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He’s seven years old, and he’s going to become a knight when he grows up. Everyone says so. He’s a descendent of Gloreth herself, and at seven, he doesn’t fully understand what that means other than that he has his entire future already mapped out in front of him.
Ambrosius Goldenloin is going to be a knight someday, just like every other Goldenloin stretching out behind him in a long, long line.
And if sometimes, when he’s dreaming in the middle of the night, his purple dragon stuffed animal tucked under his arm, he dreams of other things instead—of colored pencils and shapes taking flight on a scroll and dappled sunlight pouring in through a window—well, that doesn’t really matter, does it?
Because Ambrosius is a Goldenloin.
And Goldenloins are knights.
He’s eight, and his dad is complaining about the queen’s progressive politics, and Ambrosius doesn’t see what’s so bad about the possibilities of commoners becoming knights or more aid being sent to plague victims, but he knows better than to open his mouth.
His dad is a pretty great dad most of the time, not like some of the other pages’ parents, but he doesn’t like it when Ambrosius disagrees with him on politics. He says he doesn’t have enough life experience to really understand how the world works and why the queen’s fanciful ideas will never work. Ambrosius is eight and thinks that he doesn’t see what’s so fanciful about making sure all of their people have enough food, not just the ones who can afford it, but he lets his dad rant.
“You’ll see,” his dad says, huffing out a sigh, “when you go off to your training tomorrow. You’ll see what the world is really like, and you’ll know. We are at war, and her peacetime policies have no place in our city.”
“Who are we at war with?” Ambrosius inquires politely, trying not to squirm about the thought of Knight School. Starting tomorrow, he’ll be a squire, and he’ll be one until he graduates in fourteen long years.
“Who are we at—?” his dad scoffs. “The monsters, Ambrosius. Surely you haven’t forgotten about them. What are they teaching you in that school of yours?” And he’s off on a muttered rant about the state of his son’s education.
No, he hasn’t forgotten, but it’s been a very long time since the last time anyone saw a monster. He wonders what peacetime must look like if this means they’re still at war. He wonders if anyone knows.
He’s nine, and the queen is introducing the boy who’d jumped the fence to Ambrosius and the other squires. He had watched the broadcast earlier with everyone else, the other squires scoffing at the queen saying that a commoner could possibly have the heart of a hero. Thoddeus is the worst of them, and Ambrosius just hopes that this Ballister knows how to deal with bullies because otherwise, it’s going to be a long thirteen years for him.
“I’d like to introduce you all to Ballister Boldheart,” the queen tells them, her hands on the boy’s shoulders. He’s too skinny, his hair too short now that it’s been shorn close to his head—Todd had joked that it’s because he has lice—and his eyes are too big, but he meets everyone’s gaze squarely, not trembling even a little, which is more than Ambrosius can say for most of them when they were introduced to the others, so maybe there’s something to what the queen had said about him.
“Ballister is going to need a roommate,” the queen says. “Someone who can help him catch up on his coursework from the last year. Would any of you be willing to volunteer?”
None of the boys in single rooms (which is most of them since their parents donate a lot of money to let their kid sleep alone) steps up at first, Ballister’s façade finally starting to crack under the lukewarm welcome, and Ambrosius can see how this is going to go. In a few minutes, Todd is going to step forward to volunteer, and he’s going to make the rest of Ballister’s life here miserable because that’s who Todd is—a miserable, mean bully.
So before Todd can do more than take a single step out of the lineup, Ambrosius—ignoring the little voice in his head that sounds like his father asking him what he thinks he’s doing—steps out of the line and says, “I’ll share with him.”
Ballister blinks at him, mouth dropping open in a little o. Ambrosius gives him a small wave, and Ballister’s face transforms into a bright smile.
“Well,” the queen breathes, relieved. “Your ancestor would be very proud of you, Ambrosius.”
“Ancestor?” Ballister asks him later as Ambrosius is leading him by the hand to their room. He wouldn’t have bothered with the handholding except Ballister keeps getting distracted by, well, everything.
