Chapter Text
“You are the worst human being on this earth, Jesper Fahey,” Wylan the Robber burbled, unhappily, resurfacing from the muddy lake water. His ruddy curls were stuck to his pale, freckled skin as he spluttered and wiped his eyes and stood to his feet in the water. The old evergreen tunic of Jesper’s he wore was drenched and dripping. Jesper doubled over with laughter on the dock above.
You would have thought Maryen Van Eck would have figured out this game by now — if it was summer and they were playing Wylan the Robber and Jesper the Sheriff near Sherwood Lake, the Robber was going to be pushed in when they clashed stick-swords on the dock. Because it had been funny when they were eight, and it was just as funny ten years later, and, frankly, Jesper wasn’t sure if it would ever stop being funny.
Maryen was still looking very Wylan the Robber-ish, glaring up at him from the water as he cackled. Then the Robber bobbed up to spit a mouthful of lake water at him like a dolphin.
“Oh, Saints,” Jesper recoiled, “you’re disgusting,” but before he could get away (not that he really tried), the Robber snatched his ankle, lightning-fast, and yanked him, yelping, into the water.
It was at this moment, as in so many moments before, Jesper thought of how much he loved Maryen Van Eck.
They were a tangle of limbs in the still water, his dark, hers already pinking up from the sun. When they came up again and Jesper found his footing in the shallows, he barely had time to shake the water out of his coily black curls before he had to seize Maryen’s slight wrists to keep her from splashing him right in the face.
“What are these manners?” Jesper chastised, laughing as he held her back. “You’re no lady.”
“You’re damn right, I’m not,” Maryen snapped, and, Saints, that devilish little smirk — something wonderful was firing in his veins. Her flushed lips twisted up on one side, a little dimple creasing at the corner. The tunic she’d stolen from him clung to her skin, and the sun and the water together glimmered across her collarbones. And that sparkle in those big blue eyes — she must know what she was doing to him.
She wasn’t wrestling him anymore.
There wasn’t a moment in Jesper Fahey’s living memory that he could recall not wanting this. He had been pushing her into lakes or dipping her ruddy curls in ink or tying her shoelaces together long before he had the words to say Notice me. Please look at me. From the moment he’d heard words from her mouth, when their well-to-do parents had been introduced to each other in the foyer of Ketterdam’s Church of Barter after mass, from the moment she’d curtsied awkwardly and muttered, robotically, “I am pleased to make your acquaintance,” he’d wanted to hear her speak again. He’d wanted to hear her speak for real. He’d spent the better part of the last decade of his life foolishly designing ways to make this happen.
And, somehow, impossibly, against all the odds, it had actually worked.
(Or something had worked anyway. Maybe it hadn’t been the tormenting.)
Because now, when he pulled her wrists to him, something behind her blue eyes ached with longing. And when he dipped his head towards hers, her wet lips parted softly. The only protest on them was the tiniest whisper of his name, almost like a warning, one which neither of them could heed. And so he kissed her.
He wrapped his hands around her lean waist, and he kissed her.
The water lapped lazily against the dock posts, and the summer breeze rustled the trees that surrounded the lake. And he kissed her and he kissed her and he kissed her.
“We can’t keep doing this,” Maryen sighed. She clung to his shoulders anyway, he noted.
“So you keep saying,” Jesper smirked against her neck. There was a spot just below her ear that would make her shiver if he kissed it.
“I mean it.” This time, Maryen pushed away him, uncomfortably tugging at her soaking wet tunic, so he pulled back. Her reddish brows were cinched together, and he tried nuzzling them with his own to smooth out the worry.
“What’s all this?” he asked, softly, his brow against hers. “There’s no one around, and the betrothal will be official by the end of the summer anyway.”
Maryen stopped fidgeting with her tunic long enough to cock an eyebrow up at him.
“I haven’t said yes yet,” she reminded him.
