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“Nobody can know about this.”
They were lying together, basking in the peace and silence of midnight, foreheads pressed together, legs intertwined.
“I know.” Elliot reached up and grabbed his face, rubbing his thumbs soothingly over his skin. “I know.”
He sounded bitter as he repeated it, all too aware of the sad truth on his tongue.
Ⅰ
It wasn’t that Elliot hated Gilbert and Vincent. They were just annoying, sometimes. Gilbert was an eternal people pleaser, and it drove Elliot insane. Vincent was… he was Vincent, enough said. Elliot didn’t avoid them, he just didn’t go out of his way to talk to them.
He wished he could say the same about them.
He and Leo were home for the holidays. He hadn’t thought about running into the two of them, truly, because they were always out of sight. Vincent kept to his room doing god knows what on the occasions that he was home, and Gilbert was always out doing jobs for Pandora. He worked nonstop, day in and day out, never giving himself a break. It never even occurred to Elliot that he would be home.
And yet here he was, hovering in the doorway of one of the many studies in the Nightray manor, watching them with his simultaneously anxious and brooding stare. Elliot ignored him, continuing their piece, his hands trailing after Leo’s on the keys. This was as close as they could get in the Nightray manor. Unlike Lutwidge, there was no guarantee of privacy here. Even in Elliot’s room, someone could walk in at any moment. His family was terrible at respecting privacy, especially his.
So he ignored Gilbert and let himself get lost in the music. He had heard people say that when he and Leo played, they became one being, perfectly in sync, inseparable. There was some truth to that, he thought. He felt at piece at the piano, pouring his soul out onto the keys, not too dissimilar to an out of body experience. Leo being beside him was only natural.
Their playing slowed to a stop, eventually. He would have jumped right into another piece, continuing to ignore Gil hovering in the doorway, still watching them, but Leo nudged him. He tilted his head towards the doorway slightly.
Talk to him .
Begrudgingly, he turned his head to face his brother.
“What?,” he growled.
“Elliot,” Leo warned quietly. Gilbert grimaced, although it was probably meant to be a smile.
“I just wanted to see how you were doing,” he said, fidgeting. He stepped into the room, closing the door behind him and leaning up against the edge of one of the couches. “We don’t talk a lot.”
“Well, I’m alive,” he replied drily. “Is that all?”
“Elliot.” Leo glared. Elliot met it without hesitation, challenging him. They stared at each other, unwavering as the tension grew. Eventually, Elliot lowered his gaze in defeat, staring off at the fireplace across the room with some semblance of shame. When he glanced back, Leo’s gaze was softer, warmer. He smiled at him reassuringly.
“I’ll go get us lunch,” he offered quietly, rising to his feet. His hand brushed over the back of Elliot’s as he stood, squeezed it reassuringly once before slipping out of reach. Elliot watched him disappear, warmth rising in his chest.
“You really care about him, don’t you?”
He startled at the sudden interruption, whipping his head around to find Gil watching him curiously.
“What’s it to you?,” he snapped, instantly throwing up thick walls to guard himself from discovery.
Gilbert continued to stare at him, frowning, deep in thought. He took off his hat and stared down at it, turning it in his hands.
“I’m glad. He makes you happy, I can tell.” He chewed his lip, lost in thought. “You two seem good for each other.”
Play it cool, play it dumb .
They sat in silence, tension growing by the second. Gil collapsed first, like he always did in the Nightray manor, if he didn’t turn and leave.
“I’m not like the others, you know,” he murmured, just loud enough for Elliot to pick up. He looked at him meaningfully, trying to convey his thoughts without words. “I don’t expect you to settle down with a wife and family. I don’t expect you would want a wife at all.”
Elliot froze. Shit . Was he that transparent? If Gilbert could tell, could his other brothers? Could Vanessa? Did they already know? Were they planning something behind his back to strip Leo away from him? If he confirmed Gilbert’s suspicions here, would that be their downfall?
“Relax,” Gil muttered, still careful about being too quiet to pick up from the doorway. “I don’t want to tell you off, or go spilling your secrets to the world. I just… I want you to know that if either of you need anyone to help you, or to talk to…,” he trailed off, once again breaking eye contact, just barely, glancing over to the side.
