“And we did that?”
“We did. By ourselves. She said the heights made her too dizzy, but we wanted to try it. Then we got up there and sat on a branch. As soon as it was dark enough, the firemoths came out.”
“Firemoths?”
“They’re massive,” Jeremy said. “Wings as wide as your hands.” He held up both hands side by side, fingers spread to show the moths’ wingspan. “And they flash orange, so when they all come at night, it’s like Halloween up there.”
“What about the bad memories?” Rafe said. “Or was it all falling stars and firemoths?”
Jeremy was quiet a moment, then he rose and went to the balcony. Standing in the arched entrance, he pointed to the distant mountains.
“One morning, I woke up early. The light was different. The air was different. I was standing on this spot and saw it had snowed in the mountains. That’s when I realized how long we’d been here. From spring until almost winter. You woke up and asked me what was wrong. I didn’t say anything. Then you wrapped the blankets around you and came to stand right here.” Jeremy stepped sideways one foot. “You saw the snow and said, ‘Almost Christmas.’ And you smiled at me, and I knew you wanted to spend Christmas here. Every Christmas.”
Rafe got off the bed and walked over to him, standing where young Jeremy had once stood while Jeremy stood where young Rafe once had.
“Then what?” Rafe asked.
“Finally you ordered me to tell you what I was thinking. In my mind I was picturing Mum all alone in our house, Mum and Martha, and it was Christmas, but there was no tree up. Just a cold quiet house and Mum not even playing carols on the piano. Because she wouldn’t have any reason to celebrate if I was still gone. Lost her husband when she was twenty-nine, lost her son at forty-four. I almost lied to you that morning. That’s how much I loved you. That’s how much I wanted you to be happy. But an order was an order, so I told you the truth. I said—”
“Time to go.”
Jeremy cocked his head at him. “You remember?”
“Only in a dream.” How strange to find that so many of his half-forgotten dreams had been memories.
Jeremy crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back against the stone arch. “Nobody ever tells you that when you go to another world, that even if it’s paradise, you’ll still miss your mum and your dog.” He sat on the balcony ledge. “Or maybe I finally realized what a selfish little shit I was being. This wasn’t us staying out past curfew. We’d been gone months.”
Rafe sat on the ledge across from him. “What did I say when you told me?”
“Well,” Jeremy said, brightening, “never let it be said that my teenage self did not have excellent taste in boyfriends and princes. All you said was, ‘Okay, we’ll go home.’ But that morning we didn’t know what going home would mean. For us. I wonder sometimes what would’ve happened if we’d stayed.”
“To us or our families?” Rafe asked. “Dad aged ten years while we were missing. Mom lost forty pounds she didn’t need to lose.”
“And Mum’s medicine cabinet was full of pill bottles that weren’t there before we got lost. I overheard my grandparents saying if I’d been gone another month, they probably would’ve lost her too,” Jeremy said. He lowered his head but then gave a soft laugh, looked up, and met Rafe’s eyes. “And you would be so sick of me by now, wouldn’t you?”
Rafe laughed. “Good chance of that, yeah.” He looked out at the mountains. No snow yet but soon. He could smell it in the air. “I always did judge people a little who stayed with their high school sweethearts.”
Jeremy pointed a finger at him. “If you ever call me your high school sweetheart again, so help me—”
“Sorry, sorry.” Rafe raised his hands in surrender.
“Look,” Jeremy said and pointed. Outside the palace walls, a white stag and a red hart stepped lightly and gracefully through a pumpkin patch, sniffing out a perfect one for their dinner.
“Wow,” Rafe breathed. The deer finished eating and dashed back into the woods.
“I took all this away from you because I was homesick.”
“I could’ve stayed,” Rafe reminded him. “I didn’t have to go home with you. It was my choice.”
His choice to go. Even knowing what his father did to him, Rafe still chose to go home. Why? Because he loved Jeremy that much? Or because he also had grown up enough to know he couldn’t, as Jeremy said, stay out past curfew forever. Even for white stags and Skya.
In silence they watched the sun setting over the green and silver peaks of the distant mountains. The wind was picking up, crisp and cutting, and Rafe shivered.
“Come on,” Jeremy said, standing up. “Either get back inside or put on some warmer clothes.”
“That something that knights do? Tell princes to put on their jackets?”
“If the prince is stupid enough to sit outside in October in a T-shirt and his underwear, then yes.”
Rafe got up and started to go inside. “You coming?”
Jeremy glanced over to the next balcony. “I should get back to my room before we get into trouble with Skya. She’s not going to be happy until she beheads at least one of us.”
“Or you could stay here and just get in trouble.”
Jeremy raised his eyebrow. “Who’s the bad influence now?”
They returned to the bedroom, where a fire had magically started in the fireplace. Rafe stood by it, warming himself. Jeremy, seated in the armchair, stretched out his long legs toward the fire. Rafe saw him look over at the locked sketchbook on the side table again. He didn’t have to ask Jeremy why he wanted him to open it. Now he knew.
He turned away from Jeremy and held his hands out toward the flames. Easier to say it without looking at Jeremy.
“I fell in love with you here, didn’t I?” Rafe asked. ”I remember wanting to but being too scared, so it had to have been here.”
Before they were lost, he remembered talking himself out of being in love with Jeremy, telling himself there was no point to it, that it was a stupid crush that would go away, that even if Jeremy felt the same—and why would he?—they could never do anything about it, so why bother?
“You did,” Jeremy said. “Took you long enough.”
“Being in this world, away from Dad, it must have felt like I could love you, that it wouldn’t be wasted here.”