“And yet somehow, I’m not particularly worried,” Jesper said, wickedly, taking her chin between his thumb and forefinger. She was trying very hard not to smile — he was absolutely going to kiss her again. This delay with officializing the betrothal surely had to do with their fathers negotiating over the dowry or their mothers squabbling over the length of the engagement. There’d never been any doubt in Jesper’s mind that Maryen was the one for him. They had been destined for this since that first day ten years ago.
“I don’t understand how you’re always so sure,” Maryen murmured, softly, just as his lips were nearly on hers again. Right. So they weren’t kissing.
“Sure about what?” he asked.
“I don’t understand how you can be so sure that I would be a good wife.”
It was strange how the word on her tongue sounded like it belonged to a different language. If Jesper was honest, it was a little hard to imagine Maryen as a wife in the sense that his mother Aditi was a wife to his father — the way Aditi managed the Fahey’s properties and entertained royal guests and cared for the poor in the village. But Maryen could learn — Maryen was brilliant. She knew what chemicals mixed together made a good soap and which ones could blow up a dead tree stump, and she knew enough to not get the two confused. She could work out complicated mathematical equations just for fun. And kissing her was heaven, so as long as she was happy enough to keep doing that, Jesper didn’t mind how she spent her days.
“Lucky for you, it doesn’t much matter what I think,” he said instead, trying to ease her scowl with an impish smirk. Her sudden graveness unnerved him. “That’s not how betrothal works. Our parents have decided we’re well-suited for each other and so now—” He wrapped an arm around her waist so that she squeaked a little, grabbing his neck. “—Now you’re stuck with me.”
She usually liked his teasing. Today, though, there was something tentative, something unsure about the way her hands cupped the back of his neck.
“Be serious, just this once,” Maryen requested, softly.
This was a difficult request. Jesper misliked all forms of solemnity. It made his insides squirm. Which he was realizing now was very unfair to Maryen, now that their parents had decided that marriage was on the table. The first time he’d kissed her two weeks ago, it had been a joke - she’d dared him, and he thought it would be a laugh. Imagine, kissing your oldest friend, kissing the kid who’d nearly blown off your hand with her homemade fireworks three years ago. (Jesper had imagined it - he’d imagined it a lot.) And then they’d kissed for two hours straight. They hadn’t done much else since.
He’d assumed she would be as thrilled as he was that their parents now wanted them wed, after learning of their infatuation. It stung a little that she wasn’t. He wanted her to be happy - that was all he’d ever wanted.
Gently, he cupped her face, small and delicate in his hand.
“I want to spend my life at your side,” he promised, and then summoned up every ounce of courage in himself. She’d wanted him serious after all. “I love you, Maryen,” he said, in one breath.
For the briefest of moments, a happy light seemed to flicker in her eyes, but it was gone in an instant, snuffed out before it had even taken to kindling. Her hands slid off his neck. She couldn’t look him in the eye.
“I don’t know how you could know that,” she said.
And just like that - his whole world screeched to a halt.
This — this right here — was why Jesper didn’t do serious. His stomach dropped like a stone.
“Are you being serious?” he had to check. “I just told you I love you—”
Now Maryen was fully untangling herself from him.
“This was a bad idea,” she was saying, with a sudden, alarming clarity. She might as well have slapped him.
“Maryen,” Jesper called after her. She’d turned to wade toward the shore. “What — is this—” He didn’t even know what he was trying to ask until it tumbled out of him.
“Are you saying you don’t love me?”
And what a wretched question it was.
When Maryen turned, pulling uncomfortably at the wet fabric of tunic that clung to her bony frame, there were tears glistening in her big blue eyes, and this wasn’t happening. This couldn’t be happening.
But then she said, like a gasp:
“Of course I love you.”
(But then, if that were true, why was she crying?)
“I don’t understand.” Jesper was so confused. “Maryen—”
At that, Maryen balled up her fists and pressed them against her temples, squishing her eyes shut.
“I can’t be Maryen the wife,” she gritted out, and then again: “I can’t be Maryen the wife.” She dropped her fists — she beat her chest. “I love you, Jesper Fahey. I love you more than life itself. But I can’t be Maryen the wife. Yours or anyone’s.”
