Three Kings

by Freydís Moon

Like snakes, the townsfolk shed their innocence, leaving it to stew in the bay, sink into the soil, and beat against the lighthouse. And like snakes, the lilies drew their outgrown magic into tangled roots and narrow stems and gilded pollen: an ouroboros consuming itself.

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. Using said magic to reanimate a corpse felt less like magic, though, and more like recklessness.

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.

But reanimation rituals, bartering spells, and harnessing power from beyond the elemental plane came with bloody price tags, and most people associated witches who practiced that kind of magic with danger. Seeing as Ethan could hardly reach the top shelf in the cupboard, dangerous seemed absurd. He preferred equipped. Knowledgeable, even. Brave or daring or—

He’d begged the water to go and traded a bit of himself to evacuate it.

Out. Ethan wouldn’t bother correcting him—he never did. Dead was the right word though. Deceased, gone, passed.

Magic was topsy-turvy—palatable and friendly in one breath, urchin-shaped and aggressive in the next. He remembered how it’d crowded his throat, how he’d been willing to scrape away every ounce of himself if it meant getting Peter back. That was the strangest thing, he thought, how magic waited, considered, and chose. Hurricane Katia had forced Ethan to claw at the power he carried and sacrifice it unchallenged. That specific, heartsick panic didn’t influence the spell with this selkie, though, and he had to prepare for what that meant.

It wasn’t quite a cut, just a small puncture, but allowing Peter the opportunity to mend him put them both at ease.

“That creature in our shed is alive because of a successful, safe ritual. You’re alive because I could not fathom letting you go. Those are two very, very different things.”

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.

But Ethan missed the rest, the partnership that predated trying for something unattainable. Not unattainable, he scolded and blew out a breath, jamming his toothbrush into his mouth. Not impossible.

He hated his achy, lonely heart. Hated caring.

Like most coastal towns, Casper leaned toward the ocean, always damp, always creaky, always cold, and like most coastal towns, the folk held a bittersweet love for it. Like a thing they’d fixed, broken, and fixed again.

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

Everything—the air, the storm, the three of them—seemed strung between fight and flight.

Nico lifted his chin. Confidence came off him in waves, battling with the exhaustion purpling his eyes and the slight tremor in his hands. For a moment, Ethan thought he might’ve made a mistake, might’ve invited a territorial, vengeful creature into their home, but neither Peter nor Nico bristled or taunted. They did what most men tended to do—frowned, stared, and waited.

Double-fisting two separate libations probably, definitely, informed his raised guard.

That was the messiness, wasn’t it? The consequence that came with magic as intimate as necromancy. 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.

Vulnerability knotted in his gut. The same kind that came after babies were born, bankruptcies were filed, and divorces were penned. Regret, relief—both.

The wine cushioned him. It kept him woozy and dazed, acquiescing to thoughts of Nico, of Peter, of magic, of life, death, and children.

How was there this much pain in loss he hadn’t experienced yet?

Magic made threads, though, and theirs had formed a stubborn knot.

There was a certain obscurity that came with feeling a person from the inside, getting a glimpse of their heart and knowing nothing about them. Yet that was where they’d landed. Ethan and Nico. Necromancer and necromanced.

But he’d done his crying last night, and all he had left was bitterness that made him eager for a fight, for something reckless and shortsighted.

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.

“Raw,” she said. Her mouth opened wide for the word, and she spoke from the back of her throat, hanging onto the bag until he met her eyes. “A little sugar is fine, but no baking, no sautéing. Heat will simmer off the magic.”

Everything felt normal in a way Ethan hadn’t expected. Deliriously domestic. Softened by whiskey and close quarters.

Ethan’s mind was liquor-whipped and cottony, clinging to sleep the same way mist clung to Casper.

She was a solemn woman, lined by time but pretty in her plainness. She carried years on her slouched shoulders and cleverness in her eyes. Pain too. A terribly sad anger.

How strange to feel his heart rupture and rebel and restart. How comforting to brace for jealousy and find hope instead.

How does someone snap a heartbreaking habit in half?

Ethan felt the marrow sink into his bones, into his mind, and blur the lines between sensual and grotesque.

They stayed like that, trading gentleness in a quiet room, foreheads pressed together, legs tangled under the old, musty quilt.

Give it time. It was too early to talk about the timid flutter in his stomach, like a moth beating its wings behind his navel. Too soon to take a test, too soon to visit the clinic, too soon to know. But Ethan felt it. That magical little life stirring inside him. He ran his palm between his hips, as if to coax another hop, another tiny spike in his core. Yes. Like wings, like hope. There you are.