Magician by K.L. Noone

Chapter 7

The air tasted brisk and cool and bracing. Mountains loomed up and peered down curiously, large and old and rock-strewn. The sky arched above, pearlescent, hung with unfallen rain. The road was dry and well-worn and wider than Lorre remembered; he considered a neatly-lettered signpost for a moment. The last time he’d been here there’d been only one destination, and no need for signs.

Gareth’s shoulders relaxed, straightened, shifted. He breathed in the clean rain-sweet taste of his home, breathed out, gazed up at snow-capped stone and lower greener hills and rolling Northern land. Somewhere nearby a stream was singing, a rush of fresh water tumbling and skipping on its way down to the lowlands.

He also said, “That’s fantastic, you know.” His hand remained in Lorre’s: seconds ago magic had reached out and connected a cozy room at a harbor inn to this windswept airy road. They were connected, of course; but then in Lorre’s head most places were.

This one hadn’t been too hard: some distance, yes, and two people instead of one, but for Gareth it was home and the shining fire-kissed golden threads of the universe linked him here. Lorre had done the walking for them both, stepping across the folds of the fabric of the world.

He did take a deep breath, though, filling his lungs. Not too hard did not mean easy, exactly. He missed their room’s large fireplace, and the equally large soft bed, already.

They’d ended up sharing the bed for the night: no real point in pretending they didn’t want to, not now. Lorre possessed no shame at all about sleeping naked—he was both too old and too flamboyant to worry about that—but had hesitated over the question of etiquette involving a naïve and kindhearted prince who’d just tried to care for him by means of magnificent sex. Did Gareth cuddle? Snore? Steal blankets? Prefer not to be touched?

Lorre himself tended to be a quiet sleeper, when he did sleep, which had surprised some partners. He’d always thought it had something to do with the calm of it: a time when he did not have to think or be aware or listen to strands of magic. He tended to be still and heavy and serene, settled in. He did wrap himself up into blankets, he’d been told. He’d not been surprised by that either: he liked being warm.

Gareth had given him a sideways glance and then also slept naked, possibly assuming Lorre wanted him to. He was lovely, all smooth fair skin and dark auburn whispers of hair and flexible muscle; he’d flopped into opulent bedding on his back, grinned, stretched an arm out. “Come here?”

As if that were an assumption. A ready unquestioned answer. A place to be, now that they’d been in some sense intimate. As if having a place to be could be easy.

Lorre had meant to say no. He really had.

He somehow couldn’t. And he’d ended up tucked into the circle of Gareth’s arm. He’d stayed awake for an hour or two, feeling the night and the rain and the tides out in the harbor, nocturnal animals and activities and emotions and motion, ebbing and flowing. And then he’d slept.

He’d woken to find Gareth already awake but not having moved, gaze simply resting on him, thoughtful and interested. Lorre had said, “Yes, well, appreciate the sight, I am very pretty and I honestly do wake up like this,” and stretched: uncurling and showing off.

They’d left a bit later than they’d meant to, after that.

They still hadn’t talked about it, much. Wanting, yes. Mutual, undeniable.

That was it, surely. Pleasurable, a diversion, an encounter along the way.

Easy. No obligations. No weight.

Gareth added, meaning the magical travel, “I expect you’re used to it. But I’m not. And it’s like—like holiday mornings. Being able to do something like that.”

“Sometimes it is. Most times.” Lorre glanced up the road. Scattered houses, barns, hay bales beckoned. The Marches were less a centralized kingdom and more a loose cooperation of independent homes and farms and goat-herders, though the people did turn up at the Great Hall for petitions and for the general Assembly, if they felt like it and weren’t busy otherwise. They tended to assume being king was a job like anything else, road-building and justice-dispensing and trade agreements, and the king should get on with it, and nobody’d interfere with anybody too much.

He didn’t recognize the other three names on the signpost, nor the branching side road. New settlements, new growth, a changing world. Fifty years ago the lower Crags had been wilder, and the mountain road newly cut over ancient tracks, traces even older than Lorre himself.

About the travel, he answered, “It’s satisfying. If that’s the right word.”

“Being who you are,” Gareth said. “Doing what you know you can do.”

“Something like that. When did you have so many villages?”

“All three of those’ve been around since before I was born.”

Lorre tried not to wince. He mostly succeeded.

“From here it’ll be maybe three hours’ walk.” Gareth shaded his eyes, judged the rise of the road, the distance of more steeply slanted hills. “Here, eat this.”

