Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
When Ethram goes to bed that evening, the mattress dips with the silent weight of Ky sliding in behind him. Back to back. When he wakes, the bed is empty. The kettle is steaming over the kitchen hearth, but Ky’s cup is washed and sitting on the sink.
Ethram makes his own breakfast, but his cup of tea is ill-steeped and lukewarm in his hands. His head aches.
He hadn’t been wrong. Ky will leave. And a god he may have been, but he doesn’t know what Ky is now. A mortal? A ghost? Is he the gentle, stern-faced man who trims Mara’s fruit trees? Or the beast with claws that had wrenched Ethram through those dark tunnels, years ago? Which is real?
Ethram has never been a superstitious man, but he has never doubted the arcane exists. No one in the archipelago does. But believing in gods and monsters is different from trusting them. From loving them.
This is why he doesn’t spend time around people. It brings nothing good.
The next morning is the same, and the one after. He wakes to an empty bed. Sometimes Ky leaves breakfast and tea waiting for him in the kitchen. Sometimes he does not. They still sit in the parlour in the evening, but Ky never reaches for him. Barely smiles at him. Ethram tries to ignore it.
“I’ll be gone tomorrow,” he says, as the week is winding to an end. “There is an important presentation at the university, and I can’t skip it.”
Ky looks up from his knitting. It’s an olive-green something, still too formless to have any recognisable shape. “Very well. I’ll leave the lanterns on for you.”
And that is it. Ethram is up at dawn the next morning, and frowns when he sees the bed is already empty. How early does Ky get up?
He doesn’t need to be at the university until mid-morning, but he still slinks out of the cottage hours before that and whiles the morning away browsing shopfronts.
He makes a note to make an appointment with his tailor—he’ll need warmer clothes for autumn.
Ky will need some too, no matter how many jumpers he knits.
Then he clenches his jaw at his own foolishness, because he doesn’t know if Ky will even be with him come autumn.
Everything Ethram has had in his life, he has lost. His family. His home. His courage, lost in the dark archives. His health, lost the same. He is fed up with losing things.
All he wanted was to be alone and unbothered for the rest of his years. And then Ky crashed into him and upended everything again.
That cursed horror of a man has given Ethram everything he never let himself want—a warm bed, a lantern left on in the evening, a home—and he’ll take it all away again when he leaves.
Ethram can’t lose it all again. He won’t survive it.
He can’t say what the university presentation is about. He watches and nods and avoids talking to any of his peers, and when they break for lunch, he escapes to the river. The chatter of water and rushes is far more pleasant than any other conversation.
He buys a baked apple from a cart-seller and sits by one of the old river walls.
It’s built of old clay bricks, a darker honey-gold than the stone Esk is made from, and some bricks hold the gentle divots of the long-gone fingers that made them.
Ethram once counted them, placing his fingers alongside the grooves.
He loves the history soaked right through Esk, and all the memories still lingering, waiting to be remembered.
It’s one of the oldest settlements in the archipelago. Possibly even the oldest that is still inhabited, though he’ll leave that study to another scholar.
The truth is, not many scholars delve into Esk’s history. He’d noticed when he’d embarked on his chosen career of ritual history that he did not have many peers. He hadn’t minded, but it had struck him as odd.
Now, though, it frightens him.
Why is there so little recorded history of this place? Why do scholars avoid the archives? Why does Sabine Casca know so little of her own family’s history, and why do the Gardens worship a god they can’t even remember?
Esk’s quirk of forgetting seems more sinister than it ever has. And he knows Ky must be linked to it. God or not, he is at the heart of it.
And if he doesn’t go back to wherever he was slumbering, the Gardens and their healing waters might just fail. And if they do, then Esk, and everyone within it, will suffer.
And honestly? Ethram isn’t sure how long he’ll live without the healing waters. The aether damage was severe, and it’s possible he won’t make it to middle age without his seasonal treatments.
He chews on the apple skin, and the answer seems startlingly simple.
