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I find him now, in the kitchen, and he’s alone, though there’s something in the air. A flickering static I follow to a radio on the windowsill. “Where did that come from?”

“It is Sol’s.” Oscar presses a button and static fades. “He wants me to learn a new song for Twelfth Night.”

“When he sings to the trees?”

“Not just Sol, mielasis. Wassailing is all of Porth Luck and they have been singing to the trees on this farm longer than we have been alive.”

“As long as the trees listen, eh?”

That’s the folklore, according to Sol Bosanko, at least. That we gather around the oldest tree in my orchard, pour cider on her roots and shout and sing to her in the hope she bears fruit again in the autumn. God help me if he ever meets my dad.

And I feel like he will. Everything about Porth Luck is beginning to feel permanent. Oscar’s friends are mine too. Like Jack, who arrives a little later, when I’m showered and wearing clothes without mud stains, and comes to help me build the fire in the living room.

Actually, he does it for me. “You should take a nap, lad. Even Oscar gets rowdy on Christmas Eve.”

I’ve seen Oscar rowdy, but it’s probably a wildly different context to the one Jack’s talking about.

Either way, I take his advice and doze off on the couch. I don’t know what time it is when Oscar wakes me. Just that it’s dark for real, my house is full of people I’d never met a year ago, and I like it as much as I secretly love the wassailing.

I sit up and take the iced gin Oscar’s offering. Neck it and kiss him—that’s the other thing I like about his friends. Apart from Sev, who’s rarely around, they’re all too busy with each other to notice me mauling Oscar.

Sol and Jack sit by the fire, talking about the building work going on at the Joker—a project that brings my brother to Porth Luck most days, though I’ve yet to see him even look at a brick.

Mal’s in the armchair Jekka forced on me when she finally visited at the tail end of summer. He’s in that weird place I catch him in sometimes, half asleep but so wide awake I have to look away before he reminds me too much of Folk.

I nuzzle Oscar’s cheek. “You need help with the food?”

“Not really, but come with me anyway.”

Oscar pulls me to my feet and I let him tow me out of the living room and into the kitchen. I have an oven now—a range cooker Rubi showed up with one day. I didn’t ask him where he got it—and a big table Saint built in the yard on the autumn equinox. It’s strong enough to fuck on, but tonight it’s already laden with the food we’re going to eat…soon, I hope. I’ve woken up hungry.

“Kūčios,” Oscar says.

“Hmm?”

He says it again, slower. But he doesn’t need to. I know the Lithuanian word for Christmas Eve dinner; Aras has been talking about it all week, even though he’s not here for it.

“Look.” Oscar plants his big hand on top of my head and turns my gaze to the window. The sky is so dark and blue it’s almost black, and nestled in the wispy clouds, I see it—the first star. “Eat now, Po. Myliu tave.”

Oscar’s come prepared. He drops one of the little poppy-seed dough things he made yesterday into my mouth. They’re yeasty and sweet, and he loves them. But he doesn’t make them for himself. He makes them for the friend who isn’t here yet, but that’s about to change.

I wear a watch now, the same as Oscar. Though we’re still yet to exchange a single text—if we need each other, we find each other, like we always have—he bought it for me, and it buzzes, letting me know someone’s here, and a moment later, Skylar Buchanan slips into my house.

He doesn’t come here much. When he does, it’s usually to round up Mal and take him home, or hang with Oscar for ten minutes or so that feel like a reset. He doesn’t say much either, but I haven’t forgotten what he did for me after the fire, and I never will. It’s as ingrained in me as the instinct that Skylar reminds me way too much of the older foster kids my parents took in. Strays who’d seen far too much of the world before they were ready.

“Mal’s in there.” I point at the living room as Oscar releases me from the cage of his arms. “Not sure if he’s awake, though.”

Skylar gives me a shadowed half grin. “He’s not.”

“How do you know?”

“He’d be up in my face if he was.”

“Is true.” Oscar tips his own gin glass to his lips. “You are to Mal what the earth is to the roots of a tree.”

Skylar rolls his eyes. “Only you and Sol can say that shit with a straight face.”

Oscar says something else, but I don’t catch it. He turns away from me slightly to watch Skylar go back to the door and stow his coat and shoes, and his hand remains at my waist. But the lazy stroke of his thumb stops, his energy changes, and I know Oscar well enough to recognise the subtle concern for his friend.