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That being said, after a good deal of deliberation, Iris felt she had little choice but to accept Gabriel’s assertion about his witchcraft and impossible age, given everything he’d told her about his past and what she’d witnessed him do. She tried not to think about it too much—though that was proving difficult.

Instead, Iris had thrown herself into preparations for Christmas, which was approaching at an alarming velocity. Every day after work, while she hung paper snowflakes and decorated the tree with glittering ornaments, Blair kept to himself upstairs, either doing research for his burgeoning apothecary business, crafting plant-based medicinal concoctions, or playing Iris’ electric violin which he’d asked to borrow his first week staying with them. Gabriel, meanwhile, whiled away the evenings preparing dinner accompanied by Vivaldi, Handel, and Mozart. Iris and Blair were of course banished from the kitchen during meal prep. Iris had learned long ago that only dead composers were invited to that party.

By the time they were halfway through December, a glittering teal Christmas tree stretched up to the living room ceiling, garlands were pinned above every doorway, and tiny lights shone from within the miniature Christmas village perched on the built-in bookshelves. Iris had also placed a golden menorah at the center of the kitchen table in honor of her Jewish heritage on her maternal grandfather’s side of the family.

While Blair always made a point of telling her how nice everything looked, Gabriel barely seemed to notice the gradual transformation of their home, only commenting if Iris asked him directly with some vague response like, “If you love it, how could I not approve?” He’d enjoyed decorating with her in years past, but this December his Christmas spirit had withered into a Scrooge-like apathy.

While she and Gabriel were at work, Blair stayed at home, employing much of his time doing self-imposed chores like the dishes and vacuuming to try to make himself useful. At night he had silently adopted many of their household routines: writing in their journals, reading, and watching TV shows (Gabriel enjoyed docuseries, while Iris preferred period dramas). On the weekends when Gabriel wasn’t working, he and Iris usually made time to engage in their more specialized hobbies, like knitting blankets and scarves for the homeless shelter in Martenshire, attempting to bake ridiculously complicated cakes, and abstract painting.

Even with professional advice from Audrey, Iris’ art was still mediocre at best. On the other hand, she’d been blown away by the detail in Blair’s still-life drawings; the precise strokes of his pen as he perfectly depicted the kitchen table with its rough wood edges, the vase drooping with wilting roses, fallen petals circled around its base like worshipers at an altar.

There seemed to be little that Blair wasn’t good at, at least when it came to creative pursuits.

He’d spotted her ebony electric violin hanging on the music room wall just a few days after moving in, and Iris had been thrilled to let him borrow it, especially when she learned he’d played since he was a child. Iris’ mother had purchased it for her in the hopes she would become interested in learning a more “elevated” instrument—her mother’s words, not her own—than the mandolin, but Iris had barely touched it.

“I loved the first song you sang,” Blair had confessed when Iris first handed him the violin. “That night at the open mic. It was hopeful. Did you write it?”

A pleased smile had broken over Iris’ face as she’d explained the significance of the song she’d performed at the pub the evening before she and Blair had properly met. For so many years, she’d been driven by fear. Fear of her father, of having to get more surgeries (she’d had abdominal issues as a child), of the perilous wind. Her worries had weighed her down, making her believe that nothing good was meant for her.

When she’d met Blair’s gaze, she’d known at once that he understood the feeling.

“The song I wrote was my way of fighting against that,” said Iris. “I knew I couldn’t let worry rule over my life anymore. I had to learn to let beautiful things enter my world without being afraid another might get taken away in its place.”

She’d felt her stomach ache at the very real possibility that one of her greatest fears had come to pass; that Blair was a blade ripping her and Gabriel apart at the seams, even if it wasn’t his fault. Iris worried she would need a very large needle and yarn made of steel to even have a chance at mending their relationship.

But she was determined to try. And though she knew that a Christmas present couldn’t possibly begin to repair what was still tearing, it was at least a start.

As the quickening wind rattled against the windowpanes, Blair and Iris settled in on the living room floor, the crackling fire spreading its dry heat through the house. Blair made sure to sit closest to the glass door to the deck so that Iris could be further away from the windows. The wind was unsettling to her, and he wanted to do what he could to help with that, however small a gesture.

He watched Iris spread the branches and holly berries they had collected a few weeks earlier out in a row along the white patterned rug, along with a box of red ribbons, rope, and twine. Then she disappeared into her room and reemerged with a four-foot-long stick about the width of two quarters, which she laid carefully in the center of the rug.

Iris stared at the collection of artifacts for a moment before glancing at her watch. “Hopefully we’ll have time. Gabriel isn’t supposed to be home for another hour, and with the Christmas rush, business shouldn’t be slow.” She bit her thumbnail, an anxious movement Blair had come to expect from her.

He couldn’t pretend it wasn’t a little endearing.

Blair wasn’t all that concerned about completing the present on time, since they still had over a week left to put the finishing touches on it, but the idea of another hour without Gabriel’s cold indifference was one he could easily get behind.

As Iris began to layer branches along one end of the larger stick, Blair stared blankly at her careful hands. His emotions were crashing over him in waves, each thought emerging like a fish flung out of the storm-tossed sea. Every cogitation was so slippery that it wriggled away before he could catch it, only for a new one to leap forth into its place.

After two weeks of perpetual rumination, Blair felt he should have been able to bring some semblance of order to his racing thoughts. Then again, he wasn’t used to being rushed. And maybe he was being too hard on himself, considering that the past month had offered him more interpersonal stimulation than he’d experienced in every year of his existence leading up to it.

He felt a timeline fast approaching, even if it only existed in his own psyche. It was imperative that he come to an understanding of where he stood and what the future might hold, so that he could prepare himself for it.

First, there was the juxtaposition in the way he was treated by Iris versus Gabriel.

Blair had never said anything, but Gabriel’s icy disposition, his naked dislike, ate away at Blair the way caterpillars consumed bark, stripping away the nutrients from the tree until there was nothing left but a dead husk.

The constant weight of Gabriel’s quiet judgement contrasted sharply with the enduring compassion and acceptance that Iris had shown him, especially after the incident with the poison tears.

A slithering sense of shame slid down Blair’s spine every time he thought about it.

But then he remembered Iris’ warm, understanding smile, the truth in her eyes as she’d assured him she didn’t see him as a monster. Somehow, impossibly, he’d believed her. She was probably the first person who had ever seen him that way, and that included himself.

And then he’d told her he’d never had many friends.

Blair stared down at his partially scabbed hands, some of the wounds still healing from that memorable night. Iris must have thought he was such a pathetic mess.

It led him to the most painful possibility of all, but also the most persistent: What if Iris was only allowing him to stay because she pitied him? What if their connection was all in his own head? What did he know of this kind of thing, anyway? He’d been around for long enough—an enormous understatement—but how much had he really experienced, cooped up in the attic like a caged bird, never once allowed to fly?