Three Kings

by Freydís Moon

“What if it bites you?” he muttered, and straightened his glasses with a bent knuckle. “My mother’s exact words after I told her we were engaged,” Ethan teased.

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.

Magic was topsy-turvy—palatable and friendly in one breath, urchin-shaped and aggressive in the next.

Before that, Peter had lifted Ethan onto the countertop and taken his hand in a firm grip, tending to the shallow prick on his wrist with peroxide and bandages. It wasn’t quite a cut, just a small puncture, but allowing Peter the opportunity to mend him put them both at ease.

“Oh, absolutely not. I married you for your looks, obviously,” Ethan teased, turning to meet his eyes. Truth be told, it was for his heart. Because Peter was kind and good and humble, because he blushed like a raspberry whenever people looked at him for a little too long, because he’d loved Ethan Shaw fiercely since the day they’d met.

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

They slept partially tangled, as they did most nights, with the ocean at their window, shushing and singing.

A long, long time ago, he would’ve whimpered at the suggestion of a position like this—laid bare and on display in a sunlit room. But age and time and togetherness had made him crave it. The vulnerability, the openness.

“I’ll always take care of you,” Peter murmured and tapped his index finger on Ethan’s temple, “here,” dropped his hand to his sternum, “here,” slipped lower, cupping his palm between Ethan’s legs, “especially here. Understood?”

“Absolutely nothing. I know what sorrow sounds like, though.” Nico’s voice weakened, gentled even. “I’m not sure what you’ve done to me, what your magic’s done to me. But I don’t think I can handle ever hearing you like that again.

Crying

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.

“You’re not a coward,” he said, defeated. “You’re kind and smart and good, and you scare me. That’s all.”

KIND AND SMART AND GOOD

“Your love for me and my love for you aren’t weakened by our connection with someone else.

“We keep loving each other; we keep trusting each other. People do it all the time, darling. That’s the thing with love—there’s enough to spare. And if it isn’t love, if this experience with Nico is physical, period, and we’re a pit stop in his life, then… Well, then we enjoy it together.”

But when comfort ran dry with family and sermons stopped ringing true at church, people always found a witch.