now. It slips farther than a thought—Will blinks and a few days have passed, leaving him to walk Valdithar along the outskirts of a major city, easy enough to become invisible within and hard to trace. He doubts that the others will be able to find him. Even the connection that draws him to James has been severed. They would have to locate him the old-fashioned way, through sightings and word of mouth. But if he flattened himself sufficiently to slip through people’s teeth, then he would be untraceable.

He’s grown restless and almost hungry enough that the ration of bread and fruit he’d stored from the last shelter he’d pilfered from won’t last him any longer when he finds his last stop pinned against the wooden drawing boards of a nearby inn. A paltry, fluttering piece of paper with the corners torn and yellowed, displaying an employment opportunity.

Will pauses before the flyer for a moment, the city and the world blowing past him for those few, precious seconds, and then he enters the establishment to take the offer.

The call takes him further toward the mountains, a blustery, wind-blown area a horse-ride away from the foot of the peak. His job is simple—oversee an extension of the inn from the city, a tiny, cramped establishment that doesn’t seem as though it can house more than ten. On the occasion of visitors, he’s to act as an innkeeper would, providing meals and home services in return for pay, but so few venture this far that hardly anyone is up for the task except Will. A seldom-toured destination, it had existed first as a place for miners to sojourn briefly on their way to and from the mountain. It’s an origin story that reminds him rather ironically of his time spent at the dig.

The house itself is two-storied, a singular standing building with the outside packed with brick and stone. Squat, a dwelling that seems to cave in on itself with the years stacked on its roof. Not busy years by any means, but years nonetheless, time tumbling forward like a waterfall, the gravity of weightlessness something formidable.

Which is to say that it’s old, and it shows it. A fence limp enough that it can’t guard from any approaching figure surrounds the property, and outside there’s a short, scrubby garden that yields more weeds than fruit. The mountain hangs in the distance, an ever-loving shadow. Closer still is a small shed for the horses, the back storing feed he’s surprised to find hasn’t yet rotted. In the distance sits a well to draw water from.

The buckets for the well are found in the kitchen, naturally placed on the first floor, the open-faced oven spiraling right underneath the chimney. A long oaken table features in the dining area, the various scratches and lacerations telling their own stories of its visitors over the years. The second floor houses the bedrooms, five of them in total, and the corridor running the length of the house culminates in a six-paned window looking to the east along the faint, dizzy line of the horizon that promises the return to city life.

If Will requires anything, he’s meant to ride back into the city and inform the main inn of his needs. The idea of this mostly consists of trips to the market for eggs, meat, and milk. Mostly, however, it’s a job where he keeps to himself and is provided all of the means to do so—the kind of quiet, domestic life he’s never been afforded before.

There is much to take care of. He feels almost like a retiree at the ripe age of eighteen—he washes the sheets of every room, stripping quilted blankets and linens to hang them out in the back, takes care of an extraordinarily thick layer of dust that carpets the shelves, spends hours muddying his knees to tend to the overgrown garden. He scribbles inked lists on aged, thin paper of items he’ll purchase the next time he ventures in the city—seeds that will sprout on their own when it grows warm again, a large stash of soap, enough loose leaf tea to last him until spring, and only until spring.

It’s the tail end of autumn right now, the season dripping right into winter. The cold wastes no time to hide its teeth in the morning, nipping at the loose edges of the foundations and slipping through the kitchen when he eats his breakfast until he gets up and gets the fire going. The wind is narrower and more mean-spirited out here, seeking bare flesh, and sometimes, it will rain. Sometimes, when it rains, Will stands outside under the pour, feeling it hit his face, unmoving. Any sane person would find it unnerving. No sane person is out here this far from the city with nothing to greet them but the inn and the mountain face.

But Will likes it here, or he tolerates it just fine. Time is still thin for him, and grows more flimsy the longer it stretches out, at risk of being torn if he settles his hand too heavily over it. Best not to touch it all and allow it to whittle away on its own.

In the beginning, there is an entire week where Will learns how to cook, a long exercise in patience. Mostly, he sleeps a great deal, a luxury he is just now able to appreciate. Outside of that, he spends a bit of time foraging around the mountain itself, not venturing so far that he wouldn’t be able to find his way back before nightfall or high enough that he loses sight of the bottom. What he does find a short way away is a waterfall tucked innocuously within the vegetated right half of the mountain, a meander off the main trail and hidden unless followed by the noisy patter of water hitting stone. It’s a surprisingly steep drop, and he remains only long enough to memorize the route there before he returns to the house.

He can’t get the idea of that rocky height out of his mind for days after that for reasons he cannot explain. A relief, then, that there is nobody he has to explain himself to. Will speaks only when he returns to the city for shopping.

The vendors there began to recognize him around his third visit there, since he stops at all of the same stalls and is overly generous with his bills. In return, they call him boy and press their warm hands against his fingers when they exchange goods, and he smiles before he drifts on, never lingering long enough for anybody to truly come to recognize him.

When Will’s mind wanders to wonder after James, he kills the treacherous thought.

Will dreams. These are usually incomprehensible, typical as far as dreams go. He’s heard that such visions are to be taken as warnings from the subconscious or an omen for the future, but he doesn’t think much of the ones where all of the elderly women in the market are replaced with lizard heads, flicking their forked tongues at him when he purchases snakeskin and leathery ostrich eggs.

The others, however, are to some degree more unsettling. There are some nights where he spends hours turning corners on streets, the sky dark, the brick facade against the rain-slick city landscape damp, and at every twist there is a flash of golden hair and smartly fitting tunic that disappears no matter how fast he rounds the bend, until his lungs are sore from sprinting.

Other times, he wanders a forest alone, growing increasingly fearful as each path leads him further into the foliage—the only sign he gets that there exists an outside world is the spotted glimpse of the moon from above, shining in freckles from time to time in the soggy mulch. The whole time, Will instinctively knows that the trees are drawing the oxygen from his lungs to feast on it instead; each breath comes shorter than the last, tasting iron at the back end of each inhale, and then he falls, gasping, his head not quite spinning but wandering haphazard shapes around the tilting unreality until he wakes into his dark bedroom, breathing deeply just to remind himself that he can.

In the worst one yet, Will sits in the same room he’s fallen asleep in during the past month, perched on the edge of his bed but unnervingly conscious of a being standing behind him, one that disappears each time he glances behind him. It’s a nightmare ordinary for small children, except this time he’s fairly certain that the creature is himself, and yet, atypical of a nightmare, though hyperaware of the entity, he remains strangely calm.

The shadowed version of himself stalks near, settling just behind him on the linen duvet. The mattress deepens under the shared weight, a small depression near the base of his spine. His breath settles against Will’s cheek, blowing from behind—a passing whisper, one that comes across cool in temperature and smelling faintly of rot.

And then, slowly, through several iterations of the same dream, the copy of Will settles into his body and floods his bones; cradles his thin hands around Will’s wrought neck before squeezing suddenly and thoroughly; takes the antique earthenware vase sitting in the corner of the room, painted in clay-streaked red and greens, and cracks it open above his head, raining down in clouds of shattered porcelain and blood that flings across the covers in a macabre watercolor study.

After the last one, Will wakes with the distinct sound of glass rupturing to feel liquid pool over his arms, followed by a bright spark of pain. Fumbling for the lamp, the pull switch swings wildly when the light leaks from the desk to reveal that the damp feeling coating his forearms is blood. The glass he had set on his bedside table now lies splintered against the sheets, a red as crimson as paint splattered around the outline of his arms, rendering a grotesque picture.

For several moments, Will stares down at himself uncomprehending—wondering how he had smashed it over his body while asleep, watching a small dribble of blood against his left wrist lazily drip down the fold of skin in deep rivulets—before he springs up, hurrying downstairs to the kitchen to watch the water rinse pale pink down the sink over his skin.

He laughs, a sharp, rough sound that punctures the early morning. The artificial yellow light of the kitchen bleaches his hair a temporary white when it bounces off his head, and he can feel the sting now, the cuts along his arm mostly shallow and scattered with only a few that had pushed deeper, which had been the source of most of the blood. It had appeared worse than it truly was.

It’s ridiculous, is what it is, so absurd that it’s almost amusing—Will wonders briefly if he’s losing his mind to dream of himself being the cause of his death, whether it’s some solitude-driven hallucination or a deeper manifestation, but something about watching himself bleed reminds him of Sarcean. The part of himself that he’d killed, a haunting memory, one that crawls under his skin on his back as if waiting for him to finish the job.

The wounds don’t even truly hurt, is the thing. The pain fades away the deeper Will pushes his fingers against the lacerations, replaced by the white noise stifling everything else in the back of his head. He finds the promise of hurt oddly enticing now that he’s no longer escaping the threat of death with every move he makes. Coaxed into accepting its constant presence, it’s as if he’s turned to seeking it out in its absence.

That should scare him. Will has spent over a year terrified of being discovered, trying to prove he is who he says he is, but instead, it instills in him a certain kind of calm. It’s a privilege, almost, to have the option to face the oppressive white blankness. To choose that, instead, knowing that he was brought into the world by a mother who placed herself as far away as possible from him until he was practically alone, and that he would leave alone as well. James, Violet, Cyprian—all of that had been mere indulgence.

Clutching his arm, Will presses his hand into the gashes that would have oozed blood around his fingers if he hadn’t already cleaned the wound until he ceases feeling entirely. He should be scared, but with each day that he spends by the mountains as winter encroaches, the storm leaves a dusting of snow across the oppressive heat of his mind, piling upon itself. The pain is almost a comfort. A release. At the very least, it serves as a purpose to have been a Reborn of Sarcean’s power—a promise, once and for all, to end the bloodline.

For don’t you know that for a power as dark as his, it must end with the ceremony that it began with?

But Will used that power for a different purpose. He used it for good. And now he will shape it with his hands, turn what was never meant to be made malleable, pristine, and he will end quietly, dwindling away, one last oath in the name of something beautiful.

He spends two hours scrubbing the duvet until the stains come out.

Winter introduces itself to gray England with all the quiet grace of a swinging bat. As if appearing overnight, Will wakes to find the bottom half of the house so cold that the blue ceramic water pitcher he’d left on the granite counter is frigid to the touch and ice-solid inside, stubborn when he turns it over and nothing drips out.

It had come both too soon and so slowly that it felt he had waited an eternity for the season to set in. If nobody had bothered him before, then certainly hardly anybody will make the trek out here now, and it will be as it should be, back when Will was insignificant enough and enabled by his ignorance to not make an impression on anybody or anything.

The season turning is also a sign. Will makes all of the necessary preparations. He rewashes all of the sheets once more, even those from the rooms that haven’t been slept in. He’d stayed long enough in the property for the shelves lined with faux china dishes and handmade trinkets have collected a minute layer of dust once more that he removes with meticulous precision. It feels good to devote himself to something, to have one aspect of his life on earth retain its immaculateness even if the cupboards are missing a singular water glass.

He leaves the key in one of the two terracotta pots lining the front entrance; come spring, they will have sprouted on their own, the seeds tucked into the moist soil fed by rain and persistent sunshine. For now, one weighs a little heavier with curled, rusted iron until rediscovery.

The frozen earth crunches underneath Will’s boots in a vaguely satisfying way as he leaves the house and ventures toward the mountain. The trail opens itself up before him in a snaking lane of browned grass, setting off toward the peak. Will takes the right at the fork he’s come to know intimately—a path more obscured, less tread on by those who aren’t him.

It leads him back to the waterfall he’d discovered in the first couple of weeks he began tending to the property. Now that winter has properly made its place at the hearth, however, the pounding weight of water has been reduced to a pitiful trickle, the stream trapped within a frozen, glossy luminance. Almost the entire thing has cooled over, though the froth has iced as well, so he can’t see beneath the surface, the water turned into an opaque white.

The silence that greets him is absolute, almost frightening. The waterfall looks as though it was frozen mid-roar, jaw left gaping until spring returns. Will can almost hear the creaking echo of it when he closes his eyes. It’s trapped entire lives under its surface. Draws them near through polar attraction, whispering, coaxing. Will edges nearer to the ledge before settling right where the grass usually meets the stream, everything now a pale, frosted blue in the solemn solace of the mountain.

It’s only when the chill has sunken into his bones to worm alongside his veins, the silence as paralyzing as the temperature, that Will finally stands. It feels as though his muscles creak with the movement, everything slowed by the frost. Even his heart rate is astoundingly tempered.