Jesper blinked. Somewhere in the forest behind them, a lark whistled merrily. Jesper wanted to shoot it.
“But.” Yes, Jesper, but what, exactly? None of this made any sense. “But you love me.”
“Yes.”
“And I love you.”
“You think you do.”
“I know I do - you’re the only girl I’ve ever loved!”
“Stop—” Maryen flinched and shut her eyes fast. Then she swallowed hard. Her throat was long and slender. Jesper thought of never kissing it again after this and wanted to die.
And then Maryen opened her eyes and asked: “Do you love Wylan, too?”
Jesper was taken aback to say the least. Wylan the Robber? What did that have to do with any of this? As far as Jesper knew, Wylan was just a character, a role she played when she was sick of the dresses her mother made her wear and the way her fancy shoes pinched her feet. Wylan was a game — a game Jesper had always enjoyed dearly, make no mistake, but what that game had to do with officializing the betrothal, he could not understand.
But as he grappled for comprehension, Maryen pinched her lips together and whirled around, sloshing back for the shore as fast as she could.
“Please wait,” Jesper begged, going after her.
“Don’t follow me,” Maryen snapped. And when she was back on land, she rolled up the oversized, soaking sleeves of his tunic and then ran towards the woods, towards home, as fast as she could, leaving Jesper bewildered.
Bewildered and crushed.
Perhaps he really was the worst person on the earth. Why else would his loving her make her cry?
***
“Jesper, dear heart,” his mother Aditi said to him at the dinner table that night. “You have barely touched your food.”
She sat in her usual place across from Jesper at their rich mahogany dining table, set by the serving staff with their polished silver and serving platters and candlesticks. It was mutton for dinner tonight, next to roasted potatoes and chutneys. Sometimes Aditi requested traditional dishes from her homeland, Novyi Zem, but tonight was a Kaelish food night, Colm’s favorite.
“Are you ill?” Jesper’s father Colm wanted to know, his dark red brows knit together, a fine linen napkin stuck in the collar of his doublet. Colm always sat at the head of the table, between his wife and son — he liked to have his family sat close.
Jesper did feel ill, incurably so. He pushed around the meat and potatoes on the china dish in front of him, replaying Maryen’s words in his head again for the thousandth time.
I love you, Jesper Fahey. I love you more than life itself.
But I can’t be Maryen the wife. Not yours or anyone’s.
“How was Maryen today when you called on her?” Aditi asked, as she plucked at her food delicately. There were rubies glittering on her deep bronze fingers, each a gift from Colm. When Jesper glanced up at her, her dark eyebrows were lifted. His mother was as sharp as a tack - nothing slipped past her.
Jesper released a long, abysmal sigh and fiddled with the wine goblet in front of him.
“She loves me,” he said, ruefully, as he lifted his drink. “And she won’t have me. And it’s fine — I’ll just crawl into the nearest fox’s hole and die there.” And he drained his red wine in one gulp.
“What?” Colm’s bafflement looked familiar. Jesper had been wearing a similar expression all day. “You are a Fahey. She can’t be serious. Van Eck won’t stand for this—”
“Oh, hush, enizei,” Aditi dismissed, with a disapproving glance at her husband. “The Lady Van Eck and I are in agreement - we will not force the children together if it is not what they both want.”
Colm sighed an easy, relinquishing sigh to his roast mutton. He may have had the Fahey blood and lineage, and it may have been his relatives whose portraits adorned the halls of Fahey Manor, but Aditi’s rule was law in the Fahey estate. He’d courted her decades ago, when he was a young lord abroad and adventuring in Novyi Zem, and they had fallen madly, irrevocably in love. Jesper had always thought he would have a love like that someday. He had always thought it would be with Maryen.
“Though it would be one thing if she did not love you and so wouldn’t have you,” Aditi was saying to him, wearing a small, sympathetic smile. “But she has told you she loves you?”
A servant was refilling Jesper’s goblet. Jesper waved to him to keep pouring until it was nearly full to the brim.
“She said she loves me,” he said, miserably lifting his very full glass. “Said it more than once. Please, can we pick something less miserable to discuss? Da’s bib, for example.”
