“What does that mean?” I whisper.
“I don’t know,” he says, closing his eyes. “I guess I’ve never thought much about what I am. I’ve got a lot on my plate.”
That makes me laugh. A juvenile snorty laugh. Snow starts laughing with me. “A lot on your plate?” I repeat.
“Areyougay?” he asks, looking over at me, still laughing.
“Yeah,” I say. “Completely.”
“So you do this all the time?”
I roll my eyes. “No.”
“Then how do you know you’re gay?”
“I just do. How do younotknow?”
“Dunno,” he says. He laces his fingers in mine and holds my hand loosely. “I try not to think.”
“About being gay?”
“About anything. I make lists of things not to think about.”
“Why?”
“Because,” he says, “it hurts to think about things that you can’t have or help. S’better not to think about it.”
I rub my thumb back and forth on the back of his hand. “Am I on your list?”
He laughs again and shakes his head; his hair brushes against mine. “Fat chance.” He sounds sleepy. “Trying not to think about you… S’like trying not to think about an elephant that’s standing on my chest.”
I think about that.
About Snow thinking about me.
I grin. “I can’t decide whether that’s a compliment…”
“Me neither,” he says.
“So you don’tthink,” I say.
“S’pointless.”
I raise myself up on one elbow and look down on him. “I don’t understand you. You’re the most powerful magician alive—who’s ever lived, probably. You can have anything you want. How is it pointless for you to think about that?”
Snow pushes up on both elbows and lets his head fall in my direction. “Because it doesn’t matter. In the end, I just do what’s expected of me. When the Humdrum comes after me, I fight him. When he sends dragons, I kill them. When you trick me into meeting a chimera, I go off. I don’t get to choose or plan. I just take it as it comes. And someday, something will catch me unawares or be too big to fight, but I’ll fight anyway. I’ll fight until I can’t anymore—what is there tothinkabout?”
Simon drops back onto the floor. I reach out and very carefully push his curls back off his forehead. He closes his eyes.
“I always thought you were going to kill me,” I say.
“Me, too,” he says. “I tried not to think about it.”
I wind my fingers in his hair. It’s thicker than mine, and curlier, and it shines golden in the firelight. There’s a mole on his cheek that I’ve wanted to kiss since I was 12. I do.
“For a long time,” I say.
“Hmmm?” He opens one eye.