Lorre took the nectarine. “Do we have more?”

“Two. And oranges, and bananas, and something you brought that I don’t recognize. We can stop partway up; there’s a lake.”

“It’s a papaya. I thought you’d want to hurry.”

Gareth got very focused on finding another nectarine. “I do.”

“And you’re trying to make sure I’m not too tired.”

“I only thought you should see the lake. It’s not the biggest, but it’s a pretty one.”

“About as subtle as you trying to bribe me with a book.” His hand wanted to find Gareth’s again.

“I’ve no idea what you’re talking about,” Gareth said cheerfully, and started walking. “It’s a nice day, isn’t it? No rain, no snow, and the hills’re all emerald, up there.”

“Nice,” Lorre said. His ears were cold.

“Practically summer.”

“I could’ve been warm. On a beach. With sand and spiced wine.”

“But you’re here with me.”

“If you start singing a hearty traditional Northern ballad I’ll turn you into a squirrel—”

Gareth reached over and took his hand, squeezed it, and let go, no doubt for ease of walking. The warmth remained.

Lorre stopped talking, happy, and let himself think and feel only that, for a moment. Later he’d remember that he did not deserve it. But for now, right now—

He could have it. Selfishly, secretly, privately: he could hold onto it.

They made their way up the mountain road, two travelers together under a big grey sky, framed by wagon-ruts and rocks.

After a while Gareth started whistling. His expression, when Lorre glanced over, was flawlessly innocent.

Lorre said, “Save me from optimists. Also, that was off-key.”

“You’re here,” Gareth said, “and I’m here, and we can save people. I wonder whether I should’ve sent a message from Whiskey Harbor? We’re going to surprise my family.”

“We’d’ve got here before your message. Did you tell them you were looking for me in particular?”

“I said I’d bring back the most powerful magician I could. Someone who’d help. I did say I’d try to find you, first. Dan said I shouldn’t count on it. No one’d seen you in years, not even rumors. But we agreed I should go and try to bring someone back. And it had to be me; he’s the king.”

“Some kings would take on the quest themselves.”

“I’m expendable. He isn’t. And he’s a good ruler. I know he’s my brother, but I’d say so even if he weren’t. He really is kind and patient and generous and all those things kings’re supposed to be. You’ll like him. Everyone does.”

And that’s you, Lorre thought. Kind, and patient, and generous. The sort of man everyone likes. Loyal to your home, your brother, your people. Protecting them all. “Had you ever even been out of the Marches before?”

“Even goat-herders get to go to school.” Gareth’s grin was amused, though, not insulted. “Dan and I both went to the University, in Averene. And we’ve been to a few royal receptions, feasts, reaffirming alliances and treaties, that sort of thing. It’s always a bit of a pain, though, the travel. We’re pretty far North, I don’t know if you’ve noticed.”

Lorre widened eyes at him. “North? You mean this isn’t the Great Southern Desert, and those aren’t giant sand dunes?”

“You could take us there sometime. I do like seeing new places, it’s just the time and the weather and the problems of getting there. Which isn’t even a problem, with you. I like being home, too, though. The spring fairs at all the little villages, getting to meet everyone, or the rainy evenings, when you’ve got a fire in the hearth and a pot of tea and toasted cheese and a book…”

Lorre could see it, and the sight sank into his heart, and became something he’d always carry: Gareth with a book, hair loose, feet up, settled into a chair by a fire, surrounded by lashing rain and glowing warmth and stories about other worlds.

Domestic. Contented. Belonging.

Definitely no room in that picture for unpredictable wild magic, chaos, dragon-fire, barefoot magicians with a lot of enemies and a taste for sugar.

He knew that, had known that. No reason his chest should feel stabbed by a claw. No reason in the slightest.

He’d gone quieter without realizing it. Gareth regarded him with a small protective line between swooping eyebrows.

“I’m fine,” Lorre said. “I’m listening for bandits. All tranquil on the Northern front, at least for the moment.” It wasn’t a lie; he was listening. The strands of himself that he’d stretched outward lay like a quiescent aureate net over the mountains and rocks and rivers and trees.

“I know the road’s not the most even, up here.” Gareth took his arm, and did not let go. “And we’re getting higher up, as far as air.”

“And next it’ll start to rain, and we’ll get covered in mud.” Lorre hopped over a decently large stone in his path. “I could fix your road.”

