Magician by K.L. Noone

The Tenth Garden: A Bonus Story

Gareth, surrounded by and awash with roses, leaned in to breathe the scent of one: ruffled, wild, dusty pink with gilded streaks. The Tenth Garden unfolded all around him, drenching the world in color and light. Everywhere he looked he found a new astonishing sight: a curve of slim bridge, a leap of orchids, a spray of peonies, a skip of pebbled path.

He’d rolled up both sleeves and undone shirt-buttons under the honeyed afternoon sun. Lorre had said Kiersk could be chilly but not as cold as people thought, at least not in the southern regions where the last surviving Memorial Garden still bloomed. Gareth had pointed out that, being raised in the Mountain Marches, his definition of cold was likely not the same as most, but had brought some warmer clothing anyway, just to be prepared.

He’d left his coat and heavier layers in their rooms. The sun pooled over his arms, his bare head.

The line of the tower they were borrowing rose in lavish cerulean and celadon mosaic, almost a flower itself, off to his left. Normally visitors weren’t allowed to stay in King Jehan’s palace: the main structure was over nine hundred years old, constructed out of that legendary royal pain and grief and madness and desire to hide away in the gardens that’d been his endless memorial to his wife. Tours occasionally went in, under strict supervision. Lorre, who had some sort of long-standing relationship with the head gardener and historian, had asked for three nights.

It wasn’t exactly a friendship. More of a debt. Lorre, glittering and half-human and a legend himself, did not have many friends, or hadn’t in the past. He’d cured some rare lemon trees of some sort of infection, he’d said, mostly because he’d come to visit and the gardeners of a hundred years ago had been in despair. They’d begged; he’d figured that he might as well see what his magic could do. The caretakers of the Tenth Garden had never forgotten.

Gareth, who privately thought that Lorre could use some more people appreciating everything he’d casually done for the world, wandered down a winding path through an extravagance of lavender-and-pink snapdragons. They bobbed at him merrily.

He’d always liked flowers, both in gardens and wild, the living growing world. The first boy he’d ever kissed, years ago, had brought him sunflowers in a hand-carved wooden vase. Lorre, Gareth suspected, was trying to wrap up the whole world and give it to him as a courting-gift.

The puffball eruptions of blue petals on his left were nearly the hue of Lorre’s eyes. They made him grin more.

He’d always liked history and stories, too. Grand quests. Epic tales. Heroes saving the Middle Lands. Sometimes those stories’d had Lorre in them, a savior or a villain or a trickster or a teacher or all of the above.

And now Gareth himself would be in them. He nodded back at the encouraging bounce of a flower-laden branch, and had to laugh, half under his breath, only to himself and the plants. He was in a story right now. Walking here, this garden.

The other nine of King Jehan’s memorial gardens had been lost to civil wars, city sprawl, a lack of care, and the general depredations of time. They’d been gone even before Lorre, who was at least three hundred years old, had been born.

But the Tenth Garden, the crown jewel, shone with riotous living color.

He caught sight of a butterfly, blue and gold and improbably large, dancing around water-lilies in the twining chattering stream. He smiled.

He thought about stories and heroes, or did not think about them, or kept the awareness nearby and unfocused: letting the idea lie fallow at the back of his head. He was getting used to the world knowing his name, if not his face; the villagers back home in King’s Gate had already been cheerfully singing a newly composed tavern ballad about their prince seeking out a hidden island and asking a magician for help and falling in love.

Because his people also liked watching their prince’s ears go red, several of the later verses had employed extensive bawdy innuendo regarding the love aspect. Gareth had groaned theatrically and exaggerated his own embarrassment, playing along. Lorre had promptly memorized the filthiest of the lines, and quoted them back to him later. While testing some of them out.

He followed the rippling line of water, a river hand-carved and planned out in the grip of loss and love and obsession, ages ago. The base of the small decorative waterfall lay only a few steps away, leaping flying drops and tumbling sheets that calmed into a round flat pool. Reeds and tall flower-stalks ruffled their skirts in the breeze, and the air tasted of water and honeysuckle and crocuses and of course, everywhere, the roses. The butterfly fluttered at his shoulder.

He hadn’t quite managed to grow used to the idea that he might, in some form, live forever.

