Forseti, called the western winds in a hundred sing-song voices. Forseti, Forseti, Forseti! Play with us! Dance with us among the leaves!

Forseti danced not.

Standing in a clearing, his bare feet settled in the fallen blossoms that carpeted the grass, he surveyed the wood about him, from the crystal clear waters of the spring to his side to the various brambles and bushes ripe with fruit to the tall trees towering above his head.

How tall were they? Their trunks were as wide as water wheels, and when Forseti followed the line of their trunks upward they seemed as tall as the great sequoias of North America, ending far, far above his head.

Forseti felt as though he was staring into the depths of the very sky.

Forseti, the eastern winds murmured, gentler and softer than the eastern winds, Won’t you come and swim with us? Won’t you cool your feet in the waters and frolic in our spring?

Forseti frolicked not.

His feet, pale white and almost shining in the wan spring sun were cool enough where they were.

My friend, said a low voice, resonant and deep, won’t you come to our festivities when September reaches its end?

Forseti frowned. A party? At the end of September?

Turning his head, he looked for the speaker, but he did not see them. He was alone in the clearing, standing on the carpet of shed cherry blossoms beneath him, and he tried to school his thoughts, tried to think of his answer. Who was…?

“I haven’t the time,” he said politely. “I will soon back to school…”

No.

Forseti had not been a school boy for a decade at least.

My friend, repeated the voice. Forseti felt a hand brush his shoulder, but still, when he looked, nobody was standing behind him, and he could see no fingers touching him though he felt their weight. Your reticence wounds me. Are we not amiable? Do you disdain my company?

The words sent a shiver down his spine, thinking of the last time he had heard them.

He thought of himself and Murmel in a coat closet together, Murmel’s breath so beautifully warm on his skin, the scent of his cologne filling Forseti’s lungs. One of his hands was on Forseti’s waist, the other sliding about the side of his neck.

For all his frailty, Forseti had his father’s height, was an inch taller even than Tor, though his brother was ever loath to admit it – Murmel up close like that, chest to chest with him, was forced to look up at him, ever slightly up on his toes.

“Do you disdain my company?” he’d asked, so wounded, and Forseti hadn’t known how to explain, how to talk about it. He craved in every way Murmel’s mouth upon his, craved Murmel’s kiss no matter how unspeakable their desire for one another was, and yet at the same time, he could not relieve that unsacred craving, could not indulge himself and—

“Not at all, sir,” said Forseti. He had to be polite: he didn’t know this fellow from any other, and he knew not enough of him to disdain or to seek out his company. “Merely that I am busy.”

Let me make you a wager, said the voice.

Forseti arched an eyebrow, hearing a smidge of playfulness in the voice’s tone. “A wager?” he repeated.

A wager.

“I am no betting man,” he said, still polite.

He tried to turn away, to walk away from this strange fellow, but although forests often gave themselves over to him very easily, often showed him their paths, this one was not to be charmed by Forseti’s soft voice or his careful tread. It turned itself around and around, and Forseti found himself returning to the clearing again and again, no matter with path he took.

“Please, sir,” he said on his third return to the clearing. “I would not stoop to such disgrace.”

A game, then? Just a game?

“And the stakes?”

No stakes! The man, voiced and yet still faceless, ever sounding as though he were over Forseti’s shoulder, softly laughed. You do not trust me, do you?

“I do not readily put my faith in strangers, sir,” Forseti replied, even bowing to assuage his impoliteness, and he attempted to turn again, but found himself grabbed at the shoulders, pinned up against one of the mighty red trees by his very throat. This hand, grasping about his neck, was invisible too.

“I cannot breathe,” Forseti whispered. “But you would have me speak?”

Play, my friend, only play with me. No one has such magic as you.

Forseti felt his skin flush hot, hot, again at another quotation from Murmel’s mouth, and he was so sweaty, he was—

The fever.

Where was he? Was he as yet feverish? If he had a fever, he ought not be wandering in this strange forest, let alone without any shoes. He’d catch his death.

“I have no magic, sir,” he said, repeating himself. His mouth felt full of cotton wool.

You have everything, the voice replied, and Forseti moaned quietly, feeling the forest bleed from his vision as he turned and fidgeted in his bed.

“Mrs Borson, I beg of you, keep back,” said a deep voice Forseti was all too familiar with. “Your son is delirious with fever.”

