Shaking his head, Arthur looped his arms back around Ira’s neck. “It’s not that I’m not enjoying myself. I’m, er, actually I’m enjoying myself very much. I just—I’ve never done this before. I think I might like to go slower than we were about to.”
Letting out a breath, Ira leaned his forehead against Arthur’s. “Of course. Whatever you need.”
His breath was sweet like spring flowers. Outside, rain pattered thick and fast, but the fire was warm and bright at Arthur’s back. He kissed Ira’s scarred eye, then the unscarred one. His forehead. His nose. The metacarpal pad on his left hand, then the one on his right, then held Ira’s hand just because he could.
Ira brushed a lock of hair back from Arthur’s forehead. “When this is over... If we make it. If we save the forest...”
“We will.” Arthur kissed him again. “And you, too.”
The corner of Ira’s mouth turned up.
“...when everything’s done, maybe... you could stay. I mean,” he added, “of course you’ll go home to your family, I know what they mean to you, I know they’re really why you’re doing this, I just... Maybe, afterward, you could come back. To the vale. With me.”
Arthur’s breath caught. His imagination bloomed with images of him and Ira, after they’d saved the forest, after he and Charlotte had made it safely home to the children. The vale would blossom, green and sweet with flowers instead of cold and white in eternal winter. Ira could transform at will, never worrying about whether he’d be able to change back. They’d wander the forest at leisure, no longer afraid, and at the end of each day they’d return to the vale, curl up in that little bed together, and maybe— Arthur’s brain stalled out before he could delve too far into what exactly might happen in that little bed, but he’d read enough romance novels to have ideas, if ever he wanted to put them into practice.
“Why—” he started, but he wasn’t sure how to finish the question. “I mean... you’d want that? For me to...”
Ira let out a breath, ran his hands through his hair. Strands came loose and fell around his face. Arthur tucked them behind his ears, which twitched toward him.
“I’ve been alone a long time, except for Calyx. Then you came. You’re so...”
There it was, Arthur thought with a twinge of disappointment. The same trailing off that had plagued his entire life, although this time it at least suggested something positive.
Then Ira said, “You went back for me. Even after Calyx attacked—even worrying for your sister—you went back to the vale anyway because I needed help.”
He touched Arthur’s cheek.
“The way—what you said about your books. How they make you feel like everything will be all right, even when it’s terrible?” He kissed Arthur’s fingertips, one at a time. “That’s how you make me feel. You give me hope.”
Arthur’s fingers tingled at the press of his lips. He’d always figured he made people feel, at best, nothing. Indifference. Annoyance. Contempt. That last morning in Seacliff, something akin to danger, like any man so much as seen being too friendly with him might be tarred with the same term Mrs. Young had lobbed at him.
Ira had kissed him like none of that meant anything. Like such thoughts had never occurred to him.
Like Arthur mattered.
When this was over, the two of them could return to the vale and create a world for themselves where Arthur could read his romance novels and repair timepieces and no one would say he was odd or useless or not much of a man. Where he was worth something.
The two of them, he thought, and his stomach twisted. Twenty miles from Seacliff, farther from Port Lorne—or wherever Charlotte and the children settled. Of course they couldvisit each other, but Arthur had never lived apart from his family. The thought of not seeing them every day, not waking to Sasha’s raucous play, was intolerable. And who would take care of Charlotte? She needed so much help now, no matter how she resisted and denied it. He couldn’t leave her.
What had he expected to happen should he ever marry? That his wife would live in the cottage on the heather-grown cliff with his sister and niblings? Well... yes. Of course he had. John had moved in with Charlotte’s brother and mother. Why shouldn’t any future wife of Arthur’s? Why not Ira? As much as Arthur had dreamed of change, he’d never once dreamed of a life in which he did not live with his sister and the children.
Ira’s forehead rested against his. “You don’t have to decide now. I just... I wanted to say that. You could. If you wanted to.”
Arthur touched his face. “What if you came back with me, instead?”
“I can’t.”
“It doesn’t have to be Seacliff. We could go to Port Lorne. It’s right by the forest, too, you could visit whenever you wanted—”
“I mean I can’t leave the forest.”
“No, I suppose that would be difficult, since you’re its...”
Arthur paused, not quite sure what Ira was to the forest. Its spirit, perhaps.
Before he could continue, however, Ira said, “I mean Ican’t. Physically. I’m incapable of it.”
Arthur opened his mouth, couldn’t think of anything to say, tried to say something nonetheless, and gave up. A little unwillingly, he crawled out of Ira’s lap and sat beside him.
