“Ansgar,” Father nearly exclaimed as Forseti entered the dining room, and he stopped in the doorway, his head inclined slightly forward. His father’s eyes were wide and uncomfortably blue in the soft light of the candles made up for dinner, and his jaw was slack as he looked at Ansgar, concern writ on his features. “Out of bed so soon, boy?”

“It seemed best,” Forseti said, giving his father a neat inclination of his head, and he watched as one of the servants scrambled to set an extra place at the table. “I may not be wholly recovered, but I’m well enough for dinner – please, worry not on my account. I feel leagues better, and you know as well as I by now that gentle exertion is better than none at all.”

Forseti was pale as a sheet, and his skin still had a light sheen of moisture on its surface, he knew, but his breathing was even, and his chest didn’t ache. It didn’t dizzy him at all to stand.

Nonetheless, he was glad to lower himself into the seat beside his brother, and he felt Tor’s hand reach for him, touching against the back of his neck for just a moment, a reassuring squeeze.

Father and Mother shared a concerned glance, and Forseti wondered if Father was going to argue, but he didn’t: he simply nodded his head, and gestured for Forseti to eat. Ordinarily, he was quiet at the dinner table – it had long-since been his habit to keep his activities to himself, and it was easier still to do so when he hadn’t been able to accomplish any – so he simply contended himself listening to the conversation between Tor and his parents at the table.

After chattering on about various sundries – Mother sharing some idle updates from the other members of her needlework group, that Mrs Smith’s daughter had taken up arranging flowers, that the widow Penton’s eldest was getting married in the spring; Father talking about all the happenings in the factory, and discussions amongst some of his friends about a trip a few of them were taking to Norway.

Tor, as he was wont to do, talked about Hilde.

“She’s looking well of late,” he said when Mother asked a mild and teasing question. “Her hair is beginning to darken again, without the summer sun to bleach it so, and what with her wearing heavier hats, and the effect is to make her eyes… shimmer.”

“Shimmer,” Forseti repeated dryly.

“Shimmer,” Tor repeated back, confident and unashamed. “And such a strong girl, she is—”

“Perhaps if she lacked the strength of a cart horse, her arms would not be quite so masculine and heavy with muscle under her sleeves,” Father muttered.

“Those arms of hers make her all the more beautiful,” Tor insisted. “In days of yore, Father, you would not have looked so poorly upon them – our people were warriors, and she is from the same stock.”

“She is not to be a warrior today, nor you, boy,” Father said. “Unless it is your intention to abandon our factory and go a-viking in Ireland with Hilde as your bride.”

“The latter point, perhaps,” Tor said. “We need not go a-viking – if we have four children, I might hoist two on my shoulders and she might hoist the other two on hers.”

“You think you can carry only four children between yourself and your warrior-bride, Tor? You’re losing your ambition,” said Forseti, and Father laughed – Mother was trying not to laugh herself, clucking her tongue in disapproval, and she kicked Forseti’s foot under the table.

Tor was anything but deterred: he was beaming brightly, the sun all but shining from his face. He was doing his best not to show it, but Forseti could see that Father was somewhat pleased with the tone of the conversation as well, his lip twitching slightly although it didn’t dare attempt a smile.

Forseti thought about the invitation on his pillow.

Come to the wood, it had said, but at what time? In the morning? At night? He hardly knew. Surely, at night – this was a party, after all, a faerie revel, if it was real at all and not merely a figment of his ailing mind, but how was he to take his leave of the house once the sun had set without one of the servants noticing, without some note being made of it?

It was one thing for him to depart before the sun was set and fail to come back, but to leave at night – and particularly with his health as it was of recent – without some remarks of concern, without someone insisting on following him, escorting him?

Even if this was a real invitation, a real revel at the end of it, the whole situation was wildly improper. His parents not invited, not alerted, Forseti departing in secret… Were fae revels not the best time and place for impropriety?

He should arrive at sunset, perhaps. Take a promenade some hour before the sun was due to fall below the horizon, early enough that no one would baulk at his taking a walk alone, and then be late upon his return.

