Chapter 17
Newt wakes up warm.
This is not, in itself, remarkable. Newt has woken up warm before.
He lives in a townhouse with a functioning furnace and owns blankets and is a mammal.
But this warmth is different. This warmth is specific.
This warmth has a source, and the source is wrapped around him, chest to his back, one arm tucked across his chest, chin resting on the top of his head, and the source is breathing, slow and deep and steady, and the source is practically purring.
Malik is purring.
Not literally. Probably not literally. Newt doesn't think incubi can purr.
But there is a low, continuous vibration in the chest pressed against his spine, a rumble that is too rhythmic to be breathing and too content to be anything other than what it is, and Newt lies in the grey pre-dawn light and feels it against his back and does not move.
If he moves, this ends. If he shifts, if he speaks, if he breathes too loudly, Malik will wake up and the careful, fragile architecture of this moment will collapse, and Malik will put distance between them the way he always puts distance between them, and Newt will be alone in a bed that smells of amber and sex and the particular botanical sweetness that Malik has told him, more than once now, is incredible.
And Newt cannot bear for this to end. Not yet.
Not when this is the first time in his entire life he has woken up beside someone, the first time he has felt another body against his in the vulnerable, unguarded space of morning, the first time he has been held while he slept.
So he doesn't move. He lies still and he breathes and he lets himself have this, just this, just the warmth and the weight and the purring and the arm around his chest, for as long as the world will let him.
His magic is awake.
He can feel it, humming beneath his skin, and it is different this morning.
Lighter. Cleaner. As though a valve that was sealed has been opened, and the magic is flowing through him with an ease he has never felt before.
It is not the wild, uncontrolled flood of his usual power.
It is not the pressurized torrent that shakes windows and cracks ceilings.
It is steady and bright and alive, and Newt is so full of it he is almost buzzing.
He raises one hand, the one that isn't pinned beneath Malik's arm, and reaches for the magic the way Malik taught him. Not grabbing. Not shoving. Just opening.
The ceiling blooms.
Stars appear in the plaster, tiny pinpricks of light, scattered in clusters and arcs.
Constellations that Newt half-remembers from a book he read when he was twelve, back when he still believed his magic could be used for beautiful things instead of destructive ones.
A spiral galaxy unfurls from the center of the ceiling, its arms rotating slowly, and a comet streaks across it, trailing dust. Planets form in orbit around a sun that Newt places directly above the bed, a warm golden sphere no bigger than a fist, and its moons circle it, and the moons have moons, and an asteroid belt rings the whole arrangement in a slow, glittering procession.
He doesn't strain. He doesn't concentrate. He just thinks it and the magic does it, as easily as breathing, as naturally as blinking, and the ceiling of his bedroom is a sky full of stars and he made it without trying.
He smiles. He can feel the smile on his face, wide and private and wondering, and he closes his eyes and opens them again and the stars are still there.
And there are gold eyes watching him.
Newt's breath catches. He turns his head, just slightly, on the pillow, and Malik is looking at him.
Not at the ceiling. Not at the constellations or the planets or the comet or any of the impossible, effortless magic that is quietly redecorating the room.
At Newt. Malik's face is very close. His gold eyes are half-lidded and his expression is soft and unguarded in a way that Newt has only seen once or twice, in the moments between sleep and waking when Malik's centuries of composure haven't had time to reassemble themselves.
Gold. Not purple.
The smile on Newt's face falters. Not because of the gold, but because Malik is looking at him and Malik's arms haven't loosened and Newt doesn't know where they stand.
He doesn't know what they are. He doesn't know if last night was a thing that happens once and is never spoken of or a thing that changes everything or a thing that means nothing to Malik and everything to Newt and they'll go back to the breakfast table and the silence and the distance.
He doesn't dare assume this is something he gets to keep.
He smiles at Malik, hesitantly, trying to keep what he's feeling from bleeding too heavily into his face, which is a futile exercise because Newt's face has never successfully concealed anything from anyone and certainly not from an incubus who knows him better than anyone.
"Hey," Newt says. His voice is morning-rough and small.
