Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Let me tell you where we went in my dreams

Let me tell you all the things I saw in dreams” – Jelly Cleaver

*

i.

When Wille is in the same place as his mother, she always makes an effort to come and tell him a bedtime story. She doesn’t read stories, not like Erik does; she makes them up – mythic tales of princesses slaying ice dragons, villages sacrificed to other gods, coming of age ventures into a sleeping world that lies beneath their own, of souls bound to each other for safekeeping. She tells stories of the gifted in their legions – singers, blacksmiths, warriors, poets – shaping the world as it passed from year to year, decade to decade, hand to hand.

“My mother used to tell me these,” she says, running a cool hand over Wille’s forehead. “And one day, the responsibility will be yours. The sleeping world is dying, but that doesn’t mean it’s gone.”

At four, Wille doesn’t really know what responsibility means. But what he does know is that on the nights his mother comes, he always has weird, terrifying dreams. Sometimes it’s lightshows and magnetic fields, buffeting him about, a chorus of hissing voices. Sometimes it’s running through a world that is on fire for miles in every direction. Sometimes he’s looking for something he can’t name, something vitally important, high and low and high. And sometimes, he’s just stuck in a darkness as complete as paralysis with no way out.

He wakes up screaming, panicking, unable to breathe; his nanny holds him close until he stops crying, and he hides his face in her shoulder and inhales the smell of lavender and soap and tries to pretend that he’s safe.

Somehow, he knows that he isn’t.

“Respectfully, madam,” his nanny starts once, when Wille is six and he hasn’t grown out of nightmares like all the doctors said he would.

Queen Kristina raises an imperious hand, cutting her off.

“He needs to be prepared,” she says, cryptic, turning into her son’s bedroom. “It’s better this way.”

Later, when his nanny has changed the sheets after yet another nightmare, she takes him down the echoing, empty kitchens, sits him on the table and makes hot cocoa. It’s snowing outside, and Wille watches it, mesmerised, tries to count the flakes to distract himself from the monsters lurking in the back of his head.

“It’s ok,” his nanny says, handing him a mug. “They’re not real.”

“They feel real,” he says.

“I know. But if you don’t believe in things, then they lose their power,” his nanny says. “Like in Peter Pan, remember?”

“Ok,” Wille says, takes a sip of hot chocolate. “I don’t believe in fairies.”

“No, you don’t.”

“I don’t.”

“Good boy,” his nanny says, and ruffles his hair.

The next morning, Erik comes across him hitting the box hedges with a stick and shouting I don’t believe in fairies.

“What are you doing?” he asks.

“Killing monsters,” Wille replies.

“Can I help?”

Wille nods, and Erik goes to find his own stick, and they rampage around the gardens getting rid of all the horrible creatures that hide there, and by the end, Wille has forgotten to be scared of them. If he can banish them with a stick and some shouting, maybe they’re not so bad after all.

The next time his mother tells him a story, he murmurs under his breath I don’t believe in fairies and sleeps right through the night.

ii.

It is his thirteenth birthday when his mother digs the books out of the library. The sun is a gleaming coin in the sky, and the breeze is full of laughter. As birthdays go, it’s not been as bad as it could have; he and Erik have breakfast in bed together and then they spend an hour hanging around in the palace gardens whilst the harried royal photographer tries to take an acceptable photo to go out to the nation. Erik keeps making rabbit ears behind Wille’s head whenever their parents aren’t looking, and even their mother’s glare isn’t enough to stop him.

Unfortunately, for diplomatic reasons, the horrible British prime minister is here on a state visit, so they only have time briefly for presents and a birthday cake. He’s not that bothered, really. It’s happened too often to be something he cares about anymore.

He gets a neat Bluetooth speaker and a stupid frog prince snow globe from Erik, various random things from other relatives, a curated selection of cards from schoolchildren in Stockholm wishing their prince a happy birthday which he knows he’ll be spending tomorrow replying to, and from his parents, well. It’s not what he asked for, that’s for certain.

What he does get is a pile of dusty books and papers, so heavy with the weight of years that they might crumble into pieces at the slightest touch. He prods the top of one gingerly. The cover looks like it might actually have been attached to a cow at some point in distant, misty history.

“Um, what is this?”

His mother looks up from box of cards. “Now that you’re old enough, you need to start preparing.”

“For what?”

“Don’t take that tone of voice, young man,” his father says, warning. Wille bites down the weird feeling he gets whenever his father calls him young man. It’s not a thing, not really, but recently that’s been his father’s preferred mode of address and Wille can’t deny to himself that it makes him uncomfortable. He hasn’t really interrogated why. He doesn’t think he wants to – but he definitely knows it’s not something he should bring up to his parents.

“Sorry. For what, Mama?”

“I can’t believe he’s forgotten,” his mother says to his father, wry. “Weren’t you listening, Wille? The youngest child in each royal family deals with the Sleeping Court. I used to tell you all those stories when you were younger.”

“It isn’t real though,” Wille says, biting down on a, yeah, the stories that used to give me such bad nightmares, I remember.

“It’s important,” she says, which isn’t any kind of actual answer.

“Ok,” Wille says, then, grudging, “Thanks.”

He picks up the top book, the leather cover slightly sticky against his palms, and starts to page through it, chest tightening like a clamp. It’s heavy, the pages are thick, and filled with intensely black ink drawings and scrawl he’s going to have to use a magnifying glass to decipher – if he bothers, that is.

“What do you say to your mother?” his father asks, eventually.

“Um, thanks, Mama.”

“You’re welcome,” she replies, but he can tell that she’s not really listening.

Later, his feet find their way to Erik’s rooms. There is soft jazz playing on the old record player Erik restored last summer, and Erik is just out of the shower, all damp, dark hair and long, lean lines, the scar on his shoulder blade where he fell out of their tree five years ago. Wille lingers in the doorway, watches his older brother start to dress in smooth, confident motions.

“Nice tie,” Erik says eventually, without looking over.

“You would say that.”

“Excuse you, I have impeccable taste.”

“Says who? The fashion editors at Glamour? I don’t think they’d know taste if it jumped up and down in front of them in a banana suit.”

“Wow, someone’s in a grump tonight,” Erik turns, buttoning his sleeves. The curl of his smile is amused. “Come on. Out with it.”

Wille crosses the room and flops face-first onto Erik’s bed, then rolls over, regards the ornate canopy above it. “The stupid books. I just can’t.”

“Wille,” Erik says, and then he’s falling onto the bed too, making it bounce. “Myths. That’s all it is. An appreciation of tradition. That’s what she wants to instil in you.”

“But she always said the gifted were real.”

Erik snorts. “Real? Of course they’re not.”

“How do you know?”

“I wrote an essay on this for school,” Erik says. “You know they’ve discovered a lot of the historical ‘evidence’ is forged, right?”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Ye olde pranksters, the fuckers.” Erik pokes Wille in the ribs, gentle. “Don’t think too hard about it.”

“I’m trying. It’s just…another thing to live up to, you know? Another thing I have to do.”

“She’s not going to quiz you on it.”

“You’re going to university soon. Who knows what she’ll do without you around.”

“Wille.”

“Yes.”

“I know you’re worried, but it’s going to be ok. I’ll call all the time. And you’re starting upper stage soon with your tutor, so you’ll be far too busy to miss me.”

“I know, I know.”

They lapse into a tiny, companionable silence, and then Erik pokes him again: “I dare you to photobomb every single picture the photographer tries to take tonight.”

“Ok, but only if you ask Mr Johnson why exactly he hates Europe so much.”

Erik’s grin is a comforting, familiar thing; he spits in his hand and holds it out to Wille. Wille takes it, resists the urge to curl up and limpet onto his brother and never let go.

“It’s a deal.”

iii.

Wille tries to forget about it. He hides the books in a box under his bed. He leans into the other duties – the openings and state visits and garden parties, the writing back to letters, the traditions it is his job to keep alive. He follows Erik’s life on Instagram – his place on the polo and rowing teams, his pictures of Oxford’s ancient buildings and cobbled streets. He attends his lessons – dancing, table manners, diplomacy. He handles the disappointed glances from his mother when he uses the wrong utensil at a state banquet, breathes through the: “no, don’t be ridiculous,” whenever he floats something he’d actually like to do.

And still, in the back of his head, he can’t stop picking at the thought of the Sleeping Court. Of this old story. Of the fact that everything is mounting up and somehow, he’s fifteen years old and staring up at the mountain of things he’s supposed to be, feeling smaller and smaller in the face of it with every passing day.

“I feel like such a failure,” he says one night to Erik down the phone, after he manages to spill his drink at a garden party all over someone’s pretty dress. She’d been lovely about it, but still. Princes are supposed to be blessed with perfect balance; his father had told him as much. “Do you ever…is this…”

“All the time, bro,” Erik says, lazy. In the background, Wille can hear someone plucking away on a guitar, laughter. “Especially when I was your age.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Definitely. And fifteen’s a shit age to be. It’ll get better.” Erik pauses. “Maybe you should talk to some of our cousins. Henry. Or August, but he’s less royal, so…”

“Henry’s your friend. And August…maybe. He’s just…a lot.”

“Wille. Why are you so convinced you have to do this alone?”