If he returned.

If he didn’t, dizzy from the cool air and the exercise, fall and crack his head open in the wood again – if these creatures weren’t real, and ready to whisk him away as they did in tales.

“Have you been reading much, Ansgar?” Mother asked, and Forseti glanced up from his plate.

“Some,” he said, doing his best not to seem overly evasive as he met her gaze and smiled at her. “I confess, I’ve found it difficult to concentrate on most pages – the words swim before my eyes, but I hope to be better suited to it soon. I plan to read as I can in the coming weeks and balance my study with short promenades, the better to mend my health.”

“I shall accompany you,” Tor said cheerfully, and Forseti glanced at him, aware that his smile wanted to freeze on his face, but forcing his body to remain relaxed.

“Oh, you needn’t, brother,” he said, smiling despite the sudden fear that struck at his heart. What would happen, he wondered, were he to arrive at the wood, according to his invitation, with Tor at his side? What would be done with him, with no invitation extended him?

No, no.

The very thought was inconceivable.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Tor chided, shaking his head. “Ansgar, I could hardly expect you to sojourn alone, particularly not with your health as it has been – and time spent with my brother is no time wasted.”

“You warm my heart, brother,” Forseti said wanly, his heart sinking slightly in his chest. What now?

* * *

It was raining outside. Forseti listened to the patter of rain against the wide windows and against the dark roads outside, and he saw cross-legged on the window seat. Over his quilted smoking jacket, he had a heavy blanket around his shoulders and over his lap as well. The window was made of very thick glass, the better to keep out the cold, but he still found himself prone to shivers and shakes now that he was spending more time out of bed, and still he preferred to ensconce himself in blankets like this.

The book rested heavy in his lap, and he studied its pages with care.

Despite his ailing health in childhood, he’d never been a particularly well-behaved child. Outwardly studious, undoubtedly, and the very image of good behaviour and good breeding, but only because he was never caught when he did choose to stray – handsome though the wide shoulders of Hilde and Tor both were, they did not lend themselves to grace or concealment, and Murmel knew the meaning of many words, twisting them about his tongue and his fingers, but such ones as “furtive” or “clandestine” were often well out of his reach.

Forseti had natural skills not exactly befitting a young man of his station – as a school boy, he and Murmel had taken perhaps the wrong lessons from Mr Dickens’ Oliver Twist, and had spent one particularly passionate summer remaking Fagin’s test of coats strung with bells, returning to school in September treated with various school masters to test their newfound skills on, and test they did.

They never stole money, of course – much of the fun they found for themselves was in fact swiping something from a difficult target in an easy moment and then challenging the other to subtly return it – but more than once they’d gotten lucky in stealing a particularly interesting letter or someone’s diary (Mr Leach, it had turned out, bet not only on horses but a great many other things besides, and had a diary written up with his winnings and losses and all manner of odds on various bets), or some manner of amusing curiosity, the sort that any man might keep in his pockets.

It was only natural for a boy to graduate from pickpocketing to burglary – a natural gymnast, Forseti had never found scaling buildings any more challenging than climbing trees, and many times he had moved with fleet feet from his boarding school lodgings in the dead of night, or crept from this very house via the guttering or a trellis when he was meant to be confined to his room.

He thought about that now, leaning his temple against the glass of the window decorated with pretty frost and frozen snowflakes, and looked down against the wall. A trellis was pinned beneath his window, roses growing on it, coiling their way through the criss-crossing pieces of white-painted wood.

It had been a long time since he’d last climbed down it to meet Murmel surreptitiously in the wood – not for at least a decade – and he was a good deal larger and heavier since last he’d used that method.

He really was going mad, wasn’t he?

Not only considering this business of seeking out faeries in the wood, as though he were truly to meet any, as though this were anything more than some strange set of fever dreams, not only sneaking out in the dead of night without a word to anybody, caution to the wind when he was liable to fall down in the woods and go without being found for hours, days, even, but to creep out of his own window by the trellis like a child?

When one was going mad, why stop at one element of madness?

His gaze flitted back to the page.