"Hey," Malik says, and his voice is low and warm and the arm around Newt's chest tightens, just fractionally, and the purring hasn't stopped.
Newt swallows. He looks at Malik's eyes, at the gold of them, bright and molten in the grey light, and the question has been sitting in his chest since the couch, since the snow, since the first time he saw them change.
"Your eyes," Newt says. "What does it mean when they're gold?"
Malik tenses.
It's subtle. A tightening of the arm around Newt's chest, a stiffness in the body pressed against his back, and the purring stops.
Not abruptly, not obviously, but it stops, and the warmth that was flowing through the bond goes still, and Newt's heart sinks because he's said something wrong.
He's done something wrong already, he hasn't been awake for ten minutes and he's already ruined it, and he starts to apologize.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to... if that's private, I..."
Malik inhales sharply. He is quiet for a long moment, long enough that the constellations on the ceiling flicker with Newt's anxiety, and then he says, carefully:
"It happens when the parameters of the contract are not being met."
Newt's brow furrows. "What do you mean?"
"It means the contract is being broken. Externally. Someone is interfering with the terms."
"Someone..." Newt's stomach drops. "Mathilde."
"Yes."
Newt pulls back. Not away, not entirely, but enough to turn in Malik's arms and face him, and Malik lets him, loosening his hold enough for Newt to shift onto his back and look up at him. The constellations are dimming overhead. The comet has stopped moving.
"But we fulfilled the contract," Newt says.
"I... my magic is stable. I just made an entire solar system on the ceiling without trying.
I summoned you through a portal yesterday without chalk or candles or an incantation.
That's... Malik, that's mastery. That's beyond mastery. The contract should be complete."
"I thought so too." Malik's voice is flat. Careful. "But if my eyes are still gold..."
"Then she's breaking it early. Before we can close it."
"She told us she would. The half moon."
"The half moon is tonight."
The word tonight drops through the room and takes all the warmth with it. Newt stares up at Malik and the constellations on the ceiling go dark, one by one, winking out, and the golden sun shrinks and dims until the room is just a room again, grey and ordinary and cold.
"We still have time," Newt says.
"Do we?" Malik's gaze is steady. Unblinking. "Do you trust the word of a woman who has spent your whole life using you?"
Newt flinches. "What do you mean?"
Malik sits up. The blanket falls to his waist and his silver hair spills forward over his bare shoulders and he looks at Newt with an expression that is no longer soft, no longer unguarded, but deliberate. The expression of someone who has decided to stop withholding.
"The coven is using you, Newt. They have been using you since you were born. They bred for your power. Six generations of cultivated bloodline, each one stronger than the last, all of it leading to you. And they kept you untrained on purpose."
The words land on Newt's chest, one after another, and he can feel their weight settling.
"They want you volatile," Malik continues.
"They want you desperate. They want you so overwhelmed by your own abilities that when they step in, you'll be grateful for whatever control they offer.
Whatever cage they build for you." He pauses.
"And if they can't have that. If they feel like you're out of their control, if they think you've become capable and independent and might start making choices of your own. .."
"They'll let Dimitri possess me," Newt says.
It comes out flat. Not surprised. The knowledge has been there, somewhere, lodged beneath the surface of every interaction with Mathilde, every wrong name, every dismissal, every coven visit that left him smaller than he was before. He's known. He just couldn't look at it directly.
Malik nods. Once.
Newt is quiet for a long time. The bedroom is very still. The constellations are gone. The sun is gone. There is just grey light and rumpled sheets and two people sitting on a bed and the space between them full of things that have been said and things that haven't.
"I mastered my magic," Newt says, quietly.
"I summoned you. Without a spell. Without a circle.
I reached for you and pulled you to me with nothing but my magic and.
.. and the thought of you." His face warms. "That's not the work of an untrained witch.
That's not volatile. That's not out of control. "
"I know."
"Then why isn't the contract closed? If I've met the terms, if my magic is stable, why are your eyes still gold?"
Malik is quiet.
"What are the terms of the contract?" Newt asks.