A branch snaps somewhere behind him, the noise translated between the trees stamping the forest, but Will doesn’t look back. There are few animals out here at this time of the year, but he had observed deer tracks in the frozen grass, trampled through the green into fresh mud. Will’s prints will end here, disappearing into nothingness come spring. It will be a mystery if anybody comes to think of it in that way.

Something else crunches, another sound like a sigh, but he still doesn’t look anywhere but forward—the waterfall, its excruciating stillness, is impossible to tear his eyes away from. Captivating and intolerable. Will steps forward, one foot hovering over the air, the ground a far fantasy away from him; his stability a concept long lost from him, dissipating the moment Katherine had lit up the tree all of those months ago. 

He teeters. It was always going to end like this. Will would never have become anybody else. The hopelessness of a dream like that, futile as it is, seems almost laughable now. But all is silent now.

Will closes his eyes, his suspended leg pitching forward—

“Will!”

A shout rips through the woods in a voice so inconceivable that it wrenches Will’s eyes open again, his vision smearing into a smatter of blue as a hand encloses around his wrist and yanks him backward against a warm chest, vertigo making his head smart as he tries to breathe around the sudden congestion in his throat.

James. It has to be; Will would recognize his voice even if they had never even met in this life, would have turned instinctively to respond to any call, any plea. James’ heart, which is pressed against Will’s back, is beating wilder than Will thought possible, so alive that it’s almost unbearable.

“I know you weren’t about to do what it looked like you were doing,” James says, his voice so near that Will realizes he has his mouth pressed against the back of his head as if convincing himself that they’re touching. Despite the vaguely teasing words, Will can hear thin fear in his voice, so choked that it sounds as if James can’t believe it himself.

Will shuts his eyes so tightly that a headache sets in. “You aren’t supposed to be here,” he says, and he finds himself so close to tears that it shocks him, stripping away at the cold seeping through his body. “Nobody was. How did you even find me?”

James says, “Will.” He’s not unaware of the fact that James is slowly walking the both of them away from the ledge, retreating back towards the path. “Will,” James says again, like calling his name isn’t for Will but for himself.

Will pulls himself away, slowly so that James knows he won’t break free and suddenly leap away. Still, the hold James keeps on his wrist is so tight that it almost hurts, his thumb digging into the bone. He meets James’ gaze, and looking at his face—as beautiful as he last saw him, if not more so, his blue eyes so clear, his normally confident mouth twisted into a sadness so potent that it’s angular—makes his head feel full of static. He’s so in love with James that it’s almost painful.

“Did you really think that I wouldn’t find you?” James asks. Yes. His voice doesn’t sound quite normal yet; his eyes are still flared in fear. “Come on, Will, you should know better than that. I need… I need you, Will.”

“No, you don’t,” Will says, suddenly exhausted, and he tears his hand from James' grip, though he does return reluctantly to the path, forging ahead to return to the house with a sigh. James scrambles to follow, walking swiftly to keep step with him, his eyes intent. “You don’t need me, James.”

“I do,” James says. Whenever he’s insistent like this, every word that comes from his mouth sounds like a truth. “Everybody needs somebody, or needs to need someone, if that makes sense, and that person for me is you.”

Will just shakes his head. A thought strikes him, one so harrowing his head clears a little more. “Are the others with you?”

“No,” says James. Relief fills Will slowly like a warming stream trickling back into season. “I—well, to be truthful, I ditched them as well, but at least I left them a note. Not like a certain someone here.”

“You weren’t supposed to find me,” Will repeats tiredly, and this time, James just grins.

“I can’t remember the last time I did something I was supposed to,” he says, and even Will, disoriented as he is, can recognize the humor.

He looks upward, craning his neck back to an almost painful position to stare up at the sky. Through the barren trees, their leaves long having fled before the cold could uproot them at the stem, the open expanse gazes back at him with its blank whiteness, but the clouds have leached away since he first set off this morning. All that they leave is the light: blinding, resplendent, intolerable.

When they emerge from the forest, the tinseled, twisting cobweb of shadows peeling off their faces, the plain is so pristine it’s almost sharp. It’s as if winter has slowed time so immensely that it’s difficult to move forward, slogging through iced seconds and minutes. The house cuts a whetted outline into the horizon. The chimney spire noticeably lacks its usual spiral of smoke; Will did not think he would return. A quiet distance away, in the small shed set up out of cobbled gray stone and peeling wooden beams, he can make out a second horse stabled beside Valdithar.

Clearly, James has assumed—thinks—that he’ll be staying for longer than Will can tolerate. Glancing beside him, he can see that James isn’t carrying anything on him, had simply ventured into the woods alone. What exactly had he been expecting to discover?

“I thought about breaking in,” James says pleasantly, “and then I realized that you conveniently left the key in the flowerpot, so I let myself in.”

Will shakes his head, sighing as he leads them through the graveled path through the yard, unlatching the rusted gate before the entrance. The door, when they approach it, isn’t even closed, the paint-flaked edges left ajar. He turns with a raised eyebrow at James, who just looks sheepish. “I was going to ask for my key back to let us in, but it seems that a ghost thought ahead for us. How fortunate.”

“I must have forgotten,” says James, following Will into the parlor. “I was in a rush.”

The gravity of those words sinks in posthumously, a slow, curling dread that makes the back of his neck buzz unpleasantly. He can picture it in his mind—James letting himself through the door, calling Will’s name to receive no response, making his way through the first floor, the fireplace stifled, the laundry neatly stacked on the sofa, and then blazing through the upstairs portion of the house only to find every room empty. No Will, and Valdithar safely harbored in the stables with a share of feed large enough to last him until the next messenger visits. A vacancy that, Will can now admit, terrifies in its emptiness.

It’s easy to see now how that had led James to venture into the woods, especially if Will’s fresh shoe prints led the way through the frosted ground—nobody else has come remotely near since Will has taken up residence. The only person to meander through the desolate peaks, and yet only the memory of his presence is left behind, halfway to twisting into a ghost, one harsh exhale away from flickering out.

“It’s cold in here,” James remarks.

“I wasn’t expecting guests,” Will replies, his words leaving him in foggy clouds. Indifferently, James waves his right hand in the direction of the chimney, and a fire blooms to life, heat filling the room with artificial speed. Sitting against the fireplace is James’ pack, a familiar sight made of weathered, crinkled leather and iron buckles—a bold move, overpresumptuous. Just the sight of it is almost devastating in its own right.

Candidly, James begins to remove his winter regalia, shucking off a large-fitting cashmere coat he must have purchased in the city sometime since Will last saw him. He throws it over the closest chair, blanketing the back in beige, the shoulders padded with wood.

Even with the fire smoldering thickly in the corner of the room, Will still feels the cold inside of his body, impossible to burn out, a stain so deep that not even ash could black it out. Sarcean’s fingers passing over his body, digging with knife-tipped fingernails to pry under his skin, implanting an obsolete shadow. Just being inside of himself makes him want to run, an urge impassable even if he tore all of his skin to razor flesh. It’s the quiet of this house that has gotten to him. It had created space for Will to remember. A bloated evil; so much filth under his tongue.

“So, what do you do around here?” James asks, dropping into a suede armchair. The cushion creaks under his body, announcing the weight of his entrance. Will has never sat in that seat before, but it bends to James’ will, as things so often do, wanting to be close. He finds himself drifting closer and restrains himself from retreating farther back against the kitchen counter, the thin corner of the marbled surface digging into the small of his bony back.

“Don’t be so flippant, James,” Will says, a hard edge to his voice. James straightens at the command, a movement that would have been unnoticeable to anybody else but is painfully obvious to him. He turns, gripping the underside of the counter with his fingers and staring into the peeling wallpaper. “You have the freedom to choose your own life now, and you chose to come here? Your duty has been fulfilled. You and I, we have no more business together.”

“Will.” Just hearing his name spoken feels as though he’s being shattered; every word that drips from James’ lips flays him into the thinnest layers of himself, surfacing years of uncertainty and hollow unwantedness. “Don’t pretend as if we had a strictly professional relationship.”

“I’m not saying we—” Will shakes his head as if he can rid himself of the doubt that James swept in with him and his long coat, sighs. “We don’t know each other. We have never known each other without the influence of our predecessors and the collar pulling the strings of our every move.”

“I know who you are, Will,” James says softly, and the echo of those words, once so terrible, shakes Will, his next breath shuddering as it floods his chest. “I don’t need any magic to tell me that. Sarcean was wrong. He can’t reach us anymore.”

“You’ve barely had the collar off for a few weeks,” Will bites out, hating the words even as they glance off his teeth. “You don’t know what you want.”

“I thought you were through with telling me what I am,” James says.

Will turns again viciously, and this time when their gazes meet, James’ eyes turn gray-blue, narrow and dark. He’s not smiling. One hand perched on the arm of the chair trembles almost imperceptibly, but Will, being so attuned to the other’s presence, feels it shudder like an aftershock rippling through the earth.

“I’m not trying to tell you to do anything,” Will says softly. “I just think that you would be better off figuring that out with some distance from me. And I—”

James stands suddenly, breaking their frozen stances. He strides over to Will, crossing the self-imposed gulf between them. Will flinches when he brings one hand up, bypassing every one of his limbs to rest lightly underneath the peak of his chin, a child’s cradle.

“What is this really about, Will?” James asks, the gentle quality of his voice unbearable. It sickens. James’ undue kindness swaddles Will against the crackling wildness of reality, and now he waits patiently for it to fall away, as most things do. He stands so close that Will, backed all the way against the counter, has nowhere further to run, elbows bowed and fingers arched against the stone. His face so near and impossible. The bow of his lips, reddened from the cold. The arch of his eyebrows, so often imperious, now softened with the amenity of mellow, misplaced grief. Will wants to kiss him.

“I don’t know if I can have this conversation right now,” says Will, and even he can hear how taut his voice sounds, grating against his ears, on the verge of collapse. His legs feel weak, weightless, as though they’ll crumble underneath him. When he closes his eyes, he can feel how it felt in that long moment when he was untethered to the earth and had surrendered his entirety to the air, to nothingness.

Even while hating himself for it, he wrenches away from James’ grasp, missing the warmth as soon as the cool air rushes to take his place. Every iota of distance ever introduced between them has been Will’s fault. It’s Will who has the secrets, Will who harbored the return of ancient evil, Will who should have jumped before anybody could find him in time to catch him. He hadn’t asked for James’ return; it doesn’t matter if he wanted it.

“Take your pick of any of the bedrooms upstairs,” Will says, starting for the staircase, not knowing where he’s headed—anywhere away from James. “I just washed the sheets for all of them. It’s too late in the day now, but you can head back into the city tomorrow morning before another cold spell comes on.”

“Will,” James calls when Will is halfway up the stairs, pausing with one hand settled onto the polished banister. “Did you mean it?”

There is no question what it James is referring to, the topic they’d been talking around this entire time, so bloated in its urgency that it fills the room to the point that Will has to stop and remind himself how to breathe, manually pry his lungs open to receive oxygen. He feels trapped by it, the very thought of it, how near death sweeps in through the quiet and rakes its hand through his scalp, his body so in want of company that he would prefer ruin to solitude.

“Visander wanted to do it anyway.” The words, terrible as they are, come up like gravel in his mouth. “I had decided that I would not burden others with actions I can carry out by myself.” He starts up the stairs again.

He can hear James move at the words, a mild flurry of his shoes scraping against the floor and the whipping of a coat. “Is that really what you want?”

Will stares at his hands; he can see right through his palms, the flesh flickering before his eyes. His entire existence has been transactional. Above all, Will has been weaned as a weapon, and by dulling his tip, he’s severed his use. And still, it is better to have no utility at all if his destiny was to kill. Now, stripped of even that and left only with the magic that makes his blood run darker than most, his very corporeality seems flimsy, as if existing only when touched.

“It would be preferable.”

Now finally silenced, Will leaves James on the lower floor, feeling his gaze pursue him until he vanishes beyond the curve, swallowed by emptiness.

Morning finds James perched outside on the step before the path leading away from the house, staring absently out toward the direction of the woods with a sheared apple core in his fingers, thin and barely a speck of red left.

Will, having opened the door with the great, ancient heaving of heavy wood and hinges in need of oil, stands behind him, looking above him. “Are you liking my fruit? I just bought those last weekend when I rode into the city.”