“You’re doing enough.” When Gareth said it, the words sounded sincere: as if they could be real, an answer, an affirmation. As if Lorre could do enough, be enough, someday, to make up for everything. As if Gareth believed that.

Lorre had to smile. Optimists. And heroes. And here he himself was, somehow, beside this man.

He liked the presence of Gareth’s hand on his arm, despite the irony of it.

He asked a deep rut or two to smooth out, along the way, partly because he could and partly because he was making the point that he could. The road listened as he explained, and understood the purpose: ease of travel, connection, communication, more people to come and stroll atop it and let it feel a part of the action. It stretched out and flattened itself and perked up eagerly.

Gareth gave him an extremely patient look, at that. Lorre shrugged, letting an echo of unreasonable happiness slide down his spine, and asked a few pebbles if they’d like to dance. They did, spinning and bobbing in mid-air, excited about his presence.

They paused for bread and cheese and fruit and crisp cool spring water, after a couple of hours, at the edge of a lake. Blue and flat and deep, it glimmered like a mirror full of sapphires, framed by grey tumbling rocks and a pencil-sketch of a fishing-village along the far curve. Gareth, sitting on a fallen log, stretched both legs out and nibbled cheese and eyed both Lorre and his lake; his expression was midway between contented and hopeful.

“Yes, all right,” Lorre told him, “it’s beautiful, you know it is,” and flicked a bread-crumb at him. “Your mountains’re lovely. And cold.” He did like water. It flowed along his bones. It could take so many shapes, like him.

“It’s home.” Gareth’s eyes grew softer, pleased, deep warm kitten-fur brown. “It’s everything I grew up with. I love stories and books, of course, but I never quite understood the heroes who couldn’t wait to get out and journey through the world forever and leave everything behind. I’d never want that. Adventures, maybe, sure, but with my family waiting at the end of it all, and Dan’s baking, and the annual cheese competitions at the Spring Fair, and talking to everyone down at the tavern or out on the farms, making sure our people’ve got what they need…”

“You’re in an adventure,” Lorre said, “even if we’re on the way to your home. Do you realize everything you’ve done? You—and you’re what, barely out of university?—walked down to Averene and—”

“I did get a ride part of the way. With a hay wagon going south.”

“That makes the story even better.—And you asked point-blank about one of their greatest enemies, you went into the Dark Quarter and wandered around asking about magical maps, you found a ship willing to take you because they didn’t think you’d succeed but you amused them. And then, when you, against all odds, found the powerful sorcerer you were seeking, you singlehandedly talked him into coming home with you.”

Gareth’s expression was priceless.

“Guess who’s going to be in ballads now,” Lorre said.

“No.”

“Oh yes.”

“But. I’m not. I never thought…I just did the next thing I thought would be the right thing…”

“Don’t ask me to explain. Nothing about that should’ve worked. You should’ve never made it out of Averene. Possibly never off a hay cart. Even a Prince of the Mountain Marches is almost certainly worth more than whatever hay sells for.”

“But I knew them! And they’re good people—and then the ship’s captain was willing to let me come along, and then the map worked, didn’t it, and I did find you, and you agreed, because you did want to help—!” Even Gareth’s accent got more distressed. “I never meant to be a story or a tale or a ballad hero!”

“Too late for that one.” Lorre nudged Gareth’s boot with his own. “The second you went on a quest for me, and linked your name and mine. Not to be arrogant about it.”

Gareth’s mouth stayed open for a comical second or two, with no sound. Evidently they’d found something he couldn’t be calm and competent about, versus gathering provisions or arranging supper at an inn or building a shelter on a magician’s beach.

Lorre grinned at the lake, and devoured a bite of cheese: Gareth’s, from the Marches, goat’s milk, and not bad.

“No,” Gareth said finally. “No. It won’t be—it can’t be like that. People won’t—I’m still me! I’ve been there for barn-raisings and finding lost chickens and mending Mrs. Murray’s roof. They can’t look at me differently.”

“You think they won’t be proud of you? Their youngest prince, on a quest to save them? You’ll inspire all the rustic tavern drinking songs.”

“I didn’t think,” Gareth said, and then went quiet: a prince in road-dusty traveling clothes, sitting on a fallen log. With a magician at his side. Because he’d wanted a small detour, to show that magician a place he loved.

Lorre, looking at him, felt regret like a needle in his throat. He’d meant his own comments as teasing; he’d been a name, a power, a menace for so long that he’d forgotten how to not be. He’d never been ordinary, and had never wanted to be.