“Yeah,” Ambrosius says around a wince. He always hates this moment even though he’s used to it after six months of school. “You know, Goldenloin? Gloreth?”
Ballister’s already big, round eyes going even bigger and rounder. “Wow,” he whispers. “You’re a Goldenloin.”
“And you’re a Boldheart,” Ambrosius says, shrugging.
Ballister shakes his head. “Not really. I’m a Blackheart, actually, but the queen said it wasn’t a very knightly name, so she gave me this one instead.”
Ambrosius privately agrees with the queen, but he doesn’t say anything in favor of throwing open the door to their room. “This is us!”
“Wow,” Ballister says again, looking around as he walks inside.
“Yeah, it’s not much, but—”
“It’s bigger than my apartment.”
Ambrosius’ mouth snaps shut. It’s… bigger? But… this isn’t even half the size of his room back home. For the first time, he thinks he really understands what it means to be a commoner, and he’s ashamed of the house he came from.
“Just wait until we get you some posters,” he says, trying to chuckle. “This place’ll really feel like home then.”
He’s ten, and his dad is mad, mad, mad that Ballister beat him in training earlier that week. It’s not the first time he’s lost to Bal, just the first time his dad heard about it. Ballister is the best out of all of them, and even Ambrosius, who’s next best, can only beat him four times out of ten. He doesn’t mind. Bal is brilliant and goodhearted and works twice as hard as the rest of them to be considered half as good. The way Ambrosius sees it, it’s an honor to lose to him.
His dad doesn’t see it that way. “You are a descendent of Gloreth!” he shouts, spit flying from his mouth. “There’s no excuse for you to be letting some commoner beat you in training!”
And Ambrosius knows better than to fight. He’s the golden son of a long line of golden sons, and if he waits only a few minutes, his dad will remember that and they’ll go right back to being a happy family.
But that’s Ballister his dad is insulting. His best friend—his only friend since none of the other squires are worth the air they breathe. Ballister, who wields a sword like it’s an extension of his arm and who whispers sly remarks to him during class that makes him have to bite down on his cheek to stop from laughing and who almost never smiles so when he does, it feels like Ambrosius has won the biggest prize in the world. That’s his best friend.
“You’re wrong about him,” he says coldly. “Ballister is going to be a great knight one day. I’m proud to be his friend.”
He’s still supposed to have the rest of the weekend with his parents, but he leaves and goes hom—back to the Institute and the room that he shares with Ballister instead. To his surprise, Ballister is back too, lounging on his bed, reading one of the Gloreth comics that are always lying around the boys dorm. Ballister always takes advantage of going home; his parents are always super nice and send treats back with him.
“I thought you were with your parents this weekend,” Ambrosius says, flopping down on the bed. He told off his dad. He told off his dad. It doesn’t feel completely real yet, and he giggles, a little hysterically.
“—and they said—sorry, you think the plague outbreak is funny?” Ballister asks, frowning at him confusedly.
“What? No, I was just—did you say there was a plague outbreak?” he asks, sitting up.
Bal nods, big eyes even bigger than usual, sad and afraid. “They wouldn’t let me into the lower city. They said it was quarantined.”
Ambrosius gets up off his bed and crosses the room to sit down next to him. He wraps an arm around Bal’s shoulders and squeezes him tightly. “I’m sure they’re okay, Bal,” he says quietly. “It’ll be fine.”
He’s eleven, and Bal’s parents are dead.
It had been a bad outbreak, still raging four months later. Nate Knight and Alamzapam Davis had read off the list of the dead every single night on the TV in the common room while Todd groaned about having to listen to that depressing stuff. Ambrosius had nearly broken his nose for that and only hadn’t because Bal had held him back.
Bal’s parents had died a month ago, their bodies held in stasis until the outbreak was over and funeral arrangements could be made. The funeral was earlier this morning, and Ambrosius hasn’t seen Bal since.
