He adjusts his position to keep their hands together without making Vale stretch, and he's acutely aware of how it looks, standing at Vale's side, fingers intertwined. As though this is something they do. As though this is something they are.
Knox's eyes drop to their joined hands. Rise back to Vale's face. He crosses his arms.
"I'd ask if the Sanctus knows about this, but I'm guessing I already know the answer." His voice is dry enough to sand wood. "How long have you been harboring a necromancer?"
"We're working together," Vale says, which sounds considerably better than the truth: that he's been sneaking a necromancer around the city, collaborating on rift research using what the Order would call forbidden methods, and regularly putting his hands on said necromancer in ways that the church would find distasteful. "We closed a rift last night."
Knox's eyebrows shoot up. "That was you? The Cathedral's been in an uproar. The Templars on watch went to check on the warehouse rift and it was completely gone. Not even a trace of death magic in the air."
Vale pulls August forward by their joined hands, placing him in a spotlight he wants no part of. "It wasn't me. It was him. Knox, this is August, the Speaker. August, Knox."
Knox's attention settles on August. He's shorter than August, an observation August files away as one of the few comforting things about this encounter, and despite the holy rings and the mace at his belt, his expression isn't the hard-eyed assessment August expects. It softens. Turns warm. The long-sufferingexasperation he'd directed at Vale is replaced by something that looks, improbably, like kindness.
"August," Knox says, inclining his head. "We've heard a lot about you."
"That's not comforting to know." August casts a flat look at Vale, who appears unbothered. "Your partner is nicer than you."
Knox ducks his head to hide a smile. Vale rolls his eyes.
"Niceness isn't a prerequisite to join the Order," Vale tells them both.
"Clearly," Knox and August say at the same time, and then look at each other with matching expressions of surprise.
Vale stares at both of them. He looks displeased.
Knox's mouth twitches, but he steers back to business with the practiced ease of someone who has been managing his partner's messes for decades. "Why was I looking for you? Because a rift closed itself overnight and the Sanctus wants answers. But you obviously knew that." He pauses, glancing at August. "Word from the Cathedral is that closing rifts will intensify the remaining ones. Energy has to go somewhere. If you're planning to close more, that's something to factor in."
"We're closing another tonight," Vale says. "And there's a new one opening at the railway station tomorrow. If you want to be useful, keep the Order's attention away from both locations for the next twenty-four hours."
"Only because you asked so nicely," Knox says, with the particular sigh of a man who has been following his partner into terrible decisions for four decades and has no intention of stopping now.
His gaze drops to their joined hands one more time. He opens his mouth, closes it, seems to weigh several questions and decide against all of them. August knows what he's not asking. Why can a Templar touch a necromancer without harm? Why doesAugust look healthy instead of corrupted? What exactly has been happening in this apartment?
Knox doesn't ask. And the relief August feels at not having to answer is matched only by the quiet terror of knowing that, eventually, he'll have to answer those questions for himself.
Vale's thumb moves against the back of his hand, a small, absent motion, probably unconscious, and August's breath catches so softly that only someone standing very close would hear it.
Vale is standing very close.
August doesn't let go.
Chapter 9
Something has shifted.
The encounter with Knox, which could have been catastrophic, which had made August look at Vale with a betrayal so raw it had left a mark, seems to have broken through the last of August's resistance. Not entirely. Not in any way August would admit to. But the difference is visible in the way he moves through space now, the way he no longer reflexively angles his body away from Vale's proximity, the way he reaches for contact instead of enduring its absence.
Vale is trying very hard not to think about what that means.
***
The rift they close that night is in a gymnasium on the south side, the first one that opened two weeks ago, sealed behind aweakening blessing circle and monitored by Templars who look as though they haven't slept properly since. Knox had warned them: closing the warehouse rift would intensify the remaining ones, energy redistributing through the binding circle. He was right. The gymnasium rift has grown substantially, its blessing circle straining against the pressure of undead that are stronger, faster, and more numerous than anything the previous rifts produced.
But Vale has been healing August since Knox left them alone in the apartment that afternoon.
Hours of contact. His hand in August's while they sat together on the couch, cross-referencing research, mapping Voss's probable timeline, their combined notes spreading across the coffee table. Vale had felt the holy magic flowing through their joined hands in a steady, quiet current, not the desperate flood of the subway or the warehouse, but something sustained and deliberate. Building a foundation instead of patching cracks. It had felt, if Vale is honest with himself, more natural than anything he's done in years.
The result is a version of August that Vale has never seen before.
