AllFreeNovel
Share Us
We don’t see Luke all day.
At night, Edinburgh teems with people getting ready to celebrate. Finlay and I watch the gathering crowds from behind thick drapes, careful not to disturb them or breathe any kind of life into the building. We hear whooping and cheering, people up for a good time, and it’s busier even than in summer, with the celebrations concentrated in the streets close to us. Here, however, the apartment is dead and dark, the only sound the heavy pendulum swing of a grandfather clock.
Finlay’s arms wrap around me from behind, his chin resting comfortably on my shoulder. “Ye ken Hogmanay’s a bigger deal in Scotland than Christmas?” he murmurs. “We deserve a night oot.” His low voice caresses my ear like the most seductive devil. “If fannybaws is still in a huff wi’ us — wi’me— then fuck him.”
“You don’t mean that,” I say quietly, watching a group of revelers in party hats with the year on them cut across the road. “He’s lost his mother.”
“Aye, somehow I huvnae forgotten the Queen’s fuckin’ deid.” Finlay gives a morose sigh, the tip of his nose nuzzling at my jaw. He presses soft butterfly kisses against my nape, watching me avidly as I observe the joyous crowds. It looks like fun, something strange and absent here, and I’m drawn toward the outside so badly it’s almost as if Finlay had shoved me through the window.
“Fine. Let’s go out.” Finlay instantly perks and I almost laugh. His energy is so much like a boisterous golden retriever, and somehow I’m the one who’s ended up in charge of him. “But first,” I add, turning to look Finlay in the eye, “I want to check in on Luke.”
I go alone. Finlay hangs back, expecting his presence to count against him, but it turns out his caution is for nothing. Lucas Milton, the spurned Prince of Wales, the target of a fearsome mob rule, lies curled on the chaise with his eyes closed. His long, gangly arms are outstretched, his fingers drooping onto the red well-thumbed Bible that lies on the carpeted floor beside him. In the rack close to his head, a dozen silver knives glitter lethally. Right now, he’s a mess of contradictions in his quest for wisdom and power. Nevertheless, I take a moment to admire the outline of his soft, sleeping face, wishing him a deep, dreamless sleep as I close the door gently behind me.
The night air is cooling and sharp, like icicle daggers stabbing through skin. On another night, a freer night, I’d imagine we’d be dressed up for the occasion — me in a slinky dress, Finlay in an even slinkier top, both of us glittering with powder and sequins as we turn carnal for the god of good times. But tonight we walk, cold hand in cold hand, wearing comfortable old sweaters and worn sneakers and our regular everyday jeans, our faces tired rather than animated like the partygoers around us. New year. It should be a special, welcome occasion: new year — the sunniest period of winter. Despite my earlier words of optimism to Finlay, I can’t help the trepidation that lines the pit of my stomach. It’s apprehension, not excitement, that we carry with us into the new year. I take some small sliver of joy in the fact that the people around us are more than happy to make up for our low moods. They at least are willing to put bitter politics aside and sacrifice themselves tonight at the altar of fun.
A year ago today, I’d been in the boys’ dorm with Benji.
We’d listened to the radio. He’d cheered as a female politician was murdered.
Music blasts, thunderous and anthemic. The crowd thickens as we reach the main city thoroughfare, making a beeline for the large entrance gates, where stewards in reflective jackets check tickets and direct the revelers to the street party beyond. We slow as we reach the metal gates.
We don’t have tickets and the gates are too well-sealed to sneak in. Finlay looks thoughtful, his gaze caught on the distant Edinburgh skyline. “I know a place.”
The place Finlay’s thinking of… Well, it takes more effort to get to than he prepares me for. We tear hand in hand through the busy, buzzing city, cutting through cobbled side streets and dank alleyways, passing pubs that spill with both punters and drink, who cheerfully wish us a happy new year. I feel it in everyone who greets us, in everyone we see. The desperation for lightness, for tension to lessen, for the world to spring back to normal again. For the boring path of the status quo, as corrupt and shit as it may have always been, instead of the hard, rocky unknown of revolution.
Finlay makes a pit-stop at a bright, sterile supermarket, picking up a six-pack of Tennent’s in an aisle almost picked clean of alcohol. Then, after hesitating, he grabs a garishly tartan tin of shortbread with a painted stag on the lid.
“One’s a peace offerin’ tae Luke and the other’s tae indulge my feelings about him.” I raise an eyebrow at him, amused. He doesn’t clarify which is which, though I can make an educated guess.
The area we travel to is utterly lightless, and we’re so far from the city center that we no longer hear the sound system or the hollering crowds. We walk for what feels like miles, and eventually I have to ask Finlay outright where exactly he’s planning on taking us. When he points at the swollen dusky mass in front of us, I stare at him, astonished.
“What? You thinknow’sa good time to go hill walking? It’s dark!”
A small smile beats at the corner of his mouth. “Trust me, sassenach.”
I do. God help me, but I do. Finlay’s heart’s always been in the right place, and so I stumble through the darkness and follow him to the base of the large mound in the city center. Feather-soft tall grass tickles our legs and we pass large shadowy gorse on our ascent, the stars flickering dimly above us, trying their very hardest to shine behind a screen of smog and pollution, and barely highlighting our path. Finlay’s hand is tight around mine, and even though we’re navigating mainly by the light of the night sky, he possesses a preternatural ability to see into the distance and climb, pointing out hazards to me along the way.
This is somewhere Finlay knows intimately, as much as Rory had been familiar with the peaks he’d guided me onto at the acreage of his estate.
Unlike those peaks, this one grows trickier to scale as we get closer to the top. The path narrows and grows slick underfoot. As we’re pressed together onto one gritty track, I note a handful of other intrepid explorers have shunned the organized celebrations on firmer ground to make the same pilgrimage as us. It gives me confirmation, at least, that Finlay hasn’t completely lost his mind. I clutch his forearm, paranoid about tumbling miles down and injuring myself, especially now that I see people dotted around the grass who’ve managed to successfully trek to the top. Finlay’s grip on me is as firm and fixed as the large gray boulders we have to scramble over to reach the uppermost pinnacle.
I dust my cold, numb hands together, my breath coming in frequent silver puffs. And then, standing upright, I gaze around us.
The silver vanishes from my vicinity.
Edinburgh takes my breath away.
13
The city glitters in a shimmer of golden light. It vibrates, vibrant, with life: from the black skeletal roads to the mass of people propelled along its streets. Once again, Edinburgh seizes my heart in a way no other city can, and as I watch the carpet of commotion in the world beneath our feet, I find myself gravitating toward Finlay, for him to tether my soul to this rock.
“Arthur’s Seat,” he notes with a victorious spread of his hands, gesturing to the rocky peak. “Used tae come up here a’ the time durin’ the holidays. A’ weathers.” He wraps an arm tight around my shoulders, slowly steering me around. From our vantage point, we see the whole of the city spread at every angle, from rows of Georgian terraces and large university buildings to the pioneering engineering of the bridges crossing the Forth. The mysterious dark depths of the North Sea lie beyond the mass of shadowed land.
“Arthur’s Seat?” I stare at him. “Arthur, as in…?”
“The fabled king, aye. That Arthur.”
Standing here, it’s easy to pretend a city could be a kingdom, a kind of Camelot through the ages. That Edinburgh could play host to history’s legends and icons. That, indeed, they’d seek to come here. It’s not the character but the setting, the backdrop, that gives art its shade, its unique power. There have been heroes throughout history — but heroes tied to locations are the ones elevated and memorialized. For what would Arthur be without Camelot, and who would Finlay be without his Edinburgh?
