They walked back to Fairleigh Hall through a carved crystal morning. Sun glinted primrose from slumped snowbanks and puddles. Trees shook ice from branches and sat up like ladies dusting off ball gown skirts, ready to waltz. The sky hung overhead, brassy and blue and so clear Kit thought it might ring like a bell if tapped by a hand.
As he thought of hands, his own snuck into Harry’s, without conscious planning. Harry gave him an oddly shy smile, and wove fingers into Kit’s in turn.
As they approached the house, the front door crashed open. Edward Arden bolted out of it, managed to run down the lane without stopping, and panted, “Harry…”
“What are you doing up?” Harry flung arms around his brother, though; and they clung for a moment. “After that night, and the storm, you shouldn’t be—”
“I’m fine.” Ned waved a hand. He did look better: obviously thin, and the general weak lungs and fragility hadn’t vanished, but his cheeks were pink above that impatiently tied cravat and quilted dressing gown and incongruous hasty boots, and he wasn’t leaning on his brother for support. “You know I’m generally better than you think I should be. When you didn’t come home—and it got so cold—Harry, what happened?”
“He made a bargain with an ice dragon,” Kit said.
“You what?” Ned’s eyes, that watercolor grey version of Harry’s luscious blue, got wider; they looked even more alike, for a moment. “Tell me everything. Right now.”
“In your study,” Harry said, and tactfully steered his brother that way, hand on one sharp elbow. “Where you can sit down. And there’s tea. And chocolate.”
“Technically I’m the Earl here.” Ned let himself be steered. “Talk to me about ice dragons. Really dragons?”
“One small one,” Harry clarified, “and it was lost, and hungry…”
This explanation got them into the study and through plates of golden shortbread and solid strong tea and thick brown chocolate for Ned’s sweet tooth. Grayson the Devoted came and went, the second time returning with even more food and a perceptible easing of tension in those dependable too-young butler’s shoulders: he had, Kit recalled, grown up with the family.
Harry took over telling the story, all enthusiasm and big flying illustrative gestures. Ned listened and nodded and interjected occasional questions, and wore expressions ranging from brotherly anxiety to a lord’s thoughtful consideration of implications for Fairleigh and the future. The snow transmuted itself gradually to water, beyond heavy draperies and windowpanes: reassured as the bodies inside.
Kit sat on the arm of Harry’s chosen armchair and let Harry do most of the talking. He did not need to take credit; he wanted to watch Harry, all that exuberance fully recovered and caught up in storytelling motion. That newfound poignant emotion twisted like an ice-needle under ribs: ruefulness, perhaps, or acceptance, or desire for something he had not previously known he needed and did not know how to give up.
He did say, interrupting a sentence full of praise, “It’s not as if I knew it’d work. And I don’t need more of a reputation.”
“But you solved it.” Harry looked up at him, utterly earnest. “You aren’t even an expert in this area—no real crimes, only an elemental and loneliness—and you still figured out what to do. I wouldn’t have been able to do it without you.”
“You would have,” Kit said. “You’re good enough for that.”
“I don’t think so,” Harry said. “But either way I didn’t have to. Because you were here.”
Kit shifted weight on the chair. Glanced down at his own boot-tip, up across Harry’s shoulder. Avoiding sea-spray sincerity. Long-held fortifications collapsing under the siege-weapons of honesty. He couldn’t not be sincere right back. “Then…I’m glad I was.”
“Yes,” Harry said. “Oh yes. So am I.”
Ned looked from Harry to Kit and back. All apparent innocence, suggested, “Constable, if you’d like to stay a few more days, we’re certainly thrilled to offer our hospitality; the roads will likely still be a mess in any case…”
“Ned,” Harry attempted, half a groan. “He doesn’t want…it’s not…we’re not…just don’t.”
“Aren’t you?” Ned said. “Happy, I mean. You deserve that. I know how much you do.”
“I was thinking,” Kit said. His hand was very close to Harry’s shoulder; he could swing a boot, where he was sitting on the chair-arm, and nudge Harry’s leg. He did not want Harry to ever say those words—he doesn’t want me, we’re not a we—again. He wanted Harry to say the opposite.
