Page 76 of Something Handsome This Way Comes

Milo laughed and rolled over. “It doesn’t work like that, my love.”

“I know. All my prayers have been answered already.”

And the devotion in those eyes told Milo he might have something to do with that. Grievance climbed to his feet and held out a hand. Milo accepted it, though standing proved considerably more ambitious than he’d anticipated. His knees immediately wobbled. Quickly, Grievance caught him around the waist.

“S-sorry,” Milo said, leaning heavily against him.

“You can always lean on me, my mate. And not just when you’re too shaken to stand. I want you to lean on me when you are tired. When you are frightened. When the world is too loud.” He lowered his head until their foreheads touched. “When you simply want to.”

“Then I’d be pressed against you all the time,” Milo said.

Grievance’s grin flashed in the moonlight. “Sounds perfectly fine to me.”

Together, they crossed the clearing. Milo had lit the old Lantern plenty of times before. For festivals. For prayers. For luck. Sometimes simply because he liked seeing its warm glow between the trees.

But tonight felt different.

Maybe because he knew what this place had given Grievance. Once, that light had found him when he was frightened, hurt, and alone. It had led him through the forest until, somehow, impossibly, he had ended up in Milo’s backyard.

Milo glanced at the man beside him.

His mate.

His Veya.

His impossible, beautiful something.

“What are you smiling about?” Grievance asked.

“You.”

“There’s that strange streak about you again. Not many people smile at monsters.”

“I do at my monster.”

“Yes.” Grievance squeezed his hand. “Yours.”

Milo approached the lantern first. He dipped his fingers into the bowl of crushed Blazemoth Dust, coating his fingertips in the semi-transparent powder. Then he reached inside the glass case and snapped his fingers beside the wick. The dust ignited with a soft whump, and the flame caught immediately, filling the lantern with a bright violet glow.

Grievance copied him, but when he snapped his fingers, Milo knew the color had changed for him—though to Milo it remained violet.

“Green?” he asked.

Grievance nodded. “Purple?”

“Violet.”

“Violet is a kind of purple.”

“Yes, but violet is a more beautiful way to say it.”

Grievance thought a moment, then said, “Then mine would be… peridot.”

Milo smiled. “Like your eyes.”

They stared at the flickering flame for a moment. Then, all around them, the world began to brighten. Milo looked around, alarmed for a moment, thinking the sun was rising and they’d been out all night. But quickly he realized it wasn’t the sun at all. The mushrooms surrounding the clearing began to brighten like torches, one after another, until the whole forest seemed to glow.

Milo stared. “Well.” He swallowed past the sudden lump in his throat. “If that isn’t a good omen, I don’t know what is.”