“Doctor Hemming,” Forseti said, his throat painfully hoarse and thick, and he coughed hard. When he reached blindly forward, a larger hand clasped his own. Doctor Hemming’s palm was very cool to the touch, and Forseti sighed at the relief of it as his hand was nudged back to his lap, and a glass of cool water was brought to his throat for him to drink. “Am I dying?”

“No, highness,” the doctor whispered. What a strange thing to call him. Was this truly Hemming or the fever speaking?

“Do you know, Doctor Hemming,” Forseti said, feeling the delirium loosen his tongue, feeling his hair cling sweat-slick to his scalp, his soaked sheets pressed against his body like a funeral shroud about a corpse. He probably looked like a corpse, too. “In my dream – I had a dream – and you knew such secrets. You knew such things about me. Is that so?”

“I know you very well, Ansgar,” the doctor said seriously. His hazel eyes seemed for a moment to be honey-coloured, and his tanned skin seemed abruptly much lighter, nearly blue, nearly lilac.

Forseti snatched back his hand.

“You are not my doctor,” he said harshly before a fit of coughs overtook him again, and he hacked out what felt like all of his lungs before darkness encompassed his vision once again, his head tipping back upon the sheets.

* * *

Forseti was out amongst the fjords, sitting alone on a snowy peak, and he looked at the sky above him, before him, around him. The air was clean and cold against his skin, but Forseti felt no need to shy away from it or to huddle himself in heavy furs or fabrics. Instead, the brush of the chilly breeze was pleasant, in a way – he felt its embrace as one might take a kiss from a relative, felt the warmth of its intention if not its touch.

The sky was an array of colours, spread out like so much dye in water, and Forseti sighed as he looked out at it.

Aurora Borealis, his books called it, and oh, what pinks, what greens, what blues and reds! He couldn’t count how many times he and Tor had asked Mother or Father to describe them, the northern lights, which they’d never witnessed at home in England.

Mother described them with more emotion, but Father described them best. There was always a deep yearning in his voice when he spoke of them, spoke of the skies over Norway, the waters he’d fished in as a child, his father’s boat, the crispness of the air.

Even those lights aren’t as handsome as you are, said a voice, and Forseti acted without thinking – imperiously waving his hand, he triggered the voice to choke, gasping for air.

“Disturb me not,” he said sharply. For the first time in a long time, his words left his mouth instead of bursting upon the air half-formed, made only of thought and with little breath behind them.

Feisty, aren’t you, your highness?

Forseti scowled, turning his head, but there was no figure where the voice had come from. Slowly, he raised his hand again, but the voice, so strange and foreign as it was, did not interrupt him again.

Forseti was permitted the silence of the fjords, the skies opening above his head, and he laid back on the stone and basked in their majesty.

* * *

“Drink this,” Hemming said softly, pressing a bowl to his mouth, and Forseti parted his lips, letting the steeped tea settle on his tongue. Swallowing, he felt the astringent and bitter taste of it cling to his lips and his tongue, although it slid easily enough down his throat. A little energy seemed finally to be coming back to him, and he opened his eyes.

“Doctor,” he said. “Mother called you?”

“Yes,” Hemming answered.

Forseti watched his steady hands as Hemming poured another bowl of the bitter tea, and he allowed the doctor to bring it to his lips, swallowing it down obediently. He was well-used to its medicinal taste by now, having oft-consumed it as a youth, so prone as he’d been to strange turns or unpleasant illnesses.

He had no idea what the ingredients were, but he had come to enjoy the bitter taste of it somewhat, and he wondered vaguely if it was ever drunk for its taste alone.

“I don’t know what it was,” he said mildly. “Just yesterday, I took a walk in the woods. I don’t know, Doctor, I must have been somewhat unwell even before I left. I had a funny turn during my promenade.”

“What do you mean?” Hemming asked, setting the cup aside. His voice was quiet, but not judgemental – as ever, Hemming spoke with a voice that was low and steeped in honey, and yet felt not falser for it. He was not a Norwegian himself, but a Dane, and some decades in England had softened his accent considerably.

People knew Father and Mother to be foreigners upon speaking to them – unless one had a trained ear, one mightn’t always know Hemming was a foreigner himself.

“I found I had stepped in a faerie ring – you know, of mushrooms? – and it gave me an awful shock. Superstitious, I know, but it set my mind awhirl. All sound seemed to stop and start about me, and I felt myself growing so feverish as I came toward the path…” He frowned, furrowing his brow as he tried to remember. “I was running, I think, from something in the wood. A wolf, I thought at the time.”