The choice wasn’t the issue. He’d made it with his entire heart, and he would again. The actual practical immensity of time and transmutation remained difficult to wrap his head around. Vast and infinite and glowing with the radiance of the future.

He loved Lorre with everything in him. He could no more leave his magician to face endless centuries alone than he could fly. Besides, he’d liked the idea for himself, when Lorre had made the hesitant offer.

Gareth had always wanted to protect people, his brother, his land, their shaggy goats and cows. With him as Lorre’s anchor and sometimes conscience, they could care for all the Middle Lands. That care would go on and on and build and transform and sink deep and sweet into the bones of the earth and the sunlight, the way he and Lorre both might someday, woven into the tapestry of it all.

Not for centuries, though. He touched a curling vine, felt the strength and sap of it against his hand, heard the whirr of some honeybees a few bushes over. He liked being himself, in this body: human and sturdy, good at mending fences, happy with hot tea and a novel about dreamed-up ships that could sail the stars. He was certainly wholly convinced that Lorre liked his body too; he grinned at the vine, which waved back.

He sometimes could fly, at that. With Lorre’s magic carrying them both.

The butterfly swooped above his head and darted off to play with a sunbeam. Gareth very nearly told him to watch out for large birds or careless garden visitors, but sat on that protective impulse. Unnecessary, really.

He watched ripples spread across the surface of the pool, calm in their motion. He put both hands in his trouser-pockets.

He breathed in heat and light and the layers of the ancient garden, past and present. He felt himself at rest, listening to waterfall and birdsong, being soothed.

He turned as Lorre slid out of air and patterned wings and into human form, landing beside him. “You make a lovely butterfly.”

“I do generally try to be lovely. And you fit perfectly here. With all the flowers.” Lorre naked was more beautiful than all the roses in the world, Gareth thought; the thought was warm and soft and just a fraction bittersweet. His magician—the world’s last great magician, the last known person descended from the old river-spirits and wild powers, half human and half a story out of fantasy—had wide sparkling blue eyes and elegant limbs and fine-edged beauty, and long silky blond hair that was presently falling uncontained over one eye.

Lorre, he knew, had designed that face. Had shaped that body out of magic. Because beauty was a kind of power too, and Lorre centuries ago had wanted to be powerful. To be strong enough to change the world. To never let anyone, including his own father, use him again.

That was the small bittersweet part of the feeling; but it faded when Lorre shamelessly came up and tucked himself under Gareth’s arm, a messy-haired wayward garden sprite seeking warmth. He was in fact taller than Gareth while in his usual human shape, but only by a fraction, and Gareth’s shoulders were broader and good for cuddling. Lorre tended to run cold.

Gareth wrapped both arms around him. “You tell me if you’re not warm enough.” His magician needed some cherishing. Three hundred years, and clearly in all that time nobody’d made him feel wanted, cared for, adored.

“I’m marvelous.” Lorre leaned back against him. “Do you like it? The Tenth Garden, not me. Though, yes, tell me you like me, too.”

“I do, as it happens.” Gareth nudged a kiss into his hair. “I love you and the Garden. It’s so full of stories, this place. Every choice of waterfall, flower, tall grass. Everything that everyone’s cared for and watched over and kept thriving, all these years. Will anyone care that you’re not wearing clothes?”

“No. Karoli told me they owe me as many favors as they have lemon trees, and anyway I’d know if another person came close enough to see us.” Lorre waved a hand; a rainbow billowed into gauzy existence over the waterfall, pulled out of light and droplets and the desire for pretty colors. “I like the way you look at roses.”

“It’s incredible.” Gareth hugged him a bit tighter. “Thank you for this. I’d read about it, but I’d never expected to be here.”

“We’ve got another two days. You might be able to see most of it. And we can always come back. I’d forgotten how beautiful the seasons are here.” Lorre turned to face him; Gareth’s arms stayed around him. “Where do you want to go next? I know you like coming home again after we’ve been someplace, but…”

“It’s a bit too soon. I know.” That was part of the arrangement, Lorre’s promise and attempt to be good. His magic changed the world, at times inadvertently; he was magic, and could make rivers flood or strawberries ripen with a single impulse. Keeping him too long in one place—the formerly uneventful and unassuming Mountain Marches, say, with Gareth’s brother on the throne—could alter not only the physical landscape but that of politics and power, across the Middle Lands.

