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“I talked to Rae today. Well, and my mother. I think…that’s all right. Oh, and I’m definitely still the Heir, Rae says, if you were worried.”
“Should I have been?”
“I was, a bit.” He accepted a drink, handed the bottle back. “Because…well, you can guess. But Rae says no, it’s still me. The land loves me. The magic loves me.”
“It should,” Oliver said. “We do. We all do.”
“I offered to help. With the school.”
Oliver took his hand, and kissed it. “You’ll be wonderful as a teacher.”
“I hope so. I want to help with that. I like helping. And I thought…well, I thought about what you said. About something for me. I was thinking about an idea, before you came up. A story. Or maybe a novel. Or maybe even a sort of play, a scenario for one of those new moving pictures, if they can illustrate it.”
Oliver’s eyes were very bright. His hand was warm, holding Tir’s.
Tir said, “It’ll be utterly ridiculous and I might not even show it to anyone after all. You’d laugh. Completely improbable. A prince in disguise. Another prince who’s secretly a sorcerer. And maybe immortal. But very lonely. I think perhaps he’s been cursed. And he’s living in a big ruined castle, at the edge of the world.”
“But your prince in disguise,” Oliver said, “shows up to work for him. And they fall in love. Don’t they?”
“They do. And they lift the curse. And they restore the castle, or maybe the restoration’s how they fall in love. Oh, and they’ll have to deal with our hero’s wicked stepfather, naturally.”
“Naturally.”
“But,” Tir said, fingers laced through Oliver’s, the taste of berries and honey at his lips, their kingdom around them, stretching beyond the window in rich deep colors, cradling them inside with stars and charts and shared knowledge, “I promise there’s a happy ending. Perhaps not for the wicked stepfather, but for our lovers.”
“True Love?”
“Of course,” Tir said, tugging his husband closer for a kiss, two kisses, more. “I wouldn’t know how to imagine anything else.”
THE END