“I…” Wille opens his mouth. Closes it. Breathes. He could say so many things to a question like that: the fact that he doesn’t really like their group of family friends and relatives, the fact that he wonders sometimes what it would be like to wear a skirt and paint his nails, the fact that everyone who meets him only ever sees prince and never sees Wilhelm.

“Go and make some friends. It’ll be good for you.”

“I’ll try.”

“Good,” Erik says, and then, “Look, I’ve got to dash, we’re going for a pint. I’ll call you next week, same time, yeah?”

 “Yeah,” Wille replies. “Have fun. Don’t disgrace the crown.”

“As if I’d dare,” Erik laughs, and the call disconnects.

In his defence, he tries to make more of an effort after that, but it keeps going wrong. He allows cousin August to drag him off with the other teenagers at the events, allows a friend of a friend to ply him with whisky until he’s throwing up in a bush and some aide is pulling him back inside and his mother is wiping his sweaty forehead with her handkerchief, mouth pinched, saying, “well it could be worse.”

He lets his mother invite suitable people around for dinners, listens to their talk about horses and expensive holidays, watches videos of their street races and fancy cars. He smiles politely and deals compliments and tries his best to emulate Erik’s easy charm, but there’s a bitter hole inside him, cracking open more and more with every passing month. And so he ends up spending a lot of time watching Netflix when he’s supposed to be doing homework, watching dramas of normal people with normal lives and normal worries and dreaming about what that would feel like.

Sometimes, it all gets too much. Sometimes, he lies on the floor of his bedroom, vision blurring with panic, chest sour and full at the thought of being stuck in this life, in this gilded cage. He doesn’t know what else is outside, but it’s got to be better than this.

So he plots and plans, and eventually shoulders his way into his mother’s office one day when she’s back in the country and lays it out on the table.

“Why?” his mother asks, looking up from her red box of papers.

Wille brings his hand forcibly down to his side from where it was creeping up to his mouth. He knows what his mother thinks about the nail-biting. “I need to be closer to the people. As their prince, I should understand them. How am I going to do that if I’m locked away here?”

 “And you think doing high school in Stockholm is going to help with that?”

“It can’t hurt.”

“Hmm. I thought you’d go to Hillerska, like Erik did.”

“I’d prefer not,” Wille says. “What am I going to learn at Hillerska that I won’t learn from ordinary people?”

She raises her eyebrows, considering.

“And anyway,” Wille ploughs on, “Erik went to Hillerska, and he’s the one who’s going to king.  Therefore A) it doesn’t matter as much if I don’t go, b) they always say that diverse experiences make for a stronger team.”

“Who told you that?”

“The internet.”

“You are funny,” his mother shakes her head, amused. “Ok. We’ll look into it.”

Wille takes the dismissal and goes, tucks the sudden giddiness back down into a pocket. It’s not a yes, but it’s the most concession he’s got out of his mother ever, and he’ll take the small victories where he can. Normal school. Normal people. Maybe he’ll finally find someone who gets him.

iv.

Erik comes back from his final year of university late. He’d sent Wille postcards from his travels in Vietnam and Thailand that Wille has stuck up above his desk, but that’s nothing to how it feels when one afternoon, Wille’s bedroom door bangs open.

“Whoa, what did they feed you, plant growth formula?” Wille hears, and he’s turning and Erik is there, all white smile and tanned face, shirtsleeves rolled up, a cord bracelet on one wrist that wasn’t there before.

“You’re home!”

“No, I died in a shipwreck and this is my ghost, haunting you,” Erik says, crossing the room in five long strides. “Come here, bro.”

He wraps Wille in a tight hug. Wille hugs back, breathes in tea-tree and salt and safety. Erik’s comfortingly warm, rocks them back and forth a little bit. He’s here. He’s here and Wille has survived their three years apart.

Eventually, Erik lets go, ruffles Wille’s hair aggressively. “Come on. I cleared my calendar for the afternoon. Let’s get ice cream and climb the tree. I want to hear everything about your new school.”

Erik keeps one arm looped around Wille’s shoulders as they head down to the palace kitchens, as Erik sweet-talks one of the cooks into homemade ice cream – cloudberry, their shared favourite – and then out into the grounds, through the formal gardens and the orchard and down to the lake. The big oak tree is waiting for them, gnarled and ancient and full of history. Erik had said once that it is probably old enough to remember the Vikings, and thus it became the Viking tree, the place where they always go to talk. No-one else is ever taken there, not even their parents. It’s sacred.

They talk about Wille’s first two weeks at high school. It’s not exactly the shape he thought it would be, but it’s fine. People are starting to get used to him, to stop staring; a group of friends are starting to close ranks around him. They’re the popular crowd, the ones who’ve known each other since preschool, and he has the uneasy feeling that it’s only because he’s a prince that he’s been welcomed into their circle. But it’s only a nagging sense, and Wille is very good at ignoring those these days. What matters is that it’s fun. What matters is that they spend their days laughing about memes and film stars and stupid gossip; what matters is that people laugh at his jokes and want to hear his thoughts, that there is a girl he sometimes kisses at parties who doesn’t want anything more from him than a bit of fun.

“I’m glad,” Erik says, ruffling his hair. “You look happier, anyway.”

“I do?”

“Yeah. It’s nice. No more mopey Wille.”

“I do not mope.”

“Yes you do, emo kid,” Erik rolls his eyes. “You forget I let you sponge off my Spotify account. I know all.”

“Shut up.”

“Never.” Erik rolls a shoulder, shifts so he’s sitting opposite Wille in the tree. He’s tapping his phone idly against one of the branches, fiddling with that cord bracelet, and there’s a shadow to his expression that wasn’t there the last time he came home.

“So what’s up with you?”

“Nothing.”

Wille raises his eyebrows in his very best impression of their mother. “Bullshit.”

“Language.”

“Uh, no.” Then, “you can tell me, or I can find out for myself.”

Erik doesn’t answer, just glances down at his phone; Wille reaches forward and snatches it, clambers up several branches with Erik scrabbling for and missing his ankle. “Dude! What the hell?”

Wille ignores his brother, turns the phone over. The lock screen lights up, and he blinks, surprised. For as long as he can remember, Erik’s had a picture of the two of them from some old British garden party as his screen. Not anymore. The photo shows Erik and a girl on a rooftop terrace overlooking dark green hills and a turquoise sea. She’s got a camera around her neck and lots of long, dark hair; they have their arms around each other and she’s mid-sentence, mouth open indignantly. Erik is laughing, delighted. He looks down at his brother, who is resting an elbow on his knee, looking up with irritation and some unfathomable expression mingling on his face.

“I see you’ve replaced me,” he calls down, aiming for light.

Erik rolls his eyes. “Don’t be childish. Give me my phone.”

“No. Not a chance. Not until you tell me all about her.”

“Wille, I’m serious.”

“I’m serious. I’ve never seen you look this happy around a girl before.”

“Why are you such a brat?” Erik says and slumps back against the trunk. “Giang and I are over, so there’s not much to say.”

“Then why have you still got her picture on your phone?”

“I…” Erik pauses, and then pinches the bridge of his nose, uncharacteristically solemn. “It was…she’s amazing, Wille, but it could never be more than what it was. We both knew it. I’ve got this,” he gestures at the palace just visible through the trees, white and gold against the pale blue sky, “and she’s going to be human rights lawyer, back in Vietnam. There’s no way it would have worked.”

There’s something in Erik’s voice that Wille hasn’t heard before, a kind of resigned longing. He climbs back down onto the same branch as Erik, hands back the phone, nudges him with a foot. “I’m sorry.”

“Thanks,” Erik says, and exhales. “I wish you could have met her. You’d have really liked each other.”

Wille looks down at the phone again, the girl with her bright eyes and her mouth full of opinions and the joy in her face, and feels his heart break for Erik, just a little.

“Yeah,” Wille says. “Looks like I would.”

v.

Two weeks later, when he steals Erik’s phone on a whim, the lock screen has changed again – the lake in summer, a picture of him and Erik splashing each other and yelling, two golden princes horsing around in the sunshine.

Wille rubs his chest absently and wonders why it’s suddenly so hard to breathe.

vi.

Wille will never admit to anyone that he is terrified of wanting things.

It’s a foolish, childish fear – he knows that, hates himself for it – but it’s always there, a stain spreading slowly through the background of his life. Whenever he wants something, the world always finds a way to take it away.

Ergo, he shouldn’t be surprised when he finds himself in his bathroom, staring at his cut-up face in the mirror, the world fracturing around him. His head pounds. He’s gripping the edges of the sink hard enough to hurt his bruised knuckles. Why does he always fuck it up? Why can he never get anything right? Why can’t he handle just being normal?

Worthless, a voice in his head says, cruel and merciless, what kind of prince are you?

“I don’t want to be a prince at all,” he tells it.

Ungrateful, it replies, and he can hear it echoing all around him off the tiles. He sinks to the floor and his knees, buries his face in his hands. All he can hear is that one word, round and round and round, his chest is on fire and there are black spots at the edges of his vision. He thinks he might be dying. He wonders whether it would be best if he did.