They did visit, often. Gareth liked travel. He also liked settling into a familiar spot by a fire, feet up, everybody home and safe and well-fed and warm. Two weeks ago they’d been home when his brother had finally managed to ask Rebecca the pretty apothecary to dance, at the village fair. Gareth adored his brother, and therefore needed to lovingly mock Dan’s flailing feet at every opportunity.

He said, “Someplace by the sea. Tropical.” Lorre liked the ocean and the sun.

“I’ll come up with some suggestions.” Lorre trailed a fingertip across the nape of Gareth’s neck; an invisible magical hand ran down Gareth’s thigh. “Places I think you’d enjoy.”

“I’ll enjoy just about anything,” Gareth pointed out, honestly. The hands, multiple, were distracting. So was Lorre’s splendidly naked body, pressed up against his. “Did you want to drop into Averene on the way? To see Merry and Lily and Will?”

Lorre paused. All the hands stopped. “I was trying to seduce you in a garden. Not exactly thinking about my daughter, her mother, and a prince who’d happily stab a sword through my heart.”

“He wouldn’t and you know it.” Gareth tapped fingers against Lorre’s backside, not a scolding but just because it was so inviting and round and firm and naked. “Will’s forgiven you, Lily still cares about you, and Merry thinks you’re just wonderful. All on good terms.”

“I wouldn’t say good,” Lorre muttered, but he wasn’t arguing, so that was all right. Sunlight slid through his hair like liquid caramel, and down over his bare skin.

Gareth, entranced, traced the sun-stripe along Lorre’s chest, flat stomach, hip. Then knelt and did it again with his mouth: settling, after, to kiss the length of Lorre’s very interested cock, teasing with the lightness of it but meaning the offer. He looked up.

“If you want,” Lorre said, which meant he very much wanted to but was worrying again about power and unfairness and stepping all over Gareth’s range of comfort.

“I’d not be down here if I didn’t want to, believe me,” Gareth pointed out, and licked him, base to tip. Lorre always tasted delicious, sugared and creamy; that wasn’t just Gareth’s perceptions being fondly in love, either. Lorre had wanted every piece of himself to be attractive and memorable.

He paused to say, “Anyway, it’s possible I’ve had fantasies about getting on my knees and tasting you in a garden.”

“Have you?”

Not until today, but resoundingly yes, now. He had a hand on Lorre’s hip, steadying them both. The path wasn’t hard at all under his knees, and the air was full of bright petals and green leaves and sun. His own body was a lute-string of want, ready for a note, but also awake and alive in the anticipation. “I’m going to have this fantasy forever. The only thing I’ll ever think about again. For as long as we both live. One single thought living in my head, and it’ll be doing this to you in a garden.”

Lorre actually laughed, the sound breathless and surprised; Gareth treasured it.

“I love you having thoughts.” Lorre put a hand on his head, a bit tentatively, but then with enough assertion to tug out Gareth’s hair tie. “I love all your thoughts. You can tell me more about your fantasies later. I’ll see what I can do.”

Gareth, who had lost several hair ties to Lorre’s exploring fingers in similar situations—his magician liked to touch the universe, hands in motion, fiddling with embroidery threads or making small folded-paper animals or playing with Gareth’s hair—gave him a small kiss of agreement, at that. And then got to doing what he’d intended to do, with enthusiasm.

Lorre’s prick was large and stiff and hot, velvet and iron, and it filled his mouth so well, and pushed back into his throat when Lorre made a soft sound and thrust forward as if unable to not. Gareth caught him when he would’ve apologized, hand keeping him in place, and took the whole length of him: enjoying the size, the heft, the way Lorre’s hips jerked and a spurt of sweetness burst out.

Lorre apologized about the hair ties every time, and found them again, later, summoning them up from wherever they’d landed. Gareth redoubled his present efforts in appreciation.

A susurration of flower-petals kissed his cheek, his neck, his collarbone where he’d undone shirt-buttons. Magic, they moved and lifted and coiled around him: his throat, along one arm, down his back and under his shirt. A swirl of them pressed against his cock, where it strained the front of his trousers. They made a mischievous splash of white.