“Please, Ansgar, another cup of tea,” Hemming said gravely, and Forseti raised his chin, his eyebrows rising too.

“Really? Is it so serious as all that?” he asked, and Hemming’s expression was a blank mask as he brough the cup up to Forseti’s lips, making him drink again. He swallowed, feeling the warmth of it soothe him, feeling a sort of pleasant heat suffuse his bones, his body, as he drained the cup to its dregs. “Do you believe in magic, Doctor Hemming?” he asked as the other man drew away.

Hemming froze, his green leather shoes – Hemming was a peculiar man in a few reserved ways, and he had a penchant for green leather in his shoes, cases, and other accessories – neatly together on the carpet as though rooting him to the spot.

His expression had changed almost not at all, but his eyes did widen.

“Magic?” he repeated softly.

Forseti wished to interrogate this show of emotion, this chink in Hemming’s ordinary conversational armour, but the warmth was fully saturating him now, and he felt his eyelids growing terribly heavy. “I was reading about it, that’s all,” he said – his voice was taking on a dream-like quality, and against his best efforts, he was slurring his words. “Spells, enchantment, that sort of thing… Fire…” He felt his eyelids droop closed, sleep taking careful hold of him once again, and he was adrift in a sea of blackness.

* * *

Forseti was sitting up in his bed against the headboard, a book resting in his lap. Outside, the sunlight was wan through the fog, but even that scant light had seen fit to make his sensitive head and eyes ache, and earlier that morning he had clumsily stumbled across the room to pull the curtains closed.

His back against the cushioning of the headboard, he sipped leisurely from a mug of tea, a tray of uneaten porridge on the breakfast tray beside him, and he was doing his best to assuage his bedroom from spinning around him.

He’d fallen onto the floor getting back to his bed, but he’d managed to climb back beneath his bedclothes before anyone had come in to see him collapsed.

The door opened, and Forseti glanced up, expecting to see the footman coming to take away his breakfast tray, but instead he saw only Tor.

“May I?” he asked in a very soft voice, and Forseti nodded his head, gesturing to the end of the bed. Tor closed the door very quietly behind him, careful not to make too much noise – he was not a quiet man by nature, but was always more delicate when Forseti was ill – and sank down on the end of his bed. His hand settled on Forseti’s ankle through the sheets, patting him, and Forseti gave him a smile only slightly less wan than the foggy light outside.

“I’m fine, Tor,” said Forseti. “You needn’t worry so.”

“You’ve not been this ill since we were very young indeed,” Tor said gravely. “Nearly a month you’ve been abed now – the whole of the month has passed you by like a speeding train.”

At the end of September, echoed a sing-song voice in the back of Forseti’s head, but he ignored it, reaching for Tor’s hand. His brother shifted closer on the bed, and once Forseti had hold of his hand, he squeezed it, looking at the other man.

Where Tor shared many of his facial features with their father – the square shape of his face, the rounded eyes, the cleft chin, the blunt nose, the thick and even growth of their beards – he was blond and blue-eyed, and while he didn’t grow his hair quite so long as Forseti grew his own, he grew it a little longer than was the broader fashion, swept back behind his ears.

Forseti was his brother’s obverse, in many ways – he had Father’s colouring, paler skin, less ruddy and tended to redness, though where Father’s hair had been fully black in his youth and was now mostly silver, Forseti’s was a very dark chestnut. Their eyes were nearly the same, though, a paler colour than Mother and Tor’s brighter blue, the near-to-white of icefloes on a winter river.

Forseti took after Mother in the shape of his face, though, heart-shaped, his eyes narrower but prettier, in their way, more heavily lashed – his eyes wrinkled more when he smiled, his lips more defined and plumper than Tor and Father’s, and with more definition of the cupid’s bow than the lower half, where Tor and Father had an unfortunate generosity of the lower lip that made their upper lips near disappear beneath their moustaches.

