Meeting the Bros
IgethometofindHex has rearranged the living room.
Not dramatically. Just enough. The sofa is at a slightly different angle. The lamp has moved. My collection of mismatched candles, which I have spent considerable time arranging on the windowsill in an order that pleases me, have been grouped by height.
“I was bored,” says Hex, from the sofa, without looking up.
“You were bored,” I repeat.
“You were gone for eight hours.”
“I was at work.” I drop my bag by the door and look at the candles. They do, infuriatingly, look better grouped by height. “Normal people go to work. It’s a thing that happens.”
“I’m not normal people.”
“You can say that again.”
I make tea. Hex follows me to the kitchen in the way he has taken to doing, occupying the doorframe with his arms crossed and watching me move around the small space with that particular quality of attention that I have stopped finding unnerving and started finding something else entirely, which is its own problem.
I tell him about Peterson. About the solicitor line and the filming and the small round of applause. Hex looks extremelypleased in a way that is mostly pride and only slightly territorial, which is about as good as it gets with him.
I don’t tell him what Felix said. I’m not sure why. I open my mouth to say it twice and both times something stops me. Maybe because the flat is warm and the tea is good and Hex is leaning in my kitchen doorway looking at me like I’m something worth looking at, and I want five more minutes of that before the complicated part.
I never get the five minutes.
The temperature drops.
Not gradually. Instantly, the way it does when something significant is about to happen rather than something ordinary. My breath mists in the air. The overhead light flickers. And then the shadows in the corner of the kitchen thicken and move and two figures step out of them with the easy confidence of beings who have been doing this for a very long time.
I make a sound. Not a dignified sound. Somewhere between a yelp and a very undignified squeak.
The first figure is tall. Not Hex tall, but close, with a lean, watchful quality, like someone who has spent a long time being very still and observant. His edges are sharper than Hex’s, more defined, his features precise and almost severe. His eyes glow a deep, emerald green.
The second is broader. Built like the kind of man you’d be genuinely frightened to meet in a dark alley, even if he wasn’t made entirely of shadows, all contained power and restrained force. His eyes burn a steady dark amber. He carries himself with the particular energy of someone who doesn’t need to make threats because he has never needed to.
They both look at Hex.
And then, in perfect unison, they bow.
Not a nod. Not an incline of the head. A proper, formal, deliberate bow, one fist pressed to the chest, eyes down.
“My liege,” says the green-eyed one, quietly.
“My liege,” echoes the amber-eyed one.
The silence that follows is enormous.
I look at Hex. Hex, who complained this morning that I’d put the mugs back in the wrong order. Hex, who has strong opinions about candle arrangement. Hex, who called me cute when I was annoyed and reorganised my bookshelves without asking, and made himself entirely at home in my uncle’s very ordinary flat in Bristol.
Hex has straightened in the kitchen doorway. Something shifts in him, some quality I haven’t seen before. The easy charm doesn’t disappear exactly, but it steps aside. What’s underneath it is older and quieter and considerably more dangerous.
He looks, for the first time since I’ve known him, like exactly what he is. A prince.
“Night. Dark.” His voice is different too. Still the same deep timbre, but the warmth has been replaced by something more measured. “You found me.”
“We’ve been looking for a while,” says the green-eyed one, who must be Night. His gaze moves to me with a curiosity that is not unfriendly. “This is Adam.”
It is not a question.