But he doesn’t. And the panic eventually washes back out to sea, to a usual, bearable level, the way it always does. He gets dressed. He makes his statement, stammering his way through the first lines, Erik on one side, knee pressed firm and comforting against Wille’s thigh, and his mother a disapproving statue on the other. He takes the days second by second, minute by minute. His things are packed up by hands that aren’t his. His suit is ironed and hung out. He gets ready and goes downstairs to find Erik waiting for him, leaning against the red Ferrari that is Wille’s favourite car, their security detail already lined up in heavy black Jeeps.

“I’m sorry you can’t just fuck up like any other teenager,” Erik says as he gets in.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Ok,” Erik shrugs. “Whatever.”

He puts music on and puts the accelerator down and then they are whipping through the country that is theirs by birth-right, Erik waving at passers-by in the small towns they drive through. And then they’re at Hillerska, which he’s heard stories of from Erik but has never seen; it looks like their summer home, all white walls and box hedges and statues, a fountain, the autumn colours crowning the trees like kings.

Cousin August is waiting on the drive with the Headmistress. Wille wipes his expression from his face, tries to hide the way his shoulders tense. August smiles, jokes around with Erik, ruffles Wille’s hair – Wille resists the urge to clench his fists, to shove August off. He smiles through his teeth for the cameras, pushes all of his feelings down into the small box he built for all his public appearances, shakes hands and nods and appears attentive, pretends that he’s listening to August and his vomit-inducing commentary.

But then he sees the boy in the back row of the choir – the soloist – all dark eyes and untamed curls and stubborn jaw, and the boy locks eyes with him and raises the volume, and the tightness in Wille’s chest starts to ease for the first time in weeks.

It’s just beautiful music, he tells himself. It’s just an appreciation of obvious talent. It’s not a big deal. It’s not the fact that listening to this boy sing feels like spring, like waking from an old nightmare to the world blooming around him. He doesn’t want anything more. He can’t.

A particular talent he’s developed is lying to himself.

“That soloist was very good,” Erik says casually as they find their way outside after the service for yet more photographs.

Wille feels his cheeks warm. “Yeah.”

“We’ll have to poach him for the royal choir.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Wille mutters. Above his head, one of the trees is blooming, laden with dark yellow flowers that Wille hadn’t noticed before. How had he not noticed it? He’s not sure. It’s pretty though, and counting the flowers makes him feel a little more grounded, a little less like he’s going to float away. He makes himself smile on rote for the photographs, shoulders stuck, when Erik leans in softly and says,

“On the count of three, run for it. One, two, three…”

And then Erik is off and Wille is bolting after him, the sudden breathless laughter like lightning. They half tumble down a slope together towards the lake, and Wille wishes he could freeze this one tiny moment and live in it forever.  

vii.

When Simon kisses him for the first time, Wille panics. He hates that this is his first reaction, after years of noticing men – shoulders and stubble and deep voices, hates that he freezes, that he can’t do anything until Simon is beginning to walk away.

“Wait, wait, wait,” he says, panicking, grabbing a clumsy handful of Simon’s shirt. Simon stops, allows himself to be reeled back in. “Wait.”

Simon doesn’t say anything, just steps back into Wille’s space again, closer than just-friends but not an inch further. The message is loud and clear. Wille swallows the ash in his mouth, keeps his hold of Simon’s shirt. He can do this. He can do this.

He leans forward, inches at a time, heart thudding so fast he thinks it could achieve lift-off. Simon’s eyes are half-shut, watching, and he slides one hand into Wille’s hair. Wille shivers at the touch, at the feel of someone else’s skin against his own, at the realization that he’s been wanting this for a very long time. He counts his breaths, inches in even closer, and presses his mouth to Simon’s.

And Simon kisses him back.

And Wille knows that he should be panicking still – princes don’t kiss other boys, what is he doing - but his head is quiet, echoing, hallowed. There is nothing but this - moonlight and cool air washing through the half-open window, Simon’s hand in his hair and Simon’s hips between his knees. Eventually, Simon pulls away, flushed, smiling. His free hand is cupping Wille’s face, one thumb resting against Wille’s eyebrow; his eyes are searching.

“That was nice,” he says. Wille nods, rests his forehead against Simon’s. He’s kind of beyond words. He’s kind of beyond anything right now. He doesn’t know what he’s feeling but there is a thought caught in circles, a broken record player: I like him I like him I like him I like him. “Can I kiss you again?”

“Yes,” Wille whispers, careful not to shatter the perfectness of the moment. “Yes, you can.”

viii.

It is two nights after Erik’s funeral and the night before Wille goes back to school. He’s spent two hours trying to sleep, tossing from one side of the too-big bed to the other. All he can see is his mother, crying over the empty place at their table. All he can hear, going round in circles, is his mother’s voice: you are the crown prince now. You’ve got to do better, Wilhelm. Do you understand me? There are no more mistakes. And get that gum out of your mouth.

It’s torture. He tosses aside the covers and sinks to the floor. His knees come into contact with the box that’s been there since the morning of the funeral, ignored. He hasn’t been able to even look at the thing, had shoved it half under his bed, but now he switches on his lamp, pulls it out and opens it up, tearing at the brown tape with his bitten-off nails. The pain helps him focus.

At the top are a couple of cards, addressed to him. The press office has been deluged in the things, but these ones are from suitable people; one has a return address of Kensington Palace, familiar handwriting. Wille shoves it into the pocket of his sweatshirt, throws the others on the floor.

The box is a collection of assorted random things. He doesn’t know who put them together – certainly not his parents, he thinks, perhaps Malin or another member of Erik’s staff, people who thought he’d see value in things his parents would have thrown away. It’s postcards of famous artworks and Erik’s sketchbooks and a favourite stick he’d used when he and Wille went on monster hunting expeditions as kids. It’s notes and received letters, a tiny model of a Viking ship, the signet ring Erik had lost two years ago and never managed to find. Wille strings it onto the cross he has around his neck and feels for the last item – a folder of pictures, snagged in the bottom. The pictures are random, in no particular order, but they’re all candid – Erik and Wille as kids covered in mud, baby Wille sitting on a horse in front of a beaming Erik, a photo of their mother as a young woman with her arm around an unknown girl, photos of their cousins, photos of friends. And then, a series of polaroids of Erik with Giang – slow dancing, kissing under mistletoe, arguing fiercely about something, framed in the courtyard of some grand college building, covered in cream and streamers and shrieking with laughter.

Wille stares at them for a long time. There is a storm brewing in his ribcage, grief and anger and helplessness, and suddenly he’s wondering if anyone has reached out to Giang. If anyone even knew to try.

He’s had Erik’s phone since the accident, was given it with various other things like Erik’s watch and his crucifix; it’s the work of moments to recharge it, to find the number Erik hasn’t deleted, and type it into his own phone. This is reckless. This is stupid. But it’s the right thing to do. He can feel it, bone-deep. He presses call.

It rings for a long time.

And then, “A-lo?”

“Hi,” he says, in English. “Is this Giang?”

“Speaking,” she replies, suddenly professional. Human rights lawyer, he remembers. She must be used to unexpected phone calls. “How can I help?”

“I, um. It’s Prince Wilhelm. Of Sweden. Erik’s brother.”

He hears her inhale, sharp, pained. There is a long silence. “Hi, Wilhelm. I…is there any reason you’re phoning?”

“I, um.” Wille runs a hand through his hair, starts to pick at his nails. “I assume you heard the news.”

“Yes. Our friends told me.”

“Ok. I’m…I just…I wanted to phone. To see how you were doing.” Blood is rushing to his cheeks, and he stares fixedly at a point on the carpet. “Also I have some of Erik’s things here. Photographs of you two. I wanted to know if you’d like them.”

“That’s very sweet,” Giang says. Her voice is choked, like she’s holding back tears. “Yes, please. I would.”

“Ok.” Wille brings his hand up to his mouth; the familiar feel of his fingers against his teeth is calming. “Also, I…Erik didn’t say much about you, but I…I could tell that he loved you. So much. And my parents won’t ever acknowledge that, but it shouldn’t be unsaid. So…thank you, for making him happy. There weren’t many people that could really do that.”

“Oh Wilhelm,” she says. “Thank you.” Then, unexpected, “how are you doing?”

“Um,” Wille says. He can taste blood now, doesn’t pull his hand away. “Shit, honestly.”

“Yeah. I can imagine,” she sighs. “Bless you. At least I get to grieve in private.” Another awkward pause. “I just…never got to say goodbye to him, you know? We’d ended things, but it was still…there was still hope, somewhere, and I just…it’s hard.”

“I know. I didn’t either.” Wille sniffs. “I was supposed to go home and see him that weekend, but I’d decided to stay at school, and I can’t…I just…”

“What-ifs never make anything easier.”

“I know.”

Giang sighs again. “Did he ever tell you how we met?”

“No.” Wille pauses. “Do you…would you mind…”

“Yeah,” Giang says, and launches into a story about a debate at the Oxford Union, whatever that is, and the hecklers from the audience, and Erik coming to find her afterwards, buying her a drink to apologise for the rudeness of his friends. Of a ridiculous, magical, drunken adventure through Oxford and the secret knowledge that comes with finding your person. And so Wille reciprocates, with stories of their childhood, with all the pranks Erik used to pull just to make Wille laugh. And by the time they’re running out of steam, it’s nearly two in the morning and Wille feels a little lighter, just, with getting to talk to someone who knew Erik as he did.