He goes to the Blackhearts’ house first. It’s a burned out husk of a building now, ripped apart by looters during the last weeks of the plague once supplies had started running thin. He doesn’t know why the queen hadn’t had supplies airlifted in but she must have had her reasons, right? She’s a kind person, always checking up to see how Bal is doing with his training. He can’t imagine her just leaving the lower city to the plague.
Bal isn’t at the house, which is good because Ambrosius doesn’t want him to ever have to see what’s happened to it again. He doesn’t know where to look next, but then, his eyes catch on a photo, fluttering in the wind from the open windows, pinned up next to Bal’s bed. An old wizard’s tower, crumbling to bits. He snags it off the wall and turns it over to see the words “Ballister’s Secret Hideout” on the back.
He knows where that tower is.
His mom has been complaining about that eyesore for ages. She thinks it would be better if the city tore it down, but they can’t because it’s historical or something to that effect.
When he gets to the tower, he’s only had the door open for a second before he has an armful of sobbing Ballister, repeating over and over again, “They’re gone!”
“I know, Bal,” he murmurs as soothingly as an eleven year old boy can. “I know.”
He’s twelve, and one of these days, Ballister isn’t going to succeed in holding him back when he launches himself at Todd.
“He’s not worth it,” Bal tells him, dragging an irate Ambrosius back to their room.
“The sight of his face pummeled in is absolutely worth any punishment the Director gives me,” Ambrosius spits. “You’re lucky I’ve got Bal holding me back, Todd! If he weren’t here—”
“Okay, that’s enough,” Ballister says and shuts the door behind them. “It’s nice of you to keep standing up for me, Amb, but I don’t need you to.”
“Someone should. And someone needs to teach Todd that it’s not okay to be such a bully. We’re supposed to be the best of the best! He can barely even hold his sword the right way!”
It’s maybe a little unkind to Todd, who isn’t actually a bad swordsman (he just can’t hold a candle to either Ambrosius or Ballister). But it gets Ballister to laugh, and that’s the important thing.
“My golden knight,” Bal teases.
Something squirms low in Ambrosius’ stomach, and even as he promises him, “Always,” he wonders if he might have eaten something bad earlier. That’s all that it is, right?
He’s thirteen, and he’s not sure why he’s going to rip someone’s head off—preferably the girl who’s dancing with Bal—but he’s definitely going to.
The Institute had announced at the beginning of the year that they’re old enough to start having dance lessons (and eventually dances) so now, twice a week, everyone tromps down to one of the ballrooms to learn how to waltz, which is already bad enough but apparently, boys can’t dance with boys so Ambrosius couldn’t claim Ballister as his partner. He’s stuck with Penelope Truesword instead, and Ballister is dancing with Sommer Silverarm.
He doesn’t like it. Sommer can’t possibly appreciate Bal’s nimble footwork or muscular arms or fathomless eyes. She doesn’t even like him. It’s not fair.
Ambrosius should have been the one dancing with him instead.
He’s fourteen, and Ballister laughs and he’s beautiful, and all Ambrosius can think is oh.
Oh.
Oh no.
He’s fifteen, and he’s pining, and everyone can tell, even Bal. The other boys keep making fun of him for it, even though they don’t know who he’s pining for, but Bal seems more hurt, honestly, that Ambrosius never said anything about it to him.
“We’re supposed to be friends, Amb! Why’d I have to find out from Todd that you like someone?”
“We are!” Ambrosius protests, but he doesn’t know how to tell him that the reason he didn’t tell him is because the person he likes is Ballister. Ballister doesn’t like him back. Can there be anything more embarrassing than admitting you like someone only for them to have zero interest in you? Ambrosius is fifteen and coming into himself, and it’s starting to become very obvious when people are looking twice at him—he’s been asked to three different dances by fifteen different girls in their year and they’re not even halfway through the first semester. He thinks he would notice if Ballister was looking at him the way he looks at Bal.