Murmel commented on it from time to time – he and Hilde, strawberry blonds both and smattered with galaxies of freckles, had both said they were jealous of Tor’s more brightly blond hair, and even of Mother’s blond-auburn colouring (“At least her hair looks like it knows what it wants,” Hilde had once said tipsily, miserably curling a lock of her own hair about her fingers. “In the wrong light ours is more like a stream of piss in bright sunlight.” “God, darling, you’re right,” Murmel had said as Forseti had tried not to fall over laughing. “I always wondered what that colour was!”), Murmel had said multiple times he wouldn’t for the world take on Tor’s mouth, which he had quietly declared multiple times had the sort of lips more able for drinking a man than kissing him.

Forseti stifled his smile before Tor could ask about it, and wondered distantly when Murmel would be allowed in to visit him.

“How do you feel?” Tor asked.

“Well enough,” Forseti murmured.

“Can you walk?”

“Not without swiftly meeting the floor,” Forseti admitted, and Tor’s concern showed on his face like a wave upon a shore, passing swiftly over his eyes, his brows, his mouth, before being washed away as he hid it away. “It’s only what I deserved. Leaving the dining table with a tantrum like that as the wind beneath my sails. Never have I been so lacking in decorum.”

“I wish you were less concerned with decorum,” Tor muttered, releasing his hand. He set his hands back in his lap, and Forseti went to cup the warmth of his tea, feeling the heat radiating through the mug. “They found an apple in your coat pocket – it was near rotted.”

“The apple,” Forseti echoed, rubbing tiredly at one eye. “Vesta gave it to me – I passed her as I walked toward the wood. I ought have mentioned it.”

“That or eaten it, and then maybe you wouldn’t have needed the doctor,” said Tor, and Forseti laughed, tipping his head back against the board and looking at the other man fondly. His tone was abruptly harsh, all frayed nerves, as he went on, “This fever, the delirium, has had you in its grip for near two weeks. How could you have mentioned it?”

Forseti stared at him, taken aback, and Tor rubbed one hand slowly over his mouth, closing his eyes and shaking his head.

“I only think, brother, of… I wake in the night from visions of you on a ship to Oslo or to New York, or some other far-flung port – what if you had boarded a ship and became ill upon the seas instead of so close to home? You might have died, and we wouldn’t even have received word until weeks afterwards!”

“Tor,” Forseti said softly, but when Tor drew his hands away from his blond-stubbled face, he saw that his ruddy cheeks were ruddier then ever.

“Or if you had fallen in the wood, and not outside it, not on the path,” he went on. “We might not have found you until it was too late, and one cold night—”

“It does you no food to torment yourself with such thoughts,” Forseti said, doing his best not to chide as much as he might wish to. Here was Tor, anxious and caring only for his health – it was wrong, that it should so rankle him, that it should frustrate him. “I am here, Tor, and I will soon be healthy once more. As healthy as I ever get, anyway.”

Standing from the bed, Tor came closer, and Forseti was surprised – touched, even – when Tor drew him into a desperate embrace, his strong arms tight around Forseti’s back, clutching him as though he truly believed Forseti would be dead by the morrow.

“Tor,” he whispered, setting down his mug.

“It would have been my fault,” Tor said wretchedly, gripping at the fabric of Forseti’s pyjama shirt. “You said it yourself at dinner that night – I am too accepting of Father’s treatment of you, too willing to allow it to pass over my head, I—”

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous,” Forseti said, nudging Tor back, and he patted him roughly on the cheek, not quite hard enough to be a real slap. “Many times you’ve defended me to Father, my staunch protector, and besides, in this case— Oh, I hate to say it, brother, but he’s right. How could a man like me be the head of the factory, manage it? What if I fainted like this in the midst of the machinery, was going about a repair and, dizzy, didn’t switch the right lever? You’ve seen what accidents can do to workers who are paying full attention to what they’re doing, losing fingers, losing limbs, having their hands degloved. What if I come in to repair the carding engine or some other machine, fix a loom, and I’m not in my right mind? Hells to hurting myself – what if my negligence leads to an accident that harms someone else?”

Tor squeezed his arm tightly, and Forseti sighed, pressing his forehead to the warm crook of his brother’s shoulder. The frustration he’d felt before was swiftly dissipating and being replaced, instead, with a desperate and aching grief, one that was painfully familiar, nigh-routine.

“Has scarcely a year ever passed, Tor,” he asked in a miserable voice, “where I was not struck down by my invalidity? My weak lungs, my ailing heart, my too-sensitive and ever-pounding skull? You’re right – Father is protective of me. And for all I hate how he expresses it, it’s best for everybody that I’m not permitted free reign of the factories.”