Playful, enchanting, and unexpectedly sweet at heart, under all the casual use of power: Lorre always wanted him to feel good. Gareth wanted his magician to feel loved and wanted and anchored: to feel it, and to know it. Beyond doubt.

Lorre made that perfect quiet sound again, and the petal-spiral lost coherence. Close, then; Gareth took him deeper, surrounding him with heat and wetness and sensation and friction, guiding thrusts with the hand on Lorre’s hip. It was messy and pounding and real, suffused by garden lushness, every element singing.

Lorre’s body tightened, and the world went motionless and poised and clear, even the waterfall hanging at the brink; he gasped Gareth’s name as he began to come, hand tangling in Gareth’s hair.

The crystal silence burst into a kaleidoscope of birdsong, swaying trees, and shuddering grasses. A wave raced across the pool and up and out, a splash that drenched them both.

Gareth drank him in, swallowed gladly, held him close. Lorre’s legs wobbled; Gareth knelt up more and wrapped both arms around his hips, wet head to toes and gazing up at him.

Lorre breathed, “Oh, I love your fantasies about me and gardens…” and touched his shoulders, coaxing him up. “Your hair. Your clothes. The water. Sorry.” Another brief touch whisked the water away, drying them both off.

“That was brilliant,” Gareth told him, putting both arms back around him. “I love you getting me all wet.” He even managed not to blush, saying it. Association with Lorre had been steadily eroding that reaction.

Also, his entire body was singing with delight at the taste on his tongue, and at the feeling of Lorre leaning against him, sated and naked and thoroughly pleasured.

“So do I.” Lorre rubbed himself against Gareth’s front, very pointedly. “Would you like me to return the favor? I could—oh, no, one second.”

The gardens swirled and flowed and dissolved. Another space opened, pouring in, made of decorated walls and hanging gauzy silks and inlaid mosaic flashes of amber, amethyst, sapphire. Gareth, as usual, felt Lorre’s magic pulling them through the world like a single skipped breath, a step held a fraction too long, a split-second absence of solid tangible ground followed by immediate presence.

The tower room encircled them, opulent and exquisite. The Tenth Garden historians two centuries previous had recreated the furnishings and wall hangings of the original era, and the Garden King’s private retreat showcased his wealth and his desire to fill the world with his lost wife’s favorite colors. The greens and blues of garden and water mingled with bursts of rich indigo and sun-gold across the painstakingly crafted furniture, walls, ceiling. The desk under the open window held an inlay of jade and pink quartz, matching the climbing roses that peeked in. The vine-twist posts of the bed supported an airy hand-painted canopy full of pale blue sky and the silhouettes of flying birds.

Sometimes the historians brought the tours up to see the private rooms. Not any time in the next few days, though. One of Lorre’s diaphanous robes lay tossed across a two-hundred-year-old reproduction chair, one of Gareth’s spare hair ties had landed on the floor by the bed, and their traveling teakettle sat on a tall white table with legs the shape of tulips and a pattern of ladybugs carved from rubies. It shared the spot with the novel Gareth had been reading, all about star-ships and heavenly sails; imagined future voyages had become friends with the present-day kettle and a table out of the past, somewhat bemusedly but happily.

Lorre’s magic would clean and restore anything that needed such, when they left. Gareth consequently only felt a small twinge of guilt about sleeping on a bed worth more than every last bouncing goat and cow and exported fine cheese from the Mountain Marches.

Justa twinge. Small. Mostly small, anyway.

“Tour group,” Lorre explained, in regard to the sudden transport. “Coming up the path.”

“Ah.”

“I could’ve hidden us. They’d’ve never known we were there, or what we were doing. We could’ve kept doing it, right next to them. But I wasn’t sure that’d be fair.”

“Fair?”

“I hadn’t asked you if you’d like that. And if the people ever found out—they wouldn’t, I’m good at concealment, but if, somehow—then that’s more unfair, because I hadn’t asked them either.”

That answer went to Gareth’s chest, and stayed there: the tender ache of how much he loved this man. Lorre was trying so hard to be good, when all his life and all his magic tugged him in the direction of instantly satisfying his every impulse; the stories that painted him as a villain were so painfully wrong.

Lorre had made mistakes. Gareth knew that was true. But his magician wanted to be kind.