“Look,” Giang says at the end of the call, “I know I’m several thousand miles away, but if you need help or want to talk, I’m here, ok? I really appreciate you phoning.”

“Yeah,” Wille says, “I will.”

ix.

And then everything happens. And then, suddenly, he and Simon are a thing. It’s undefinable and weird and terrifying, but that doesn’t matter. What does is that Simon doesn’t give a shit about the legacy of the royal family, that Simon treats him like he’s any other boy. What matters is that Simon treats him like something precious, that he apparently sees and likes Wille the person far more than Wilhelm the prince.

When he’s with Simon, he forgets about the history squatting and gloating on his shoulders, crushing him into dust. When he’s with Simon, the grief lodged like a fist-sized stone where his heart should be. When he’s with Simon, everything roaring in his head goes quiet.

He doesn’t know what he did to have this, to have Simon who sings spring into life, whose hands are an epic poem all to themselves, whose smile could level a city. He doesn’t know how the hell he’s going to make it work, is terrified of anyone finding out, but it’s fine. It’s baby steps. It’s a start.

“See this is the thing,” Simon is saying. They are out in the woods, far enough away from school not to run into anyone, and the bodyguards are hanging back enough that Wille feels ok about holding Simon’s hand, “It’s all a knock-on effect. Empowering people here empowers people elsewhere – it’s all global.”

“You know I’m not allowed to have opinions.”

“Well,” Simon frowns, “you are around me.”

Wille glances over his shoulder, then leans in and kisses him. The autumn leaves crunch under their boots, and Simon makes a happy humming noise against Wille’s mouth. When they break apart, Simon is surrounded by a ring of snowdrops, white petals unfolding against the brown November mulch.

“You are horrible for my self-control,” Simon gripes, but he’s grinning, all crinkled eyes. Wille kisses him again, brief, and bends to pick one of the snowdrops and tuck it behind Simon’s ear. He’s still getting used to Simon’s gift, still getting used to the fact that at least that part of the myths is true, but that’s all it is – a thing to get used to. He doesn’t know why his child self was so scared. There’s nothing but beauty in what Simon can do.

Something he doesn’t think: if that bit of the stories is true, what else could be as well?

“Keep talking.”

“Ok, so, I found this book in the library and the author was saying that she believes justice is a social issue rather than just a political one, right? And therefore, because some social issues are global, justice is a matter of social connection – it’s not just geographically bound by like, the political borders of Sweden. And then because we’re all structurally contributing to these social issues, these injustices, then we all have a duty to work to counteract it.” Simon pauses, heaves in a breath, “I know we’re building for the future right now, but I wish we could do something now, you know.”

“Could we have a climate strike?” Wilhelm asks, half-joking. “The other schools are doing it.”

Simon’s eyes light up: “I mean that’s not a horrible idea. But we’d have to get everyone else on board for it to be effective.”

“Hmm,” Wilhelm shakes his head. “I can think of exactly five people who would be on board.”

“Bad odds.”

“Bad odds. Why is the system like this?” Simon groans and knocks his head against Wilhelm’s shoulder. “Still think we should do it. Maybe for the conference of parties in January. It’ll give us time to drum up support. No luxury holidays if the world is turning into a hellhole, right?”

“Unless you like sailing,” Wille amends, and Simon snorts with laughter.

Another thing about being with Simon is that he actually talks about the system. Wille knows from experience that all the people who benefit from it like to pretend that it doesn’t exist, which makes having conversations about it difficult. But he can, with Simon. And Simon encourages him to go looking for information, recommends Instagram and TikTok creators and articles and books, encourages him to talk about what he learns.

And learning about social justice is like a natural disaster – in that once it starts, there is no way Wille can stop. The more he reads, the angrier he gets, and the more he wants to know. And so he often ends up spiralling when he can’t sleep, alternating between texting Simon and scrolling until the small hours, looking at all these people who expand his world beyond the borders his life so far has imposed.

One night, he’s lying in bed, aching and cavernous and feeling like he might just fall off the edge of the world. He’s not really paying attention to his phone. He’s not really paying attention to anything, but then his eyes catch on a post with a line of cartoon people, different pronouns floating about their heads. It’s captioned: hello, we’re here! #nonbinarydayofvisibility and his eyes get stuck on the drawing with he/they scrawled above it.

The realization is an elastic band, snapping back into place; feelings rising like floodwater. He throws his phone across the room and rolls over, buries his face in his pillow.

It’s a non-starter. He can talk all he wants about climate strikes and queer creators and the possibility he might not actually even be just a boy, but the limits always reimpose themselves. He’s in a web, caught, trapped, and there is no way of ever getting out.

x.

The Christmas palace is glittering in its finery, all towering Christmas trees, and tasteful paper lanterns, and festive heirlooms. Everything smells like pomanders and spiced wine. Usually Wille would be basking in the festive excitement; he and Erik would steal food and make unsanctioned additions to the decorations, causing quiet havoc to keep themselves entertained. But there’s no Erik. And there’s no Simon. And none of this fucking matters anymore.

“It’s for the best,” his father says, the only time anyone brings up the video and the fact that August fucking betrayed every trust Wille and Erik had ever placed in him and the fact that Wille has broken not only his own heart but shattered the heart of the best person he’s ever met. “You’ll be grateful in the long run.”

“What for?” Wille snarls back.

“Stability,” his father says, claps his shoulder, and turns to go. “You’ll need it when you’re king, young man, like your mother did. Don’t discount it because it’s not exciting.”

Not a young man, Wille thinks as his father walks away. And why would he want anything like his parents? Separate apartments, civility and friendship and trust, sure, but not passion, not feeling. Just dull days and dull years, life wasted on polite smiles and holding his tongue. He knows what love feels like. He has opinions, now, thoughts, questions about the world and his place in it. And why should he uphold a system that does nothing but break him down?

So he starts talking. He starts talking back.

“I’m sure everyone spending Christmas in homeless shelters because there isn’t enough social housing is thrilled by the idea of lifting the rent cap,” he says to the Prime Minister.

“Hi, how are all the protestors your police forces tear-gassed last summer?” he asks a cousin’s wife, who just so happens to be a senior American political figure.

“Yes, well, maybe you should stop talking about things you don’t know the first thing about,” he suggests to a pair of relatives discussing trans people in a way that makes him want to be sick.

“Wille,” his mother says once, drawing him aside. “Why are you so determined to punish us? Come on. Don’t ruin Christmas for everyone.”

“I’m just pointing out the truth.”

“You’re making everyone uncomfortable.” She narrows her eyes. “Are you wearing mascara?”

“No,” Wille lies, brazening it out. She meets his gaze for a second and then reaches out to straight his tie.

“Stop behaving like a child,” she says. “What would Erik say?”

Erik would ‘accidentally’ spill his drink over the cousin we know is a confirmed sexual predator, he thinks viciously. And then probably find some other subtle way to humiliate him too, and for good measure, probably sic his badass lawyer ex-girlfriend on him to round it all off.

He doesn’t say it though, and his mother re-joins the party with an airy laugh. After a while he turns to go.

So.

Christmas is horrible, but then it’s over. And then he’s just drifting around the empty halls, trying to convince himself not to burn the place down, breathing through the anger that simmers at the base of his sternum. He scrolls Simon’s Instagram, hating himself. When he gets tired of that, he finds places to curl up and watch memes, marking time, wondering what the fuck he’s going to do now.

And then.

And then - he’s coming back from a new hiding spot in the greenhouse and he’s halfway up the stairs when he hears voices – the butler, snooty and aloof, and a voice he’d know anywhere:

“The Crown Prince is not accepting visitors.”

“Look, I know. But I’m his friend and you have no idea how important this is.”

“Miss Ehrencrona, please.”

Wille nearly doesn’t turn. Nearly. But there’s something steely in Felice’s voice, something absolutely determined, and so he goes back down to the hall where Felice is arguing, hovers in the doorway. For the first time in living memory, her hair is unstraightened, is a pile of kinky curls on top of her head. She’s not wearing make-up, is in leggings and a sweater that says I never fall off, I dismount with style, which absolutely cannot belong to her. Her phone is in her hand, and one earbud is in.

“Felice?”

“Wille, thank god,” she says, moving across the hall to him. The butler sniffs and retreats to the opposite door, watchful. Then, into her phone, “Sara, I’ve found him.”

“Sara?” Wille frowns at her. “Why are you talking to Sara?”

“Why am I…wait, Wille, has no-one told you?”

He’s frozen, staring. That tone of voice cannot mean anything good. “Has no-one told me what?”

“Fuck,” Felice says, and he blinks at the fierceness in her voice, “The fucking…I told you this was the reason,” and then she meets his eyes and says, “Wille, Simon’s disappeared.”

There is a moment where the world just stops. Sound fades out, and the edges of the room are blurring. Felice’s mouth is moving but he doesn’t know what she’s saying. And then the panic hits him like freight train, all blaring horn and screeching steel and burning rubber. His knees buckle. Someone’s hand is suddenly firm under his elbow, holding him upright. He can’t breathe. Fuck, he can’t breathe. He can’t…

“Wille,” Felice is saying, “Wille. Shit, what’s happening?”

“Panic attack,” someone is saying. “It’s ok. We’re used to this.”

