"You will make preparations to meet on the next half moon," she says. "We will void the contract. I will take back the incubus' binding and relieve you of your familiar."
Malik goes still.
The words arrive and he hears them and processes them and the stillness that takes hold of his body is not calm. It is the stillness of a mechanism seizing, of every moving part locking into place simultaneously. Void the contract. Take him back. Relieve Newt of his familiar. The words mean something very specific and Malik understands them with the precision of a creature who has spent centuries navigating contracts, and what they mean is this: Mathilde is going to pull him out of Newt's life and put him back in hers.
"What?" Newt says.
His voice is small. Smaller than Malik has ever heard it. A word stripped down to nothing, to breath and vibration and disbelief.
"Did I stutter?" Mathilde's eyes are bright and cold. "We will void the contract. I will take back the incubus' contract and relieve you of your binding." She turns back to her work, to the papers on her desk, dismissing them. Dismissing Newt. The way she has been dismissing Newt for twenty years, turning away from him as though he is a thing that has served its purpose and can now be set aside.
Newt stands there.
He stands in the center of Mathilde's study with Malik's hand on his shoulder and he does not move. His face is empty. His body is still. The bond between them is screaming with something that Newt cannot contain behind his wall, something huge and dark and terrified, and it pours through the cracks in the blankness and floods Malik's chest and it tastes of iron and ash and the particular, specific despair of someone who has just been told that the one good thing in their life is about to be taken away.
Malik takes his arm.
Gently. Carefully. His hand wraps around Newt's elbow and applies the slightest pressure, a suggestion rather than a command, and Newt lets himself be turned. Lets himself be guided. Malik walks him out of the study, through the corridor, past the coven members who press themselves against the walls to let them pass, out through the heavy front door and into the grey afternoon light.
They walk back to the townhouse in silence.
Newt does not speak. He does not cry. He does not collapse. He walks beside Malik with his arms at his sides and his face forward and the bond between them is a roar of barely contained anguish that Malik can feel in his teeth, and Malik walks beside him and holds his arm and says nothing because there is nothing to say.
He is going to lose him.
The thought arrives whole and terrible and Malik lets it in because he is done pretending. He is done constructing walls and maintaining distance and telling himself that what happens to Newt is a contractual concern and not a personal one. Mathilde is going to take him back. She is going to void the contract and reclaim him and put him back in her cabinet of tools and Newt is going to be alone again, untrained,unprotected, with no one's hands on his shoulders and no one sayinggoodand no voice in his ear telling himI know you can do this.
Malik holds Newt's arm and walks him home and doesn't let go until they're inside, and when Newt sits on the sofa and stares at nothing, Malik sits in the armchair across from him and stares at nothing too, and the townhouse is very quiet around them, and the ward Newt cast hums in the walls, still perfect, still unbroken, still holding everything together except the two people inside it.
Chapter 13
Newt feels numb.
He sits on the couch in the living room that Malik has quietly, methodically put back together in the hour since they returned from the estate. The books are back on the shelves. The cracked coffee table has been pushed against the far wall where its damage is less obvious. The chair that caught fire two days ago is gone entirely. The townhouse is clean and neat and softly lit and it looks, for the first time in weeks, like a home, and Newt is sitting in the middle of it with his hands flat on his thighs and his breath coming in small careful measured exhales, and he cannot feel any of it.
The closest he has ever come to controlling his magic. The closest he has ever come to being something other than a disappointment. The closest he has ever come to being understood and she is going to take it away from him because he couldn't make it work fast enough. Because he was too scared, too slow, too hesitant. Because he wanted Malik so badly and was so terrified of wanting him that the wanting itself became another kind of failure.
The half moon is tomorrow night.
Tomorrow night Mathilde will stand in her study with her ancient patient hands folded in front of her and she will unmake the contract, and Malik will be taken back into her service, and Newt will be alone in this townhouse with a coffee table pushed against the wall and a jar of thistle tea on the counter and the smell of amber candles in the curtains, and—
His eyes sting.
He is not going to cry. He is done crying. He has cried a truly embarrassing amount in the past two weeks, sometimes about things as small as the way Malik lays his teacup down with the handle pointed carefully away from the edge of the table, and he is done. He breathes in. He breathes out. He stares at a point on the opposite wall, somewhere in the middle distance, and he spirals.
He does not notice Malik cross the room. He does not notice him stop in front of the couch. He does not notice him lower himself to sit directly in front of him, so close their knees almost touch, until Malik says his name.
"Newt."
Newt blinks. Refocuses. Malik is right there. Inches away. Newt startles back into his body so hard his breath catches.
"Sorry," he says, automatically. "Sorry, I was—"
"Don't." Malik's voice is very low. Very careful. "Don't apologize."
Newt swallows. He doesn't pull away. He doesn't have the energy to pull away, and he doesn't—he doesn't want to, that is the worst part, he never wants to pull away from Malik and he is going to have to learn how to starting tomorrow.
"I want you to cast something for me," Malik says.