“Shall I read to you?” Tor asked as he drew away, taking up Forseti’s tray and laying it on the side table.

“You need not waste your days at my bedside,” Forseti muttered. “I know full well you’ve already been in here whilst I’ve been feverish – I’m well enough now to need entertainment, but also to entertain myself. I expect the Wrights are missing you – I expect Hilde—”

“Perhaps from Thomas Hobbes?” Tor suggested, taking up a book at random from Forseti’s desk. “You’ve always found his philosophy comfortable for bedtime reading.”

“You’re thinking of Kant,” Forseti said, but he felt fill to the brim with affection.

“You’ve scarcely eaten anything,” Tor said, glancing back at the bowl. “You want me to call for something else?”

“The thought of eating anything turns my stomach, I’m afraid,” Forseti murmured, his tone apologetic. “I might ask for something I don’t need to chew later that won’t stick to my teeth as the porridge does, some sort of broth.”

Forseti looked at Tor standing there in the dim light of the room, and then asked, “Have you been having dreams of late?”

“Dreams? Of course – I dream most nights.” As he turned his head, Tor’s curiosity shone in his eyes, and Forseti opened his mouth, then closed it again. He found he had little else to say, all of a sudden – dreams? Why, precisely, had he brought that up? “Have you been having queer dreams?”

“I think so,” Forseti said, and where his dizziness had faded somewhat, it returned with a vengeance now, black spots pattering uncomfortably about the edges of his vision. Closing his eyes and tasting his own uncertainty on his tongue, he said, “Pray, do leave me for a bit, Tor. I would sleep a little longer.”

“Should I call Hemming back?” Tor asked, reaching out: the backs of his knuckles touched Forseti’s forehead, but he was cool to the touch, and the clammy damp of his fever had long-since gone away.

“No, no,” Forseti said, shaking his head and immediately regretting the way it made the room spin again. “I’ll just sleep another few hours.”

Taking Forseti’s cup and setting it onto the tray, Tor took it up, and Forseti laid down on his side, hearing the soft creak of the door opening and then clicking shut again.

As if it was a physical source of warmth, spreading out an aura of its own, Forseti felt the siren call of his illicit book of magic – before, secreted in the woods, it had been quite safely hidden, and he oughtn’t have brought it into the house. If his mother happened on it, she’d be very annoyed, perhaps even enough to tell Father, and then…

And yet—

And yet.

Forseti let his arm reach over the edge of the bed to where he’d lent the book against the back wall, hidden by the shadow of his end table, tracing the leather beneath his fingers, feeling for that illegible gilt writing on the cover.

Sleep came to him all at once, assailing his weak body, and he let himself melt into the bed.

* * *

Forseti stood in the centre of a clearing.

His feet were bare, and he was still clad in his bedclothes, but the air was warm, and the weakness he had been feeling not too long ago seemed to have left him entirely. The scent of the air was all wrong for September, the scent of fruits and warm, wet grass thick on the air, and there was a heat to the wind that ran itself through his hair.

“Are you there?” he asked.

“Of course,” the voice answered. Forseti recognised that voice immediately, and yet when he attempted to match a face to it, nothing came to mind.

“I don’t believe you,” Forseti said. His voice was not unkind: he spoke politely, but simply, and he heard the frown in the ensuing silence.

“I beg your pardon?” it asked. “What do you mean, you don’t believe me?”

“I don’t see you,” Forseti said. “Therefore, I refuse to believe you are there. Perhaps you are projecting your voice through some manner of stagecraft I am unfamiliar with, perhaps some sort of machinery, but either way, you are not here.”

“I am,” the voice insisted, and when Forseti turned toward it, this time he saw a figure.

He was taller than Forseti had expected, nearly as tall as Forseti himself, very square in the shoulder, and he had a great mane of hair that wasn’t just grey, but actually had streaks of shining, shimmering silver through it. His eyebrows, which were bushy and thick, had similar streaks of what truly seemed to be living, molten metal, and his face was painted in places with similar silver pigment – his lips were silver, and streaks of silver lined the sides of his jaw, a stripe down his chin and more stripes down his neck, more disappearing under the open collar of his robe. Scattered over his cheeks and forehead were freckles of silver that almost seemed a mirror to Murmel’s golden own.

Wearing the dark violet and silver robes of some priest of old, silver jewellery adorning his wrists and his fingers and his long, pointed ears, he seemed at odds with the normality of the simple, English countryside about them.

