Three Kings

by Freydís Moon

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.

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. Townsfolk called him witch, as they always had, but after that, they called him necromancer too.

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

Ethan gathered some of Peter’s old clothes, strode into the kitchen, and shoved them at Nico. The selkie, who could, in fact, make rational, smart decisions, said absolutely nothing.

“Besides, you’re our very rude, very broody guest.” Nico huffed. “You’re tiny and awful. You know that, right?” “I do.”

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.

“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.”

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