Though Colm gave an indignant huff as he smoothed down his tucked in napkin, his grey eyes, the same shade as Jesper’s, were mirthful.
“If I wear it, you laugh at me. If I don’t wear it, you laugh at the food I end up wearing.”
“Just take smaller bites, Da. You look like an enormous baby.”
“I can’t be held responsible for my actions on mutton night. Your mother’s cooks are too exceptional.”
“Did she give you an explanation, my son?” Aditi asked, warmly. She never was afraid of the terrible. “Did she tell you why she could not have you, though she loves you?”
Jesper released a long sigh through loose lips, sinking back against his high-backed chair.
“All she said was that she can’t be Maryen the wife,” and his throat felt tight when the words left him. Maryen didn’t want to be his wife. The pain of that realization was still white hot and sharp. He bit the inside of his lip.
“Well, that’s about as clear as mud,” Colm said, with mutton in his cheek. But Aditi was considering it carefully, turning over the words again and again as she ran the pad of her finger over the rim of her wine goblet.
“This doesn’t entirely surprise me about the Maid Maryen,” she said after a moment. “There has always been something zowa-like about that child.”
At that, Jesper cocked his head. Zowa is what his mother called the abilities of her people, her own innate healing powers, and Jesper’s influence over metals. They had been born like this, able to heal the sick or bend and sway materials at will, and while the Kerch and the Ravkans called them Grisha and sought to use people with these abilities to their own advantage, to the Zemeni, zowa were sacred. Revered. Blessed - just as the word zowa itself implied.
“You sense something zowa in the Maid Maryen?” Colm blinked at his wife in amazement. He trusted her judgment fully.
“Not an ability in the same sense that our son and I possess,” Aditi explained, reaching over to lay a gentle brown hand over Colm’s pale one. “But there is something sacred about the one Jesper loves. I have seen it in Novyi Zem — there they are called chibados. Born into one body, their soul something entirely different. Chibados are sage and powerful teachers among the Zemeni, Jesper.” She turned her warm gaze toward her son. “They see and know more about the spirit of the world, of the true way of things than you and I can see. You would be wise to listen closely to this love of yours, dear heart.”
“She doesn’t even believe I love her in return,” Jesper muttered to his untouched mutton, miserable and hopeless still.
But Aditi said, “If Maryen is chibados, my love, then you must not take for granted what you believe you know about the person you love. Chibados often see into the world as it really is, beyond the rigidity the rest of us have placed upon ourselves. If you are truly in love, you must be prepared to learn, to observe, to listen carefully to Maryen, to what Maryen tells you of the soul inside the body. Only then can you — and Maryen — trust that your love is true.”
At first, Jesper felt out of his depth. He was used to being the one with power, the one who could impress Maryen with little tricks with pieces of silver. It didn’t seem possible that Maryen, little easily-impressed Maryen, could be something other than what he knew her to be.
And yet so much of what his mother said rang true. Do you love Wylan, too? Maryen had asked. Had she been trying to tell him something? Something about the true way of things that he could never know on his own?
Colm lifted Aditi’s bejeweled fingers to his lips, leaving a tender, admiring kiss there. If his mouth was slick with mutton grease, Aditi didn’t seem to care. She smiled at him as if it was the first time still and brushed a hand over his cheek before returning to her meal. An improbable pair, the two of them were.
Maybe Jesper wasn’t entirely without hope either.
***
That night, Jesper couldn’t sleep. He lay on his back on his four-poster bed, staring at the thick canopy above with his mind full of Maryen and everything his mother had said. Though he was still and the night calm, his heart leapt wildly in his chest. If he was going to feel like this until he saw her next, he wasn’t sure he was going to survive it. He was going to come out of his skin.
Listen carefully to what Maryen tells you of the soul inside the body.
Only then can you and Maryen trust that your love is true.
Jesper thought of Maryen’s devilish smile at the lake and her cleverness and the easy way she could make him laugh. His love for her felt so sincere. But if what Aditi had said of Maryen was true, if his oldest and dearest friend was not what she appeared, did that change anything?