Gareth hadn’t wanted to be extraordinary. He’d only wanted to help. A prince who liked books and loved his home, who’d put down a novel to help repair a fence or find chickens or square his shoulders and take on a quest, having done every drop of research he could. A man who’d truly never thought about becoming one of those stories himself.

Simple, in that sense. Simple and straightforward. Nothing concealed or twisty or hidden.

Something in Lorre ached to reach out, to put a hand into Gareth’s hair and draw him into a kiss, to let Gareth kiss him in turn. To be lost and found, swept away by bedrock certainty and brought safely home.

Simple did not mean naïve. Gareth knew about betrayal, and pain, and loss. Lorre paused, trying to recall. Gareth hadn’t said how long his brother had been king, but it clearly hadn’t been long, if his uncle had only just joined up with bandits. Lorre’s own joke about being University-age had been just that, a joke, but Gareth couldn’t be more than twenty-five. Maybe twenty-six. Young—at least by most human reasoning—to lose a father, and to be betrayed by family.

He wished he hadn’t done the teasing. He wished he could take back the silent realization behind those wounded earth-rich eyes: that coming home, no matter how welcome, might never be the same.

He said, “Well, you never know; it’s the Marches, after all. It’s not as if your Northerners’re all that impressed by, well, anything much. Unless it’s a prize cheese. Or your brother’s, what was it, carrot cake?”

“It was,” Gareth said. “And don’t try to say you didn’t mean it. You were right the first time.”

“I keep telling you not to listen to me. My life so far’s ended up with me alone on a deserted island. How old are you, by the way? I never asked.”

“Twenty-seven. Twenty-eight, next month.” Gareth sighed. A strand of his hair, as it often did, snuck out of its leather tie; the woodsmoke embers of it mostly stayed placid and contained, Lorre decided, but not completely. Always a tiny piece wanting to peek out at the wider world.

But, surprisingly, a hint of smile snuck out too: wry, but present. Humor returning. “I did say I’d pay whatever price might be asked, I suppose.”

“Would it help,” Lorre said, to his own surprise meaning the words with everything he was, “if I said I was sorry? For mentioning it. I am sorry, I mean.”

Gareth’s eyebrows went up.

Lorre grumbled, “I know, I know, you know the stories, the Magician Who Was Never Wrong, and all that,” and glanced around.

Wildflowers, Gareth’d said. Color. In the winter not much choice presented itself, but—some wild woods-roses, some unexpected yellow pansies, some spicy orange witch-hazel…

That was the work of a moment; he put a question out, running along the filaments and strands of his magic, and was answered. The Marches knew their people tended the land with care, and though they could not quite distinguish persons and the response was hazy as plants tended to be, they recognized the touch of magic and the question, and they also liked the idea of being carried and spread someplace else.

Lorre held out a hand. Gathered blooms from nowhere visible, until they became visibly present, offered up. “Was it a bouquet you said you wanted? Your mountain plants approve of your family, by the way.”

Gareth stared at him, at flowers, at Lorre again. His face, for a moment, was even younger: enchanted, and brilliantly happy.

“You should probably take them,” Lorre said, “before they start to feel, ah. Not accepted.”

Gareth’s next breath did something like a laugh; and then he took the small ragged gathering, cradling them in one hand; and then he set them carefully, with a gentle hand-pat, on his pack. And then practically tackled Lorre off the log, all hands and muscles and kisses and that loose strand of hair.

They landed on soft green grass and dirt. Lorre’s newly made coat would have smudges; he did not care. He could fix it, and he’d made Gareth happier. He’d done that.

“Every time I think I know what you might do,” Gareth said, between kisses, “you surprise me.” His eyes were all hot and brown and molten and fond, and his face still had that hint of auburn scruff because he hadn’t shaved, and his hair had come completely loose at some point. He had a hand beneath Lorre’s head as a wholly unnecessary cushion, though Lorre did not mention the unnecessary part.

“I’m extremely surprising. Known for it.” He spread his legs, let Gareth settle between them, let himself feel it: both of them still dressed, lying entwined, kissing wildly in a lakeside mountain clearing. “Hasn’t anyone ever brought you flowers before?”

“Actually, yes.” Gareth’s hand ran along Lorre’s arm, caught his wrist, pinned it to the ground: flirtation, unserious, both of them knowing who could break whom. Lorre’s arm liked being caressed and held. “He was the first boy I ever kissed. Roderick the woodworker’s son, a year older than me, and he had hands that could shape poetry out of oak and teak and pine right before your eyes. He’d heard I liked wildflowers, and he’d put them in a vase he’d carved himself and lined against water and all.”