“The Faerie is concerned, above all else, with Manners and Politeness. Although they are beings of Chaos, made as they are of all that Nature should cast aside and being as they are the disgraced Children of Eve, they Seek to create Order in their life through matters of social polity. Faeries have complex social structures, with a regimented understanding of class and status, and any member of good standing should follow every Rule of polite Society.

One should take Care not to give into Social Nicety too easily, however, some Rules of the Fae are not mirrored in our own Society, and one must take care not to Sign a Contract through ignorance. One’s Name, for example, is the representation of one’s Soul in Faerie Society and therefore one must take care not to give it away – better that one should say what one wishes to be called, and to not “give” one’s name away.”

Forseti had read this page before. He’d studied this page a dozen times, hoping it would reveal more to him, for there were scarcely three pages in the entire book on the subject of faeries and how best to approach them, how best to deal with them.

This was a book about practical magic, after all – what poppycock – and not about mixing in foreign societies.

Faeries, the book maintained, delighted in music and dancing of any kind, as well as sport, and bets, and violence. As much as faeries maintained an outward appearance of polity and gentility, it was little more than that outward appearance – as creatures of chaos, in-touch with the ebbs and floes of magic and their own primal desires.

Their lust for blood sport ran deep within them.

He thought of the Silver King’s hand warm against his lower back, thought of his fingers sliding lower, dipping between his buttocks, pressing, pressing—

Delicately, Forseti interrupted his own train of thought with a cough against his hand, and turned the page.

“A Spell to Douse a Fire.

Hold the left hand open with Palm to the ceiling and imagine the flame, complete, against the fingertips. Imagine not only the sight of it but also the feel of hot flames licking the skin, the scent of the oil or charred wood in one’s nostrils, the very soul of the burn against the flesh.

Very slowly close the palm until one is stifling the flames with the clench of the finger and thumb, and so shall the true flame mirror the act.”

Forseti looked at the four oil lamps that kept his bedroom lit, stationed about the room’s walls, high up and close to the ceiling. Focusing on the one closest to him, he studied the glass and the golden haze shining out from within – the glass was a little dirty, in need of its monthly cleaning.

This was ridiculous. He was ridiculous, playing at being some manner of magician – oh, like any child, Forseti had had fantasies of acts of magic, would often play at being Merlin where his brother might be Arthur or Gawain, where Hilde might be Morgana le Fey or the beautiful Guinevere, where Murmel was… Well. At Forseti’s side, any thought of taking a chivalric name for himself forgotten, more often a nameless sorcerer’s assistant or some manner of druid.

Much as he had played at sorcery, he had never believed he might actually perform any – and in any case, as a child, Forseti had taken many of his Father’s wise words to heart in that arena, long lectures as to what such men as Vikings or the knights of old in England thought of as magic, but what was actually early medicine, meteorology as compared to augury, the political importance of the appearances of magic for one ruler or other.

Now that he thought of it, he didn’t know that he had ever even played at performing a spell.

In between petty burglaries and thefts, he and Murmel would play at different games – reading fortunes in stones or dice or fallen twigs (Forseti had once or twice attempted to scry in the entrails of some poor dead squirrel or other creature in the woods, but the sight of such things made Murmel go pale and faint even if he didn’t outright vomit); encoding messages and ferrying them to one another; attempting to tame or speak to crows and ravens (unsuccessfully) or to tame local cats (perhaps too successfully. Some of the local moggies still followed Murmel as soon as they saw him).

Had he ever tried to say magic words whilst waving his hands or making theatrical points and gestures? Surely, he must have – such pantomimes were natural for children to do. Had he?

He didn’t think so.

Forseti set out his palm.

He imagined the heat of the oil lamp in his hand, considering how it would creep out over the flesh, imagining the way it would slowly begin to settle liquid hot upon his palm. He imagined the regular set of the flame, different to a fire in a grate that crackled and danced – no, the flame from an oil lamp was ever still, roaring quietly as it burned through the fuel thrown out of the little pipe to meet it. He smelt the scent of burning oil heavy in his nostrils, that coal-tang, and he closed his palm – not slowly, as the spell had instructed, but all at once.