Lorre stretched, shaking off the work of travel. It wasn’t hard, he’d said, or not very. He knew where he wanted to be, and he could ask the threads of the universe to rearrange so that he was now there, instead of where he’d been. Gareth also knew, because Lorre didn’t lie to him, that bringing other people along was marginally harder—more so for more people, of course. Lorre had to keep track of who was who, and ensure each individual point of light stayed distinct.

Just now, however, Lorre looked perfectly at ease and happy. He wandered to the bed, collapsed down into it, draped himself across brocade and silk and satin and embroidered samite. Gold and blue and decadent, he became part of the artwork, framed by matching limpid hues. “Come here and let me take care of you?” His eyes echoed the invitation. Because magic made a lot possible, his body was already stirring to new arousal.

Gareth pulled off his shirt, peeled off his trousers and underclothes—Lorre had flicked a finger at his boots and socks, and made them vanish and reappear under the table—and came over, sitting down beside him. “That was nice of you. Thinking about that, what I’d want, and the other people.”

“You think about other people all the time.” Lorre propped himself up on both elbows, managing to look both glorious and gloriously indecent. “And I’m not nice.”

“So you say. I happen to know you’re wrong.” He rolled that way, landed atop his magician, pinning Lorre with human muscles and weight, loving how they fit and felt together. Lorre spread his legs willingly, and wrapped one around Gareth’s waist.

Gareth kissed him, tasting bliss like sugared violets. “You’re very nice. This is nice.”

“Only nice?” Lorre said. “I’ve been told I’m magical at kissing. Told by you.”

“You are. And you’re also…” He nuzzled lips under Lorre’s jawline, felt the scratch of his stubble against Lorre’s smooth fair skin, knew his magician so often needed grounding sensation. “Entirely nice. Sweet, like your tea.”

Looking up, he discovered that Lorre’s expression lay somewhere between unserious exasperation about Gareth’s evaluation of him, a hint of bewilderment over the adjective choice, a large amount of desire, and a breath of hope.

“I love you.” Gareth tapped a finger over Lorre’s mouth. “You. My magician.”

Lorre kissed his finger. “My hero. Can I reward you now?”

“Mmm…I know what I want.” He found Lorre’s arms, stretched them up into a pile of feathery bejeweled pillows, stroked his hands along them. “You stay right there.”

Lorre opened his mouth, visibly rethought whatever answer had been on the tip of his tongue, and nodded instead, mock-demure. And lay there smiling at him.

“Lovely,” Gareth told him, and showered kisses like offerings down the length of his body, avoiding Lorre’s cock for now, though it was upright and rigid again. He parted Lorre’s legs further, ran his hands along them, lightly squeezed both graceful ankles.

“You really don’t want me to move?” Lorre tried, rather plaintively.

“Oh, you can if you want.” He kissed Lorre’s inner thigh, adding a bit of a nip, a rub of his cheek there. Lorre moaned softly at the experience of it: the feelings and responses of this body, this physical shape, lighting up his world. Gareth added, “If you need to, it’s fine. There’s nothing holding you down…nothing keeping you in place…except you wanting that. Listening to me. Being sweet.”

“Now who’s being unfair,” Lorre said. “You know I like a challenge.”

“Nothing unfair about it. It’s all your choice, whatever you do. Or don’t.” He caught Lorre’s dripping prick in one hand, caressing the length, fondling him. Then shifted atop him, braced over him, so their shared arousal pushed and rubbed together. He got his hand back on them both, and nearly groaned at how good that felt.

Lorre outright whimpered beneath him, not moving, being good, and terribly frustrated about it.

“I love you,” Gareth told him again. “And I want to take care of you. If I get a reward. I’m choosing this.” His hand was slicker, wet with need.

He paused, shifted position, let the moment stretch further. Lorre said, “Gareth,” sounding desperate; Gareth sat back a little and went back to playing with him, with the golden hair at the base of him, and the taut drawn-up balls, and the sensitive skin behind them. He stroked fingers into the crease of Lorre’s luscious backside, and this time Lorre whispered, “Please, Gareth, please,” and his thighs quivered. But he stayed put.