And he did not, in the end, give a damn about Society and gossip and class divides. Neither of them would ever fit in properly and that would be just fine; both of them were nevertheless respectable enough, and they’d faced worse than what would be a fairly minor ruffling of waters, and anyway the only part that mattered was whether Harry would smile.
He finished, continuing the statement, “About the question you asked. About whether your elemental, or others, might come back.”
Both Arden brothers looked at him. Harry’s eyes were unhappy around the edges, in the way of someone very happy indeed at a successful rescue of the world but waiting for a final sword-blow farewell.
This time Kit did kick him, but gently. “Part of the problem is the build-up of your power, right? In one place. A beacon. So if you aren’t always in the same place…if you were to travel…not for months or years at a time, of course not, but at least a week, a few days…”
“You could,” Ned said. “Harry, you could.”
“I can’t.” Harry gazed at them, confused, conflicted. “Ned, I can’t leave you—”
“I keep telling you I’m better,” Ned said. “Honestly, look, I’m not ever going to be, well, you, but I’m not twelve years old and on the brink of perishing from a summer fever, either. And I’ve got proper doctors, and Elizabeth to lean on. I can handle a few days or a week without you. Or, if Elizabeth wants to, we can pile into a carriage and come and meet you in London. We could open up the family townhouse again.”
“In London,” Kit said; and Harry’s eyes found his, and the moment became forever. Harry leaned in closer; Kit’s hand landed on the closest broad shoulder.
“I could,” Harry said, “but…could I? The estate—everything I do—”
“You mean you could actually let our estate manager do his job for once?” Ned said. “Fairleigh will be fine. And you can fix whatever needs fixing when you’re home. And be here if your ice dragon decides to pop by for a future visit. Speaking of visiting, I think you really should go to London and visit the Preternatural Division offices for yourself. Give them an in-person report and commendation for Constable Thompson. You know. Ensure he’s properly…rewarded for his efforts.”
This time both Kit and Harry stared at Ned. Who shrugged, shameless, and popped shortbread into his mouth. “What? It’s a perfectly reasonable proposition.”
Kit chose not to dignify this word choice with attention. “Harry?”
“You were thinking about this,” Harry said, not quite a question, full of abrupt and clumsy hope.
“I was.” He let his hand drift: to the nape of Harry’s neck, toying with sunbeam tumbles of hair, skimming fingers over warm skin under the edge of that unfashionably sturdy shirt-collar. “I was thinking that you might like to see an opera. Talk to a magical zoologist. Visit a pleasure-garden. Drop into a dressmaker’s shop.”
“A—”
“My sister’s.”
Harry closed that mouth. Opened it again, after a second, and breathed, “Yes. I would like that.”
“Yes,” Kit echoed, lightheaded—lighthearted—with the word. “So would I.”
“You’re adorable,” Ned said, around a sip of chocolate.
“Go away,” Harry requested, leaning into Kit’s hand more. “Since you’re feeling well enough to do that.”
“It’s my study!”
“And I’m about to kiss Kit in it. That is…” Harry paused. “I am, right?”
“Very, very much yes,” Kit said.
“Good,” Ned said, quiet and with affection; at some point after this he did get up and slip away, but Kit did not notice when.
Too busy kissing Harry. Too busy sliding hands through Harry’s hair, untucking that shirt. Memorizing the shape and sensation of freckled skin and firm male body under his hands, and the way Harry looked sprawled out across an antique purple armchair, and the way Harry moved and responded and laughed under his hands.
This morning Harry tasted like unsweetened strong tea and shortbread, and that shaggy golden hair held the impression of that long-overdue thaw, frost bending and surrendering and giving way. Harry kissed back while laughing, smile curving against Kit’s mouth, legs falling cooperatively open, and said again, “Yes please.”
So Kit kissed him more, drinking him in, thinking of London and cobbled streets and tea-shops and cluttered Preternatural Division offices, thinking of a future like a waving banner and a call to adventure; he answered, word a vow against Harry’s throat and the heartbeat there, “Yes.”