Elliot let himself relax, a bit. He’d never known Gil to break a promise, and even if he hadn’t made a promise, it was hanging in the air, unsaid. He was so genuine that it was almost impossible for him to be baiting Elliot; he rarely spoke, and when he did he chose his words carefully, plucked straight from the heart.
He should say something, probably, to ease Gil’s own worries, but he was at a loss for words, unsure of how to continue the conversation, what his part should be.
“I know we’ve never been the closest,” Gil continued, cutting off his thoughts, “but I do care about you, and I want you to be happy and safe. If you want to talk, I will always make time for you.”
“I- thank you.” It was all he could say, because he didn’t quite know what to say. He’d gotten along with Gil when he was younger, but there had always been some distance. Neither of them were prone to spilling their emotions. This little… heart to heart was foreign territory.
Gil gave him a little tight lipped smile, and they went back to silence, but it was lighter now, like a weight had been lifted from the very atmosphere.
(He would take him up on that offer, later. He’d crash into the apartment Gil was staying at at the time already fuming about how annoying his family was with their constant intrusion on his life. Gil was hardly surprised by it after the first few times, and he’d sit and listen, quiet as ever, which was often exactly what Elliot needed. He’d offer him comfort, awkward as it was, and they’d go about their day, never acknowledging those moments. It was… nice, admittedly, to have someone else to talk to, someone who wasn’t just the two of them.)
Ⅱ
They were in Pandora for ‘confidential’ matters once again with Elliot’s father, older brothers, and Vanessa to discuss the looming threat of the headhunter. It was taxing, to be honest, and even though he knew it was a important and possibly life-threatening matter, he would really rather be anywhere else.
Luckily, he and Leo were able to slip away to an old, empty room they’d found on one of their numerous trips to Pandora headquarters in the past weeks. He’d told someone he’d be slipping off, of course, to avoid them freaking out and tearing up the whole building trying to find him, but he’d rushed down the hall before they could stop him, Leo already ahead of him by a good distance.
It was refreshing, to have time to themselves after hours with his brothers and sister, not to mention his overbearing, bitter father. They’d slipped into the empty room, closed the door carefully behind them to make it look undisturbed, and crawled under one of the many tables haphazardly stored there, just like they had the last time, and the time before that. It was becoming familiar at this point (as annoying as it was to admit, visits to Pandora were becoming a regular occurrence).
They’d crawled through the mess of tables to one far from the door where they couldn’t be seen by someone walking in searching for them. They were wrapped around each other now, breathing in the tranquility of the dim, dusty storage space, Elliot slowly drifting off as Leo played with his hair. Who knows why Pandora had so many extra tables and other miscellaneous furniture stuffed in here, but they had some use.
“My my, what have we here?”
Goddamnit. Shit. Shit. Red Alert.
Elliot snapped his bleary eyes open and turned to face the direction of the voice, coming face to face with none other than the supreme annoyance himself: Xerxes Break. Beneath him, Leo froze, muscles taught, squeezing the arm around his back tighter, pulling Elliot closer (which was really the opposite of what they needed to do right now).
Elliot glared down the man who had popped up in front of him with as much intensity as he could muster with the sudden terror coursing through his veins. Get back. Go away. Tell no-one.
Break stared at the two of them curiously for a moment, grin spreading wide, and started laughing. Even though it was low, the chuckling rang through the empty room.
“Oh, don’t you worry, I’m no rat.” His eyes held a mischievous gleam, and Elliot didn’t believe him for a second.
“Tell anyone and you’re dead meat,” he hissed, spitting poison into his words.
“So aggressive~” he teased. “I am serious, though.” His face went completely slack, grin dropping in an instant, single red eye drilling a hole into Elliot. “How would ratting on you benefit me?” He stared at them for a moment, and then smiled again, softly this time.
“You aren’t the anomalies society would like you to think you are, you know.”
Elliot broke his gaze from the man for just a moment to glance over at Leo. Their eyes met, a silent conversation passing in a single second, and then Leo was pushing him off to sit up.