“So it was good strategic thinking on his part, then.”

“Are you wondering how many boys I’ve kissed?” Gareth grinned down at him. “You’d be the second. Well, the third, but Johnny Thatcher, when we were twelve and he’d just beat me in a swimming race, hardly counts. Barely a peck, and we were all swept up in the moment.”

Lorre, who genuinely had lost count of his own partners over the years, said, “Second?”

“I told you I wasn’t a virgin,” Gareth pointed out, with such disarming honesty that Lorre could only shake his head, except the headshake turned into himself more or less pushing his head, cat-like, into Gareth’s hand.

Gareth added, purely mischievous now, “I’ve also kissed two girls, if you want to know that. One that never went much beyond that, and, well, one that did. Fun for the both of us, that one. And then she fell in love, and she and her wife are blissfully happy managing the most profitable opera house in Averene, as far as I can tell from her letters.”

“You keep up correspondence with your former lovers,” Lorre said. Of course Gareth did. Everybody being friends. On good terms. “Go back to the part where I’m only the second man you’ve ever kissed.”

“You said you enjoyed yourself, so don’t tell me you’re complaining now.”

“You said you knew what we were doing—”

“I did, and I do.” Gareth’s lips brushed his neck, and sent tingles through Lorre’s body. “I’m kissing the person who pulled flowers out of thin air for me, and told me my home thinks well of my family.”

“The plants told me.” Lorre moved against him, under him: feeling their bodies together, the press of desire, the undeniable weight and shape and sensation of being here and wanting. “And I thought you’d want to know.”

“Thank you for that.” Gareth kissed his nose; Lorre blinked, processing the sensation. He couldn’t recall the last time someone’d done that to the Dread Sorcerer of Goldenfell.

Gareth added, “And I hate to keep telling you you’re wrong, legendary magician and all, but I’m still saying it: you’re wrong.” His hand left Lorre’s wrist pressed into willing grass, and wandered downward: not undressing either of them, but stroking over Lorre’s chest, stomach, thigh—and finally the straining hardness beneath his trousers, rubbing tenderly. “About yourself.”

“I am not,” Lorre protested, and then, “Why am I wrong?” Gareth’s hand felt marvelous; he let his hips rock upward into the gentle pressure.

“Easy,” Gareth murmured, hand pausing to rub his hip, “in a moment, I’ve got you…you’re wrong about where you’ve ended up. Not alone on an island now, are you?”

“It’s not that I wanted to be—oh—” His breath caught; Gareth had moved the hand, and did it again, stroking, beckoning. Lorre’s whole body shivered; a ripple passed across the lake below. The radiant edges of himself blurred and ruffled and billowed, full of pleasure.

Gareth paused. “You were saying?”

“Was I? Don’t stop—!”

“You can tidy us up after, you said? I hadn’t meant to let this get so far, but…” Gareth was smiling, stroking him, gazing at him. “The way you look, just now. I’m thinking yes.”

“Yes,” Lorre breathed, “yes, yes, yes…” and let Gareth softly and sweetly take him apart, with nothing but hands and caresses, until he was dissolving and crying out and collapsing into sheer golden being, the body and self that felt so much and poured it all out and spilled it all shamelessly into Gareth’s grip and his own trousers.

He felt flowers blooming all around, pushing up and thrusting through the earth—because they were himself, as well, the way everything was just then—and he looked up at Gareth and reached out with a thought, because his body was tremulous with release but his magic was singing and he knew sensations. He knew Gareth felt it because they both felt it—heat, pulsing, slickness, stroking over heated rigid length, making desire flood upward, and then for good measure stroking an unseen fingertip down along Gareth’s cock, with another finding Gareth’s delectable backside and rubbing at the opening there.

The invisible fingers were a bit shaky too, because he was trembling with aftermath. But what he wanted tended to shape the world; and he wanted to give Gareth pleasure.

Gareth, who’d been lying against him, atop him—though he’d shifted more to one side to play with Lorre’s prick more easily—gasped. Arched against him. Groaned—and came, just like that, shuddering and spurting in his clothing, hips thrusting against Lorre’s thigh.

Lorre, smug and breathless and thrilled everyplace, managed, “I can also beat you in a swimming race, if you’d like,” and put both arms around Gareth as his prince collapsed into laughter.