When Wille comes back to himself, he’s sitting on the velvet chaise longue in one of the many parlours in the East Wing, head in his hands. His entire body is shaking. There is a glass of water by one foot. He presses his fingers into his temples, hard enough to hurt, stares down at the pattern in the carpet. Simon is missing. Simon is gone.

After a second, there’s a noise and then Felice’s fingers are closing around his wrists, pulling his hands away from his face. There’s a small metallic droplet of a scar on the inside of her wrist. He fixates on it, on the way the light skims off it like oil.

“Don’t hurt yourself,” she says, gently, and then she doesn’t say much for a while, waits for him to get his breath back, runs her fingers across the back of his hands.

“When?” he asks, eventually.

“Three days ago,” Felice says. Then, before he has to ask: “Sara and Linda had left him in his room, and when they got back from the supermarket he wasn’t there. Ayub and Rosh haven’t seen him. No-one from school has seen him. I helped them take it to the police, but there’s no CCTV footage. He’s vanished.”

“Fuck,” Wille says. “Fuck, I, how?”

“I don’t know. No-one knows. We, um…I don’t…we thought you might know something. We’d phoned the palace, but you never got back in touch. Sara is furious.”

“No-one told me.”

“I figured.”

“Fuck. How could this have happened?”

“I don’t know,” Felice says. “Worst case scenario is that he’s been taken. He wasn’t careful enough with his gift, and someone saw money to be made.”

“Wait, you…”

“Sara told me. Not important. Other option is that he’s gone somewhere on his own, and that he’ll turn up, but…it’s been three days.”

“Three days?” Wille stares at her. “It’s been three days and they didn’t tell me?”

“Evidently not. Look, I know you’re angry -  I am too – but this is…we’ve got to find him. It’s…” she swallows, “it’s not looking good, Wille.”

“I don’t care,” Wille says, immediate. “I don’t care what the odds are – he can’t…this can’t…I’m in. I am in.”

“Ok,” Felice says. “Sara and Linda are coming to my house after they’re done searching. We’ll meet them there.”

“Ok,” Wille says, fumbling for his phone, nearly dropping it. He sends a text to his mother: going to Felice’s to help her choose a new horse. Then says, “I’ll go and pack my things and tell the security. Half an hour.”

Felice smiles and squeezes his hand once before letting him go.

xi.

“I spoke to Micke,” Sara says.

They are in the orchard at Felice’s parents’ house bundled up against the cold, with flasks of hot chocolate Felice’s housekeeper had made them cooling between their ankles. Sara and her mother had arrived a couple of hours ago, drawn and wan-faced and red-eyed. Felice’s mother is away but Felice’s father had been on full host mode, gracious and charming, “anything for a friend of our crown prince, god, what an awful thing to have happened. Here, let me get you a cup of tea.”

It has taken this long to be able to get away, but Felice had finally said, “We’re going to take Sara for some air,” and forcefully manhandled all of them out of the conservatory doors and down across the lawn.

“You did what?” Felice turns to look at her, mouth open. “Sara…”

“Don’t. I did what I had to.” Sara runs a hand through her hair. “And I know where Simon is.”

“You…”

“I didn’t want to say anything in front of Mama,” Sara shrugs. “I just…it’s not something she should have to deal with. He’s put her through enough shit.”

Felice narrows her eyes. “And you should?”

“I chose to,” Sara says.

“Where is he?”

“Micke made a deal with the Sleeping Court – years ago, before he even met Mama,” Sara says, like the Sleeping Court is a fact of existence and not a fucking myth. Wille’s stomach contracts to a point. He could adjust for gifts, when he met Simon, but this…this is something else. “He traded the life of his firstborn for never coming down from his highs.”

“But…you’re his firstborn,” Felice says.

“Jesus,” Wille adds.

“I wasn’t there when they came to complete the deal,” Sara says. “And Simon, for whatever reason,” this with a glare at Wille, “decided to go with them. I suppose being gifted was a fair enough exchange for not being the oldest.”

“Not his fault,” Felice says, automatic, like it’s something she’s said a lot. “Ok. So how do we get him back?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know.” Sara has her hands in her hair, and Felice reaches for her, pulls them away. “I don’t know. I don’t fucking know. Micke was worse than useless, and I…the Sleeping Court has been a story for so long, I just…”

“I have books,” Wille says, and Sara pauses, eyeballs him.

“You what?”

“Royal libraries,” he lies. He doesn’t want to touch the fact that his mother might have been right; that this was his duty. He should know what to do. He doesn’t want them to know how badly he’s fucked up, yet again. “We have lots of things that aren’t open to the public. I can…we can see if there’s anything in there.”

xi.

It is dark and late, and they have spent all day going through books, piecing together what is out there. Felice and Sara have both fallen asleep curled into each other on Felice’s bed, but there is no way Wille can stop, not with Simon’s life on the line. In any case, he’s used to not being able to sleep.

He lifts a book from Felice’s chest, tucks a blanket around them both, and moves his pile of notes and papers into the small sitting room adjacent to Felice’s bedroom. All through their research bender, Felice has organised food, logistics, run interference with her father – she’s such a good person, such a good friend, and Wille resolves to be better to her and make more of an effort. He pours a glass of water, goes back to his notes.

There is a lot of material, but not much of it is particularly helpful or relevant. There are old stories of deals with the fae, a couple of ancient travellers’ accounts, crumbling maps of Sweden with ominous-looking stains, timelines of fae sightings, and a pseudo-scientific journal dedicated to the study of dreams as a way to communicate with the sleeping world. Most of it is outright ridiculous, and his fingers drift up to his chest, pressing hard. They don’t have time to be wasting on scraping history for clues.

He sits back on his heels after a second, digs his thumbs into his temples again. It feels like he’s on a tightrope, like he’s falling and the wind is screaming in his ears but solid ground is nowhere to be seen. He’d take a crash over this. He’d take anything other this.

Something sharp is digging into his leg and he reaches into the pocket of his sweatshirt, pulls out a card. The one with the return address in London. Henry. He opens it, finally, draws a finger over the beautiful ink penmanship – it’s a lovely note, kind and understanding, and he remembers vaguely that Henry had lost a beloved father, that Henry knows how this feels. At the end it says: if you ever need to talk and a phone number.

He hasn’t seen Henry in years. He hasn’t been able to face it, really, the fact that Henry is out and happy. But Henry is gay and Henry is a youngest royal too, and Henry…Henry might know something. He stares at the card, hears Erik’s voice in his head:

Why are you so convinced you have to do this alone?

And then finds his phone, types in the number. It rings for several seconds, and Wille brings his hand up to his mouth, bites hard enough that he can taste blood.

“Hello?” a mellow, English voice says. “Who is this?”

Wille’s going to fuck this up. He can’t do this. He can’t barrel into his cousin’s life and demand help, he has to do this on his own, he…

“Hello?” Henry tries again, guarded. “Look if you’re-”

Wille finally gets enough oxygen into his lungs to interrupt: “Wilhelm. Uh, Wille.”

“Oh,” Henry’s voice softens. “Hey.” Then, to someone in the background, “My little cousin, love. No, I don’t know. Could you turn the radio down?”

Wille hears a man’s voice grumble you turn the radio down and a sound like someone got whacked with a tea-towel. Wille can guess that this is Alex – Henry’s boyfriend. He knows about everything that happened in a vague sense; when it happened, he was too young to really engage, and now, well. He’s not been brave enough to look at their Instagram accounts, to see all the ways in which they’ve made it work. There was always no point tormenting himself with impossibilities.

A kitchen chair screeches, and then the sound of the radio is dimming. “Sorry, Wille. Alex is running on about six coffees and fasten seatbelts right now. What’s up?”

Wille’s words stick like burrs in the back of his mouth. He clears his throat once, twice, tries to make the English words line up. Henry is quiet, waiting.

“I…I need your help.”

“Ok.”

Wille tips over sideways onto the carpet, regards the dark ceiling, the moonlight cutting a pale swathe across the room. Henry is not going to have heard of it. Henry is going to laugh him off, and Wille will never find a way to Simon. “This is a…do you know anything about the sleeping world?”

“Wow, ok. That’s…” Henry pauses. “I do.”

Wille pinches his leg hard to make sure he’s not dreaming this. Henry is listening. Henry knows. “Have you been there?”

“…yes. Not an experience I want to repeat. Wilhelm, what’s going on?”

Wille takes a deep breath and forces himself to tell the story. Simon’s gift. The video. And now, this. He works through the anxiety and Henry is listening, quietly, with little humming noises every so often whenever Wille gets stuck and can’t manage something. When he’s done, Henry sighs, explosive.

“Well, first off, that’s fucking diabolical what happened to you, and I’m so sorry.”

“You…really?”

“Wille,” he says. “Has no-one…?”

“Malin, my bodyguard,” Wille says. “And my friend, Felice. But that’s it.”

“Wille,” Henry says, “god. Fuck. I’m just…really want to hit something right now. Right.”

“It’s ok,” Wille says, “I…it’s done. That bit. It’s not ok, but it’s over. I just…I have to get him back. I don’t care what happens after, he’s just…Simon’s important. Even if he doesn’t want to be with me anymore, he’s…he’s such a good person. He’s going to change the world. He deserves to live, not to be caught up in a trap set for his father.”

