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“Fifi!” rose over the chugging engine. One figure stood high above the rest, arm raised in greeting, body thrown in shadow, wild hair glazed gold by the sunlight.

Orpheus didn’t need to see their face to know it was Fenrir.

Finally, he thought, heart clawing into his throat.

He gripped his sign as he left the shadow of the barn and approached the slowing tractor. Before it could come to a stop, Fenrir leaped from the wagon, jogging towards Orpheus, his smile luminous. Two, three, four bounding steps and they came together. Hands gripped his shoulders, then cupped his cheeks. The board thumped dully atop the tufted grass when Fenrir’s warm and wind-blown lips touched Orpheus’.

It was natural to close his eyes and let go. Fenrir kissed him with an ease that had become familiar over the last six months—a whole winter spent in his embrace, mornings idled under a tower of blankets, warm skin growing slick while snow piled up in waves against the red bricks of the Stacks. Where dinners were cooked together, but shared with Red, their days spent no more than a few minutes apart, the rebuilding effort slowed by the winter’s snow, but steady on, nonetheless.

He hadn’t felt so empty, then. Maybe that was why he wasn’t ready to give this up. Not yet. Not now. Not even if he had to.

I don’t want to.

Fenrir broke the kiss with a choppy inhale.

“Missed you.” Under the light of the late afternoon sun, relief edged Fenrir’s Rim-pale eyes, a mirror to Orpheus’ own. “Let’s get out of here.”

From the wagon, voices spoke over each other: laughter, a small infant’s cry, the incessant chatter of a large family maneuvering through too many conversations at once.

Beyond them, Orpheus could imagine what waited: the white-capped smear of a thousand pitched tents and a gridlock of distant travelers all gathered in one place. The fairgrounds, once an empty field of grassy hills now churned muddy with an activity that hadn’t existed a week ago when they’d first arrived. Preparations made and executed. A plan set in motion years ago now fully realized.

But maybe not in the way Fenrir expected.

Everything is going to change, and Orpheus wasn’t ready. Not again. Not so soon.

“Dinner’s in an hour!” shouted after them, and Fenrir waved his mother off while reaching for Orpheus’ hand.

Orpheus didn’t look back when Fenrir pulled him towards the barn. He snatched his sign up on the way, following him down the steps until the scent of leather and oil and animal grew stronger than exhaust, the stables home to more than the pastured horses.

The little red door leading into the stable hand’s quarters creaked when Fenrir opened it. The cool air inside was a welcoming balm, the latch of the lock behind Fenrir releasing a tension Orpheus had been fighting for weeks. It shivered beneath Orpheus’ unfamiliar clothing, the robes hanging off the snarled remains of an old iron hook beside the bed a cruel reminder of what he’d lost yet still hadn’t fully given up.

How am I supposed to do this? How am I supposed to find my place in the world when the one thing that defined me is gone, and he’s about to become beholden to everyone in the Empire that isn’t me?

Orpheus swallowed the thickness in his throat, voice breaking when he said, “Fenrir—“

“Alone at last.” Fenrir grinned and leaned back against the door like he intended to barricade them from the whole of the world—or at least his family. “We’ve got about thirty minutes before the kids come looking for us.” Fenrir’s eyes darkened, his grin growing sharp. “Come here.”

Orpheus hesitated, sign still dangling from his hand, the wail of Astrid’s cries a siren inside his head. “I—”

Fenrir didn’t let him finish. The sign thumped to the floor, Fenrir reaching out to drag him in, the hand on Orpheus’ waist an insistent, shaking thing.

Wait, shaking?

The solid wall of Fenrir’s body nearly chased the thought from his head, his lips Orpheus’ worry. Kissing Fenrir remained a new and novel experience, one Orpheus found himself unable resist despite the house full of family that could come barreling through their door any second. No, it was the uneven exhale of Fenrir’s breath that had Orpheus hesitating—the continued tremble in the hand pressed flat to his lower back that made the little hairs on the back of Orpheus’ neck stand on end.

He’s nervous, Orpheus realized. He’s...scared?

Orpheus broke the kiss and leaned back, looking at Fenrir and seeing cracks that had been widening since the first day they arrived, and realized none of this was about him—this was about Fenrir.

“Fenrir,” he murmured, “Are you—”

“—What’s that?” Fenrir said before Orpheus could finish as his pale eyes locked on the forgotten sign.

Orpheus tensed, suddenly unable to say all he wanted. Whatever inconvenience he may be experiencing was nothing compared to what Fenrir faced: a family who had sold him off to a mine so they could feed his siblings—who he had continued to support in the years after by selling his sword to Lore. Who were trying, desperately, to rebuild a bridge between them—only for Fenrir to find himself rooted in place on the opposite side.

And a whole Empire who had, one month ago, voted him into a position of power over them all. A leader to guide them out of the shadow of the Rim into a future far brighter than anyone could have predicted. A future Fenrir would shape. The fallout, as it were, of any successful coup against a reigning power—but one always put off as an unlikely what-if, because heroes only won in stories, and this was their life.

“It’s nothing,” Orpheus said a little too quickly, tipping his head to rest on Fenrir’s shoulder so he didn’t have to look him in the eye. “Everything is fine,” he lied.