“You weren’t going to eat it, anyway,” James says, and the starkness of it almost tips Will right over from where he’s leaning against the door frame, pitching forward for a millisecond before he catches himself. “Ah, so you do interact with the public after all. I wondered if you were a true recluse.”

Will probably wouldn’t have waited as long as he did if he hadn’t mingled with other people, brief as it was. Besides, it had been nice to drift through the crowd, jostling against strangers and bumping elbows just to remind himself that he was real, and nicer still when the sellers he frequented—bakers, mostly—told him to come back the following week with a crooked smile, as honest as sincerity could be.

Will hesitates, and then he lowers himself beside James, lurching forward to lean against his thighs as he stares out toward the gray, contemplative horizon. “Honestly, it was odd not talking to anybody at all. After too long with anybody, you'd even get used to an ancient, undead warrior whining about his ancient, undead grudges and a small child who hates you.”

“I’m going to take that sentiment as you saying that you missed me,” James declares, directing his grin up as an offering to the sky, and Will huffs a laugh, looking the opposite direction. Sometimes even being in his presence is difficult, suffocating. Not today, even though the smog creeps over him, receding when he pays it too much attention. Today, he feels cleaner being in James’ presence.

“I did,” Will says, the words half-spoken into the sleeves of his loose button-down, cotton absorbing the sound as he rests his cheek the other way. He can hear James start at the words, the faint rustle of his body readjusting, and somehow he knows that James is looking at him, a gaze that would be just as indiscernible if Will were watching back.

The slight clap of palms hitting stone rings out; Will looks back to see James steadying himself with his hands behind his back, his body a perfect, sharp angle. Needless in its allure. “Well, you’re not much of a liar, so I’ll accept those words entirely as the compliment that they are.”

James utterly baffles Will, a golden, slippery smoke-figure of a conundrum. “I am a liar,” Will says dryly. “I spent months hiding my true identity from everybody around me out of fear, and that ended up blowing up in my face anyway.”

James hums, a thin sound that resonates in the limp air. A strand of hair sits over his nose in a flawless curve that Will longs to brush away. “There’s a difference between somebody who’s dishonest and somebody who’s a liar,” James says nonsensically. “You only kept it hidden because people would act exactly as you predicted they would. It’s almost like how I didn’t tell anybody about the collar. I mean, a magical mechanism that would turn me into Sarcean’s sycophant? The knowledge of that is powerful as it is.”

“That’s different,” says Will, shaking his head, feeling his doubt spring from him like dipping flower heads. “I was Sarcean, until I killed him. I existed as a guarantee that evil would continue to plague humankind, the slipslide of eternity. You had the darkness shackled around your neck; it was inside of me. The fact that I would not tell anyone is proof of this selfishness. I knew that if I must die by the hand of somebody I loved, I wanted to do something with it first. To extend the farce was to play right into his hand. Into the filth hewn through my destiny. I can’t get it out. I…”

“You escaped, Will,” James whispers, the sentiment one that Will is not sure he deserves to hear. He fears that the scourge hasn’t entirely been thrust from his soul, worried that instead it had never been an external source, but a state of being. “You are Will, not anybody else. The truth would have destroyed everything at the time. It almost destroyed everything when it came out. But the truth now is that you are Will, and all you have ever tried to be is good.”

Hunched in on himself, heels of his shoes tapping against the corner of the step, Will gazes over at James stretched out, languid confidence. Thinking about how James had gotten so good at pretending hurts. Will had almost been killed by his mother at seventeen, but James was driven into the abrupt reality of a society driven by fear ten years before that.

“You are a fool, then,” Will manages, wishing that he’d never made the comment at all, if only for the fact that James would have left the issue alone if he didn’t have anything to latch onto. Will and his mouth. Will and his lapping desire to be desired. He’d once been skillful at prying conversation out of others instead of speaking himself.

“I suppose I am only a fool to give myself over to you a second time,” James says, carving Will hollow with a precision that should terrify him. It does terrify him.

Will says, “James.” He fights to swallow an impending, dreadful surge of want. The ease with which James commands his affection is equal parts admirable and alarming, an equivocal golden scale of conflict. The truth escapes James so easily when he’s with Will. He wants to bottle it, cap it with his lips.

“Somebody out there would find it funny that I got the collar taken off just to run back to you,” James muses. He throws the words out carelessly, the only listeners being Will and the open sky. “Probably Sarcean. Sarcean would think it hilarious.”

“I don’t care what Sarcean has to think,” Will whispers, a mantra he’s recited to keep himself sane with the hope that it will thrum so deeply in his bones that it becomes truth. Sarcean already has such immense influence over Will that at times, he feared that his love for James stemmed from his ancient obsession.

He takes a deep breath, holding its bulbous intrusion in his chest until it feels so solid that it’s irretrievable. When it releases, it leaves him emptied. “When are you leaving? It’s not a long ride by horseback, but the sun leaves earlier and earlier this time of the year.”

James pauses. Out of the corner of his eye, Will can see him looking back at him, though he surprisingly doesn’t look as wounded as he would have presumed. Instead, he appears decidedly thoughtful, running the question over his teeth with his tongue.

“I’m not going to leave,” says James, and a pressure pops suddenly behind Will’s ears, flooding his senses with an aggrieved layer of intensity. It is perfectly wretched how badly Will wants to let James stay.

James stretches his head backward as he closes his eyes, dimpled throat going golden when thrown into relief. “I like it here. It’s rather peaceful, you know? And you’ve got all those bedrooms with no one to occupy them. I figure that I’ll keep you company. Here’s the biggest plus: I like you, Will, a lot. If you didn’t like me, you wouldn’t look at me the way you do.” At the words, Will tears his eyes away and sternly refocuses them on a stubborn weed pushing its velvet-green leaves through the patch of brown and dying grass. “Seems like a sweet deal to me.”

“The world would like you better living out there instead of shut up on the mountainside.” Will squeezes the sentence through the strain of his own self-control.

“I could say the same as you,” James counters, which immediately sets Will’s head shaking. “Don’t make that face.”

Will turns back to James to see that he’s opened his eyes again, staring into him with a brazenly cool gaze, sifting through all the layers of himself to strike the heart. “I’m not making a face.”

“You’re always making a face, darling, that’s what faces do.” Will’s heart thumps at the endearment, spurred to life by the fondness curling off James’ words. “If you’re not going to leave, then I’ll stay with you. The others can sit tight for now. I told them I was embroiled in deeply serious business and that they shouldn’t wait for me. I’m not sure what they’re busy with now, but they can start with putting Visander in a rehabilitation institute so he can become more ladylike.”

Defeating Sarcean is almost as much a cruelty as it was a kindness, for most of them have nothing to return to—torn from the world before ordinary could be established, or thrust into a life of ideals that distinguished itself for its abnormality in a land of humans. To think of the rest of the group as aimless as Will is forces a wash of fresh guilt over his body. But at least they have each other. Will only has—

James, who lets his stare remain far longer than what is proper, even if they never have been proper to begin with. James, who followed Will even after he made himself untraceable, riding deep into the mountains to prevent him from spiraling. James, whom Will loves so desperately that he knows that love is the reason he should keep his distance.

“You don’t have to remain with me,” Will says dully. “I’m stuck. It feels like I can’t move forward, one foot always in the past. James, your destiny has literally always been brighter than mine has. There’s no reason to ground it here, where nothing waits for you.”

“But you’re here,” says James, and god, is he aware of the ragged opening that the words cleave straight through Will? If he were, would he still say them? “I don’t want to go living the grand life you think I was made for if it isn’t with you, at least for a little bit. At least to say that we tried. Will, don’t you think that there’s more waiting for you, too?”

“No,” says Will. The word is dry, cracked open like skin splintering red in the winter’s cruelty. “I don’t.”

“I can’t leave,” James says, leveling his full gaze in its terrible entirety at Will. “You know I can’t leave.”

Will rouses himself, shaking off the remaining dust from his bones to attempt to pull James away from the step, only to remain fruitlessly hanging onto his arm without even trying to force him away. “You can and you will. You don’t know what’s waiting for you.”

“You don’t know what’s waiting for you,” James echoes back at him, and he clutches onto Will’s wrist with both of his hands with a sudden urgency, his eyes a piercing, impenetrable blue. “Even if you wanted me to go, you think that I would just leave like that? You can’t escape this conversation, Will. I don’t want to find you like that again.”

“I’m not going to kill myself,” Will says harshly, bitterly, spitting the words out as if they sat as acidic on his tongue as burnt, corrosive ash. Not with James here. He wouldn’t do that to him. But James won’t leave. “If that’s the only reason that you’re hanging around, then I would rather you return to where you belong than have to stomach your pity. I’m sure Violet and Cyprian and the rest of them could use your help restoring the world to how it was before Sinclair set his claws on it.”

“I’m not going to leave,” James says again, steady, confident, and it chips at the cemented wall of Will’s resolve until he feels the ache spread outward in a way he promised he would never let hurt again. How many times in the past had he wanted to hear those words, only to have them siphoned away from his grasp?

James looks directly into Will’s eyes, this time, moving one hand up slowly as if afraid to startle him, resting his cool fingers against the side of Will’s face. Will doesn’t dare look away, fears that breathing will shatter the careful illusion of trust erected between them. “Will, I’m not going to leave,” James says again, and Will lets his eyes close as his defiant determination finally crumbles over a year’s worth of struggle, the sob that leaves his chest as deafening as the season’s first peal over the earth.

James settles into the shallows of Will’s life, eddying into warmth amongst the frigid winter. The transition is far from natural. Will feels the ripples of his sudden presence in every corner of the house, inescapable. Even outside, away from the sound of James puttering through the kitchen or even the quiet noise of his breathing, the clouds part to sprinkle golden sun across the back of his hand in the exact shade of James’ hair.

The second day of James’ visit, he spends the entirety of it snooping through the property, curiously upturning tarnished silver pots and running his finger along the many books shoved into the oaken shelves of the living room, seated before the open glass window. Will has a feeling that James hasn’t had the luxury of time like this before in his life, the first seven years possessed by Steward training and the rest consumed by his claim to ancient magic.

The third day, seeing James stare balefully out the window while absentmindedly tracing a metal spoon through a half-eaten bowl of stodgy oatmeal makes Will so edgy that he immediately steps away after his last mouthful, the porridge sitting heavy as glue in his stomach.

“I’m going on a walk,” he announces, the outside cold seeping through the thick soles of his boots as he snags his coat from the chair it’s resting atop of. The air in the open seems to sit in place, frozen in silence. Comparatively, the inside of the house runs so hot that Will can feel the flush spreading across the back of his neck whenever he looks at James.

James subsides into whichever place he inhabits, the confidence of his easy, natural. Even though it’s only been a day or so since he’d settled in, his command over the space pours forth with every simple movement. Will feels himself drawn in, helpless, a little desperate, like he’s always been. The house itself feels as though it could belong to James, the whole estate, perhaps. Even Will. Maybe Will, always.

James eyes him from his spot at the table, lips parted and his hand pausing over his bowl. Winter mornings usher in the shade, but even so, his eyes glitter intensely under the damp lamplight, flickering over Will’s frame. “I’ll join you,” he says, pushing away his unfinished meal and standing.

No, Will almost blurts, the rebuff trembling upwards immediately before he caps it. He—needs to get away from James, can feel it in his bones as surely as he did when the collar still fettered James’ neck—the slow-pulsing desire, that defenseless want. The palpitation consuming him, hooking into his ribcage. Out the window promises the cool relief from the temptation that is James, cutting off Will’s inability for self-control.

“Stay,” says Will, fastening the buttons of his jacket and glancing at the parlor. He hadn’t worn enough layers, not expecting to leave straight after breakfast, but the drop in temperature will be a reprieve. “You haven’t finished your oatmeal.”

“I wasn’t hungry anyway,” James says nonchalantly, the cords of his back twisting underneath his thin linen long-sleeve as he turns to place the bowl in the sink. “Give me a minute to change into another shirt upstairs.”

“Really, you don’t have to go to the trouble,” Will says in one last desperate attempt, and James turns at the foot of the stairs to fix him with a stare, one that has a plea attached to the back of it, melting away at his defense.

“I can’t stand the thought of you willingly isolating yourself after over a month of living alone,” James says finally, his handsome mouth contorting. The fear spells itself nakedly across his face. The truth, a severance. Will wants to reach over to him, cripple the distance between them and snake one hand behind his neck, through the fine baby hairs entwined at the skin, and just—hold him. Breathe in James. The feeling that they could, again, be part of a whole, no more pretending that the connection linking them so desperately wasn’t cleaved when they defeated Sarcean, because it never was. It was always just Will and James, James and Will.