Enveloped suddenly in darkness as every night in the room doused itself at once, Forseti let out a soft, disbelieving breath.

When he opened his palm again, the lamps flickered back to life, and he laughed.

* * *

“Murmel,” said Forseti as he stood on the landing, looking down the stairs at the other man, and Murmel smiled up at him with his dandy’s smile on his face. He was implacably, impossibly handsome, at times, and he was overwhelmingly so now, standing at the foot of the stair with his hat in his hands, the light shining on his cheeks. “I’ve missed you these past weeks of bedrest. You’ve neglected me, your bosom friend.”

“In favour of my studies, I’m afraid,” Murmel said apologetically, spreading his gloved hands as Forseti carefully descended the stairs to meet him. “If you stacked the legal tomes Mr French had had me read through this year atop one another, they would be tall as Tor and you together, and perhaps your father, too.”

“Poor thing,” Forseti said teasingly, wrinkling his nose. “You do seem the paler for lack of sun.”

“The pot calling the kettle white, it seems to me,” said Murmel dryly, and Forseti laughed. “I’m told you must take promenades for the sake of your health – the rain will not relent for much longer. I thought I ought invite you whilst I was able, and with a spare few minutes.”

“It’s good of you,” said Forseti with mild reluctance, hesitating, and Murmel’s charming smile grew wider.

“Come now, for your health.”

“Very well,” he said, giving a polite nod of his head.

Before the footman could come forward, Murmel was acting in his stead, taking Forseti’s quilted smoking jacket in exchanging for his overcoat, offering him then his hat, his scarf, his gloves.

When Murmel offered his arm, Forseti took it. It ought have embarrassed him, interlinking their arms as though Forseti were a young woman, but Murmel was perceptive in more ways than one, and Forseti saw the measuring expression in his face as he glanced down to Murmel’s knees – stronger today, but not cured of weakness – and his chest before looking up to his face.

For a scant moment, as they stepped outside, Murmel’s hand settled over the one Forseti was gripping the inside of his elbow with.

“Take care, Mr Wright,” said Forseti, scarcely moving his lips, “that you overstep not.”

So impugned – his smile was gentle, his eyes a little sad – Murmel drew his hand away.

They stepped out into the street, and although the rain had only just faded away, the sun was shining so brightly one might believe it had been sunny the day through, were it not that the streets beneath them were still slippery with moisture. Murmel’s pace was slow and even as it ever was, offering Murmel a steadying hand, and he held an umbrella at his side as if it was a walking cane, just in case.

“Has Tor gotten the rhythm of walking with you, yet?” he asked. “He said he’s been accompanying you on your morning walks.”

“The man lopes like a clown on stilts,” Forseti muttered. “You’d think after twenty years he’d shorten his gait a tad.”

Murmel laughed loudly, and Forseti shook his head fondly despite himself.

“It was part of what prompted me to offer my companionship on a walk rather than just coming over with a book and some biscuits, I admit,” Murmel said. “I was very worried when you were taken ill – scarcely a day would pass when your brother was not in our drawing room, seeking comfort as my sister’s breast.”

“Comfort was not all he ought, I’d wager,” Forseti muttered, and Murmel chuckled now. His body was warm beside Forseti’s own, and Forseti recalled long nights in the chilly air of their school dormitories, where Murmel would slide into his bed alongside him, and Forseti’s heart would soar at the contact, even as he caught fast Murmel’s wandering hands.

He had the measure of Murmel Wright, no matter that he considered him so close a friend.

“Lose sleep over me, did you?”

“Always, my friend,” Murmel said quietly, with a very grave expression, carrying little of his usual flirtation. “Doctor Hemming seemed convinced you’d die this time, you know. He did not say as much, but I read the fear in his features as you read between the lines of essays and diary entries. Never have I seen him so afraid.”

“He grows too attached to his patients, I fear,” Forseti said, “particularly the sickly ones.”

“It is difficult for any man not to grow attached to you, Forseti.”