Do you love Wylan, too?
So, Jesper thought of Wylan, too. When Maryen was Wylan, when she was he, Jesper didn’t spend so much time trying to get him to speak for real. Wylan was full of sunshine and brilliant ideas. Wylan ran fast and took risks and wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty. Wylan made crude jokes and climbed trees and helped wild animals out of traps. Wylan was admirable. Wylan was brave.
Wylan was everything Maryen was, and more.
Do you love Wylan, too?
Jesper threw off his comforter. He couldn’t stand another moment of this. His feet hit cold stone, and he scrambled in the dark of his bed chambers for his trousers, his doublet, his boots. He took a moment at the tall mirror beside his wardrobe to check his black coily hair before dashing into the hall, collar askew and jacket flapping open.
In the hallway, Colm was in a dressing gown and tottering back to the lord’s chambers from the privy. He nearly dropped the candlestick he carried when Jesper’s door crashed open.
“Sorry, Da.” Jesper was deeply apologetic as Colm straightened his nightcap, catching his breath. He gave a small, knowing nod when he took in Jesper’s frenzied state of dress.
“You’re going to Maryen, aren’t you?” said Colm.
Maryen. Wylan. Maryen. Wylan. Jesper wasn’t sure how to answer, and his heart thumped hard enough that he thought for sure his father would hear. If he did, Colm didn’t seem alarmed. He gave Jesper a firm pat on the shoulder before turning back toward bed.
“You are a Fahey,” Colm called to him. “And Faheys love hard. Don’t do anything stupid.”
“Really moving stuff, Da. I’ll be writing that one down for posterity.”
“Do that, will you? I was thinking that would be the start of my speech for your wedding. That’ll really put old Van Eck to shame.”
And even though his heart was still sick with love, Jesper couldn’t help snorting a laugh at his old man. Colm grinned back at him.
“Go on and win your love, son,” he said before turning the dark corner.
And so, with his heart full, Jesper dashed down the grand staircase and made for the stables. There, he selected his mount and burst through the stable doors, full speed toward the Van Eck Manor.
They were neighboring estates in Kerch, Fahey Manor and the Van Eck’s — both stately with sprawling lawns and manicured gardens, each an hour’s journey by carriage, give or take, to Ketterdam, Kerch’s capital city. They were both ancient familial estates, passed down from generation to generation, Fahey to Fahey, Van Eck to Van Eck. Jesper had heard it said that, in the hundred years prior, the two families had once fought over possession of the land and their towns and of the sprawling woodlands of Sherwood Forest that ran in between. Indeed, it sometimes still seemed like the Lord Jan Van Eck thought Colm and Aditi were maybe not the best suited for lorddom, that the Kerch countryside would be better managed under a more centralized rule. Jesper had also heard (and preferred) the story that the Van Ecks and the Faheys had long since stopped feuding over possession of the land once they’d learned of the curse of Sherwood Forest. It was said that the trees themselves rose up to trample and eat the men who trespassed their borders with bloodlust in their hearts, grinding their bones into a meal to nourish their roots. Colm would tell a young, wide-eyed Jesper that the bones of greedy men were the reason why the trees of Sherwood Forest grew so tall.
Jesper didn’t believe any of that anymore, he was pretty sure. In any case, tonight, he rode through Sherwood Forest with nothing but love for a Van Eck in his heart, so he was probably safe from the curse. (Though if he kept his head low just in case while he raced through the dark woods, no one could blame him.)
Van Eck Manor at night looked as it always did - Jesper had been fifteen the first time he’d made the journey at night to throw rocks at Maryen’s window. It was imposing and magnanimous, its grey stones hewn from a quarry so ancient no one alive still remembered its exact location. It had turrets and towers and flickering torches at its wrought-iron gates, but the only window Jesper had ever any interest in was on the east wall, facing the forest and overlooking the rose gardens. Maryen’s chambers.