“I’ll wait,” Will says eventually, and James climbs the stairs without another word, taking the itch under Will’s skin with him. He collapses, sagging back against the wall so that the rough woodwork digs at the sharp points of his spine. It hadn’t always been so exhausting to exist around other people. He’d put up a front for a greater part of his memory to be a docile, just boy. But now he’s tired of dragging the bright parts of himself to the light for inspection. He’s weary of the pretense of living.

James returns quickly, still tugging the neck of his shirt around his head as if afraid that Will would have slipped out when he turned his back. He doesn’t so much have to say that he fears what will happen if he leaves Will alone than it appears in his urgency. His hair springs back when tugged downward by the fabric, a perpetually optimistic pliancy. Disheveled, Will catches a glimpse of James’ pale torso before he turns away.

“I suppose there isn’t much to do in a place like this other than take walks, is there?” Upon locking the door behind them, Will had decided that it was probably for the best to avoid the woods, so he’d taken James onto the treaded path along the mountain, beaten down by countless boots before him into a grassless, dusted trail.

“That, and waiting.” What for, Will doesn’t elaborate.

“Waiting for the next best thing? Well, I’m right here,” says James, throwing his arms out with emphasis, a bright grin drawing itself over his face. His hands fall back to his sides with a dull thud when Will doesn’t reply. “Once upon a time, people would be delighted that I would remain by their side. Or terrified. It really depended on the person. Regardless, they tended to have a stronger reaction than yours, especially… considering.”

Considering. Will swallows that thought to scoff, his fingers twitching with belated intent where he would have once reached out to shove James gently on the shoulder for the remark. He pockets the instinct of lieu of it. “Your charm doesn’t work on me anymore, James.”

“A shame,” James says, sighing. His face twists to look at Will, mischief dotted in the lines of his smile. The path before them stretches out as if endless, but forever doesn’t seem so far away. “You’re the only person that I’ve wanted it to.”

Will looks away, nettled. James is so casual, so generous with the truth as if it’s all he has to offer. Will supposes that’s how it’s always been. With things like his magic and the collar, those rise to the surface without restraint or warning. It makes itself known. It works out then that he would be able to offhandedly drop his thoughts as if tossing aside salt.

“Hey, don’t ignore me,” James says.

“I’m not,” says Will, annoyed that he can’t brush off James’ remarks as easily as he would have wanted to. Still, he falls into silence once more, contemplative as he rewinds through the many things he’d like to ask of him.

“Is there anywhere in particular that we’re headed?” James asks unexpectedly, tilting his head up to breathe out foggy clouds into the sky that dissipate once they step forward. “I sort of decided to join you on a whim.”

“I don’t normally set off with any destination in mind,” Will admits. Now that they've completed their mission, Will feels drifting, directionless. At least harboring evil had given him a directive. In yet another twisted, wrenching way, being Sarcean’s Reborn had given him purpose before so cruelly wrestling it away. “There’s nothing time sensitive to return to, unless you’ve left the kettle on the stove.”

“I would never,” James says, affronted, and Will allows himself to crack a small grin, the return of their ways easing through the brittle bones of his mind. He tilts his head to the side, staring longways up into the woods, the trees and their arms creating a shrouded web of tinseled frost. “It is rather peaceful here without anyone around, isn’t it. I can’t remember the last time I was able to appreciate silence without having to think about what it was harboring.”

“I want you to live a good life,” Will mutters. He hears the sharp twist of James swiveling to stare at him, feeling the hotness of it bear into his skin, but he doesn’t see it. Instead he studies the way his feet sink into the earth, his scuffed black leather boots scraping through the dry, brown undergrowth. “That’s a big part of why I wanted to take the collar off.”

The other piece of his motivation was that he wanted to know if James’ draw to Will was consumed by the collar’s pull, but even knowing that James had come here on his own insistent volition, he realizes that it’s not so easy to believe it.

“I’d say that I’m not unhappy with how things turned out,” James murmurs. Will can still feel his eyes needling against him, trying to squirm around his skin. Everything about James is so physical, dogged. “I’m at least halfway to a good life, if you define a good life by knowing you.”

Will’s tongue sits heavy in his mouth, almost as dense as the words knotted deep in his stomach. He doesn’t, wouldn’t. Wants James to keep his casual remarks to himself instead of pressing them against the soft of Will’s throat. He’d been little when he learned that the truth yields hurt as fervent as blood, and growing up hadn’t changed his conviction.

“Why do you say things like that, James?” Will asks.

James makes a small, inquisitive noise in the back of his throat. When Will peeks to the side, he’s cleaving through the morning fog, sucking his pinkened bottom lip into his mouth in thought. “Why? Do you not like it? I thought you did based on how you used to treat me, but if that’s changed…” He swoops in closely all of a sudden, eyes training in on Will’s as they both skid to a halt and James roams intolerably near. He swipes one thumb over Will’s cheekbone, and though the movement slows, hesitant, it doesn’t stop, smearing warmth across his face. “See? You still react the same way. Most of the time, you’re so hard to read, but when I get close, your face grows tight and you flush, so lightly it’s almost impossible to notice.”

“But you notice,” Will rasps.

James grins, a gleaming light amidst the season’s viscous gloom. “What can I say? I’m always looking.”

A note of tentativeness enters Will’s mind, warbling but sure. He thinks back to the moments leading up to when he’d left the rest of the group, the disorienting nausea of ridding himself of Sarcean rippling through his body at the same time that he physically feels the collar break, that one moment of bright, white pain, a clean break that dissipated when the gold fell to the ground and was over. And then the rush of fear, his inability to see the expression on James’ face, not out of physical restraints but the terror gripping him like a vice. Sarcean’s curse hanging over his neck like a guillotine.

“When the collar came off,” Will starts softly, almost not believing that he’s bringing it up. Neither of them has made another attempt to continue their stroll, feet planted firmly in the hard dirt, the woods swimming endlessly behind James. Almost everything that Will sets his eyes on is dead, except for James, who is so painfully, vividly alive that his transcendence doesn’t swing with their world.

James is still touching Will, the backs of his knuckles gentle against his skin, his flesh tremulous in the places where James grounds him back into existence. “What?”

With one glance to the left, Will can see that they haven’t ventured very far at all, the outline of the house still insistent and burned into view, so difficult to escape. That promise of domestic peace sits heavy on Will’s shoulders. It is an idea so impossible it now appears daunting.

“When the collar came off,” Will continues, raising his eyes to look at James and finding the sky, “you wouldn’t look at me.” James’ mouth cracks open, his usual aura of confidence foggy in place of surprise. “Or—you did, but it was as if you were looking into nothing. A blank vacuity. I couldn’t tell if it was you who was empty or me. I felt that I had somehow robbed you of something, and yet, paradoxically, that I had given you something that ruined us: the truth.”

“Will,” James whispers, sour, wretched. His eyes flare, ribbed by his long, blond eyelashes. Will fights the urge to grasp onto the hand holding him, suddenly ill at the idea that laying it out so plainly might change James’ mind. That James had shown up at his doorstep and chased him into the forest is sickening enough; to think that he might turn and take his warmth with him to leave Will alone again, even though he’s been telling him to go, curdles an already bitter part of his body.

“I thought that you might have hated me.” The words come crumbling out of his mouth, breaking even as they leave the fresh heat of his tongue. “I was not surprised that you hated me. I think I expected that the only thing stopping you for so long was the illusion of the collar. And I’d woken up and you weren’t there, so I figured that keeping my distance was best for both of us, so I left.”

“Not best for both of us,” James says, raw, “best for you. Because you were afraid.”

Will swallows down the vehement refusal rising to be heard, a knee-jerk reaction. Once, James had said that Will was the only one who wasn’t afraid of Sarcean. He had been wrong. Will had let him believe a lie—many lies, some of them small, inconsequential, all of them culminating to become terrible. He wants to correct James even now that he’s advancing on the truth closer than before, so near that he might ghost right through Will.

“I’m even now. I don’t want to be—” Anything anymore. “—still afraid. But I’d come to before some of my closest friends arguing over my right to live in voices of reasoning that sounded extraordinarily like my own, and you were absent from the conversation, so I… assumed, I suppose.”

“I didn’t want to hear Visander continue about how you should be killed.” James’ voice is rough, grainy as the dirt beneath their feet. His fingers have long trailed away from Will, both hands shoved deep into the pockets of his thick winter coat, shoulders still and hostile and his head turned to the side, indescribable in the cold-eyed light. The jut of his jawbone both impossible and so tangible that Will wonders if he could reach out and touch him, or if his hand would pass right through.

Here, the blue of James’ eyes is so intense that it dips into gray. “I was also trying to sort out my own thoughts without the collar. It was disorienting to be so removed from the desire that had been speaking in the back of my mind, as well as the absence of the amplified power. It was like—a door shutting.” His eyes stray back to Will. “And another opened in its stead, but he ran away before I could catch up.”

Will squeezes his eyes shut, hard, in the hope that narrowing the world will make it more comprehensible, easier to digest. In the darkness hidden behind his eyelids lies the taunting remains of Sarcean, and yet, piercing the curtains of his eyelashes, is the light—blinding, pervasive. “I wish that you would stop searching for a promise in me.”

“What else could I do?” When the world floods back into Will’s vision, James looks pleading, angular desperation. “My boy-savior.”

“I’m nobody’s hero.” Unable to stand any longer in the muddled, fevered confusion that amasses in James’ heat, Will strides off once again, the green-blue-brown of the dwindling landscape dissipating into pastoral smears. The faith that James mistakenly puts into him will always—always—be tainted by their ancient past.

“Will,” says James. Wildly, disbelievingly, he latches onto Will’s hand, trapping him. Feeling sweat bead on his neck, Will bites his cheek until he can taste the familiar tang of iron. “When you left, I realized that the only thing I’d never forgive you for was if you never saw me again. Anharion and Sarcean may have been why we were brought together, but now I’m choosing you. And I’d never forgive myself if I let you leave again.”

Will takes in a shuddering breath, the air whistling in narrow and cool. He whispers something so quiet that it comes out as a hiss.

“What?” The hand linking them now lies limply between them, James approaching close once again until the strain is no longer.

“I can’t leave as long as there is somebody to wait for me,” Will says again, the words tasting of salt and the warm flush of blood flooding the back of his tongue. “I have a duty.”

“Give your duty to me,” says James, and Will hears nothing of it before he gingerly wraps himself around Will’s thin back, a breath of surprise forcefully expelled from his body as he nearly pitches forward. His heart beats strongly against Will’s skin, thrumming deep to still the quiet panic grasping his chest at the sudden contact, his traitorous want. Every movement he makes carefully feeds the voracious cavity that had never before dreamed of being full before James. “Can we go back soon? It’s cold out here.”

“Okay,” Will says, unable to deny James any longer. The sky blinks above them, gray obscuring the unending blue. It is almost painful.

Atop Valdithar, the wind gunning past Will’s face is piercing, solid. He isn’t riding fast, but the mere motion of pushing forward through the clearing is such a change from the deadened, sluggish house at the base of the mountains that every step away breaks like a whip. The past stretch of days in particular had been the most leaden, as if it were a spot on the horizon refusing to rust. Leaving the grounds and peeling away the suction of the trees had felt like tripping into next week, even though the last time he had traveled into the city had only been fifteen days before at most.

James is beside him, atop his own steed. He’d jumped at the chance to leave the estate, his eagerness to travel so visceral that Will regretted not proposing it sooner.

Turns out that two people burn through a stock of oats, fruit, and bread faster than just Will, especially when he hadn’t left very much behind to begin with, intending the leavings to satisfy a visitor if they happened upon the house. The trip is as much a necessity as it is a way for James to burn off his energy and hopefully relieve him of the uptight stare following him around the house.

Valdithar’s flank muscles jump underneath Will’s calves, a kicking reminder of his responsibilities. Will had gotten so tired of carrying the burden of his body that he’d forgotten that those beside himself counted on him too; but Valdithar had whinnied sweetly when Will approached the stables, nosing into Will’s open palm. Beside him, James had kicked one heel back as he leaned against the stone wall speckled with flakes of granite and ages-old dust, a curl of golden hair hanging low over the eyes that seemed to have little else to do but follow Will.