“Is this the medicine you bring me, Murmel? Flattery and false words?”

“As good a medicine as any,” Murmel purred. “And not as false as you so often accuse me.”

“Perhaps not,” Forseti allowed, and Murmel gave him a soft smile, a gentle haze in his eyes, making the dark green of them seem rather misty, fog over one of Albert’s forests. “Have I told you lately how beautiful your eyes are?”

That took Murmel aback – his pretty lips parted under the blond hairs of his carefully groomed moustache, his eyes widening. “Not for quite some time, no,” he said softly, and then, somewhere between jocular and really quite afraid, he went on, “Forseti, darling, are you dying?”

“I should hope not,” Forseti said. “I’ve been having such queer dreams and fancies of late, you know.”

“Fever dreams?” Murmel asked, tapping his hand against the back of Forseti’s – not so obviously improper, this such, this a glancing but comforting touch, a squeeze of his fingers.

“They ought to be,” Forseti said. “I confess, they haven’t felt that way – they’ve felt very real.”

“Hallucinatory, you mean? Or…” Murmel trailed off, searching the air ahead of them for the right words as they continued to walk together, wet leaves barely making any crunch beneath their feet. “Prophetic?”

“Closer to the latter than I like the idea of,” Forseti said.

“That must be difficult to stomach,” Murmel said. “I know you don’t go in for all that.”

“It’s why it feels so disorienting, I’m sure,” Forseti muttered, and Murmel clucked his tongue, wrinkling his freckled nose. “Strange figures in the wood, odd dreams, and they feel very solid, quite whole and complete. The touches, the voices, the feelings of it.”

“You’re not sleep-walking, I hope?”

“No, no. I wake in my bed, where I ought be.”

“What does Doctor Hemming say?”

“The man can’t read my mind, Murmel.”

“You haven’t told him?”

“Mother and Father already want to confine me to my bed – it need not be the bed in a madhouse.”

Murmel made a displeased noise, shaking his head, but Forseti felt all the lighter for having shared these small details with him, even though he hadn’t unburdened himself of all the details. What would he say, were Forseti to tell him the whole of it, to tell him about the book and its contents, the Silver King in his dreams, tell him of the magic, the magic Forseti had cast?

He would say you were mad, says a quiet voice in the back of his mind.

But no, replies another. He wouldn’t. You know he wouldn’t. Hear how easily he speaks of prophecy in your dreams – he would jump for joy at the thought of magic as something real, something tangible, and he would write you so sweet a poem that your eyes would water and your heart would burst from your chest. He already thinks you magic, without a spell between your fingers.

“I wish there was some cure for you,” Murmel murmured softly, his tone positively tortured.

“Priests and doctors are always wishing for cures for men the likes of us,” said Forseti, and Murmel’s laugh lacked humour.

“I have the perfect cure for you, darling,” he said. “A doctor might not prescribe it.”

“Filthy.”

“You know it.”

Forseti’s gait slowed slightly, his chest feeling a little bit tighter than it had done, and Murmel stopped immediately, changing the angle of his arm that Forseti could better lean on it without the shape of them looking too unusual in the street, without it being too obvious at a glance that Murmel was holding up as much of Forseti’s weight as Forseti was himself.

“We’ll sit a while,” Murmel said. “The bench on the corner. You can make it there?”

“Yes,” Forseti said.

“Your lungs? Is the air too cold for them?”

“No, no, just fatigue, I think,” Forseti muttered, and he didn’t bother to keep the irritation out of his voice as he might with Tor – Tor was always liable to take such frustration as a personal insult or a jab, interpret Forseti’s irritation as irritation with Tor himself rather than the weakness of his own traitorous body. He took in a few slow, deep breaths, and Murmel stood very still and very patient, his expression not changing, and not making too much of a pantomime of his gentle concern, either.

“Perhaps your knees are weak because my overtures are so ensorcelling.”

“You couldn’t bewitch a sheep, Murmel.”

Murmel gasped loudly, theatrical, but when he leaned back, Forseti gripped tighter at his arm and he immediately straightened again, taking a step closer. “Sorry,” he said.