“There,” he said. “You can see me now, can’t you? What do you think?”

“Taller than I expected,” Forseti answered honestly, and immediately, the man laughed. His tongue was silver, too, and it caught the light when his mouth opened. “What ought I call you?”

“The Silver King,” said the voice, immediately. Although Forseti saw the face it was attached to, and even saw the face’s lips move, the two seemed unconnected, somehow. The thought made him smile.

“I see,” he said. “I am dreaming.”

The Silver King frowned. “May I have your name?” he asked: Forseti laughed.

The sound was low and resonant, echoing in the emptiness of the clearing and sounding off into the forest around them, and when the Silver King took a step to the left, Forseti mirrored him, stepping right.

They each took careful, stealthy steps upon the forest floor, circling one another as though in some sort of queer dance, and Forseti kept his smile. If he were to give this man his name, why, he would surely take it – and Forseti needed his name for other things, as yet.

“You may not,” he replied, “But I will tell you what I should like to be called, if you wish.”

The Silver King grinned, showing all his teeth. They were very white, gleamingly so, and not so sharp as they should be – not so sharp as they truly were, Forseti would wager.

“Call me Forseti.”

“Forseti,” the Silver King echoed, and the sound of his name seemed to thrum through his very heart, affecting a tingling sensation within him. Here in this deserted clearing, barefoot and still in his nightclothes, Forseti felt a sudden, off-putting twinge of fear. “You crossed the faerie ring.”

“I did,” Forseti agreed cautiously. Fear bloomed in his chest like so many wildflowers, and he stumbled slightly in his circling of the Silver King: for his foibles, the King took a step closer. He smelt of the stars themselves, whatever they smelt like. “But you put it there. And you hid it before I crossed it, didn’t you? That seems a rather nasty trick – not very sporting at all.”

“Why don’t you come to my party?” the Silver King asked, his lips pressing out into a comical pout that didn’t seem quite matched to his age. He didn’t look ancient, but he was, Forseti knew. “You should, you know. You’ll just adore it.”

“I’ve never cared for parties,” Forseti said, stopping in his circling, and the Silver King closed the gap between them with one loping step. He really was taller, taller than he had been a moment ago – he was looking down slightly at Forseti, and the lack of distance between them seemed most improper. He wasn’t dressed at all, after all, and the King’s hand…

Forseti glanced down at his own hip.

The Silver King’s hand was splayed across it, the fingers spread as wide as possible, as though the King wished to touch all the flesh he could in one movement, the grip of his thumb against Forseti’s hipbone positively possessive. Forseti felt all the breath leave his lungs at once – such heat, such wondrous heat, oh, had he always been as cold as he felt in this moment?

Had he always been so desperate for such a wonderful, warm touch?

The King leaned very close indeed, such that his lips ghosted Forseti’s own.

“I can’t,” he whispered. “I won’t. Two men oughtn’t stand so close as this, sir – you forget yourself.”

“Who am I, Oscar Wilde?” replied the King, and Forseti clapped his hand over his own mouth as he took a step. Wilde’s trial, concluded a year back, was a dangerous topic in the Borson household – his name was spoken in hushed voices, lest his father overhear them.

“Sir,” he hissed, indignant, and the King stepped closer again, their chests pressing together, and Forseti felt as though he might well melt. What read radiated from this King – no wonder so much of the silver on him seemed molten What splendid energy crackled on Forseti’s skin, making him feel so full, so energised, so healthy.

“Ask me to kiss you,” the King suggested, smiling. His teeth were sharper now. “I won’t, you know, if you don’t ask.”

“I couldn’t ask for such a thing.”

“Why not? You’ve asked before.”

Forseti felt his cheeks flush red with shame. He remembered his school days, letting other boys, older boys, lay soft attentions on his cheeks – let them admire his prettiness, for a boy.

It had always sat ill with him, that last addition, that he was pretty, for a boy. He had his mother’s features, knew he had them, and Mother was often admired as a great beauty even today, was complimented by other women, and Father was known to quote all manner of poems about her, wrote poetry of his own—

Forseti would never be beautiful, not as she was, couldn’t be.

Just once, just once, Forseti recalled the way he had stepped through some gambling den in such of Torkild, attempting to find his brother before the constabulary happened upon them both (for Forseti had tipped them off), and a man had pressed him against the wall, his thigh pressed hard between Forseti’s legs and making him gasp. He’d called him beautiful, and tipsy as he’d been, he’d even meant it, Forseti thought.