“I don’t remember the ride there being quite this long,” James comments, sitting tall and proud over the coarse, roughened leather saddling his horse’s back. It’s a sunnier day than most at this time of the year, the overcast mist shuddering back at least for a couple of hours more.

“Perhaps you overestimate your patience,” Will replies, a trace of amusement ingrained in his voice. Beyond them, the bunched, scraggly grass lies shriveled into clumps more brown than lively, the dusted path centered and slinging straight down toward the citadel. They follow the lifeline, the urban center rising ahead of them as they chase it down.

They arrive soon enough. The buildings, furnished in once-bright brick and cemented gray sides, sit short and squat around them as they gently guide their rides along the cobbled streets, the symmetrical clicking announcing their presence. The city is a swarm, the roads existing as veins through which the people flush into the swollen sides beneath the sidelong overhangs.

Eventually, Will and James disembark to tie their horses to the side of a building before venturing into the market itself, entering at the mouth of a river that deposits them first at a stand proffering sacks of golden grain spilling out of coarse burlap sacks, a dusting of seed rained down and collected at the base of the stall.

The throng of people pushes James into Will’s side, or he sticks himself there as if connected by a leather strap, one of the two. He is a familiar, pulsing warmth at his flank.

“I’ve never actually been to one of these,” James says, his neck craning as he looks all around, his head of golden hair standing tall among the mass. Will knows now that it’s due to his connection to the old world, the same way that the first bite of food after being accustomed to Steward fare had settled like silt in his mouth, but the way that James’ peerless brilliance pulls all of the area’s color to him reduces everybody else to tedium. “For all of that traveling, we didn’t actually do a lot of sightseeing.”

“Too busy getting paraded around, weren’t you?” Will says, halting at a produce stall to sift through a woven basket filled to the brim with crimson apples. Knowing James likes them, he sets a few aside before scouring over the rest of the offerings: round, plump oranges with craggy skin, a variety of misshapen squashes striped and dotted, a pile of pomegranates waiting to be cleaved in half.

“The only one doing the parading is you,” says James, settling close to Will, and then after a moment of deliberation, sliding one arm through Will’s crooked elbow. Will shoots him an exasperated look, only to be met with James’ smug smile, which he rolls his eyes at. He leans forward, catching the attention of the elderly woman manning the booth, whose eyebrows slightly raise before she settles into a pleasant smile. “A bag of these apples, please.”

“I already got some for you, dolt,” Will says to him, waving the one in his hand before James’ face, but to his surprise, the woman plucks it from him and adds it to the bag, waving away the extra coins he pulls from his pocket, her nimble fingers already folding the paper top into neat creases.

“It’s nice to see you with some company,” she says to him, dipping her head and giving him a certain look through her eyelashes that he can’t quite decipher, for some reason feeling flustered.

“Oh,” Will says, his arm dipping under the weight as he belatedly takes the bag of fruit from her. “Ah, I—”

“Thank you,” James says cheerfully, his arm still entwined with Will’s as he sends her off with a spritely wave and guides him away, the two once again getting lost amongst the flood of bodies. “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, Will.”

“I wasn’t going to correct her or anything,” Will retorts somewhat defensively, feeling chastised. He looks down at their arms, which he supposes is more practical now that the push and pull of the current can pull them apart.

They carry on past a few more stalls, Will’s eyes dipping over and under the various other families haggling at booths sporting glinting jewelry, precariously stacked pottery, and molded casks of ale until James’ nose drags them to a baker’s kiosk.

“One of those, please,” James says, eagerly handing over a clinking handful of coins for a warm meat pie, the crust flaky and brushed with golden-brown egg wash, pockmarked to let the steam out. He proffers it to Will first, pushing the fragrant pastry toward his nose. “Do you want a bite?”

“I’m alright,” says Will, stomach tumbling at the idea—and the awful domestic feeling—of strolling a weekend market arm in arm with James, passing a pie back and forth between themselves. It’s so terribly simple, and housed in that simplicity is a privilege they’ve only now been afforded, one that Will realizes he should now appreciate.

James only shrugs and takes a massive tear out of the pastry, tender bits of crust flaking off and sticking to the corners of his mouth. Will’s gaze fixates on the crumbs until James notices and his pink tongue darts out, the tip slowly tracing the bow of his lip, and he jerks away, turning frantically on his feet to ask the stall owner for a loaf of bread.

“Why do you frequent the markets instead of going to a store?” James asks Will as they move on from what was their next stop, a produce booth with barrels heaping with shapeless red potatoes and bright, gnarled carrots with the stems still attached. “I would’ve thought that you aren’t a fan of all the people.”

Will falters, unsure how to tell James that the volume of people is what draws him to the marketplace to begin with because their presences bring him back to his body, but James’ attention is quickly halved when he pulls Will toward a jewelry stall instead, the thought discarded.

“These are nice,” James says to Will, picking through several rings molded from silver and gold, pinched between rows of heaping velvet in their showcases. James, being an inherent creature of elegance, carries himself with a distinct air of devastating impropriety, a kind of disciplined dishevelment. He wears silk shirts and leaves the top unbuttoned, sharp colors and angles with ruffled hair, a perpetual smirk that contradicts the genteel effect surrounding him. It’s only fitting that he likes jewelry too, outfitting himself with more elaborate pieces usually only worn by women.

“If you like anything in particular, I’ll treat you,” Will says, casting his gaze over a collection fitted with deep red rubies that would have suited Katherine if she were still here to compliment them.

“Will, you flirt,” says James with no small amount of delight, a flourish to his voice. He grins, the corners of his eyes dimpling, and he reaches out to grasp onto the corner of Will’s sleeve, a small claim to his entire body. “I’ll get us a matching set of rings.”

“James,” Will just says, a hot-seated flush rooting and hooking into his skin, but he can’t tear his eyes away from the other despite the swell of embarrassment. The jeweler doesn’t look as though they’d overheard James’ comment, but Will sidles away slightly just in case, putting more distance between them on the off chance that somebody looks too closely.

“What do you think of this?” James asks, letting Will’s sleeve float away when he reaches out to slide a golden chain through his fingers. He holds it up to the light, the fine metalwork glinting in the slip of sunshine slanting through the season’s haze. He makes as though to hold it against his neck.

Will’s eyes deepen slightly, his tongue immediately drying in his mouth. His heart slams once, a sudden pulse echoing through every crevice of his body. The thin gilded necklace barely resembles the thick, consuming collar other than the property of the metal, but the very idea of a link around James’ throat and the semblance of control is enough to force Will’s blood to run hot. James’ beauty longs to be owned. It isn’t Sarcean thinking it now that he’s been flushed away; it’s Will, a truth he grapples with in the way his fingers twitch to possess James—his ragged love, his often ugly desire.

“James…” Will says.

James looks out of breath, unsteady. They’re both thinking the same thing. His eyes flick between the chain in his hand and Will, and Will isn’t sure if he’s imagining the way James looks like he wants to be enthralled or if it’s a mere fact, gripping him like a tightened knife, blade up. There’s no magic here; it’s not the collar, but still—

“How much?” James asks, and Will’s hand automatically dips into his pocket as if demanded, pulling out a loose handful of notes held taut. Whatever the number is doesn’t process until the exchange is made and James tucks away the necklace, releasing them from its tense hold when it’s out of sight. The sensation is so similar to the first time Will encountered the collar, months before it finally, inevitably clamped around his neck, that for a second, a spike of anxiety over Sarcean’s return cleaves his body nearly in half.

“And they say chivalry is dead,” James purrs, once again slotting his arm between the space of Will’s elbow and his slender torso. This time, Will doesn’t even acknowledge it, letting it happen as simply as settling into a sigh. “Whoever said that hadn’t heard of you, clearly.”

“But they’d certainly known of Sarcean, whether they knew it or not,” Will says wryly, “and he is dead. Also, I wouldn’t exactly describe his glorious vision of indomitable reign as chivalrous. Not very polite at all.”

They stride ahead through the narrowing path of the market, people falling away before them as if opening for their sake. They’re only wandering now; Will purchased everything he intended to buy, but even he can admit to himself that he enjoys the excuse to be joined with James. Especially with his new resolution to dedicate himself to the truth, no matter how difficult that truth may be.

“Well, he ruled with Anharion at his side,” James says with faux contemplation, pretending to tap his long finger to his chin as he looks askance to the sky. “It is gentlemanly to do so with a lover. Will, would you let me share your throne?”

“There is no kingdom over which I would like to reign,” Will says, honestly slipping out with the words in transparent recollection. “So I am not sure what I can share with you other than the house by the mountains, which does not even belong to me, and a place that you swaggered into without any discussion with me, if I’m remembering correctly.”

“Oh, so modest,” says James, placing the back of his hand gingerly against his forehead and performing a dainty swoon. “He denies what he so rightfully holds precedence over. My lord forgets the claim he holds over mine fair breast. With one kiss, he had had me for good… Does he not know that I am tarnished before any other man, and I must follow him into the countryside to pursue my due fortune?” 

“I am not your lord,” Will says, his protest fruitless when James waves it away with one hand as if swatting a bothersome insect.

“But you could be,” James points out, the two of them dancing atop the moss-shrouded streets, darting among clumps of people and the constant stream of bodies as if it’s a game. 

James is so boyishly ridiculous that Will feels a little more in love. He grins, a sharp joy that he seizes and clenches in one fist. The city is charming instead of grimy all of a sudden. He thinks that he could walk these streets for hours more.

For a moment, and only for a moment, Will can forget the burden of himself, can stare into the gray sky fogged above their heads and remember that the light will one day emerge from the covers again, if only for the knowledge that James is beside him, that his inexplicable affection has not yet splintered. In that moment, the deep cold frozen over his head wavers, cracking once at the edges.

They’ve wandered so far down the street that they’re at the stretched ends of the market, the crowd fading away and the bustling noise muffled at a distance. Will slows to a stop, toeing the cracked rock beneath his boot, and James halts beside him, turning expectantly to face him. His long black coat fits nicely on him, woolen and warm, the collar perking up and framing his face. It sits against the golden splendor on his head, his eyes just a little bluer in comparison.

At some point, the elbow hooked onto Will’s arm had slipped down so their hands are loosely entwined, so blatant and overt that a spike of anxiety that someone had noticed courses through him, though it fades when James brings their folded embrace up to mouth-level.

James smiles. At this distance, Will can hear the movement of his lips, a quiet crackle of tender joy. “Hello,” he says, impossible and foolish and brimming so full with it that he’s in danger of spilling over.

Will doesn’t know how much longer he can ignore it, folding it away into the most terminal places of himself. His heart pounds almost painfully with the extent of his want—for James, for spring, for vitality—and conversely, the guilt for wandering into the woods with no intention of making it back out. The desire to be well for James. The desire to want to be well, and for the sentiment to last longer than a day before night steals it away, the stars flickering far out of reach.

Will blinks away, quiet despair at the knowledge that the feeling will fade with time. “Hi,” he says in return as he stupidly allows James to hold his hand still. His slack grasp on his fingers feels as though it’s the only thing tethering him to the earth. He swallows, a sharpness like a fish bone lodged in his throat. “Shall we go back?”

“Sure,” says James. He glances at the sky. “It feels like it might rain.”

The pendulum swings back to the left. Being alone brings with it a certain sinking sensation, as if all the air in the room slowly squeezes out through brute force, the unwieldy shape of his seclusion. Logically, he knows that James is asleep two doors down in a room that Will hasn’t allowed himself to step foot in since the last time he did the sheets, but even he feels far away. Perhaps it is a selfish, self-absorbed thought, but if the center of the universe, or at least Will’s universe, finds its epicenter at his feet, then everybody else swims at a sluggish pace, each of them untouchable. If there is a center of the universe, it is only because he is so utterly alone.

Even that morning in the market appears at a distance, a fogged over windowpane peering into a world that is capable of retaining joy. The rain had come after all, washing away the memory and sequestering them inside. Each dull thud against the house’s wooden roof echoed emptily in Will’s chest.

Nights are the worst. The room floods so darkly at the first moment, he tugs the lamp’s pull-switch only for the light to leak back in from the window. It is just enough that he can make out the faint outlines of the room, the too-tall towering wardrobe in the corner with its elaborately carved drawers, an ornate chair beside the door built of gleaming oak, the dirty leather satchel he’d carried in with him when he first arrived and left unemptied on the carpet. Not enough to see any farther than that, and Will can’t be bothered to turn the light back on.