It doesn’t matter if Ky stays. Either way, one of them will leave. Ky is not a man. Ethram is. Mortals might find each other again in the dark river of the underworld, but Ky is not mortal.
If Ky leaves, Ethram will live his life as he has been. If Ky stays, Ethram will be the one to leave him.
Ethram is a fool to want nothing but the impossible. Because even if Ky must leave, Ethram may as well make what happiness he can, while he can.
Gods know, there won’t be much of it after.
It’s barely past lunch when he makes it home.
The front door is propped open, and the back too, to let the soft breeze sweep the stagnant warmth from inside the cottage.
Ethram never remembers to do things like that.
If he’d been alone, the cottage would have baked all through the summer without a single gasp of fresh air.
Ky is in the back garden. He’s lying among a mess of cowslips and meadow grass behind the elderberry shrubs, glowing in a patch of sunlight. His eyes are closed. He does not stir at the crunch of Ethram’s boots up the path, but he is awake. The tilt of his head towards the sound betrays him.
Ethram doesn’t stop to think. He swings a leg over Ky, drops to straddle him in the grass. The sun is warm on the back of his neck, but it’s nothing compared to the wide-eyed surprise on Ky’s face. Ky brings his hands up on instinct, grabs Ethram’s waist.
“You’ll leave,” Ethram says. It’s a change, looking down on Ky. He doesn’t look half so regal with his hair tangled in the weeds. “And I’ll be miserable whether or not I’ve kissed you. I’d rather know what it was like to have you than not.”
“Finally.” Ky’s surprise is fading, his grip growing tighter. He wets his lips with the tip of his tongue. “Some sense.”
Ethram leans over, bracing his hands on either side of Ky’s head. They hold like that for a long moment. Ky’s pale eyes are bright. His mouth has fallen open, an inviting gap between his lips.
Ethram wrenches his gaze back to Ky’s eyes. “Do you want me?”
“You needn’t ask me that,” says Ky, low. His hands force Ethram’s hips down, press him against the proof of that. “I’ve been doing nothing but wanting you.”
When Ethram dips down to kiss him, he tastes exactly as Ethram had always thought he would.
Like crisp water, like Ethram could go on kissing him forever and never want for anything.
He deepens the kiss, then pulls away, bringing it back to shallow, and feels Ky’s groan of frustration.
Feels it right through his whole body. He smiles.
Ky could turn this at any moment, could bear Ethram down in a breath, but he lets him tease.
Lets him bite gently at the corner of that mouth, then lick a stripe up Ky’s neck.
He unlaces Ky’s trousers, and Ky slips his hands up, taking Ethram’s shirt with them.
The sun is warm, and warmer still, and all around is the scent of crushed meadow grass, sweet and summer-soft.
That’s what he’ll remember, he thinks. The sunlight, dappled and pale, dancing across Ky’s face, sending shadows tracing around his eyelashes and leaving sun-warmth on his lips.
Ky wraps his hand, large and work-rough, around them both, holds them together, and Ethram presses himself against Ky’s chest like he can sink right through him.
If only he could. Then Ky could take him with him, and Ethram would never be alone again. It’s that thought that has him shaking apart, and for a blissful, quiet moment, all of Ethram’s worries are a world away.
After, Ky laughs at his flushed cheeks, and they lie and watch as the clouds track across the sky. Ethram’s body is a pleasant hum of contentment, sun-warm right through.
“Did you not have some important conference?” says Ky after a long while. He traces the shape of Ethram’s smile with his thumb.
“Mm. I left,” says Ethram, nipping at his fingertip. “Couldn’t care less.”
“You are a shocking example of a scholar. No discipline.” He shifts, and then he’s standing and hefting Ethram up with him.
He’s smiling, a wickedly sharp sort of smile that has no business being on a face as handsome as his.
“But if you’re not going back, let us go inside.
I’m not nearly done with wanting you today. ”
Ethram is sure they leave at least one item of clothing behind in the meadow grass. It hardly matters. It’ll be there to fetch later.