“You’re forgiven, but only because I didn’t collapse,” Forseti said in very low tones, and Murmel’s expression showed a great deal of consternation this time. His free hand twitched, and Forseti knew that if they were alone together, Murmel would probably reach up and cup his cheek – he ached for it, in truth. His eyes stung with how much he ached for it, how much he craved that comforting touch.

“I don’t know what I’d do if you died, you know,” Murmel whispered. “Even with this fine country air in your lungs, you’re so prone to illness – your heart remains weak, your lungs so easily overpowered, your stomach turned by anything you’re not well-used to. It seems like even a strong wind might kill you, and then where would I be? Alone and weeping like a widow.”

“Not alone, you’re making too much of a drama of things now,” Forseti said. “Hilde and Tor would look after you.”

“Not as you do,” Murmel said. “My sister doesn’t soothe my ills as you can, nor your brother my heart as you do.”

“Cure me as you have before then,” Forseti whispered. “Pleasant company and leisurely exercise, Murmel – t’is all I need.”

“A break on the bench first,” the other man told him, as stern as he got, and Forseti nodded, letting Murmel take a good amount of his weight as they went around the corner and sank down on the bench together. He undid his scarf and retied it tighter around his throat, and Murmel went to untie his scarf as though to tie that around Forseti’s neck as well, but Forseti slapped his hand before he could.

“Do you have any care for what we look like?” Forseti asked, laughing helplessly despite himself.

“Oh, we look terribly handsome together,” Murmel assured him. “You more than me, of course, but a perfect portrait, I’m sure.”

“Shut up,” said Forseti, and Murmel laughed. “An invalid I may be, but there are limitations to what improprieties might be forgiven us nonetheless.”

“Always such a concern for appearances of impropriety.”

“You’d be even sadder than a widow weeping put to hard labour,” Forseti reminded him. “The last nail that would be in my coffin, too.”

“Hard labour? I should think so. You wouldn’t even survive a night in the cell.”

“I meant the loss of you,” Forseti told him, adjusting the set of Murmel’s coat lapel to disguise the emotion in his face, to displace the amount of emotion he felt stirring in him, contrasting the weakness of his lungs, the ache in his chest.

“Good Lord, you’re Wednesday’s child today,” Murmel whispered. “This prophetic dream you’ve been having – you’re not actually dead in it, are you? You’d tell me if you genuinely thought you were at death’s door?”

“I don’t dream of dying, no,” Forseti said. Murmel opened his mouth, and Forseti spread out one of his hands. “Please,” he interrupted him. “Spare me further thought of it, would you? Turn my mind to more pedestrian things. How’s your work, apart from Mr French’s reading list for you?”

“I might kill myself,” Murmel said after a moment’s consideration, and Forseti laughed so hard it did hurt his lungs, and they had to wait a few minutes before Murmel felt it was safe to talk on again.

* * *

Forseti laid on a bed of stone, his naked skin touching the marble sprawl beneath him. It was very cool against his skin, which felt incandescently hot, so hot from within, in fact, it threatened to warm the altar he was laid on. Lying on his belly, Forseti slowly raised his head and looked lazily, indolently, about his surroundings.

This was an ancient altar, as the Greeks and Romans laid out their sacrifices on, and the altar was amidst an olive grove. Sun shone down through the thin leaves of the gnarled and twisted trees, and it was hot on Forseti’s back, a pleasant kiss, surprisingly. He didn’t know that he’d ever felt such pleasant warmth on his back – in the waking world, even a sunny day was liable to burn him near to cinders if he chanced out from beneath a parasol.

“Is this what I am to you?” he asked, his voice coming out casual and easy as he set his chin on his palm. “A sacrifice on an altar?”

Forseti felt his length between his legs, soft and heavy where it rested on the stone, and it made him prickle with a strange discomfort, uncomfortably wrong, not quite right at all. He cast about the clearing to look for a mirror – although why there should be one, he had no idea – and exhaled a relieved breath when assured there was none.