“It’s not that I don’t trust you,” he finishes, sighing heavily as he drops down onto his bed. “It’s just that I didn’t want to tell anyone. They don’t like me back.”
“Well then they’re an idiot,” Bal says, sitting down next to him.
“He’s really not,” Ambrosius says miserably, laying down so he doesn’t have to look at his best friend. “He’s the smartest person I know.”
Bal pauses and then says quietly, “He.”
“Yeah. That’s not a problem, right?” The queen legalized same-sex relationships before Ambrosius was even born, but some people still try to hold onto the old ways. He never would have thought Ballister would be one of them but—
“Of course, Amb,” Bal says quickly. “That’s not what I was—never mind. It’s… He’s a lucky guy. Anyone would be lucky to catch your eye.”
There’s something about the way he says it that almost makes Ambrosius sit up, but he tells himself he’s just imagining it. Ballister only sounds bitter because Ambrosius wants him to sound bitter. He wants Ballister to be jealous of his mystery boy, so he does. He’s not actually interested in Ambrosius, not lovely, talented, brilliant Ballister, who could have anyone he wanted.
He still remembers that moment last year, that terrifying realization that he’s in love with his best friend who can never know. That hasn’t changed. They’re best friends, brothers in arms. He can’t throw it all down the drain just on a maybe (not even a maybe, a definitely not). Bal means too much to him to ruin what they have like that.
He just has to wait long enough, and these feelings will fade.
They have to.
He’s sixteen years old, and Ballister says he has a surprise for the end of the year, and Ambrosius thinks he would follow him anywhere if he just asked, so he goes along with it.
“One of the other maintenance workers told me this was here,” Bal tells him as they climb up through the inside of Gloreth’s statue. Ambrosius doesn’t say anything about that, though his stomach squirms uncomfortably. Ballister gets a stipend from the queen for most of his things, but it’s not enough to give him any spending money, and with his parents gone, the only thing he can do is take on a job. So he works at one of the museums near the statue, and Ambrosius keeps his mouth shut because he’d pay for everything Ballister ever wanted in a heartbeat if he would let him, but Bal would never let him.
It still makes him uncomfortable when Bal has to get dressed again after a long day of training to go right back out there and clean up other people’s messes while Ambrosius gets to just lounge around for a few hours.
“Hey,” Bal says with a small laugh, shoving him lightly. “Stop giving yourself a guilt complex. I know you’re the descendent of Gloreth, but that doesn’t mean it’s on you to fix every problem in the world.”
Maybe not, but he wants to fix Bal’s problems at least. Still, he forces a smile to his face and says, “Maybe if you’d stop giving me that broody face, I’d stop thinking I need to solve all the world’s problems.”
“Knights don’t brood,” Bal informs him and then nearly hits his head on a hatch. “Here we go. Just a turn to the right and—got it!”
They climb out onto Gloreth’s sword, gleaming and golden in the light from a thousand buildings. If they wanted to—and Ambrosius very much does not—they could walk all the way right out onto the point. Over their head, the city is setting off fireworks to celebrate the beginning of a new year. And it might not be the best view in the city, but when Ambrosius looks to his left and sees Ballister’s awed face lit up in washes of blue and red and purple, he thinks that there’s no place he’d rather be tonight.
“Amazing, isn’t it?” Bal asks.
Ambrosius lets himself have this moment and tilts his head onto Bal’s shoulder. Without hesitating, Bal’s fingers come up to run through his hair, making him want to purr.
“Yeah,” he murmurs instead of doing something stupid like turning and kissing his best friend. “Amazing.”
He’s seventeen, and every year, Ballister insists on not doing anything special his birthday, and Ambrosius agrees because he doesn’t want to make Bal uncomfortable, but not this year! This year, they are going to do something, even if it’s lowkey, and he’s going to make sure that Bal has a great time because his best friend deserves the very, very best.
“Amb, where are we going?” Bal laughs as they push through the underbrush. “You know we can still have a picnic on the Institute grounds. We don’t have to go out in the woods.”