“Oh Goddess,” Gareth got out, shaking with merriment, “you could, too, I’m sure…you’d talk to the lake or the river…oh, Lorre. Oh, yes.” He landed one more kiss at the corner of Lorre’s mouth, pushing himself up on one arm. “More flowers. Everywhere. Thank you.”

“That part wasn’t on purpose.”

“I’ll never be able to look these trousers in the eye again.”

“Good.”

A few snowdrops nodded around them, also smug, and unabashed about it.

“We,” Gareth said, rolling over onto his back in the grass, fingers in Lorre’s, “should be going. On the way. Home.”

Lorre smiled up at the clouds. “Probably.”

“Home—” Gareth did sit upright, at that. The snowdrops scowled merrily. “Oh Goddess. You’re meeting my mother! And my brother! And we’ve just—this—we’ve just been—there’s grass in my hair!”

“No one said quests can’t be fun along the way.” And likely Gareth was only dismayed at his own inability to conceal anything, and consequently his family’s conclusions about the sex he’d very much been having moments ago.

Likelyit was only that. Unless it was more.

Unless it was dismay about the other person involved. Regret or shame about introducing that person, that scandalous children’s-story villainous magician, to a loving family.

Lorre’s historic reputation—earned, and fearsome—kicked him in the chest just for daring to hope. It caved in all the joy of a moment before.

Gareth, not privy to this silent heart-battering, went on, “It’s only maybe an hour’s walk from here. We’ll be there before we know it. You can clean us up, right?”

“Of course.” This time he was a bit insulted; obviously he could, and Gareth had even assumed so, earlier. “Would you like anything else? Clean boots, gold coins, the lost jeweled scepter of the last queen of Amaranth?” On his feet, a slice of his hand through the air took care of grass stains and sticky clothing: thinning any evidence out to non-existence.

Gareth had got up too. “Are you angry with me? Did I do something wrong?”

“No.” No, unless one counted a reminder that Lorre was in no way a person anyone would want their son involved with, not to mention a person who could be distracted by self-indulgent fun and pleasurable sensations while Gareth remembered to think about responsibility and getting back on the road—because Gareth was a hero, practically an innocent, and Lorre was someone who in no way deserved to be here with him—

He repeated it. “No.”

“If there’s something wrong, please tell me.” Gareth stepped closer, eyes concerned, muscles unthreatening. Lorre’s magic had tugged the grass out of his hair. “I’d like to try to make it right.”

“Yes, because you need my help.”

“Because I think I’ve done something to upset you, and I didn’t mean to, and I’d like to make it better if I can?”

“You didn’t.” Lorre ran both hands through his hair, spun away, stared blindly at the beauty of the lake. Overhead clouds gathered, rumbled, muttered dourly: the sky slid from pewter to obsidian, drawn by his mood. He felt it stir, reckless and restless. “Never mind.”

“I think we’re having some sort of argument,” Gareth said after a second, “but I don’t know why. I honestly don’t. I can see I’ve done something, so please tell me.”

“I could call lightning. Split this valley in two. Set fire to your lake.”

“You could.”

“You’re not afraid of me.”

“I know what you could do.” Gareth came to his side, looking at Lorre, not the lake. Lorre pointedly did not look back. His eyes burned.

“I know what you can do,” Gareth said again. “I know what you haven’t done. Not yet, anyway. What you’re trying hard not to do.”

“I hurt people,” Lorre said. “In all the stories…if I’m winning a battle or reshaping someone’s mountains without permission or—or being a dragon—you don’t know me. You don’t know what you’re bringing home to your family. You don’t know anything.”

“I’m still here.”

“Until I hurt you too. Until I’m not what you wanted to believe I could be. Until—” He shut both eyes. Thunder howled, black over the lake. Cataclysm, born of despair, trembled at his next inhale.

Because he wasn’t looking, he didn’t see Gareth move, only felt the ripple in the air: weight shifting away. Going. Of course.

But the prince’s presence came back, copper-calm and unshaken. Lorre opened his eyes.

Gareth held out a sprig of witch-hazel. Lorre knew that sprig: pulled from the impromptu bouquet he’d assembled earlier. He said, “It’s only a plant.”

“It’s not an until,” Gareth said, ignoring rumbling skies in favor of answering. His eyes searched Lorre’s face. “Or if it is, it’s none of what you said. Until you go home again, maybe. Or until this quest is over, or until we decide whatever we’re doing’s done. But that’s what we choose. And maybe I wanted to see you one way, maybe I thought I knew, before I met you. But I don’t, now.”

