We ate. The conversation was comforting. It was Milo's ongoing saga of the Great Garden Dispute between Jeffrey and a local crow. Rook's quietly devastating commentary on a Bureau procedural update that had made Fenric's eye twitch for an entire Tuesday. Zane's account of a student in his yoga class who had accidentally achieved enlightenment and then immediately wanted to know if there was a refund policy on the eight-week session.
I watched them and felt something settle in my chest.
After dessert, which was something Milo had made with berries from the garden and Jeffrey had enthusiastically requested in the only way Jeffrey communicated requests, which was by standing in front of the refrigerator and pointing, a different kind of quiet settled over the table.
Rook looked at Zane. Zane looked at Milo. Milo looked at Fenric. Fenric set down his wine glass with the particular precision that was all him.
They reached into pockets simultaneously.
Four small boxes, none of them matching, all of them clearly chosen with individual intent. Milo's was wrapped in paper printed with tiny skeletons. Rook's was plain dark leather. Zane's was a deep fae-blue that seemed to shift color in the candlelight. Fenric's was precisely square and had a small Bureau seal on the corner because apparently you could take the man out of the bureaucracy but not that bureaucracy from the man.
They looked at each other one more time.
"We discussed," Fenric began, "whether to do this sequentially or…"
"Together," Rook grunted, which was his position on most things that mattered.
Four boxes slid across the table toward me.
I looked at them. I looked at the four of them, Milo almost vibrating, Rook very still in the way that meant he was working extremely hard at stillness, Zane watching me with that particular softness he usually kept carefully tucked away, Fenric with his jaw set and his hands flat on the table and his eyes holding everything he'd ever struggled to say out loud.
The rings inside were all different. Of course they were.
Milo's had a tiny bone detail worked into the band with an amethyst that matched his necromantic energy. Rook's was simple and heavy, dark metal with a single groove worn into it. Zane's was ancient gold with fae knotwork that moved when the light hit it. Fenric's was precise and silver with a blue stone that matched his eyes and also somehow the Oracle's mark on my forehead, which had faded to nearly nothing but still caught the light sometimes.
Horrace put his head in my lap.
"Yes," before any of them could find the words they'd been rehearsing and because I had been carrying this answer formonths without knowing I was carrying it. "Obviously yes. To all of you. Obviously."
Milo made a sound that was approximately eighty percent joy and twenty percent relieved tears. Rook exhaled like a man setting down something very heavy. Zane smiled the particular smile that reached all the way to his ancient eyes. Fenric blinked once, precisely, and then said, "Good. The paperwork is already prepared."
"Of course it is," I laughed, and was still laughing when Milo lunged across the table to hug me and upended a candle, which Zane caught without looking, Rook had clearly anticipated given the way he'd already moved the wine, and Fenric documented by saying "noted" in a tone that meant he'd already written it down.
Later, after the table was cleared and the candles were burning low, we moved to the living room in comfortable disorder. Horrace was draped across Rook and Zane both, his colors cycling through warm golds and soft blues. Milo was on the floor with Jeffrey, who had apparently been promoted to ring security during the dinner and was now receiving an award ceremony from the other skeletons. Fenric sat with his shoulder pressed against mine, his hand finding mine without ceremony.
I looked down at my finger. Four rings, worn together as we'd decided, because nothing about this was traditional and there was no reason to pretend otherwise.
I had held cosmic power. I had given it back. I had chosen the mess and the joy and the people in this room over the clean lines of absolute authority.
I had chosen well.
Outside, rain was beginning, soft and ordinary. My knee ached with the first drops before the sound reached us, which was just how it worked, how it had always worked, and would go on working regardless of prophecies or Harbingers or anything else the universe had in its queue.
Milo looked up from the skeleton award ceremony and said, "Are we having a party now? We should have a party. Jeffrey wants to DJ."
"Jeffrey does not DJ," Rook deadpanned.
"Jeffrey absolutely DJs," Milo grinned. "He has opinions about tempo."
"He has a jaw," Rook pointed. "That is not a DJ qualification."
I leaned my head against Fenric's shoulder and listened to them argue about it.
Here. With these four impossible men, one deeply principled miniature skeleton DJ, and an interdimensional manticore snoring on the couch.
Here was home.
Chapter