There was no verbal response – the clearing in the olive grove was eerily silent, and although the breeze stroked through Forseti’s loose hair and played over his unsweating skin, it didn’t touch the leaves of the trees nor disturb the dust on the ground.

“Give me a cigarette,” he said.

The Silver King’s voice betrayed some mild surprise as he repeated, “A cigarette?” Caught out and made to reply, although he remained as invisible as he often did, he appended, “Why?”

“Because I want one,” Forseti said simply.

“You’re not asking very nicely.”

“I wasn’t trying to ask.”

The laughter came from nowhere and everywhere at once, but Forseti of course recognised the silver voice of the Silver King, molten and shimmering although he couldn’t see its source.

“Please,” Forseti drawled out, drawing out the single word and letting the sibilance hiss on his tongue, tingling against his teeth. “Do give me a cigarette, your majesty.”

There was so much syrup on the words they threatened to drip, but he got what he wanted – the cigarette was placed neatly between Forseti’s index and middle fingers, already lit, and he took a slow drag from its butt.

He had once been told to smoke for the sake of his health, but Doctor Hemming had belayed that order as soon as Forseti got a taste for it, said smoking too often – or at all, really – would leave him ill and short of breath. Mother and Father detested the scent of tobacco, and Tor and Murmel always refused smokes out of a misplaced sense of fairness, but he knew Hilde adored to smoke a pipe from time to time, and very handsome she looked while she did it, too.

This cigarette tasted of nutmeg and cinnamon, sweet on his lips and tongue, and when he exhaled, he made a ring out of the pastel pink smoke.

“Very clever,” said the Silver King.

“I can only do it in dreams,” said Forseti mildly, tapping the end of the cigarette and watching lilac ash drop down onto the marble surface of his altar. “You know, your majesty, it is considered the height of bad manners to enter a gentleman’s bedroom without at least knocking first. You seem to be stepping into something far more intimate – a gentleman’s mind.”

“Well, you invited me, didn’t you?” the Silver King asked, voice very smooth indeed, even more syrupy than Forseti’s was, the two of them apparently making a competition of it. It was rather strange, hearing his voice coming from Forseti’s left and right at once, before and behind him, all at once.

Why was it that he felt such confidence in dreams like these? It wasn’t just for the sake of his health, his body no longer feeling quite so awful to inhabit, his lungs and heart and other organs rebelling against him – it was more than that. Power felt as though it were crackling within him, perhaps the source of whatever was heating him from within.

There was some extra power afforded him here, as though the universe itself was sympathising with his weakness in his waking hours and sought to balance the table when he was laid in bed.

“Is that so,” Forseti replied. It wasn’t a question.

He took a longer drag of the cigarette this time, and he imagined the pink smoke filling his lungs, coiling like a serpent behind the cage of his ribs – when he exhaled he painted the snake on the air with his tongue. It slithered forward and then – mad! – began to coil in upon itself, swallowing down its own tail.

The sight filled Forseti’s heart with a strange melancholy, Jormungandr writ on the air before him. He was far from England, here in some Greek olive grove, and far from Norway too, but here was Jormungandr nonetheless, encircling the world.

“Are a kind man, your majesty?”

“Me, a man? Oh, no.”

There was sudden breath, cool, against Forseti’s left ear, his neck, and he struck out with the cigarette out of reflex – he heard the hiss and sizzle of burned flesh before he heard the Silver King’s groan of pain and saw the dust disturbed as he stumbled back.

“Ow,” he groaned, a curiously childish exclamation for such an aged and apparently dignified figure. “That wasn’t very nice, young man.”

“I’m not very nice,” Forseti agreed, and something else didn’t quite sit well with him about the statement either – young man? Him? Nausea bubbled in the back of his throat, and although he knew there was no mirror about him, he looked down at the stone beneath him to save himself from glimpsing his own body nonetheless. “See that you ask permission, your majesty, before you seek to touch me again – or before you invade my dreams.”

Forseti flicked the remainder of the cigarette away from him, and the olive grove went up in flames around him like so much tender.

Forseti closed his eyes and sighed in satisfaction as he didn’t roast upon his altar.