“Sorry to disappoint.”

“I mean you’re not what I expected.”

“That was my point.” Lightning sparked, brutal and searing.

“Sorry. That came out wrong. I mean, I’m not seeing the stories or the history. Not anymore.” Gareth’s mouth crooked up: a smile. “That all went overboard the first minute I spoke to you, and you answered. The you now isn’t the you back then. I can’t judge that you. I’m only looking at the man I’ve known, these last days. That’s who I see.”

Lorre put both the heels of both hands against his eyes. Pushed enough to make dark spots flare. Held back flash floods and rock-falls. Not metaphorical.

“I don’t know what’ll happen next,” Gareth said. “Not even you know that. But I’m here and you’re here. This you, this us, here and now.”

Lorre wanted to argue, wanted to shake him, wanted to shout. But he also wanted the words to be true.

He hurt with the wanting of that. He could be here, Gareth could be here, both of them together. Gareth could know him, see him, and accept him…

A fantasy. Magic. Not real, or at least not a human sort of real. People weren’t that good and generous and forgiving, and Lorre had not earned it.

He tasted fire and rock and stormclouds and his own threats, on his tongue.

But he was so tired of being alone with his own dry heart. And Gareth was a pillar of honest homespun heartfelt kindness beside him.

Maybe he could borrow that honesty. Hide in it, a refuge. For a moment. Until this was over.

He breathed out. Let coiled vicious tension ebb from rocks, water, skies: less a decision than wordless surrender.

“I’ve got a guess,” Gareth offered. “I should’ve thought. You haven’t been around people for years, and here’s me talking about you meeting my family. Was that it?”

“No. Or yes. It doesn’t matter.” He sat down hard on their abandoned log from earlier, where they’d shared food. Let the wood take some weight. “I’m still going to be me, no matter how many years it’s been.”

Gareth sat down beside him, setting down the witch-hazel. “It matters. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

The clouds dwindled, lightened, became sun-streaked silver instead of dull grey. The air remained spiky, full of thistles, brittle.

“Can I ask you something? I was wondering, earlier.”

“You can ask.” Lorre nudged a grass-clump with the toe of his boot. “I won’t lie. I might not answer.”

“It might be personal.”

“Like I said.”

“Just now you said you’re still you. And last night…” Pink scribbled its way across Gareth’s cheeks, but he went on regardless, not ducking away. “You said not to believe it. What you look like. You can shapeshift, you said.”

So that was the question. Lorre wasn’t sure whether it had to do with sex specifically, or whether Gareth wanted him to be a different person overall, in bedroom encounters and meeting the family.

The prince was right. It would be easier. All around, no doubt.

“I can be anything you might want,” he said, because he could. “What would you like me to be?”

“That wasn’t my question.”

Lorre nudged the grass again. “It should’ve been.” The toe of his boot, which he’d just cleaned, acquired a decoration of green.

Gareth sighed. “I was wondering what you look like.”

Lorre turned to look at him, and lifted both eyebrows: yes, here I am, this is it, you’ve seen it.

“Your real face,” Gareth clarified. “The one you were born with.”

“Oh.”

“You’re beautiful,” Gareth said. “You know I think so. Everyone does. And I’m not asking you to go back to any face you’ve given up. I just thought…if I asked, maybe you’d show me. Or tell me about it.”

“I can’t.”

“Never mind,” Gareth agreed immediately. “Forget I asked.”

“No, I mean I can’t. Not won’t.” A swirl of fallen leaves caught his attention; he poked them into a miniature cyclone beside their log. “I can’t remember that face. It’s been too long since I’ve worn it. I wouldn’t know how it might look now.”

Gareth’s lips parted, soundless, though Lorre wasn’t sure of the emotion welling up behind wide dark eyes. Something soft and aching and understanding, kind as velvet, painful as the realization of thorns.

Lorre, who did not want pity, interrupted that comprehension with, “Just tell me what you want me to look like.” The leaves whirled and spun, scarlet and russet and burnt sugar and gold.

“Like this.” Gareth moved a hand over. Set it between them on the log. “Just like this.”

“That’s not what you asked for.”

“It was the wrong question.” Gareth bit his lip, let it go. “I’m sorry. I mean I’m sorry for the whole shape of it. This is your real face, really, isn’t it? What you chose for yourself. What you wanted. That’s what I should’ve asked to see, except you already show me that. You show everyone. The face you picked, when you could be anything.”