“What do you mean by that?,” he asked.
“Well, if one looked they might find that we’re in the same boat.”
That… that would explain a lot, actually.
Leo glanced over at Elliot again and smiled, squeezing their intertwined hands. He shuffled closer and rested his head against Elliot’s shoulder, relaxing at his side. Elliot stared at him, chest growing warm, but he was still too aware of their uninvited guest to relax.
“What are you doing here anyways?,” he asked.
“Same as you,” Break chuckled. “Hiding.”
Before Elliot responded, the door creaked open, and all three of the room’s occupants went dead still.
“Xerxes?,” a tired voice called out. Xerxes smiled and picked up some of the tablecloths stored haphazardly under the tables. He gestured for Elliot and Leo to lay down and covered them with the cloths until they looked like nothing more than a pile of tablecloths. There was a rustling as Break shuffled further into the mess of furniture. Vaguely, Elliot could hear someone else crawling under the table.
“I know you’re back here, Xerxes, please don’t make me come get you.”
“Ah, you’re no fun, Reim.”
“Xerxes Break,” the voice warned, deadly serious.
“No fun at all,” Break repeated.
“Xerx, please,” the voice pleaded softly. “I really don’t want to have to crawl under here.”
Silence followed, and Elliot held his breath, scared that any movement would give them away.
“I bought you taffies while I was in town, from that trader that comes in from the coast.”
There’s rustling, and the steady thump of someone crawling out from under the tables.
“You know me so well, Reim.” Break’s voice carried across the empty room.
Reim sighed. “You’re insufferable, you know that?”
“But you love~ me,” he teased.
“And sometimes I wonder why I do,” Reim grumbled.
Elliot threw the tablecloths off the moment the door shut, sitting up and stretching as much as he could in the cramped space.
“We should probably go back,” Leo suggested. “We’ve been here a while, they’re going to start looking for us soon.”
Elliot groaned. “That stupid clown wasted all our time.”
Leo only laughed and crawled out from under the table.
Ⅲ
They had always known that Elliot would be set to marry a noble girl and settle down, but they never thought they would have to worry about it so soon.
This whole situation was infuriating. He’d tried to fight his way out of it, getting himself in several arguments with his parents and siblings alike on the matter, to no avail. Even though he had several siblings and was the youngest of the Nightray family, his father insisted that he would be married, like it or not, and he would pass down the Nightray name.
He’d thought they’d have more time before marriage arrangements were made. Logically, they should have had at least until he graduated from Lutwidge.
But no, of course not, because there they were, visiting the sprawling grounds that belonged to the family whose daughter he was set to marry once they both came of age.
Ridiculous. Everything about this was ridiculous.
Apparently, his father had already made the arrangements, and had only told him after everything was sorted. He was to meet her today as the two families finished up the arrangements. He despised the very thought of it, and in the days leading up to the meeting his dread had been steadily growing.
But despite his trying to fight it, there he was, seated in the parlor of the family’s manor, across from the girl who was set to be his wife. Catrina, she was introduced to him as. At least she seemed level headed.
At some point, his father dismissed them both to finalize the arrangements. Much to his dismay, the girl walked with him and Leo to the gardens of her estate.
They’d walked out some ways when she stopped. Elliot would have kept walking, if it weren’t for the way her stare was burning into his skull, and Leo’s faltering steps beside him.
When he turned, she was giving him the strangest look: something curious, and yet also sharp; something hopeful, almost.
“You don’t want to marry me,” she uttered, a definite statement instead of a question.
“I don’t want to marry, end of story,” he muttered.
He expected her to be upset, to cry or to yell, to ask him why not, what’s wrong with me? , but she simply smiled at him.
“That’s… a relief,” she admitted quietly, and Elliot couldn’t for the life of him figure out what she meant. She seemed to read the thought off his mind, because she huffed good-naturedly.
“I’m sorry. I’m sure you’re a nice man, but… I have my heart set on another. Someone I could never marry, with the world watching me like they do.”
Ah . That… that rang close to Elliot. For a moment, he forgot himself. He glanced at Leo, and found that his valet was already looking back. Their eyes read the same silent message.
