Three Kings

by Freydís Moon

Ethan Shaw carried two knives, one for lilies, the other for veins.

Most people refused to use the term—magic—but Ethan found it appropriate. Harvesting long-gone energy from a living thing felt like its very definition.

Rabbit-framed, small-chested, wide-hipped, and delicately masculine, Ethan Shaw wasn’t the optimal lightkeeper type, per se.

His beautiful, ridiculous husband wrinkled his nose. Sea-bitten copper cheeks, angular bones pressing hard against his skin. As always, Peter Vásquez looked dashing, exhausted, and worried.

As it turned out, marriage wasn’t exactly what everyone made it out to be. It was coexisting in the same place, building bridges when arguments landed like grenades, worrying ceaselessly about each other, being irrevocably consumed by each other. Marriage in the fiscal sense? Simple. Money could be made and tracked and divided. Marriage in the lifetime sense? Complicated. Because love was indomitable, but it could be lost and ruined and squandered.

Seeing as Ethan could hardly reach the top shelf in the cupboard, dangerous seemed absurd. He preferred equipped. Knowledgeable, even.

Ethan remembered how the pocketknife had slipped across his arm, how his blood had darkened Peter’s mouth, how the sea had jolted from between his husband’s blue lips. He’d begged the water to go and traded a bit of himself to evacuate it. Three years ago, kneeling on the docks while hail pelted Casper, Ethan Shaw had deemed himself miraculous and deadly.

“I would’ve bled every drop of magic to bring you back. I would’ve killed to bring you back.

It was a heady type of missing when you missed a person you already belonged to. Loneliness knotted in his chest. He had someone. Loved someone. Honored vows with someone. But he missed the desire, missed being lusted after.

Witchcraft wasn’t exactly cute. Spit, blood, semen, bone, flesh, hair. It always called for something.

“You’re the only person I see, Ethan Shaw. I’ve wanted you since I was twenty years old—hardly a sailor, hardly a man, but entirely yours. I think about you constantly. Today I was…” He huffed out a laugh. “I was undone by you.”

That both Peter Vásquez and Nico Locke carried a bit of Ethan with them. His magic, his lifeforce. The power in Ethan’s blood would call to itself from where it’d rooted in their bodies, a ripple traveling backward toward its source.

He’d had to fight before. Had to defend himself, take punches, throw blows. He’d been forced to break things—bones, hearts, promises. Had to figure out when and how someone might aim to hurt him because someone would always, always want to. For becoming self-made, for having a womb, for harnessing magic, for being different.

Why do I matter? I’m no one to you.” “Because life isn’t guaranteed, but it is precious.

“You’re the love of my life, Ethan Shaw,” he whispered, poking at a carrot at the bottom of his bowl. “That’ll never change.” Ethan’s heart lurched. You perfect idiot, he thought and met Peter’s dulce-brown eyes. “And you’re mine, Peter Vásquez. Even when you bring home dead seals.” “Handsome seals,” Peter corrected.

He stood at the edge of the tide as his husband kissed the selkie they’d saved, on that beach, on a cold, clear Friday evening. Nico Locke leaned into him. Their noses brushed, and their breath fogged the air. Ethan, he saw Nico say, lips stretched, tongue touching the back of his teeth. How strange to feel his heart rupture and rebel and restart. How comforting to brace for jealousy and find hope instead.

He knew the bottlenecked fear he’d carried for years had driven him into a spiral, but how does a witch rework a ritual he’d never paid attention to? How does someone snap a heartbreaking habit in half?

Fear—that awful, relentless fear—had stolen his ability to speak, to ask, to be open.

Maybe it was never a child. He opened his eyes. Light ribboned the door. Maybe the cost had always been this. The horror. The hope. The mourning.