He’d wanted to be beautiful. He’d wanted to be eye-catching. He’d wanted the kind of power that came with attractiveness: everyone’s heads turning, everyone intrigued, barons and countesses and priestesses and generals and merchants falling over themselves to please him. Lorre had left his father’s house a month after the day when he’d tried to walk into the river, after he’d refused his father’s command to kill a man, and had not looked back.

He could do anything, or nearly. He was special; he’d always believed that.

He’d seen the lives that people in power led, and he’d seen the opposite. He’d seen his father’s mistresses, and treaty marriages between baronies, and the importance of gold and allies and being desirable and being a treasure. At first he’d only wanted to be valued, and he’d done what would make him so, deliberately, though he’d also enjoyed looking good.

Later he’d wanted to change the world. To carve out power for magic and magicians. They were more than human, after all: not restricted. He’d made demands of kings and queens and the Church. He’d won some of those battles—the old school for magicians, now reopened by the new Grand Sorceress, existed because of him—and had lost some, too. But that had all come after.

He’d told the truth when he’d said he couldn’t recall his age, nor the precise year he’d left home. Old enough, he’d told Gareth, that his father had begun considering a betrothal and cold-blooded breeding of a magical bloodline. Young enough that nothing’d come to a serious head yet.

He hadn’t learned to move through space like water then, so he’d walked. For a week.

He’d crossed the border into the neighboring small barony, the home of his father’s closest rival, and used raw earth’s gold to pay for a room in the most expensive inn in the most wealthy town. He’d studied beauty: he’d seen engravings in books, his father’s women, some of the courtiers’ men. He’d stood invisible in brothels and ballrooms, learning what made people look at each other, and stop, and look again.

And then, carefully, with precision, he’d set about shifting the face, and the body, that he saw in the mirror.

He’d taught every woven lattice of magic in his body that that was his body, over and over. Repetition. Reminders. Reinforcement. Until it was natural as breathing, and then not even that: simply the shape he was.

He’d walked into that court without an invitation, mid-banquet, on a torch-lit evening. He’d twirled fire in one hand, leaping and spinning; he’d let his hair fall long and blond and loose over one shoulder because the baron liked the pretense of innocence, and as everyone around went silent in wonder, he’d held the man’s gaze and smiled.

Right now he felt every century of his age and more, sitting with Gareth under fading tempestuous clouds. He wanted to take Gareth’s hand, where it lay between them. He wanted to feel that reality against his skin.

He said, “It’s not as special as you think. This face, I mean, this shape. I was a pretty child to start with. Or I think I was. I have some sort of memory of that, some ladies saying so. So maybe I would’ve stayed that way, or not. I don’t know. I made myself beautiful—what that court at that time called beautiful, anyway, all fair and elegant and graceful—because it’s another form of power.”

“You could have changed it every decade. Every year. Every time something new was fashionable. But you like it, don’t you?” Gareth’s little finger brushed his. “You kept this one. Through the years.”

“I don’t know if I like it.” He was thinking more about the touch of Gareth’s hand than the words. “It’s more that…it’s what I’m used to, now. But I like knowing I’ve made something pretty. I’ve always liked that. Adding more beauty to the world…and then of course I am vain and arrogant and everything else, and I like being called beautiful, and I like looking and feeling splendid. I’m not denying that.”

Gareth laughed, though it was a fond sound, and wistful: more on Lorre’s behalf, likely, than his own. “I do think you’re beautiful. I said, didn’t I? I’m telling you so you can hear it. If you like knowing it.”

Lorre shrugged a shoulder at him. “I’m not sure my opinion of myself matters much these days.”

“Beautiful,” Gareth said, “and magical. Nothing like what I expected, and so much more. You remembered I like wildflowers. Does my opinion of you matter? Because splendid’s a good word for it.”

“You’ll regret it.”

“You know, I’m not thinking I will.” Gareth’s fingers brushed his again, and Lorre must’ve moved or begged or yearned, because Gareth gathered his hand up and enfolded it in both sturdy farm-prince hands. “Your fingers’re cold.”

The leaves fluttered and drifted down, curling up like kittens in a heap to watch.

“It’s cold,” Lorre reminded them both, astonished at the softness of his own voice, “in your mountains.”

“You let me know if you need warming up.” Gareth kissed his fingers, tender as an apology, a vow, a champion’s oath on bended knee. His lips were warm, and the scruff of his stubble caressed Lorre’s skin. “I like your hands. I like you.”