Her rooms had a balcony fixed above a wooden trellis climbing with vines and clematis - Jesper had attempted to climb it on numerous occasions and had nearly broken a leg at least twice. Maryen was always better at climbing down to meet him. Tonight, her rooms were still aglow in candlelight, the soft drapes in front of the balcony shifting in the night breeze. The balcony door was open.
Had she been hoping he would come?
Jesper dismounted his horse, tied its reins to the garden gate. Then went in search of something to chuck into her open room.
“Is someone there?” he heard Maryen call as he rooted around in the garden. And he looked up.
In the silvery light of the moon, backlit by the glow of candelabras, Maryen - or Wylan - was angelic. Though her hair was pulled back, her rosy curls softly framed her face, and her skin seemed radiant in moonlight. Her white nightgown was nearly translucent - Jesper found himself breathless at the outline of the dips and angles of her body.
“Hello?” Maryen called again. She was wrapping her arms defensively around her thin frame as she stepped out onto the balcony. Jesper’s mouth suddenly felt dry. What had made him think he could land someone so perfect?
And then -
“Jesper, is that you?” Maryen whispered, and it almost seemed like there was hope in her voice. Jesper stepped out from behind the roses.
“I didn’t mean to startle you,” he called up. Maryen stiffened, tightened her arms a little more. “Please, I couldn’t sleep,” he pleaded before she could retreat within herself.
Maryen softened, just a bit. Just enough.
“What do you want?” she asked.
Jesper swallowed. Prayed to all the gods his mother revered that the right words would supply themselves.
“I’ve been an idiot,” was what he came up with. And when Maryen said nothing, he was sure he’d been an idiot twice over. Still, Jesper was determined to press forward, with all the confidence of a bib-wearing Colm on mutton night.
“You asked me a question today that I didn’t understand at first,” he continued, taking another step forward. “But I’ve learned some things since then. I think you were trying to tell me something, something I was too dumb to see. You wanted to know if I love Wylan, too?”
Maryen shifted her weight between her feet, her eyes flitting nervously about as she absently twisted the neckline of her nightgown. Saints help him, she looked too heavenly for words, even now. He put a hand to the trellis to steady himself.
“So, here’s the thing,” he swallowed. Did his cheeks have to burn so hot? “I love how happy Wylan is. I love the way he laughs and the ridiculous jokes he tells. I love that Wylan can solve any problem. I love that Wylan is brave and kind and clever as hell. But mostly, I love the way Wylan is everything Maryen is - just more of it somehow. If you’re worried that I don’t love Wylan, tell me how to show you that I do. Because I do. I really, really do.”
It was hard to tell in moonlight, but Maryen seemed to tremble at his words. Jesper desperately hoped it was the good kind of trembling. She shifted towards the balcony doorway, half hiding from view as she leaned against the frame. When she spoke next, Jesper had to strain to hear the quiet words.
“I wish you could feel what I feel when you call me Wylan,” came the words, just a notch above a whisper, and Jesper’s heart caught. Just tell me, he wanted to beg.
“I’m here now - I’m listening.”
“It’s like…” Jesper’s love twisted leaned against the doorframe, neck craned to stare up at the moon, like she was seeing truths far, far away. “It’s like it’s what I was always meant to be called. Maryen feels like I got plopped into a story where I don’t belong. And when you call me Wylan, you’re fixing something. When I get to be Wylan, everything feels right.”
“So, be Wylan.”
Maryen - Wylan - just gave a sad, wry laugh.
“Do you hear yourself? I’m happiest when I’m a boy. My father would never understand it. And even if he did,” Wylan gave a strangled, wet sob, looked up again at the moon. Tears were streaking his moonlit cheeks. “You’re a Fahey. You need a wife. You need someone to sire you heirs. If I were to do that — I don’t think I could do that — and—”
And it was at this moment Jesper realized he loved Wylan Van Eck. He had always loved Wylan Van Eck, and he couldn’t imagine a life without him.
“I don’t,” he insisted, fervently shaking his head. He would climb this trellis for real this time to stop these tears. “I don’t need that. I just need you, Wylan. I just need you.”
