“You,” he says, and his voice has dropped into something resonant and serious, “faced a shadow king with nothing but preparation and nerve and the sheer audacity of someone who refuses to be afraid of things larger than themselves.” He takes a step toward me. “You have never once used your size or your power as an excuse. You built what you have out of what you were given, which was insufficient, and you built it brilliantly.”
I open my mouth.
“I am not finished,” he says.
I close my mouth.
“You are funny,” he says, like this is a significant finding. “Without trying to be. Which is the only way to be actually funny. You are kind when you think nobody is watching, and you think nobody is ever watching, and you are always wrong about this.” Another step. “You laugh like you’ve been given something unexpected. You love the people in your life with a ferocity that you have never once turned on yourself, which is something I intend to correct.” He’s very close now. “You summoned me for revenge and you couldn’t do it. Not because you’re weak, but because you’re not. You simply refused to become something lesser than you are.”
My throat is very tight.
“I have existed for longer than most of your civilisations,” Dis says. “I have seen power and beauty and courage in many forms. All humans are made from stardust, but I am telling you, Felix, that you were forged in the brightest of stars and you have spent your whole life being told otherwise by people who were simply wrong.”
The kitchen is completely silent.
I can’t speak. Something has happened to my voice. Something has happened to all of my normal defences, my deflection and my sarcasm and my habit of turning things into a joke before they can become something real. They appear to have left the building.
“I love you, Little Witch,” Dis says. “This is not a small thing. I do not say small things.”
I believe him. I believe him completely, in the way you believe things that are said by people who have never once told you what you wanted to hear just to make you feel better. He has been honest with me since the beginning, with the particular brutal honesty of someone who doesn’t know how to be anything else, and he’s being honest now.
I gulp.
“I love you too, Disney,” I say.
It comes out slightly strangled and my eyes are doing something embarrassing and my voice is not entirely steady but it’s true, it’s completely and entirely true, and I’ve been not saying it for so long that saying it now feels like putting something down that I’ve been carrying for miles.
When I thought I was about to die, not saying stuff was my only regret. Fixing that error is a wonderful relief. As well as absolutely terrifying.
Dis looks at me. For a moment his composure does something I’ve only seen it do a handful of times. It cracks, just slightly, just enough to show what’s underneath it, which is something vast and warm and so genuinely relieved that it makes my chest ache.
And I’m relieved too, because even on my best days I would not be capable of putting my feelings into words the way he just did. He just gave me poetry. Sentences that I’m going to cherish and remember forever.
Blurting out three little words and a nickname, seems like a poor thing to give in return. But he is Dis, and he sees me like no one else ever has, and I don’t think it’s merely a connection from feeding. It’s just Dis. He can hear everything I can’t put into words. And it’s enough. He accepts that I love him and he won’t ask me to prove it.
Suddenly, he closes the remaining distance between us and kisses me in a way that makes the love declaration seem almost an understated warm-up act.
When I eventually remember that I have lungs and they require air, I pull back slightly and look up at him.
“You know,” I say, “the teabag is still in the wrapper.”
Dis glances at the mug. Then back at me. “I am aware,” he says, with great dignity. “I was getting to it.”
“You absolutely were not.”
“I was.”
“You were going to give me hot wrapper water and say nothing.”
“I would have noticed, eventually.”
I laugh. He’s watching my face when I laugh, with that expression I know now, the one that started all of this, the one that means he finds my laugh pleasant and has never pretended otherwise.
I reach past him and fish the teabag out of its wrapper and drop it in the mug properly.
“Right,” I say. “I’ll teach you to make tea. You teach me I’m worth staying for.” I look up at him. “Deal?”
Those blue eyes, warm and steady and completely certain.