They got too careless, forgot Catrina was watching them too. She gasped beside them, staring between the two.
“Are you…” she puttered off, searching for her words. “Are you two in the same situation? Are you–” she glanced around nervously, making sure nobody was watching or listening in, “–courting?”
Elliot’s heart froze over with icy fear.
“What made you think that?,” he asked in the steadiest voice he could manage.
Catrina looked around once more, checking the rolling rows of garden for anybody watching. Nobody was there. She stepped closer, leaning in with hopeful eyes.
“My love is one of the kitchen maids. She served us the tea, do you remember her?”
Just like that, it clicked. Her hopeful stare, her relief at him not wanting this marriage, her instant recognition of the full extent of his and Leo’s relationship. Everything fell into place.
“Perhaps we could make this work,” he whispered back, staring not at her but at Leo, whose eyes were filled with warmth for the first time since they heard of the arrangement.
“I think we could,” she agreed with a pleased grin. “I’ll leave you boys now. I have… matters in the kitchen to attend to.”
(Later that evening, when they were back at Lutwidge in the privacy of their room, buried deep within the confine of the bed they now shared, wrapped around each other, legs tangled and arms clinging tight to the other, Leo kissed the shell of his ear and whispered into his hair, “I told you it would all work out in the end.”)
Ⅳ
The Rainsworth manor was admittedly nice. Duchess Rainsworth wasn’t as smarmy or annoying as Elliot’s father or Duke Barma, and they didn’t hold the inherent rivalry to the Nightrays of the Vassalius dukedom. Sharon was polite, always a gracious host, even if her near-constant companion was insufferable. It was also fairly easy to find privacy, once they snuck away. Elliot pointedly ignored the fact that they were probably able to do so because that clown Xerxes made a distraction for them.
That being said, making out in a secluded section of the Rainsworth gardens was probably one of the stupider decisions they’ve made.
They’d been on break from Lutwidge at the Nightray manor the past two weeks, so Gilbert offering to take them outside of the prying eyes of Elliot’s family and their staff had been a blessing. Perhaps that’s why they’d been so reckless; in the past week they had barely been able to brush hands without worry of arousing suspicion. As they say, distance makes the heart grow fonder, especially if that distance is no more than a few inches that cannot be overtaken. Besides, the back of the garden was secluded, surrounded on all sides by tall plants and walls, with only a narrow entrance that made it hard to see them at the angle they stood.
With or without a reason, though, they should have been more careful.
It was hard to stay vigilant for potential passersby, however, when he had Leo pressed up against the wall of a garden shed. He barely thought about it, in fact, preoccupied with running his hands over all the curves and dips of his face, his neck, down his arms and up his sides. For a time, the world was just the two of them, pressed flush to each other, like they were back at their dorm.
It was glaringly obvious, in hindsight, that they would be caught.
A loud cough split through the white noise in Elliot’s head. His blood froze solid. His lungs stopped. Slowly, he glanced towards the entrance of the corner they were hiding away in.
Duchess Rainsworth sat there, staring at them both with a stern, disapproving glare.
“Duchess Rainsworth,” Elliot greeted. His voice caught in his throat, which was closing up in apprehension. He stepped away from the wall to face her fully. Leo stayed where he was, a deer caught in headlights, but he was tensed, ready to run if he needed to, despite the fact that the only exit was currently inhabited by the duchess.
Duchess Rainsworth sighed. “Boys.”
Elliot prepared himself for the worst. His mind was running in overdrive now, coming up with bartering arguments and, if push came to shove, escape plans, sorting the bad from the worse as fast as he could manage.
The duchess wheeled herself closer to them. “Is this the sort of behavior befitting of a nobleman in public?”
Elliot bristled. No. Now wasn’t the time for pride; they’d be lucky to get out of this by their skin.
“It isn’t. My apologies, ma’am.” The words burned his tongue. Everything inside of him protested his own voice. He didn’t give a damn about ‘befitting behavior’, he never had and he never would. This was all ridiculous. He couldn’t even look the duchess in the eyes, staring instead, embarrassingly enough, at his feet.