“So good,” Gareth murmured. “Help us out, a bit, here? That trick you do with the—”

Even before he finished, his fingers, his hand, Lorre’s body, were slicker, gliding. Lorre could conjure up—and also clean up—oils and ointments and lotions; this fact had come in very handy on many occasions.

He pressed fingers in, delving, stroking. Lorre moaned and squirmed in place and opened up at his touch, looser, easier. Gareth was pretty sure that was being helped a bit by sorcery as well—his magician could shapeshift, after all—but that was a clue to Lorre’s eagerness, so it made him smile.

He played with Lorre that way for a while too, fingers working in him and thrusting and finding that spot; he stroked Lorre’s cock with the other hand, until Lorre cried out his name, back arching, coming again, astonished and abrupt and shivering in the aftermath.

Gareth bent over him and licked his chest, then kissed him. Lorre, despite hundreds of years of experience, looked a bit dazed. Attentive loving care tended to cause that expression.

“Wonderful,” Gareth said, between kisses. “And, look at that, you didn’t even move…”

“I think technically I did,” Lorre said, still soft and wide-eyed and dreamy but also still himself and inclined to debate. “That probably counts, in some sense. If you want me to do that again, even I might need a few minutes. I am three hundred years old.”

“Ah, but you’re magical, and so’s my mouth.” He applied it to Lorre’s right nipple, then. And then the left, leaving them pink and pretty and matching. Lorre was panting a little by the time he stopped.

Gareth petted his shoulder for a moment, letting him breathe. “All right?”

“Spectacular. These fantasies of yours…they’re extremely effective.”

“And you haven’t even heard the one about making love to you, surrounded by books, in some sort of historic library.”

“I can arrange that. Which library? Where? Did you have a location in mind? Right now?”

“Later,” Gareth promised, and touched his wrist. “You can move now. I like you touching me.”

Lorre reached for him instantly, an anchor for them both, as Gareth moved atop him, between his thighs. Lorre’s hands were warm, not chilly the way they could get at times, when he needed protective gloves and Gareth’s attention. His body yielded and opened as Gareth pushed into him, also warm and sweet and slick and everything that made Gareth groan and thrust deeper, plunging.

“Yes,” Lorre gasped, “yes, yes, yes—this—” His hands clung to Gareth’s arms; his hair fell into his face.

The painted birds on the bed’s canopy ruffled their wings. Vines coiled along the bedposts. The bed itself arched upward.

They rocked together, moved together, came together. Lorre came apart soundlessly this time, trembling, openmouthed. Gareth, gazing down at him, felt the rise and the rush and the wild spill of joy like opening flowers, like a burst of rain.

In the wake of it, cuddling his magician against himself amid a heap of silken and satisfied bedding, he traced Lorre’s shoulderblade, arm, bare skin. The climbing roses nodded at the open window. “I like both this garden and you. Very much.”

He felt Lorre’s answering smile at the dip of his throat. “I thought so.”

“I’m also glad to always be with you.” He kissed the top of Lorre’s golden head. “Your anchor, forever. It’s a wonder, this place, and of course it’s all about love. But I think he must’ve been awfully lonely, that poor king, without his wife.”

“Yes,” Lorre said, and then went quiet, though a hint of tension in his body—under drowsy bliss—suggested more.

“Lorre?”

“Would you,” Lorre asked, “want to get married?”

His tone was more curious, rather than solemnly contemplating the proposal. Gareth knew that Lorre had had lovers over the decades, but had never got round to getting married, at least not in any of the recorded stories. He’d guessed ritual ceremonies likely didn’t matter as much to someone who could walk on raindrops or turn into a firebird or outlive any more human partner, though he hadn’t asked Lorre about it. He also knew that Lorre and the Church weren’t on the best of terms, and he knew that that was an understatement.

Given all that, he’d never expected that to be the question. But Lorre did often manage to surprise him.

He tipped his head up, trying to see his magician’s face. “What, right this instant? Naked and in bed?”

Lorre rested his chin on one hand, on Gareth’s chest. His fingers pressed quick tingling prints of heat into Gareth’s skin, miniature fireworks. “If you want that, I’ll arrange it.”

“Of course you would. Exhibitionist that you are.” He ran his hand over Lorre’s backside, proprietary. “No, this is for us.”

“I was serious,” Lorre said. “If you want.”