He lies so still he could be mistaken as dead, and still that isn’t enough to tempt sleep, instead lurking around the quilted corners of his bed, ghosting silken fingers over his side. The hours slip by gray, formless. And left unfurling, pried apart by time’s nimble fingers, is the age-old pain he’d become so numb to that its reemergence shocks him.

Will can’t sleep, or he can’t stop sleeping; the heady promise of unconsciousness seduces him, ever near. His time alone before James had only been bearable with the knowledge that it would soon end. Now, plagued by the ceaselessness of the night, it grows increasingly intolerable. There is no way for James to know how cruel it is to appear before him with those blue eyes and sweet mouth, only to draw out his time—he will leave. Will holds this belief as close as a creature ailed by hypothermia dares to hover over a flame: eventually, James will have to leave.

And when he does, Will shall—

The second floor is so cold. Will doesn’t remember shivering like this, but in the meat of winter, it makes sense. If he were asleep, the chill wouldn’t bother him, wouldn’t be able to reach through the thick soup of slumber. At least Sarcean knew Anharion would have to warm his side.

No. Will scrubs his eyes, pressing his fingers deep into his eyelids until bursts of bright light appear under the pressure, and he curls further into his body, hugging his knees to his chest like a child. He shudders, once, twice, and prays for sleep.

“Did you sleep at all?” James asks him the next morning, peering at him across the kitchen from where he’s perched against the counter when Will blearily stumbles into the room.

Will squints at him and then turns away to drag himself toward the pantry, his body feeling as if made out of light. Rubbery the way it always is after a night of poor or little sleep. He can hear James stride over, the only warning he has before it happens, and then he forces Will to face him, the base of his spine pressed against the sharp end of the stair banister.

James leans far closer than what is proper, audacious even now with his lingering warmth. One hand reaches up to thumb gently at the purpled bag drooping underneath his eye as if swiping away an errant eyelash. His fingers smell like oranges; so does his breath. There still seems to be errant levity capturing James’ movements, leftover from the day before—his smile is impish, slightly curled at the edges.

Will’s hands hover behind James’ back, knowing what would happen if he pushed him away—he doesn’t know anything about his black nights, his self-cannibalistic hatred, that he can’t fathom that James can be so comfortable touching Will when he would do almost anything to tear himself from his body. To reject James now with the truth feels almost as painful as if turning the unicorn horn on himself and impaling himself through the abdomen, but each passing second that James spends suspending at his side is so unbearable he almost feels violent with it.

Thankfully, he retreats just as the terrible want and self-disgust wheels to a crest, bitter and hot in his throat. Will swallows, suddenly nauseous. To distract himself from the sickness, he trains his gaze on the set of china plates delicately set behind a glass case above the cabinets in the kitchen, perfectly circular saucers of pristine white clay painstakingly inked with blue fired decals. Each of them renders a different offspring of flower, some of them recognizable in shape and sprout, but others none that he’s ever seen before: oval leaves, spiked flowers, all of them a respective imprecise perfection. Perhaps in another life, he would have liked to see them for himself.

“It was too cold to sleep last night,” Will belatedly answers, his voice coming out crackling like a frozen pipe. He looks away from the flurry of James’ flitting fingers and his everlasting concern. His pity is as wasted on Will as is salt thrown over your shoulder to feed the devil.

“Huh.” Thankfully, James doesn’t pursue the point, stepping away and padding back to his spot at the counter to let Will sag in on himself, relieved from the weight of his stare. “Would this warm you up at all? I made soup.”

Will crosses the room as well, cautiously peeking into the pot bubbling over low heat on the stove. He wrinkles his nose at the painfully transparent stock simmering merrily with a handful of roughly cut onions, a yellowish potato, and a variety of green vegetables. One chicken drumstick sits sadly at the bottom, looking rubbery. “Can you really call this soup? You lived with the Janissaries for seven years. Did none of that rub off on you?”

Will can sense James’ displeasure without even turning to look at him; it’s a palpable thing, as tangible as the steam currently wafting over his face. “I tried to cook for you, which is a lot more than other people can say I’ve done for them.” It’s even more audible in his voice, Will’s amusement at his chagrin tugging the knot of curdled anxieties in his stomach looser.

“Nobody has ever taught you how to cook, have they?” says Will, facing to turn James by bracing his elbows against the granite tabletop. James shakes his head, and Will makes a decision, shoving away the bitter part of himself that still feels edged with frost to turn toward the pantry with a new mission in mind.

“Are you saying you’re going to teach me, then?” James calls out, still curled around his post at the end of the counter. “I don’t know if you’re fit to lecture me about cooking either, seeing that you spent your whole life jumping around random places in England.”

Will determinedly ignores him, sorting through brown paper bags of bundled produce, a small burlap sack overspilling with thumbnail rice grains, a hacked end of a round and floured loaf of bread that he takes into the crook of his elbow. When he deposits it onto the table, three reddish oblong potatoes rolling away from him in the melee, James’ eyebrows inch higher into the bush of his golden bangs.

“Contrary to that notion, I spent a lot of time between the feet of innkeepers and cooks,” Will says. “They had to make me useful eventually.” The flare of nostalgia—flush with past years, the memory of sweat pricking his back underneath his thin shirt when he worked the brick oven, forearms reddened—is fond enough to push even farther the recoiling upset from the night. Back then, with unwieldy legs and even more misplaced determination, he had thought that a place in the world would carve itself out for him once he grew old enough.

James tsks. “Putting you to work in the kitchens when they should have been conditioning your magic at a young age. A waste of talent.”

“I’m sure they’d be shocked to know now that they had the Dark King kneading dough at five in the morning,” Will says sarcastically, proffering an uneven and long-tipped carrot to James from the stem as if enticing him into a duel. James looks down at it as uncertainly as if he was extending an invite to battle. “Can you wash and chop this?”

“I don’t know, I might kill somebody,” James mutters, but he takes it anyway, puttering over to the sink and letting the rush of falling water splattering against the metal interior wash away the remnants of the night’s detail.

The familiarity of the routine eases the tension from Will’s joints, memory taking over the strain in his muscles from little sleep. Oftentimes, his mother would send him into the kitchen if she wasn’t already working there herself, though she held a job in a variety of fields and needed someone to watch over him without having to pay for a nanny.

He directs James to cut the carrots and potatoes while he prepares the chicken, but this time with more attentiveness than he paid it the first time—and James takes to the task with an endearing amount of diligence, careful to cleave every chunk into equal, even shapes.

Maybe it’s the steam from the saucepan or James’ quiet presence chasing away the loneliness, but the mundanity of it all makes time feel loose and warm, bowing away from its stricter hold over Will’s lungs. Instead, it hovers in the back of his mind as a faint threat—gone for now, it will return in time, but he doesn’t have to worry about that right now.

“I don’t even know why I’m bothering with this when my magic could be doing the job for me,” James grumbles, cheeks faintly flushed as if embarrassed to only realize this now. Will glances over to see him hovering a potato menacingly in the air, swiveling in place.

Will snatches it from its temporal levitation, fixing James with a firm look that only makes him grin guilelessly with what seems to be delight at his reaction. “We shouldn’t become reliant on these things just because they’re at our disposal. Remember that we weren’t even sure we would retain our magic after we defeated Sarcean? Imagine where you’d be with your potatoes and carrots if your powers were gone.”

“I’d probably just have somebody else do it,” James mutters, taking the potato back from Will with a sharp movement that leaves the heat of his hand faintly tattooed to Will’s palm. “Not all of us grew up having to do these things ourselves. Some people had others to do it all for them.”

“That’s not exactly a thing to boast about,” says Will, inching closer to James to supervise his movements. James eyes him out of the corner of his vision, stark blue darting back and forth between the cutting board and Will.

Will sighs; at this point, James is going to injure himself, and then they’re going to have to have a lesson on kitchen safety on top of the basic skill of putting together a meal. Before he can think, he’s inserted himself around James’ back, placing his hands over his arms to choreograph his movements. He feels more than he hears the sudden inhale of breath James takes, the abrupt concave of his chest as his entire body goes taut, sitting tightly as if a tensely spun bundle of wires.

Will goes still as well with sudden realization. They’re closer than he’s let them be since James arrived, the distance shrunk even greater than it had the day before, walking arm and arm through the city streets. James sits warm against his chest, fitting against the hewn outline of his body. He’s holding his breath; Will only knows because he would feel it if he had. They’re both frozen. The tension running between them veers so hot that it would kill a lesser man.

Then, methodically, James twists so that he comes just short of facing Will, the sharp point of his nose close enough to brush, his eyes sliding farther toward him to make up for the gap. Will feels every movement in his own muscles, running along his own skin, as if he were the one trapped instead of James.

“Are you going to show me how to do it or not?” asks James, his voice coming out barely ragged, torn at the edges. Will could point it out, but he won’t, shouldn’t.

Releasing as though given permission, Will forcibly settles his shoulders—they had hiked up almost to his ears in agitation—and leans forward so he can see around James’ neck, both of them so obviously pretending not to be affected that he almost thinks they should give up the facade all together.

“You need to be more careful,” says Will. His voice is almost unrecognizable, dark. He swallows the boiling want frothing to a peak, the creeping taste sweet and all-consuming. He can feel James along every inch of his bones, in every pore. He wishes that he had the excuse of the dark king to explain away how easily his obsession can be stoked.

It’s too late to turn back now. Will licks his lips to bring back the moisture that had been sucked out of his body, leaving the rest of him dry and brittle, and watches James stiffen even more at the motion with anticipation. Instead of acknowledging it, however, he moves—holding the knife in a solid grasp to cleave it through the potato, moving so slowly he almost can’t stand it. James lets him, hands lax underneath Will’s.

“You know that if I cut myself, I can heal myself within a second, right?” James says, his voice quiet. Despite the defiant words, however, he doesn’t push the protesting any farther, still just—letting Will do as he likes with him.

Will lets out a low hum of displeasure right into James’ ear, and he swears that James almost whimpers. “Why open yourself up to the possibility of injury if you could eliminate it entirely?” Why court the potential for pain when eternal numbness is right there?

They’re only halfway through the amount of vegetables they need for the dish; Will glances at the clock slowly making its way around its numbered border and sees that almost an hour has passed, sucked into the vaporizing heat of the kitchen.

The knife glistens in front of them, held taut, pensive as it slopes downward. James hisses through his teeth, “Will,” the singular word hot and frayed, and Will steps away cleanly, unable to stomach it any longer, feeling every second slip maddeningly in incrementally increasing excruciation. If he stays any closer to James, he doesn’t know what he’ll do, the lingering remains of his control sliding out of his control.

“You’ve learned, haven’t you?” Will says, referring to the potatoes—the point that they’d forgotten in the past few minutes—but it comes across commanding, almost, bordering on condescending, and when James shivers, obviously reacting to his tone, Will has to turn away, bracing himself against the counter.

Jesus Christ.

“Yes,” James whispers, visibly gathering his composure again and picking up the knife again, though if Will looks over at him, he bets that his eyes would be glazed over.

The pile of already-cut carrots sits limply in a pile beside the cutting board, long forgotten. Will looks at it from the side, the hunger already cut neatly out of his body and replaced with something else. If he’s hungry later, he can eat a apple, or—

He looks sideways at James, who’s already looking at him, blue eyes so blown out they’re almost black. He almost drops the potato, fumbling with the vegetable when he turns hurriedly back to his station. Almost lazily, Will slides his stare along the hot length of James’ body, his lean stature, his neck so flushed it looks painful, and drags on the bulge in his pants. He feels the answering pulse, slow and deep, in his own body.

Will steps away completely to take his mind off the suffocating tightness of his clothes stretching over his skin and the answering desire. They were supposed to be cooking, anyway.

He sequesters himself to the corner of the counter, aimlessly preparing the chicken just to have something to do with his hands, James methodically slicing potatoes behind him, the thud of the knife hitting dull wood a soothing and forgettable background noise.

The rest of the hour is quiet, tense, as if any more words stuffed into the brimming kitchen would cause the house to overspill with the sheer amount of things left unsaid.

Night slips into place, sliding shut with a quiet click as darkness steals over the land. And with it, alone with the ebony shadows and the single flickering light from the lampshade, Will sits curled on the bed. Hunching over in this position is doing terrible things to his back; bright spots of pain flare up along his spine the longer he stays, but he can’t move, staring down at the hollowed out shapes that are his fingers.