“Sweetheart,” Henry says, and there’s so much understanding in his voice that Wille feels tears burning in his eyes. “Ok. We can talk about that bit later. Sleeping Court first. Do you mind if I put you on speaker? It’s just me and Alex here, and Alex is good at things like this.”

A dog barks and Henry adds, dry: “Fine, and you too, David,” which startles a laugh out of Wille. He rolls over onto his front, starts tracing a pattern in the carpet. His stomach is in knots as he hears Henry move through his house, back towards the music, which stops abruptly.

“Uh, rude,” he hears a very American voice say. Then, “Hey, Wille. Nice to meet you, finally.”

“You were always going to meet him one day,” Henry says. “We need your weird brain, please.”

“Excuse you, my brain is a thing of beauty and also, for the record, it doesn’t come cheap.”

“I know,” Henry sounds fond and long-suffering. “Alex, this is serious.”

“Ok,” Alex says, and Wille literally hears the second serious-mode kicks in. “Is legal ass-kicking required?”

“Fairy ass-kicking.”

“My favourite. What’s happened?”

“The boy Wille is in love with has been taken by the Sleeping Court,” Henry says, perfectly calm, like it’s a perfectly normal conversation to be having. Wille’s hands are shaking. He can’t believe he’s being taken seriously. He can’t believe that this is happening. There’s a lump in his throat and the room is blurring.

“The boy…”

“Yeah.”

“Fuck. Ok. Well this is one hell of a fucked up situation,” Alex says, and that’s it, Wille just starts to cry, silently at first, and then presses a hand against his mouth. He’s sure Alex and Henry can hear him, because Alex is saying: “hey, pequeño, we’ve got this. We’ve got you, ok? Ain’t nothing no fucking fae can do against us, yeah?”

Wille wipes his eyes, sniffles. “Ok.”

“Ok,” Alex says, and he sounds so sure, so confident, like someone who knows exactly how to bend the world to his will. “Let’s do this.”

xii.

The phone call quickly turns into a video call. Henry puts the kettle on, and forces Wille to go and find something to eat too. Alex gets a whiteboard from somewhere in their house, props it on the kitchen island and begins brainstorming, Henry sitting just in view and commenting. Wille provides things from his books, has Google Translate up on his computer for words he doesn’t know. And he’s watching Alex and Henry work too, perfectly in sync – the way they finish each other’s sentences and all their casual touches, the way they’re locked in an orbit that only makes sense to them. He imagines this being him and Simon, plotting together, mugs of tea at their elbows and a cat stalking across the table and he wants, more than he has words to express.  

It’s seven am his time and one am theirs when they finally settle on something that might work. Alex texts him a picture with the beginnings of the plan.

“Good luck,” he says and tilts the phone so Wille can see all three of them: Alex, Henry, and David the dog, a dopey beagle who has been inputting via bark.

“We’ve got your back,” Henry says. “Keep us in the loop, ok?”

“I want to meet this boy when you rescue him,” Alex adds. “Come and visit us in New York this summer, ok?”

“Yes,” Wille says. “I’d like that.”

“Ok.” Henry gives him one last smile. “Keep safe, Wille. Go get your boy.”

He ends the phone call – feeling exhausted and drained, but the panic has drained away with it, and he stares at the photograph, traces the steps of the plan.

“Who was that?” Felice’s voice says from the doorway, voice rusty and thick with sleep. She’s wrapped up in an embroidered robe, rubbing her eyes; after a second, Sara appears behind her, leans an elbow on Felice’s shoulder.

“My cousin. I think I’ve got a plan.”

“I?” Sara asks.

“You are not going on your own,” Felice continues.

“I am. I have to.”

Both of them level him with identical unimpressed stares. Wille squares his shoulders and stares back. “There more of us there are, the more leverage they’ve got. The fae will use anything against us. And anyway, my position affords me more protection, so it makes sense that I should go alone.”

“Your position?” Sara’s voice is scathing.

“Royal,” Wille says. “It matters to them. Tradition matters to them. We need to play the game on their terms, until we don’t.”

Sara mutters something under her breath which is probably uncomplimentary, but the fact that she doesn’t say it aloud means something. Felice heaves a sigh.

“Ok, I see your point. But it’s unfair to ask us to sit here and do nothing whilst you go off and risk your life. I can’t. Sara can’t.”

“I…”

Sara cuts over him: “Could you cause a distraction?”

Felice half turns. “Maybe?”

“Worth a try.”

“Huh?” Wille asks, and they both give him another look, so he subsides. It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t have the bandwidth for their secrets. He hands them the phone and rests his head on his palm, watches them pore over the plan, murmuring to each other. Sara tucks one of Felice’s curls behind her ear. Eventually they look up.

“Ok,” Felice says. “We’ll try and draw them all off, once you’re in. That’ll be your chance.”

“What are you going to do?”

Sara raises her eyebrows. “Bring my brother back and we’ll tell you.”

xiii.

The trick to getting into the sleeping world is to find a doorway and to keep walking.

Stopping means being stuck in the void between worlds. Hesitating means taking a wrong path. To get to the sleeping world, you have to trust yourself. They have no time, space, or patience for doubts.

Wille walks through forests of laughter and skies full of burning clouds. He walks through misty swamps and a world made of nothing but coloured lights. He walks through a coffin-dark night, the silence ringing furiously in his ears. And then he reaches a wall made of wind and the voices start, more knowledge coalescing in his head than actual sound.

“Who are you?”

“Wilhelm, of the Royal House of Bernadotte, Crown Prince of Sweden,” Wille says. The iron hidden in the inside pocket of his jacket is a freezing weight, and he resists the urge to reach for it, to give himself away. Enough of the stories say that only a fool walks into the Sleeping Court unarmed. “I demand an audience.”

“And what right have you to demand an audience with The Radiance?”

“The agreement between our people, the one forged by King Arthur of England.”

“The agreement? The agreement is dead. Your people put an end to it with their machines, with their disbelief.”

“And how is that my fault?”

“We saw you as a child. You closed yourself off from us. You didn’t keep the door open.”

“You terrified me,” Wille protests. “I was only a kid.”

“The world is a terrifying place, little prince. You cannot just shut it in a box and hope it doesn’t crawl out in the middle of the night.”

“Well…I’m sorry.”

“That means nothing, now. You will not pass.”

Wille bites his lip, and then unleashes his back up. “You will let me pass, unless you really want a repeat of the Claremont-Diaz affair?”

“Are you threatening us?”

“No. I’m reminding you. Alex told me what happened, you see, and I’m entirely sure you don’t want to do that again.”

There is a long, long pause, and then the voice says: “The Radiance will see you now.”

The wall melts, spreading beneath Wille’s feet in a wave of warmth that smells like raspberries. There is a buzzing noise and a phalanx of cat-sized bees swoops towards him, a plate of fruit harnessed underneath them. Wille shakes his head; the bees’ buzz becomes disapproving and they disappear with a pop. The world is swimming like an impressionist painting. Around him, there is the suggestion of columns, a ruined temple open to a multicolour sky full of the possibility of weird creatures.

Wille digs his nails into his palms, hard. He cannot see anyone, but he can feel eyes on the back of his neck. Next to his ear, something sighs and then the air is shimmering, sometimes a person, sometimes a creature with tentacles and eyes and wings, slipping in and out of view. It can only be one thing.

“The Radiance.” Wille bows, shallow.

“Prince Wilhelm. To what do we owe the pleasure?”

“I’m looking for someone. I believe he’s down here.”

“Your lover?” The Radiance says. “How sweet.”

“Is he here?”

“Is he here?” The Radiance echoes, and then deafening laughter is ringing out from all around him. Wille controls his flinch, lifts his chin.

“I want to see him.”

“You ask much,” The Radiance says, but then it makes a sound like a crow that drips black tar at its feathered feet. The columns shift into arches, a cathedral, an amphitheatre, and suddenly Wille can see statues around the walls, the most solid thing in the room. A horrified second later, he realises that they aren’t statues at all – they’re people. And third from the left on the bottom rung is Simon, face blank, eyes vacant, singing softly. There is a green-gold tinge to his skin, there are flowers in his hair; he looks half-dead, like he’s halfway through turning into a myth. Faded flowers appear in the mist around his feet, and The Radiance suddenly has one clutched in a claw, its form becoming briefly more corporeal.

Wille cannot stop staring at him, but Simon doesn’t seem to notice. He keeps singing. His voice is raspy, worn-out. Wille can hear Alex in his head: they bind people’s souls to the land of dreams and drain them dry. It’s horrible, but it’s a survival thing. And most people know what they’re signing up to.

“What would you do to have him back?”

This time, he hears Henry: be careful what you say.

“What would you accept?”

“Only a high price. He’s valuable, you see – and the result of a fair deal. He came with us willingly, you know.”

“Willing is a matter of perspective.”

“Indeed.”

The feeling of being watched is intensifying, leaden and uncomfortable. Wille gets the sense that other fae are crowding around, out of sight, intangible to human senses. He resists the urge to turn and look, doesn’t break eye contact with The Radiance.

“What would you call a high price?”

“Bargaining, we see,” The Radiance laughs, grating, “an act of daring. A sacrifice. A fight. Something that we can live off, for a while. But you’re not a daring person, are you, Prince Wilhelm? You deny your true self. You allow others to crush you. You don’t know how to fight.”