“I always want you naked and in bed with me, and I’m very serious about that.” He leaned up for a kiss.

Lorre kissed back readily, draped all over him. But then pulled back. “I meant the question. The one I asked. Would you want to?”

“I know,” Gareth said carefully, and truthfully, “that you don’t. It’s not a question; I don’t need it. I know you love me, and I love you.” He knew most of Lorre’s moods by now; this one was unusual. “We’re good as we are.”

“I know we are,” Lorre said. “Don’t answer like me.”

“Oh, well. All right, then…” He considered words, with both arms around Lorre atop him. “I used to think…I imagined getting married, yes. Not in any detail, mind. I only thought, of course it’d be part of my life, at some point.”

“That’s not an answer.”

Trust Lorre to get to the distinction between want and custom. He touched his magician’s spine, slim and straight and light. “Yes, I suppose. Not loudly, I think. But…I might be traditional enough, somewhere in my heart, to like the idea of getting married? But don’t feel you have to. It’s not a request.” He flattened his hand against Lorre’s skin, gauged the warmth and also solidity and presence, not retreat.

“If you do want that…” Lorre watched him. “I’ll do it.”

Gareth’s head spun, for a moment.

His magician, his beautiful unpredictable one-of-a-kind enchanting beloved. The two of them in the quiet small unadorned family chapel, out behind the Hall. A simple short ceremony, a binding, a promise in the presence of the Goddess and the world in the shape of all Her witnesses. The joy of a family wedding-breakfast, and later a party, with the whole of the Mountain Marches invited to dance the night away and claim their right to make a toast to their prince’s happiness.

Twining white roses rustled in a quick glimpse of breeze, at the tower window.

He breathed, “You never have.”

“I never saw the point.” Lorre sat up more, rolling off him, shaking hair away. Gareth did not like the distance, and reached for him; Lorre resisted for a second and then slid back down to nestle against him. “It wouldn’t change anything for me. I love you, and you love me, and we’ve promised everything we’ve promised.”

“I know. I’m not asking.”

“But you would like it.”

“Only in the sense of what I’m used to. It’s not a problem, love, I promise.”

A pause happened, rose-drenched. Lorre said, “Love.”

“Well, you are, aren’t you?” He played with Lorre’s hair this time, all sleek and shining but a little fluffed up from loving. “I might say it. To tell you.”

Another pause happened. Lorre finally said, “I like hearing it.”

Gareth threw a grin at the birds on the bed-canopy. They beamed back. “Then I’ll say it more. Are your toes all warm enough?”

“They feel…loved.” Lorre stopped talking; a sudden spike of diamond light lanced down from no discernable source, pierced the floor, and vanished. “Then. If it’s something you like. Getting married. I don’t want anything big.”

Gareth lay extremely still, taking this in. The words grew and spread and lit up someplace inside that he hadn’t known needed a lantern, until now. “Are you proposing to me?”

“Ah. Yes. Or no. Not yet? If you want something romantic and full of flowers. I could give you the proposal of your dreams.”

“Lorre,” Gareth said, “you gave me a garden.”

Lorre shook his head and glanced away, pushing himself up on one elbow; blond hair fell like the regret of centuries over his shoulder.

Gareth sat up. Held out a hand. Lorre needed to want to be touched, but also needed a place to land, a refuge, more desperately than anyone over the years had ever known. So many centuries, and so much pain. “You can’t say anything that would make me leave you. I’m your hero, remember.”

Lorre’s smile went sideways, wry and bruised beneath the surface. “The most stubborn person I’ve ever met, I think I said.”

“Fair enough.”

“I just thought…I had a thought. My father…” He waved a hand; the open window abruptly reshaped itself, answering some unspoken pain. An arch became a square, and then an oval. “One reason I left. Not the main reason.”

Gareth winced. He should’ve thought. He knew. “No. I see why you wouldn’t, about marriages and betrothals that you never wanted. Never mind, ever, all right?”

“No,” Lorre said. “It’s not that.”