“Really, this estate has plenty of empty rooms. Would those not be more appropriate to use, rather than defiling my garden, even if this is only the servants’ shed?”
More appropriate to… what?
He dared to glance up at the Duchess. “Pardon?”
The duchess smiled and shook her head. “Young love makes one foolish, doesn’t it? You have to understand that you must be more careful, don’t you?” Her tone turned dangerous.
“Ma’am, this was a foolish error and we… we promise we will not make it again.” God, he hated himself right now. “I’m sure you agree, though, that my father does not need to hear of this.”
Leo raised his head for just a moment to shoot him a warning glance. You’re too demanding . Duchess Rainsworth, however, only laughed.
“What happens on my property is none of Duke Nightray’s business,” she assured him. “But don’t think that’s an excuse to continue being reckless in my gardens.”
“Of course not.”
“Good. It seems we are on the same page,” she smiled.
What now? Was this it, were they off the hook? Would it be disrespectful to just leave? Normally he wouldn’t give a damn, but at any point the duchess would decide to take back her word and talk to his father anyways.
Leo stepped forward, finally, picking up his loose ends like always.
“Thank you, Duchess Rainsworth. We’ll get out of your hair now.” He began dragging Elliot away by his sleeve, like he was a small child. An old, shaky hand stopped them.
“One more thing,” she told them, holding Elliot’s gaze firmly. “You must understand that you cannot afford to be careless, Elliot Nightray.”
“I understand,” he murmured. “We’ll be more cautious moving forward.”
The duchess smiled. “Good.”
Ⅴ
Isla Yura’s basement floor was cold. The stone, rough beneath him, was freezing. It chilled him to the bone, even through his layers.
The cold wouldn’t be a problem for long, though, because the blood gushing from his wounds was burning hot. It covered the stone with no trouble, warming the cloth it soaked, covering every inch of his right side.
“I really liked you,” Vincent mused solemnly over him. “You were nothing like your brothers.” He kept talking, but his words drifted in and out of range of Elliot’s ears. His senses were fading. His hearing wavered, his vision blurred. He was out of time.
“Thank you,” Vincent whispered. It was more than a gratitude. It was a farewell.
He couldn’t go, though, not yet. He couldn’t leave Leo knowing that his last words to him were harsh venom spat in a childish squabble. With a groan, he reached out as best he could to Vincent’s shoe. If he couldn’t tell Leo what he needed to say himself, he would have to settle for giving it to a messenger.
Ever perceptive, Vincent knelt down to hear him. His pants were probably being soaked in Elliot’s blood, but he showed little care.
He had to force the air into his lungs to push the words from where they trapped themselves in his throat.
“I need– to t-tell Leo… I’m sorry,” he murmured.
Vincent smiled down on him sadly. “I understand,” he assured him. “I will tell him.”
There was more than that. There was so much more he wanted to say. He wanted to tell him a million things. He wanted to remind him of his love a million times.
He wanted to kiss him one last time.
Elliot’s heart ached. All of the months, all of the moments they spent together buzzed in the back of his head. He held every detail he could remember. The light draping across the room during the sunset that bounced off of them, bathing them in gold. The notes of the piano weaving around them as they practiced, hands always dancing after each other’s. The chiming of Leo’s laughter, the light of his smile. The curves and ridges of his face. The deep purple and brilliant gold of his eyes.
He would never see any of it again.
Vincent still loomed over him. His eyes pierced right through Elliot.
“That’s not all, is it,” he asked softly.
Elliot didn’t have the strength to turn around so he could glance at Leo, slumped over against the wall. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to see him all battered and bruised. That wasn’t the last view of him he wanted to have. Still, apologizing wasn’t enough. It didn’t soothe the agony in his heart. Nothing would, but still…
“Tell him… tell h-him I love him. Always.” His words came out as wheezes more than proper sounds. His lungs stuttered, threatening to collapse on him all together. He didn’t feel the warmth of his own blood soaking into him anymore. He couldn’t feel anything.
Vincent stared down at him, uncharacteristically shocked for just a moment. Then he smiled, warm but bittersweet, and brushed away some of Elliot’s hair gently.