He remembered the ear-splitting crack of the stranger’s nose as Forseti had driven the heel of his hand into it, remembered how his blood had clung to his fingers in thick dribbles even as he staggered away.

“You are beautiful,” said the Silver King, and Forseti’s eyes shot up to the other man’s face. “Oh, you thought I wouldn’t know?” He laughed. “Everything can be reached for, grasped at, in dreams, my dear.”

And there was the Silver King’s thigh, hard and unwavering between Forseti’s own, and Forseti let out a shuddering little noise.

“I beg of you, sir, don’t—”

“Don’t what?” the Silver King asked in a soft and solicitous whisper, and his thigh pressed even higher.

Forseti’s length was erect within his pyjama trousers, which didn’t give him the modesty proper garments would, and he whimpered as he felt himself become slightly wet at his cockhead, and oh, oh…! He flinched away as best he could, or attempted to, but he was trapped in place by some magic unknown, and the warmth of the Silver King’s body…

He was weak, but Forseti could scarcely bear to pull away from him.

“I rather like you, dear boy,” said the King. “Won’t you let me show you how much?”

“You oughtn’t,” he whispered. “This is a great sin, sir, unnatural, and I—” He moaned, and Lord help him, the sound was not as pained as it ought sound. The Silver King’s hands were gripping at both of Forseti’s hips now, and all he had done was pull Forseti’s hips flush against his own, serving to grind his shame into the King’s leg ever harder, ever more so. “Your majesty, please.”

“Please what?” the Silver King asked, and again he pulled on Forseti’s hips, and Forseti felt his own movements stutter. His knees growing weak, he was forced to grasp at the front of the King’s strange and splendid robes to keep from falling, reminded painfully of gripping at his bedroom curtains to keep from hitting the floor. “Ask me to kiss you, Forseti. Ask me to kiss you, and I’ll stop.”

The Silver King’s hands were slipping beneath his bedclothes now, his fingers, scorching hot, seeking out the twin curves of Forseti’s buttocks, and then his thumb dipped between—

“Kiss me!” Forseti exhaled desperately, panic and arousal twisting themselves like a Celtic knot within him. “Please, sir, I beg of you, stop: kiss me, if you must, please, and don’t—”

The Silver King’s silver lips were on his own, electrifyingly hot, his molten metal tongue sweeping against Forseti’s own in long, easy strokes, and it was sublime. There was a roar in his ears and a crackle under his skin, his heart feeling as though it might burst from his chest and soar into the sky, and between his legs—

The Silver King’s mouth pulled away with a quiet pop of sound, and Forseti heard himself sob, felt the tears slide down his cheeks in hot streaks, and he knew not whether he was crying for relief or for loss.

* * *

Waking in his bed with a start, soaked with sweat, Forseti sat up straight and shoved the blankets off of his body, heaving in desperate lungfuls of air. He felt his hardness between his legs, felt it growing soft, and with shame (oh, Lord, oh, Lord), he realised there was a stickiness, a slickness, between his thighs and upon his belly.

Touching his cheeks, Forseti found no tears there – those, at least, had been reserved for his dream self.

And on his pillow— On his pillow, what?

Come to the wood on September 30^th. Wear as little as you dare.

Reaching for the note, made of similar old parchment as the pages of his forbidden spell book, which was written on with ink as blue as the beach-near sea, he found it was real. It was real, and not a mere figment of his fever-dream – it was as real as anything.

It was as real as the stickiness on his thighs.

Forseti felt sick, and he crumbled the parchment in his hand, ringing the bell to summon the footman. He must to a bath immediately, must scrub himself of these thoughts, and yet, and yet… Forseti thought of the Silver King’s incandescent mouth on his, their tongues together.

He had asked for it – how could he do such a thing, when he had never even permitted Murmel to kiss him like that, when he had never allowed any man to kiss his lips before, let alone slide their tongue between them?

What if he had continued? asked the voice in Forseti’s head. What if he had tainted you even further?

Another voice, whispering and not his own, appended, What if you liked it?

Forseti felt the want to cry again, fear running through his veins like so much blood. September 30^th, that was scarcely days away.

He couldn’t, surely, he couldn’t…

And if he was going to, he had much to prepare.