It should’ve been that. Lorre’s father—the second baron of Valpres, and so concerned with establishing his power that he’d never given an ounce of his heart to anything or anyone else—had used his river-spirit by-blow as a source of utility, a means to an end. A child who could shove rocks into the shape of a new defensive fort at a strategic location. A progeny who could sense deposits of gold and silver in the hills. A young boy who might be wedded to an eligible girl as soon as possible, to secure a magical bloodline. Courting portraits, pretty flattering miniatures taken from a hurried sketch, had been sent out to prospects without Lorre’s knowledge. None of those portraits survived, or at least Lorre said not.

Gareth had never previously wanted, sight unseen, to punch someone in the face. He did, low-key, and never mind that Lorre’s father had been dead for over two hundred years.

He knew Lorre had finally left home because his father had asked him to kill a man, magically, leaving no traces. He knew Lorre said it had never been a question of whether it was possible, but a question of how much younger Lorre had liked his own father, versus the troublesomely ethical Church priest under discussion, and whether that younger Lorre had felt the request was in any way a productive course of action, versus something more like changing the landscape or bringing wealth up from hidden depths.

He knew that Lorre had walked into the river that’d birthed him, and had hoped and believed every drop of magic would protect him, and perhaps his mother would come and claim him at last and take him away—

Lorre’s mother had never appeared. Not then, not ever again. Lorre said the river-spirits were irretrievably gone these days, someplace else, dancing along the tapestries of magic to some other space. He said nothing about how he felt, being half one of them, and alone.

Gareth, whose mother was alive and human and very loudly involved in trade negotiations and wool export agreements, could not imagine that amount of loneliness. Lorre still hadn’t taken his hand.

He said, “I love you. No matter where we are, no matter when we are, as long as I’m me, I’m someone who’s in love with you.”

“Oh,” Lorre said, eyes all big and blue and surprised, “I know. It’s not that either. That is…it feels real, when you say so. Knowing you’re here. Thank you for that. But that wasn’t what I was thinking.”

“What were you thinking?” He lifted Lorre’s chin, delicate and pointed; made sure they were eye to eye. “I can say it more. How much I love you. As many times as you want.”

“Oh, no. It was just…” Lorre’s mouth flattened, straightened, laughed. “My father would’ve loved this. He was only a baron—the richest around, mind you—and you’re a prince, even if the Marches aren’t that wealthy. It would’ve been such an occasion. Fields of gold, triumphal trumpets, overflowing feasts. What a conquest for him.”

Gareth, who as a rule did not generally enjoy punching people, genuinely would make an exception for Lorre’s father. If the magicians ever worked out time travel, he’d offer. Maybe only one punch. But hard.

He said, “It wouldn’t’ve been about him. It would be about you.”

“It wouldn’t—”

“I’d’ve eloped with you. Swept you away. Only if you wanted, of course. I’d ask you first. But I’d’ve come to court you because you’re remarkable, and fallen in love with you because you’re you. Nothing big, you said, no huge ceremony, only something small for us. So that’s what we would’ve done. I’m not sure the Marches can manage fields of gold or trumpets, anyway. But we’re not bad at feasts and parties, for after. Big or small.”

Lorre said, “I don’t need trumpets.” His expression was one Gareth hadn’t seen before: younger, broken open, revealed. “It would be about us, you said. And you’d ask me.”

Gareth sat up more, tugged Lorre to the edge of the bed, got him to sit right there. Then climbed out of the bed. Down on one knee. Naked, with a thick waterfall-blue rug and the slanting afternoon sun and the scent of roses as witnesses.

“What,” Lorre said, “are you doing?”

“I’m asking you to marry me.” He took Lorre’s hand, the one that might wear a ring, whatever his magician wanted, elaborate or plain, colorful or clean gold. “I’m in love with you, you make my life magical every time you smile, and I want to hold your hands when you’re cold and give you foot-rubs when you’ve been wandering around barefoot all day. I want to save the world with you. I want that forever. I want you, Lorre.”

“For possibly the first time in my entire life,” Lorre said, “I honestly don’t know what to say.” He was serious, too; that was teasing, but also pure amazement.

“Yes would be nice?”

Lorre put out his other hand; Gareth gathered that one up as well, kneeling in front of him, between his naked legs, in a tower out of storybook history.

“Gareth,” Lorre said. The blue of his eyes was very bright, light, like sunrise, a new dawn over a brand-new country. His fingers were tight and hopeful. “Yes.”

THE END