The lamp light stretches sideways, uneven. It’s small and compact. It hardly casts enough light to fill the entire room. From the outside, only a faint gleam would be visible from underneath the door, barely able to spill forward.

Even though Will logically knows that he’s been conscious for so many hours that he would sleep as soon as he puts his head to the pillow, a masochistic urge rises in him to see how long he can drag out the dull pounding in his head, test his limits. After all, the presence of magic in his blood has always enabled him to race to boundaries others cannot.

The unbearable vacuity inside of him, the tremendous, corrosive tangle of self-hatred, is now so familiar that he almost doesn’t want to let it go. Will knows that he will always have this pain to return to, if nothing else. It’s a relief, so terrible he can’t admit it to anybody else. A reminder not to let his desire consume everything else in its sight. Desire for James, even though he’s only brought him grief, desire for things to be easy so he doesn’t have to take responsibility for his past—each variation equally unacceptable.

The loathing sits so heavily underneath Will’s skin that he feels the need to tear it out, to physically maim himself, stretching flesh to bone as if exposing his vulnerability will cure his inability to accept who he really is. Instead, he stares down at his fingers, the shadows forming a haunting curve past his nails to form into claws. He has to remember that he deserves it before he becomes a glutton for reward. All of it is a way to keep himself from becoming irredeemable. All of it is—

A soft knock at the door tears him from his thoughts, physically starting as if shaken. It’s so soft that he would have mistaken it for the murmuring noises of the house settling if it weren’t for the fact that there were three of those gentle knocks—and Will only has one companion at the moment, so there’s no doubt in his mind about who the person whose feet block the faint line of light at the bottom of the door belong to.

“Still awake?” Will calls. There’s a moment of silence; his heart makes a slow attempt to thrash against its cage, startled back into life. “Come in.”

The door gives almost immediately after the words leave his mouth as if James had his hand on the door handle. Backlit from the dim lantern dancing from the hallway, Will can’t make out the expression on James’ face until he steps in and the door closes with a small click behind him, the shadowy lighting stretching over the pale expanse of his cheekbones.

“Hi,” James says, his spine to the entrance, his hands folded behind his back. He almost looks shy. In the darkness, Will smiles slightly, his head tilting to the side as a rush of untoward endearment spills through his body. And accompanying it is quiet relief that he’s no longer alone, the solitude broken by his presence.

Will says, “Come here.” Moving over, his body creaks as he finally breaks out of the crooked posture he’d been frozen in. The sheets rustle as they shift under his legs, linen slipping against his uncovered feet.

James pads over, settles beside him. The mattress dips beneath their shared bodies, giving way like thick tar. In the darkness, James parts the sunless night with his bare hands, forging forward to grasp Will by the wrist. Everywhere Will looks he sees James. In every opening and every closed door.

“Can’t sleep again?” James asks. When Will shakes his head, he shrugs, tilting his head slightly to the ceiling as he looks away. “Me too. Don’t know why, but figured that I’d like any company rather than none.”

“Sorry that you don’t have any other options out here but me,” Will says, half-teasing. He folds his legs entirely over the bed, crossing them over his lap as he turns fully to face James. In the quiet of the early, early morning (or late night, depending on how you look at it), he feels a little less broken for his openness, his edges scooped away by the clock. Or maybe it’s only that like this, hampered by muted, serene sadness, he doesn’t have it in him to continue being cruel to both of them.

James hums, distracted eyes dancing all over the ceiling. His feet dangle off the side of the bed, hands propping him from behind. “Don’t worry. You’d be my first pick anyway.” Then he turns, flashing a smile at Will that makes him swallow, feeling physically hollowed out, a little sick.

Their dependence on each other is dangerous, he knows. Even if Will doesn’t want to admit it, he knows it to be true—has known it since the first time he felt James’ dark gaze trail him from the back and relished the feeling, since watching his eyes blow out from pain when he thrust the unicorn horn through his shoulder and the vicious possessiveness that had followed.

God. Will would do almost anything to return to the years when he hadn’t yet realized the agony of survival, and everything else to be able to live out a future without the burden of guilt. Naturally a creature of the light, James forces the fog from Will’s mind little by little, whether he knows it or not, and that is such a relief he can picture himself an addict—James, here in his bed, softened by the night; James, backed against his kitchen counter; James, tumbling through every crevice he can slip through; everywhere.

He can see it in the way that James leans toward him even now, as if possessed, enthralled. Will doesn’t want to condemn James to this life. He doesn’t want James to want to be kept like this, dragged around by brute force, a limp and ragged sense of honor. Two iterations on desire, the second more defiled than the first. And Will, caught by the throat by each of them as if a fish hungering for cruel steel, ruined by the past and the present.

“About that,” Will says, his eyes dropping to his hands resting against the blankets, finding James’ gaze intolerable in the low light, “you can’t stay here forever.”

“I know I can’t,” James says quietly. “But neither can you, Will. You shouldn’t have to. It’s not like anybody banished you to the edge of nowhere to live by yourself for the rest of eternity—we can leave.”

Will’s throat goes sore with the immenseness of such an impossibility. He wants, desperately, for James to give in and leave—if Will has to bully him into it, then so be it. By the time James wheels around and returns, he will be gone. James might hate him for some time, and he’s not stupid enough to think that he’ll forget about Will, entwined as they are, but he will get over it. Even if he’s foolish enough to mourn, even that will leave. Eventually, as the years spin on, James will forget his face; he’ll have so much life to live that he won’t have any capacity left for Will, a teenaged mistake.

“You know I can’t.” The early morning casts itself cruelly against his hands, rendering them paler in the shadows. The light does nothing for his wan skin, bloodless. “You’re wrong, in a way. Everyone who was involved—they all want me dead except for Violet.”

“And me,” James whispers, urgency spilling from the edges. “I really don’t think they’re going to hunt you down. You know that Violet can be stubborn when she wants to be. And they love you.” He takes a hold of Will’s hands, his fingers warm and alive, shocking him into looking back at James. The stark sincerity that meets him stuns him, thrumming outward from the point where their bodies meet. James smiles, weak. “And even if we have to spend years running away, at least we’d be together. Because I’m not going to leave—”

“I can’t do that to you, James,” Will interrupts, the harshness surprising even him when the words come out edged. “To live life as a convict? Running from city to countryside back to city, perpetually looking over your shoulder? I’ve lived that life. I’m not doing it again. I’d rather be—”

The sentence trails off in his mouth, lugging blood across his tongue.

“What?” James says, dark. “You’d rather what? You think that you can convince me to leave when you’re like this?”

There, a fire. A flame stoking to life in the bleak winter. Will had missed James’ anger, in a way—that’d been the circumstances of how they’d first met, fury and desperation, the brutal cast of the truth. The delicacy James had treated him with had been almost unbecoming.

“James,” Will says, slowly, carefully, “if the only reason you’re still around is because you’re trying to keep me from killing myself, then I’d rather you go.”

James recoils as if Will had struck him; the pain that flashes across his face, a brief moment of wretchedness, is what takes him the most off guard, shadowed by defensiveness, and finally: a thread of guilt, insignificant enough that only Will could pick it out.

“You need me in more ways than one,” James says quietly, his eyes flashing. “And I need you to a terrifying extent. Don’t you get it, Will? I’m here because I want to be. I don’t want to be anywhere else without you, no matter how glamorous, how rich. This is wealth to me.”

“Shouldn’t you be more afraid of that?” Will manages. James still has a careful hold on Will as if afraid that if he lets go, Will will dissolve before his eyes, subliming into mist and out the window.

“Oh, god, I am,” James whispers, and Will sees it—the fear stretching his eyes wide, his throat working with the size of it, the vastness of his desire—and he only believes it because he recognizes it in himself. “But I don’t care. I spent so long thinking I was unstoppable. A change is nice, for once.”

“You’re a fool,” says Will, even though he’s twice as much an idiot for the relief that floods through him at the words. That he had failed. The conviction to drive James away wavers with each night that passes, but as the sun sends its first promise over the stretch of horizon out the window, James becomes golden with the light.

“Am I?” James asks. He scoots closer to Will, narrowing the distance between them. All he can hear is the shuffle of fabric rubbing against itself, James’ quiet breathing, Will’s heart throbbing at a convulsive rate, desperate to prove its life.

The world narrows down into the point between Will and James, barely enough space to breathe. Yes, Will wants to say, yes when James’ eyes flicker down to Will’s mouth, yes as his hands soundlessly drift out of Will’s hold, his right hand cradling the angle between his jaw and his neck, the other moving slowly to cup the back of his neck, his eyelashes fluttering to eclipse the endless blue of his gaze, night’s breath dying when James presses his lips to Will’s.

Everything goes mute. All he can taste, smell, see is James, flooding his senses until he has to shut his eyes to retain his composure. James’ mouth feels impossibly soft, a little warm and dry. He sits there as if—waiting.

This is only their second kiss—the first right after James had taken Will out of the palace when he’d first been collared had been the last, no matter how much James came onto Will after that, even despite the desperate surge of want that would almost physically overcome him in the months after. White knuckling to curb the craving.

But how can Will forget this now? How can he forget it long enough to be forgiven? Like smoke, James is permeable, settling into every quiet place inside of Will that he had tried to bury.

Will falls away.

“Don’t say anything,” James immediately says as if begging when he parts, no chance for Will to respond. His eyes look to him, expecting Will to push him away—he can read his irises spelling out the song of rejection. “Just—”

“It’s okay,” Will says softly, one hand coming up as if possessed against the soft hairs prickling at the bottom of James’ neck, watching his throat work as he swallows his emotion. Gingerly, James relaxes into his hold. Will catches him, the puddling relief tender in his hands. “It’s okay.”

He doesn’t know who he’s telling it to. Their eyes still caught, James deliberately shifts closer to Will, both of them holding each other nonsensically, each the only person strong enough to keep the other up. Then, the morning drawing them down as the moon surrenders to the light, they rest back against the bed atop the covers. Sinking into a pillow that smells like Will and soon of James too.

James yawns, the dim light sinking over his pearled fangs. In response, a vicious surge of drowsiness shudders through Will’s body, making his limbs feel slow—even if he wanted to tear away from James, he wouldn’t be able to. “I think I’m sleepy,” he murmurs, his eyes already squeezing shut into curves.

“Okay,” whispers Will, watching James’ next breath leave him as a noiseless sigh, sweetly settling between them. Face to face, he takes in each swell and curve of James: the proud bridge of his nose, his quivering blond eyelashes, the mouth that he just kissed. Somehow, even when pinned to a threat, he’s able to find peace.

Will can feel it leaking over to him, too, coaxing his eyelids to fall. Ridiculously, the urge to fight sleep crosses his mind, unwilling to look away from James, but the long hours erode at his will, sanding away the force of it, and with James’ hand sitting warm against his waist, keeping him close, Will finally falls asleep.

Morning gently shakes Will awake; it is still early morning, an hour or two before the land typically stirs to rouse the house with warmth. James, still asleep, has one arm strewn across Will’s stomach and the other half-curled into a fist in the space between their bodies, limp golden curls marking the white expanse of linen sheet.

He imagines that they’re living in another reality, untouched by the old world and able to move through the motions of domesticity when it suddenly strikes him that all he had ever wanted to be was here. Here. This is where Will is.

Afraid to wake James, he takes great pains to retract from his hold without startling him, eventually able to back away entirely with James left alone on the bed. He redresses quickly, leaving his sleeping attire hung over the back of a chair, then slips out the door, the hinges mercifully not creaking as he disappears.

The heat seeps out the cracks when he tiptoes his way down the stairs, the wooden floor slipping cold against his bare skin. Every grain of wood feels new to him. Each breath, clean and pure, fills his lungs with unexpected clarity. He passes the open kitchen, the oil paintings watching from their station in the hallway, the fireplace sitting still and unused as he pulls his old, weathered boots over his feet and takes the extra time to lace them firmly, a comforting pressure.

Key in his pocket, the world glitters when Will takes the first step outside. He picks his way across the lawn of dead grass, speckled with the green persistence of sprouting weeds. The mountain appears gray and blurred out before him, but he sets off for it anyway, the earth sinking underneath his feet. Just a few weeks ago, it had been frozen, crunching under his feet. An early spring awaits them, perhaps.

He had never realized how short the distance between the foot of the ridge and the inn was until now. The last time he’d ventured up the path snaking through the gray-lined half-shadows, he’d thought of the mountain as his last destination. Now, with the knowledge that he can turn back, the winding length appears conquerable.