The Radiance’s words are designed to be cutting. He knows this from all the stories – fae are honest, and sometimes honesty is the cruellest weapon. But he lets it glance off – there’s no pain in being told something he already knows.

“I know.”

The Radiance shimmers, a tentacle turning bright orange, edges solidifying. “A truth. Rare, for your kind.”

“And precious to yours.”

“Such a duality. The reason we cannot coexist, despite the benefits it was designed to bring.”

Wille opens his mouth – to say what he doesn’t know, but suddenly the sky starts to rain stars, burning chunks of rock, red and orange and white and blue, splashing down and sending waves of heat and cold rippling through the air around them.

“What is…” The Radiance says, and hisses, echoed by the chorus of invisible subjects.

And then the world goes dark. Felice. Sara. It has to be. This is his chance. He moves on instinct through the sightless, suffocating black. Something – someone – is glowing in the dark, a faint bronze light. Simon. Wille falls to his knees, feels for the iron sequestered in his pocket. It burns his fingers. He presses it to Simon’s wrist, to his pulse, holds his own against it too. Simon’s eyes are blank. Wille closes his own eyes, sends up a little prayer, and then pulls all his conviction and his love and his pain into one shining, glowing feeling and says: “I command you to release him.”

There is resistance, a burning pain in his wrist like a thin line of molten metal wrapping around his wrist. There is a feeling in his chest like his whole body is caving in, like his soul is tearing loose from his body. He chokes on a scream, closes his eyes, focuses on the feeling, on the reason for why he’s doing this. For his future. For the world. For Simon.

It had been about four in the morning and they’d been discussing the lore of souls, the way the fae feed off them. And Wille had remembered a story, had said: so what happens if I bind his soul to mine?

And Henry had said: “That hasn’t been done in the history of human-fae relations.”

And Alex had said: “That doesn’t mean it can’t be done.”

Henry had frowned, upset at the thought. And Wille had nodded, allowed them to relegate it to a back-up plan. But he knows that The Radiance is toying with him, letting him talk himself into a corner. And The Radiance won’t let Simon go easily.  

The pain fades, slowly. He opens his eyes to blinding white light which fades in increments, a watercolour world seeping back into view. The arches are more defined now, a court of strange fae, faded people, are clustering and pointing and whispering. But Simon is doubled over, gasping, clutching Wille’s fingers.

“Simon,” he’s saying. “Simon.”

“Wille,” Simon’s voice is faint, and when he looks up it’s him, he’s lucid. “It’s you. You’re here. You came for me.”

“You came for me first,” Wille says. He wants to pull Simon into his arms and never let go. He wants to kiss him senseless. “Come on. We’ve got to go.”

He tugs Simon to his feet. His chest feels bruised, like someone has tried to pull his heart through bone and muscle and skin with only their bare fingers. But Simon is here, his arm heavy on Wille’s shoulders, head lolling, and he has to finish this. He has to get them out.

When they turn, The Radiance is there, watching them with all eight sets of eyes. It looks brighter, more solid than before. Wille cannot help himself.

“You’re looking better.”

“That is very rude, Prince Wilhelm,” it says, raising all eight pairs of bushy eyebrows.

“A deal is a deal,” Wilhelm says. His legs are molten. “An act of daring.”

“We will admit that we didn’t see that coming. It’s almost as if the old days are back.”

“Perhaps they could be. Perhaps we could give each other another chance.”

“Perhaps,” The Radiance says. “We will be in contact.”

And then the entire court dissolves, and they are in a smithy. The air is boiling and he can hear a fire roaring. He’s instantly soaked with sweat. Simon has passed out, is a deadweight against Wille’s side. After the Sleeping Court, this amount of certain reality is enough to make Wille’s head spin.

A woman turns towards them, hands full of melting metal. She’s small and round, there’s a mark like a hammer across her face, and her short curls stand up like a sweat stained halo around her dark face. She spots them, rolls her eyes.

“Don’t just stare at me. The door is that way.”

She gestures at a door. An archway leads out into a bustling market hall full of strange, uncanny things that Wille’s brain is too exhausted to compute, and there is a door next to it, hazy and blue, swirling with clouds and stars. He takes it one step at a time, pulling Simon gracelessly with him. He reaches the door. He opens it, and they tumble through into rain and camera flashes. Wille trips over someone’s ballgown, and they both topple to the floor, landing on a red carpet on hard stairs full of people in beautiful dresses.

Someone begins to scream. The cameras keep flashing. Wille locks his fingers onto Simon’s and promptly passes out.

xiv.

The first day after their return is blurry. Wille wakes up in a hospital bed too far from Simon, screaming like he’s going to break into a million pieces. They are quickly reunited, and, after that, no-one tries to separate them again. He sees his mother, briefly, here and gone so quickly he wonders whether he hallucinated her. And then they’re being lifted into another ambulance and carried through the palace.

And then Wille wakes up, again, in his own bed, with Simon curled into a soft, sleeping shape beside him.

The days roll by, and Simon doesn’t stir.

“We don’t know what’s wrong with him,” the royal doctor says when Linda asks, adjusting the IV, the heart monitor set up at Wille’s bedside. “I’m sorry. We’ll do everything we can.”

They fall into a kind of vigil – Wille on the bed, still too raw from the bond to be any further from Simon than absolutely necessary, Linda in the armchair, Sara hunched up like a cat against one of the canopy poles and Felice on a beanbag brought from her house.

It’s nearly a week later when Simon finally wakes. Wille is paging through a book. Someone has taken his phone, but he doesn’t care. The outside world can wait. Everything can wait.

And suddenly, there is a quick inhale, the miraculous sound of someone wheezing back to life.

“Wille?”

Wille’s stomach is a handful of knots. He puts the book down. Simon’s eyes are cracking open, his beautiful voice is hoarse.

“Hey,” Wille says. “Hi. Simon.”

On instinct, he reaches out, brushes Simon’s hair back from his face.  His skin is still green-gold, iridescent, and his hair is full of buttercups and daisies and cornflowers, woven in with the curls. Simon turns his face into the touch.

“Where am I?” he murmurs.

“Drottningholm Palace. How are you feeling?”

“Wretched.”

“I’m not surprised. You’ve been out for five days.”

“What happened?”

“What do you remember?”

“Not much. I remember deciding to go, but I don’t know where. Darkness. Singing for light. And then you were there, and I…you saved me.”

“It was a team effort,” Wille corrects. “I couldn’t have done it without Felice and Sara.”

“Sara,” Simon says, tries to start struggling upright. Wille reaches out, pushes him back against the pillow. “Mama. Where are they?”

“Eating dinner. You’ll see them soon.”

“Ok.”

“The doctor said that you should try and eat something when you woke up.”

“I feel sick.”

“Just a little.”

“Only if you kiss me,” Simon says, thin, sounding so sorry for himself that Wille’s heart hurts.

“Ok. A kiss for every item of food,” he bargains.

“It’s a deal,” Simon says and lets Wille arrange the pillows, help him into a sitting position. He pours a glass of water and holds it up. He pulls the plate of crackers and grapes the kitchen has been keeping them supplied with. He presses a kiss to the side of Simon’s mouth, then holds a cracker up. Simon manages two whole crackers and a handful of grapes before his eyes start to drift shut again. Wille adjusts the pillows, but Simon half rolls so his face is pressed against Wille’s thigh. Wille takes it as an invitation to smooth his fingers through Simon’s hair again, the flowers leaving glittery dust against his fingers.

He doesn’t realise that someone is there, watching, until his mother says, quietly: “You love him.”

“Yes,” he says, not wanting to look up from Simon’s sleeping face. He’s known this conversation has been coming. He wonders why it hasn’t come sooner, why she hasn’t burst into the sickroom demanding answers – after all, his mother has never been known for holding back.

But the criticism he expects doesn’t come. And when he looks up, his mother is leaning against one of the bedposts and watching them, looking so very, very tired. Her eyes are slightly swollen, her make-up creased.

“I thought I’d lost you,” she says, finally.

“You thought you’d lost your heir.”

“No, Wille.”

“Well, forgive me for misunderstanding,” Wille says, not a little bitter, “I thought that’s all you cared about.”

“No. Not at all.” She brushes her hair off her face. “I know I haven’t been fair to you. I don’t have an excuse. I thought I was protecting you, but I was wrong.”

“You were destroying me,” Wille says, finally honest, and his mother swallows nods. “Why now?”

“Thinking that you have lost both of your sons puts a lot into perspective,” she replies, quiet. “And I’m sorry it took me so long to see.”

“I can’t just forgive you. It’s been too much,” Wille says. There’s a lump in his throat.

“I know. I don’t expect it. But…I’m going to try and make it up to you, if you’ll let me.”

“Ok,” Wille says, and then, on some small, childlike whim, reaches out his free arm. “Can I…um…can I have a hug?”

“Darling,” his mother says and sits down carefully on the bed, puts a tentative arm around his shoulders. He leans his head against her shoulder, breathes in her subtle, expensive perfume, and allows himself to hope that the future might be brighter.

xv.

Eventually, his body gets used to the fact that his soul is half attached to someone else’s, stops trying to revolt whenever he moves further than six feet away from Simon. So, after a few more days he manages to get up and shower and get changed, to leave a sleeping Simon with his family and escape to the music room down the hall. He sits at the piano and pulls out a piece of sheet music at random and begins to play, loses himself in the ebb and flow of it.