“I’ll tell him that, too, little brother,” he promised.
+Ⅰ
Glen had a tendency to disappear, sometimes. This wasn’t unusual on its own. Glen always seemed to prefer his own company, or enjoyed doing things alone. Even the vivacious Levi disappeared for hours at a time to explore or experiment.
This was… different, sometimes. About half the time Glen disappeared, he left for the forest with a melancholic stare, flowers he hand-picked from the garden clutched in his hands, and didn’t return for several hours. When he did, late into the evening, his pants, and sometimes his jacket, were coated in a layer of dust and dirt. He was solemn, reserved. He always disappeared into his room for the night the first moment he could. Sometimes he would take a stroll through the gardens and examine the flowers he had planted himself. Sometimes he would stare longingly at the piano, but would never play it.
The others learned quickly to leave him alone when he was like this. They understood. He was mourning his best friend. He needed time. So they left him to his forest and his solitude.
Lily found it the hardest to understand. She wanted to finally spend time with Glen again, and she was notably upset whenever she went looking for him and he wasn’t on the grounds. Lottie tried to distract her the best she could, but she could only do so much.
Now she had to deal with two missing Baskervilles.
She raced down the steps as fast as her heels could carry her, skirts bunched up in her fists, beelinging for Vincent.
“Have you seen Lily?”
The man paused, blinking.
“No.” He smiled. “I’m sure she’s fine, though. Nothing can get to that girl.”
Lottie huffed. As usual, Vincent was of no help to her. She rushed past him, heels clacking harshly against the cobble walkway as she continued her race around the premises.
“Actually, I might have seen her heading towards the forest earlier,” Vincent called.
Lottie was going to murder that man one day. She whipped around, venom on her tongue.
“And you didn’t stop her?!” She didn’t await a response, finally slipping off her heels to run barefoot through the grass towards the treeline at the back of the manor. It wasn’t easy to weave through the trees, but she had to find that child, dammit.
There. Red, straight ahead. She growled as she marched towards her.
“Lily, I swear to all that is sane, if you ever disappear like that again I will–”
Lily whipped around, eyes wide, and held up a finger to her mouth. She pointed through the trees.
Before them was a small clearing in the brush and wood. In the center, Glen kneeled with a small basket of drinks, bread, and fruit, muttering unintelligibly to the headstone that lay at the head of the clearing. He was smiling, but it was bittersweet, nostalgic, almost.
He stopped suddenly, his mouth snapping shut. Slowly, his eyes wandered over to the section of the treeline where Lily and Lottie stood.
“You’re not very good at hiding, if that’s what you’re trying,” he deadpanned, staring not at Lottie but at the little girl at her side. With a sigh, she shoved Lily forward and stepped into the clearing.
“I’m sorry, Glen. She wandered off in the middle of a lesson when I had Gil’s attention turned for a second. We’ll leave you now.” She grabbed Lily by the shoulders, half-considering picking her up and carrying her. “ You are not getting out of your learning that easily.”
Lily huffed, cheeks puffed up and brows furrowed almost comically. Glen smiled.
“It’s okay. You can stay.” His attention turned back to the headstone. Slowly, Lottie took a seat, folding her skirts under and around her so the grass didn’t dig into her legs. Lottie plopped down right on top of the fabric, sidling up beside Lottie and staring at Glen with big eyes. Her gaze bounced between him and the headstone hesitantly.
“Was that your friend?” she asked in a small voice. It was strange on her, with how bubbly she always was. Glen glanced at her. He considered her question for a second, and then gave her a far-off smile.
“You could say that, yeah.”
Lottie knew she shouldn’t pry, but curiosity was nipping at her heels, and she’d never been very good at keeping her mouth shut.
“What else could you say?”
Glen huffed good-naturedly. He stared for a second at the carving on the stone, fingers brushing idly against the crimson rose he wore on his lapel.
“You could say… he was the most important person in my life. He was my roommate, my music partner, by duty to take care of. He was my equal. Or, really, I was his.” He let his head fall, examining now one of the flower buds that extended beyond the gravesite to where his hand lay. His face fell slightly as he sighed.