The trees rustle in silence, void of wind, still mostly too iced over for much wildlife activity. Will’s feet know this curving path, trodden familiar to his body, even without a compass. Before he approaches the waterfall, he can hear it—a faint trickle, hardly the full-out grandeur it would become in the summer, but a glimpse of its rushing depths.

It takes him by surprise. This deep into winter, he hadn’t expected the ice to melt so quickly, but when he comes upon the waterfall, it greets him sluicing by at a sluggish pace, the current mostly frozen except for one crack, a miracle.

There is a metaphor here. It is so obvious in its irony that it makes Will grin, viciously, mockingly. It makes him a bit of a fool, and James, a little more right than he ought to be. But the sky is so clear, swept of its clouds, clean and bright. The silence rubs his nose red. Deep in his pockets, the tips of his fingers tingle, still blood-hot. And standing at the top, peering down over the crystallized pool glittering starkly in the light, the bottom both miles and yet only seconds away, he thinks that the promise of weightlessness seems a little less tempting now.

Will realizes, quite imperatively, that one day, he might want to live. And he will live to see that day come.

The walk back, as he’d expected, is short. The door awaits him, splintered and heavy, and it creaks when he pushes through the entrance as if announcing his return in an oaken voice.

And immediately on the other side is James.

“James?” Will says, the name startled out of him. He looks down on James, who’s crouching down on the floor, surprise halting him for a moment before he remembers the outside temperatures and steps aside to close the door, once again immediately enveloped in the warm buzz of the inn.

James looks worse for wear. His clothes appear hastily pulled on, the buttons through the wrong holes and his collar untucked. His hair looks raked through, uncharacteristically disheveled—forked high on one side and limply hanging over his forehead on the other. Kneeling on the ground, he’s halfway through knotting the laces of his leather boots. And his face—stricken pale, bloodless and formless, eyes an unending shock of blue. His lips the only smear of red across his expression, bitten raw.

Panic worms through Will, causing him to drop to the floor to look closer at James. His knees hit hard against the wood paneling, an afterthought. “Are you okay?” he asks, hands automatically wavering in front of him to clear the air between, searching for injury.

“Am I?” James says incredulously, and the bitten-off state of his voice repels Will in even more surprise. “Are—what of me? What about you, Will?”

“Me,” Will repeats dumbly, one finger uncertainly turning on himself. Slow as his thoughts are from the now-fading alarm, he doesn’t understand James at all. “I’m fine.”

James chokes out, “You weren’t there when I woke up,” and suddenly Will gets it. The red flush around his eyes, beautiful in their sincerity. How here on the floor, he has never looked closer to prayer.

“James,” Will says, and then he draws in further, gripping James’ forearms to bring him near. “I was only going on a walk.”

James merely closes his eyes, looking as though he has to convince himself to simply breathe. Will can imagine it—the dumb panic, the insatiable fear, rendering everything dull in its intensity. The back-of-his-mind pain of the bone of his knees pressing into the hardwood floor whites out in comparison to guilt, making him feel sick.

“How was I supposed to know that?” James whispers. “That you would come back?”

Logically, Will knows that James is only responding like this because he’s made enough wrong decisions to instill the fear that he would lose him. It’s Will who put the idea in his head in the first place. But despite that, he can’t help the faint flicker of irritation blistering in the back of his chest at the notion that James can’t trust Will with himself.

“I’m not a child you have to supervise,” Will says. Still holding James by his arms, he rubs his thumbs against his skin, trying to push the comfort through his body. “I’m not—if you’re here, you can expect me to come back. I’m as old as you are.”

“I don’t think either of us is old enough to have to deal with all of this,” says James, still slumped against the floor, now leaning half of his weight against Will.  Waveringly, his hands lift before him to brace themselves against Will’s shoulders, clutching so tightly he can feel his grip to the bone. “Sometimes you carry yourself with a weariness you should only have if you were thrice your age. I don’t even remember becoming an adult. I don’t feel a day more than seventeen. And sometimes when I think that you were ready not to live any longer—”

James cuts himself off before the sentence can grow any farther, shearing it short at the roots. Will feels the loss in his throat—and once again, the same guilt worming through his entire body, touching each limb briefly and passing on to pool in his stomach. He swallows down the bitter taste on his tongue.

“You’re not doing a good job of convincing me that you don’t stay only because you’re afraid for me,” Will says wryly, only half-serious, the other half light to ease some of the stiffness from James’ shoulders, so tense he looks as if carved from stone.

James opens his eyes once more and holds Will’s gaze, unblinking blue. Will feels that look loop around his ankles and hold him here, linking him to James. So reluctant to leave his side it almost scares him.

“Why can’t you believe that I love you?” James says, quiet, sure. Unafraid to keep his eyes on Will, possessing his stare as if he knows it already belongs to him. And it does. His heart in his throat, swelling with every passing moment, longing to be owned by James—and it’s already partway there.

The problem is that Will does believe it. It’s the worst part of it, unfolding, unfurling, coaxed outward by the light—a flower that beams up only to fear the winter. Puddling dark. James may love Will, yes, but does that eclipse his sadness? His desperate desire to be hurt, snaking alongside every inch of his devotion? They come entwined, knotted deep within Will. A pain he fantasises would be better removed rather than nurtured. To be loved by James seems to him an indulgence. To keep him is unfair to James, when Will will only ever be the person he has been treated as since he was a child—volatile.

It amazes Will that James is so unafraid to confess. But if he thinks about it, he’s always been like that, starkly confident, unwavering in his want. And somehow, never quite as desperate as Will is.

“I do believe it,” Will whispers. Unable to keep it to himself.

The only sign that James’ grasp on his composure slackens is his audible swallow, his Adam's apple working in his throat. Will feels it echoed in his own body, hot and dry.

“Then are you aware that you love me?” James says, the assertion as arrogant as it is sincere, drifting softly into place between them. The panic has flushed from his face, now replaced over time with profound calm.

“I am,” says Will, unable to do anything else but utter the damned truth, as terrible as it is. To admit that he had known the happiness that could exist between him and James, and that he had denied it for both of them for so many months. “I’m sorry.”

“Why are you sorry?” James asks, his hands softening against his shoulders now that he’s pried the confession out of Will. Even despite it, there’s a ghost of a smile across James’ face like relief. “I’m not. I’m not sorry that we still love each other despite the hell we’ve been through.”

“I’m sorry that sometimes you think I’ll walk out the door and not come back,” Will says, “and that I keep telling you to leave so I don’t have to do it first.”

“But you’ve already left, Will,” James says gently, his right hand now cradling Will’s cheek. When he blinks, he’s taken aback by the dampness in his tearline, rendering the sight before him watery. “The first day you woke up after you saved the world and you left all of us. I’ve survived that already.”

“We’re kneeling on the floor because I came back and you were ready to search the woods to find me,” Will points out, not without a bit of self-deprecating wryness. “I can’t tell you that admitting I’m in love with you means that I won’t be sad anymore. I can’t promise that I’ll be able to sleep through every night, or want to wake up for every sunrise. Right now, I don’t—I don’t think…”

Impossibly, James pulls Will closer until he’s hauled him into a hug, clutching onto him with a sudden need that melts through Will’s outer jacket, startling the breath out of his chest. He turns his face into James, his nose buried in his hair, his entire vision gold before he squeezes his eyes tightly enough to erase the spasms of light creeping through his eyelids, the image of Sarcean haunting in the dark, all of it obliviated.

“I know that,” James says mildly, placid. “I’ve been at your side for this entire time. I’ve served you, mourned you, and loved you the entire time. You don’t have to be a hero. That’s not the Will I love. All I’ve wanted to be is here. Can’t you trust me on that?”

“I do trust you,” Will whispers pitifully. “I do.”

“Okay.” James presses his fingers into Will’s back, and Will does the same in response—grasping, suddenly, in his newfound desperation, for a reminder of his presence. “Keep trusting in me, then, when you don’t trust anybody else.”

In lieu of a reply, Will only holds onto James impossibly tighter as if believing he can meld their bodies into one—and he stays, instead of leaving.

One day, in the future, he will trust in more than only James—the solemn gaze of the moon, the rippling grass hushed over the plains, even the crackling, frozen waterfall—and eventually, himself.

After the first night that James crashes Will’s bedroom, he doesn’t leave. It’s a pattern he settles into as easily as the moon slides into place once the darkness sets overhead—when evening falls, Will knows he can find James waiting for him on the bed.

He doesn’t leave. It’d once been a fact that he dreaded about James, but now—now, he’s made his peace with it.

Tonight, they’re up late again, the light waning through the window, shedding its silvery shadow across the sheets. The glow swallows James, too. The night promises to be long, and this time, Will doesn’t fear it.

“Did you pick the room with the best view on purpose?” James asks Will, slender frame tilted toward the outer ranges of the house as he looks upon the horizon. “Or did you just end up putting me in the ugliest room by accident?”

“It was just the first one I walked into,” Will mutters, slightly ruffled, and James just laughs in response, a light sound that floats through the moonlit air and rests upon Will’s shoulders. “It is nice, though. I’d been thinking about how the sunset would look from someplace other than England. I hadn’t really been paying attention when we were at the dig since we were, ah, preoccupied.”

“Me too,” James murmurs, settling himself to lie down across the bed, long limbs taking up as much space as possible. He sounds a little sleepier now, lulled by the dampened night. “I want to travel without being there to kill so and so or threaten an enemy or another.”

Will thinks back to the china plates propped up in the kitchen, encased in glass and painted blue. “You know the plates on the shelf downstairs? With all the flower varieties?”

James hums in response, a small, peaceful sound.

“I want to see those for myself in person,” Will says, a little wistful. “Just once, or in passing. I’ve never seen them before. I guess I really have only known England.”

James rockets up, so suddenly that Will startles, flinching backward. He turns to him with a shining gaze, so full of excitement that it flushes the previous drowsiness from his face. “We should get out of here, Will.”

“What?” Will says, barely comprehending.

James grasps onto Will’s hands; Will tracks the movement, his stare belated. “Travel. We should travel the world together. We don’t have to stay here; soon enough, we’re going to run out of walks to go on, or at least get tired of the scenery. And as nice as it is, I miss being around people—and I think you do, too. Besides—” He glances back out the window, this time toward the forest. “—There are some memories that I’d rather leave behind, if you’re okay with it.”

For once, Will feels a rush of excitement thrill through his body, something akin to adrenaline. The first to rouse his body in months. A plan to do something other than sit in the same room day after day, running through the same routine. “Can we really?” His voice is uncertain.

“Why not?” James flops back again, this time grinning to himself as he pans his hands over his head as if playing with a visual only he can see. “We can go all over. We can do anything. Will, we’re so young, and we haven’t done anything with it other than save the world. Imagine where we could go. Imagine what we could see. All the people we could meet. The experiences we could have. We'll find Violet and the others and make them understand if they don't already.”

The idea of it—a surprise to even Will, the idea of it doesn’t scare him the longer he thinks on it. In fact, he—

“Let’s go, James,” he says, so quietly it shocks him to hear the words come out of his mouth. “We can go.”

“Really?” James says, grin so wide it looks as though it could house the whole world, swallow both of them in one go. “You can’t go back on this promise. Let’s go tomorrow, Will. I’m sure the horses are raring to ride.”

“Tomorrow?” Will laughs, settling back beside James, feeling his warmth spread through the mattress, take his hand. “That’s a little ambitious.”

“Why should we wait for anything?” James says as if it’s obvious. Will can feel his shrug through his body, every moment mirrored across the bed. “Everything is for the taking if you think about it.”

“You sound like you’re in love with the world, James.”

Another shrug. “Why shouldn’t I be?”

Will digests the question, letting it settle through his body, soak into his mind. With bated breath, almost waiting for a thread of pessimism to avert the notion, his head takes the idea one more time. A rush of air whistles out through his teeth, not quite a sigh.

Will turns on his side, settling his face into the crook of James’ shoulder, pressing it deep until it hurts the ridge of his nose. “Sure,” he says into his skin. “Whatever you want.”

He can hear when James smiles, the creak of his jaw when his lips crack. “I’m holding you to this swear, you know.”

“That’s okay,” Will whispers, feeling his eyes close, finally able to sleep with James at his side. “I’ll let you.”

After all, James had been right. What is there to fear about the world, really? And someday, sometime in the future, the day will come for Will when he realizes it for himself. The first spring. He just has to hold on until then.

The day will come.