After a while there are footsteps, the weight of them well-known and beloved. Wille stops playing, half turns on the bench. Simon is swaying slightly on the spot, watching. Wille’s mouth goes dry, his hands slightly damp. He pulls them off the keys, folds his fingers tightly together.

“You’re looking better,” he says, for want of anything better.

“I still feel awful,” Simon replies. “But if I stay in bed any longer I’m going to mummify.”

“I know the feeling,” Wille moves over and pats the bench. “Sit down before you fall down and I won’t tell the doctors you’ve escaped.”

“Rude,” Simon says, but he sits, sways in, rests his forehead against the hollow of Wille’s throat, so Wille has a faceful of flowers and dark hair. “We should probably talk.”

“Yeah.” Wille exhales, breathes in the smell of spring – rain and cut grass and honeysuckle. He doesn’t know what to say, where to start. It’s all too enormous, too beyond the bounds of what he’d thought the world was. And even now, it’s fading – like the sleeping world can’t persist in his head now that he’s awake. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?” Simon’s voice is muffled. “Why?”

“I…well, for everything. For leaving you in a situation where they came for you-”

“They came for Sara,” Simon interrupts. “And they would have come no matter what happened. Don’t apologise for choices you had no hand in.”

“Ok.” Wille gently touches Simon’s shoulder blade, traces a line down it. Simon sighs, presses in closer. “I’m still sorry for leaving you. For hurting you. I’m sorry I was too much of a mess to even think about making it right. And I’m sorry for giving you no choice in the binding. I won’t blame you if you’re angry. We don’t…it doesn’t have to change anything, you’re not obliged to me just because…”

“Wille,” Simon says, lifts his head. His dark eyes are soft. “I’m not angry.”

“You’re-”

“You saved my life.”

“I bound our souls together. I didn’t ask if that was what you wanted.”

“You are…” Simon shakes his head. “I was too far gone to know. And, for the record – a choice between this and wasting away down there, dying at seventeen…I would choose this. Every time.”

The relief is like a knot releasing, all at once. Wille feels his shoulders inch downwards. He didn’t realise he’d been holding them so tightly.

“Why did you go in the first place?” Wille asks, eventually, trying to keep his voice light.

Simon looks away. “I…spur of the moment decision. There were four of them and one of me, and they were looking for Sara, and I…Sara’s only just found her peace. I couldn’t let them take that away.” He pauses, “and I was heartbroken and angry and I wanted to do something unignorable. A fuck-you to the world, to the system. It was only when I got there that I realised what the fae actually do to humans.”

“Alex says it’s not out of malice,” Wille offers faintly. Felice keeps saying that it’s not his fault, even now, but listening to Simon talk…it kind of is. And he’s going to have to learn to live with it. “They’ve been cut off from our world for so long that their own is dying, slowly. It doesn’t make it right, of course, but it’s…understandable.”

“Yeah. I know. They said, when they put me under the enchantment,” Simon shakes his head. Then, “who’s Alex?”

“Oh. Alex Claremont-Diaz.”

Simon’s mouth drops open. Wille laughs, once. “Wait, hold on, this is the important bit. Why were you talking to Alex Claremont-Diaz about the fae?”

“He’s dating my cousin. And apparently they had their own encounter with the fae, though fuck knows what actually happened. Neither of them would tell me.”

“You…oh my god. I can’t believe you’re on speaking terms with the most famous bisexual in the world.”

“Is this a crush?” Wille teases, suddenly light.

“He’s just so cool! And he’s Mexican! And he’s everything I want to be when I grow up.”

“He wants to meet you.”

“Stop. No.”

“Yeah. I told them all about you. We have a standing invitation to New York this summer.”

“Ok, I need a minute,” Simon says and buries his face in his free hand for a moment. “Ok. I’m going to have to process that. Where were we?”

“Having an intense and important conversation about surviving the Sleeping Court.”

“Right. Yes. Ok.” Simon looks up again, then down at their hands, millimetres from each other on the piano bench, the matching bands of iron seared around their wrists. “Are you ok with it?”

“What kind of question is that?”

“I’m serious.”

Wille tips his face up to the high, baroque ceiling. “Yes. Of course I am. I…Simon, I love you. I would do anything to make sure that you’re safe and that you’re happy. I just don’t want you to feel beholden to me for anything.”

“I don’t,” Simon says. “For the record. Like you said – I came for you first. We’re even.”

They sit in the quiet for a few more moments. Idly, Wille reaches out and plays a few notes on the piano, the first line of the Hillerska hymn.

“So, what now?” Simon asks, eventually.

“I…” the words are on the tip of Wille’s tongue. He pulls his gaze from the piano, meets Simon’s eyes. “I’m going to come out.”

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely.” Wille shakes his head. “The fae…said some things that I needed to hear. And before, I didn’t have support, I didn’t know I could stand up for things. I let my mother and her expectations dictate what I thought was important. But it’s bullshit. The world is changing. Why should the monarchy hold it back?” he pauses, “also, I’m nonbinary. I think.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. And queer. The label for that part doesn’t matter to me so much.”

“Wille.” Simon’s voice is warm, heartfelt. “That’s great.”

“You think?”

“Of course. I’m really proud of you.”

“I’m proud of me too. I’m done with trying to be someone I’m not. I’m done with keeping secrets.” Wille pauses, runs a hand through his hair. “And I don’t…if you…there’s a place for you. At my side. If you want it. But I understand if not.”

Simon is quiet for a while, reaches out to trace fingers across Wille’s cheek. Wille holds still, resists the urge to pull him close; Simon has got to make the decision on his own. Wille has made enough choices for the both of them.

“Are you asking me to be your queen?” he says, eventually.

“If that’s what you want.”

“I think…I don’t know about the royal thing. That’s…a lot.”

“If you can’t beat them, join them.”

“Wille,” Simon says, reproving, and then reaches out, pushes Wille’s hair behind their ears. “I…I want to be with you. Can we figure out the rest later?”

“Whenever you want,” Wille says, and then all he can think about is Simon’s exhausted face splitting into a smile, broad and joyful, the way Simon takes both of his hands and leans in to kiss him, once, twice, three times, like a promise from a long-lost story. Simon’s heartbeat is steady against his own, a constant glow, a north star, a lighthouse guiding him to safer shores. “I love you,” he murmurs against Simon’s mouth. “I love you, I love you, I love you.”

“I know,” Simon says. “I know.”

xvi.

05/01/22

Press Release

Crown Prince Wilhelm and his boyfriend are in recovery from a traumatic ordeal, the details of which will not be made public. They are doing well and will be making an appearance on their return to school in three days [8^th January 2022].

Crown Prince Wilhelm would also like to confirm that his previous statement was false, and that he was the second boy in the video released on 12^th December 2021. The Palace is taking private legal action against the creator of that video.

The Palace and the Royal Family will not take any questions at this time.

xvii.

“Are you ready?” Sara is calling up the stairs. “Come on! You know photographers get more feral the longer you make them wait!”

“One second,” Simon shouts back out of the open door. Wille is still adjusting his suit, the tie that belonged to Erik, smoothing his hands through his hair – pulled back with a gold pin Felice had gifted him. He and Simon had spent half the morning finishing packing and laughing over mascara, trading kisses that got more and more heated until Malin had banged on the door and called:

“Sir, you’ve got half an hour until the car is here. I would advise that clothes are necessary to face the public.”

“Urgh, why,” he’d groaned, half into Simon’s shoulder.

“Why clothes or why the public?” Simon had been too amused, tracing a finger across Wille’s ear.

“Both,” Wille had grouched, but they’d both managed to get themselves into the shower and get dressed in clothes appropriate for their first public appearance together. Now, Simon is digging around in his pocket, half-frowning. Wille turns away from the mirror.

“What are you doing?”

“Wait,” Simon hums, “here. Got it. A present, for the new year.”

“A…you didn’t have to get me anything.”

“I wanted to,” Simon says, and steps right up into Wille’s space, fidgeting with something in his hand. He reaches out and adjusts the embroidered lapel of Wille’s jacket, and sticks a pin in it, fiddling with the clasp. Wille looks down at the little gold and white badge that says he/they; the feeling of seeing it there bubbles up between his fingers, irrepressible. He touches it, gently, and then tugs Simon on for another kiss, hoping it expresses all the things he can’t put into words.

“Thank you,” he says when they pull apart. “It’s gorgeous.”

“So are you.”

“You are a flirt." He presses a finger to Simon's nose. “How are you feeling?”

“Nervous. I’m just…” Simon half turns back towards the mirror, and Wille looks at the pair of them reflected in the vintage silver. A prince who walked into fairyland and back, head high, and a boy who looks like springtime brought to life, hand in hand, shoulder to shoulder. “They’re going to stare.”

“They are,” Wille says, matter of fact. “And it’s going to suck. But we’re together, and you’ve got this, and that’s all that matters.”

“SIMON! WILLE!” Sara bellows. “HURRY UP!”

“I love you,” Simon says, unexpected, and Wille meets his eyes. The words sink under his skin and find a home, known and wonderful and true. “Let’s go and save the world.”