“I think it’s also possible to say he was the love of my life.”
Lottie blinked. Glen? And the Nightray boy? She hadn’t considered it, not as Glen Baskerville, not as their leader, but… but she could see it from the Before. She could see it as he used to be, before he knew of his destiny. A young, lost boy with secrets he’d carried with him since day one, with voices in his head and gold in his eyes that nobody else could see. He was natural at secret-keeping. He was meticulous, closed off. He could easily hide something like that from the public. What confused her was the Nightray boy. Certainly he didn’t know, because even without the stories from Gilbert and Vincent, even with only her personal experience to guide her, she could see that that boy was stubborn as a bull. He didn’t seem like the type to be willing to hide anything from anyone, no matter what the public—or his family—thought.
“Did he know?,” she prodded tentatively. Again, Glen laughed mournfully.
“Yeah. Yeah, I think it’s safe to say he did.” He stopped, readjusting his posture.
“We had plans,” he continued, staring off into the forest. His voice wandered with his eyes, floating, not quite present. “We had everything sorted out. A system. A future. A dream. A huge library, a sprawling garden. Even with him having to have a wife, we knew how we could make do sneaking around. But then…”
Finally, his gaze wandered up to Lottie’s. “Then Oz came back, and the Baskervilles got involved. And then it was all gone. Between the incident in Sablier, the headhunter’s return, the voices getting louder, the party … it was destroyed. Everything I planned, everything I thought I would have, unattainable.”
Lottie’s heart dropped.
“I… I’m sorry,” was all she could say. “I… wish you could have had your future with him. If none of this ever happened, if Jack hadn’t been involved in the first place, if Gilbert became the next Glen… maybe you would have been able to be a normal boy.” It was easy to forget, sometimes, that underneath the burden of inheriting Glen Baskerville, he was just a boy. In his conscious, he was just sixteen, with a life he had been ripped away from so the world could be balanced on his shoulders. It was easy to forget that underneath his sharp eye and steady leadership, he was a child.
Glen glanced away, turning his head completely so they couldn’t see him.
“There’s no use contemplating maybes anymore. There’s no time for regret or wishing we could go back and change what’s been done. That’s part of what got us here in the first place.” He was silent, then. Lily and Lottie could only sit and boil under the tension of the still clearing.
“You should take Lily back to the manor,” Glen told her at last. His voice was taut, carefully held back but so close to breaking. Lottie nodded.
“Let’s go,” she told Lily softly. In that moment, it felt like she would break something in the air if she was too loud. Lily stood, but didn’t move from her spot. Lottie tugged on her cloak, but she stayed firmly in place. She hovered, almost swaying between the direction of the exit path and Glen.
In a flash, she took tiny, rapid steps forward and wrapped her arms as best she could around Glen’s hunched form.
He startled. Lily squeezed tighter.
“Did you love him like they do in the storybooks?,” she asked softly. Glen’s shoulders hitched on his breath.
“Yeah, I did,” he croaked. Lily frowned.
“Those are supposed to have happy endings,” she whined. A small, nearly inaudible sob broke from Glen.
“They are, aren’t they?”
Lottie hovered on the edge of the scene, uncertain if she should join them, leave, or pull Lily away.
Glen wrapped a shaky arm around Lily, squeezing her back. He still kept his face twisted away, but he was sniffling, muscles tense with restrained tears. He let the girl cling onto him for a moment longer, and then gently removed one of her arms from around him.
“Thank you, Lily. Go back to the manor, now. Gilbert’s probably worried sick about you.”
Lottie pretended not to hear him come unraveled as they worked their way back through the forest.
(He spent that evening in one of the drawing rooms with Gilbert and Vincent. Lottie didn’t really know what they were doing, but she had a feeling they were reminiscing, finding solace in each others’ loss. Things would get better, she mused as she watched the moon light the garden silver. Glen may never have his happy ending, but he had the Baskerville clan at his side, and that had to count for something in the long run, because even if grief never really disappeared, it would fade, as all things did, to a weathered memory, if given time.)