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For the bar at the end of the universe and everyone the devil met there.
anyone and, as sometimes happened, felt perversely like surrounding himself with people to not-talk to.
Edwin had no idea what he ached for, no real sense of the shape of his ideal future. He only knew that if every day he made himself a little bit better—if he worked harder, if he learned more, more than anyone else—he might find it.
“And you should have known better than to try to wriggle around me like this. If you were here for a fuck, that’d be different. I suppose I might be willing to bend you over my bed for old times’ sake.”
“We are man’s marvellous light / We hold the gifts of the dawn / From those now passed and gone / And carry them into the night.”
“All right. Books are at least somewhat less likely to hurl insults at one,” he said. “It is one of their major appeals,” said Courcey, and Robin found himself unexpectedly smiling.
Robin and Edwin had already shared a handful of secrets, and now they shared another, and this awareness of their common nature—in a way that had nothing whatsoever to do with magic—hung delicate and unspoken between them as they left the room.
Where contempt existed, attraction could even deepen it.
He liked being with other people. Too much time alone and he felt his colour leaking out.
Magic tends to adhere to life, or at least a place where life was.
You look like a Turner painting and I want to learn your textures with my fingertips. You are the most fascinating thing in this beautiful house. I’d like to introduce my fists to whoever taught you to stop talking about the things that interest you.
“You can do this,” Robin said. “I know you can.” “You don’t know anything,” Edwin whispered, but it sounded like thank you.
And Edwin wouldn’t have spent a week being mocked and half-killed and overwhelmed and—looked at like a miracle, and kissed like an explosion.
“Everyone deserves somewhere where they can be reminded of their potential.”
“Are you all right?” Robin asked. “I don’t know what I am,” said Edwin. “But yes. I’m all right.” In the spirit of enquiry, he sat back on his heels and tried to identify what he was feeling. Somewhat to his shock, he decided it was joy.
I’m so glad :(
Edwin was still laughing when Robin kissed him. It turned at once into a sharp inhalation; an equally sharp press of fingers at Robin’s neck, keeping him close. Edwin’s mouth opening to his. It had the same urgency, the same carmine edge of exultation and not-being-dead, that had flooded Robin’s veins when they escaped from the maze. Robin kissed him, kissed him, drank him in like water.
Robin groaned. “I suggest a daring stealth adventure, and you have to ruin it by telling me it’s going to involve books.” “A great many books.” Edwin’s smile was a tease.
He directed the smile around the room. “I don’t know if I can learn to do what she did, but I’m going to try.” “I think you can probably do anything you set your mind to.”
“You sat there knowing you were in terrible danger, you were offered all the magic you could want, and you still refused. You were magnificent.”
The flush deepened. Robin wanted to make a leather-bound book of his belief and hand it to Edwin, make him read it over and over until Edwin could look in a mirror and see something of what Robin saw.
“Robin—” “I know what you meant.” Robin leaned closer and dropped a single careful kiss on Edwin’s mouth. Edwin made a half-conscious noise of complaint, when Robin pulled away, that was nearly as potent as the blue nerve-magic. “Of course I’m on your side. You complicated my life,” Robin said warmly. “You woke me up. You’re incredibly brave. You’re not kind, but you care, deeply. And I think you know how much I want you, in whatever way I can have you.”
“And I’m sick to death of being afraid, and I want you. Enough to risk it. More than enough. You make me feel like something—extraordinary.”
Even so. It felt different: larger and smaller, more profound and more intimate.
Edwin was learning that Flora Sutton had been as busy and brilliant as she was untrusting and suspicious.
She couldn’t hear Edwin, when he pledged himself to avenge her and Reggie the only way he knew how: to continue her work with the old magics, and to find her contemporaries and warn them. To do his best to ensure that nobody would use the contract as she’d feared it might be used.
It wasn’t up to Edwin to decide if he was worthy. He had been chosen, and he would fight to live up to it. Chosen twice over, in fact; his heart lightened again as he met Robin’s affectionate smile.
“A none too marvellous light,” said Edwin dryly. “For my next trick, I shall fly to the top of Nelson’s Column, and bring the lions to life.” Adelaide tucked a pencil behind her ear and came closer to look. “It’s still something. Good job.” Edwin watched the pale glow in his palm, unfelt but undeniable. Despite his sarcasm he was fiercely, wonderfully proud, even if that feeling was new enough that he was still making space inside himself for it.
He leaned sideways and encountered Robin’s shoulder, firm and warm against his. “It’s a good start,” he said. “Let’s see if I can get it any brighter.” And he paused, in the space between inhalation and exhalation, and invited magic in.