“And what would your parents say if your wife was instead your husband? If I changed my hair and my clothes and my voice, and there were two lords of Fahey Manor? You can’t tell me Colm wouldn’t drop dead of a stroke.”
“He wouldn’t!” Jesper flailed his arms as if taking flight could help his case. He really did know how to make an idiot of himself. “He literally told me to come here tonight! And my mother said she had always suspected this about you — it’s not unheard of in Zemeni culture. She’ll welcome you with open arms. You have to believe me, Wylan — all I have ever wanted was for you to be happy. I swear I will find you the best Tailor in Kerch, and you can have whatever face you want, only, please, please, say you’ll marry me.”
Wylan’s fingers were pressed over his mouth, his beautiful mouth, his expression indiscernible. Jesper had never been so terrified in his life. His heart rammed against his ribcage, terrified at the prospect of withstanding another round of rejection.
But then Wylan whispered: “Do you really mean that?”
“I mean it all,” Jesper swore, hand to his racing heart. “Every word. I’m a Fahey, and Faheys love hard.”
“Now you’re sounding like Colm, and I’m having second thoughts.”
But there was that smile again, that devilish little smile Jesper loved with all his whole being. The terror in his heart began to subside, a golden warmth taking its place.
“Say you’ll marry me, Wylan Van Eck,” he begged, and, when Wylan began to smile behind his hand, his heart swelled in his chest. Without a second thought, he put his hands and feet to the trellis. “Say you’ll be my husband.” He was going to climb.
“Oh, good lord,” Wylan exclaimed, alarmed, “what are you doing?”
“I’m being romantic! I’m coming up to kiss you!”
“Don’t be an idiot! You’re going to break your neck!”
“I don’t think you understand.” Jesper really hoped this trellis would hold his weight. He was tall and lanky, and these slats in its frame were barely big enough for his feet. But there was no way he was going back now. “I didn’t know I’d been kissing a boy, and there’s something extra wonderful about knowing you’re kissing a boy. And I just have this feeling—” Oh, Saints, a slat in the trellis broke under his foot. Somewhere above him, Wylan cried out. “—this feeling that—” He adjusted his weight, found his footing again. Wylan had crouched between the railings of the balcony, holding a desperate arm out to him. “—as much as I have adored kissing you,” He hoisted himself a little higher, a little surer. “—I’m pretty sure I’m about to like it even more now.”
Wylan was giving him a suspicious glare from the balcony.
“How would you know so much about kissing?” he scowled.
“Oh, Wylan, you precious ray of sunshine. You remember that summer when we were sixteen and you told me you hated me and then your family left to spend the summer in Ravka?”
“Yes…”
“I kissed all sorts of people that summer.”
“I should push you off this balcony.”
“Well, if you’re going to kill me,” Jesper hoisted himself up to the edge of the balcony, wrapped his arms around the railings. Leaned a cheek against the cold marble wearing the most charming smirk he could muster, “at least be merciful and kiss me first. Send me to my grave a happy man.”
Wylan gave a hopeless sigh. Then reached out between the railings and cupped a hand over Jesper’s jaw. The pad of his thumb caressed his cheek, and Jesper’s insides melted like butter beneath his touch.
“You really are the worst,” Wylan murmured, pressing back a smile, “but damnit if you don’t have the most gorgeous mouth I’ve ever seen.”
That was all the invitation Jesper needed. He leaned as far as he could manage, and Wylan closed the distance. And then Jesper was kissing him, kissing his boy, Jesper was kissing Wylan, and he couldn’t breathe (not that he wanted to), and he couldn’t think (not that he needed to), and he never wanted to do anything else. This love is true. He knew his love was true.
He broke away only when he thought his lungs would burst, and their foreheads bumped together for one breathless moment.
“Will you marry me?” Jesper asked, softly, though this time, he wasn’t sure he needed to. He could feel Wylan’s smile in the warm space between them. “Will you marry me, Wylan?”
And Wylan whispered, “Yes.”
And Jesper kissed him. He kissed him and he kissed him and he kissed him.
And he kissed him back.