“I know, but…” Other than going to the tower, Ambrosius has never really been out in the woods, but he’d heard that the old wishing well is still around, so he’d asked—“Aha! Here we are!”
He proudly presents the old wishing well to Ballister—and everything else along with it, including the picnic blanket, the laid out spread, and Sommer Silverarm sitting on the blanket in a pretty dress.
“Amb… what’s this?” Bal asks, turning to him.
Ambrosius forces a smile to his face and says, “It’s your birthday surprise, of course.”
“Yeah, but—” He lowers his voice, turning away so that Sommer can’t see his face—“What’s Sommer doing here?”
He’d been hoping that Ballister wouldn’t make him say it, but that looks like a no go. “She’s your date,” he replies and motions towards her like he’s unveiling a new hovercar. “Ta-da!”
“But Amb, why is she my date?”
Please, can Bal just stop being so unthinkingly cruel for two seconds? It had been hard enough watching the two of them during dance lessons, spinning and laughing and looking at each other like they were the only two people in the world, and realizing that Ballister was never going to be interested in him the way Ambrosius lov—likes him.
“Don’t tell me you still think your birth status is what’s stopping people from liking you. You need to have more self-confidence!” he says instead of pointing out that he knows they like each other. “Look, you’ve got a beautiful girl sitting over there waiting for you to sweep her off her feet. I keep telling you, you could have anyone you wanted if you just opened your eyes a little.”
“Not everyone, apparently,” Bal murmurs, so quietly that Ambrosius isn’t sure he heard it right. He heaves a sigh and goes, “Yeah, okay. I’ll just… go over there now, yeah?”
For someone who’s about to have a romantic meal with his crush, Bal seems remarkably unenthused. But he’s probably just nervous, Ambrosius reminds himself, and he gives him two thumbs up.
“You’ll do great, Bal. See you back at the room.”
Except then he’s back in their room, and he can’t stop thinking about how Bal’s date is going. Is he holding her hand? Will they kiss at the end of the night? Will he—Gloreth forbid—spend the night in her room tonight? Surely not, right? They’re not supposed to spend the night in other people’s rooms, no matter the gender, and Bal isn’t a rulebreaker. But maybe he’d break the rules for her. Maybe he likes her so much that he’d be willing to risk his knighthood for her.
Maybe he’s walking back through their door, an almost visible thundercloud forming over his head.
“Bal?” Ambrosius asks, jumping to his feet. “What happened? Where’s—”
“Nope,” Bal says, holding up his hand. “Stop talking. Sommer is my friend, and she’s been teasing me about my actual crush for weeks, which you’d know if you’d asked her if she liked me instead of just telling her to show up at this picnic.”
“Your actual—”
“I said. Stop. Talking.” Oh, Bal is mad. Ambrosius has only ever seen him this mad with Todd, and even that is on very, very rare occasions. Bal is generally pretty even-tempered. Ambrosius really messed up on this one.
“Bal, I’m—”
“Stop!” Bal shouts, and in the silence, his shout rings in the air. “You keep talking about how brave I am, how I’m the best out of all of us, but I know I’m not because if I was, I would’ve done this long ago.”
And then his hands are on Ambrosius’s face and his mouth is on Ambrosius’s mouth and it’s a really terrible kiss except that it isn’t at all because it’s Ballister who’s kissing him.
“Oh!” Ambrosius gasps when they part.
Ballister gives him a worried look. “That was okay, right?”
“Yeah,” he breathes, a slow grin spreading across his face. “Get back here.”
Ballister’s grin is the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.
He’s eighteen, and they’re two teenage boys with two teenage libidos living in the same room together, so one can guess what they spend most of their time doing. Todd had burst in unannounced the other day on one of his power trips and had been so confused by the smell that Ambrosius had completely failed to hold in his laughter, which had of course, confused Todd more.
He props his head up on Bal’s sweaty chest, trying to hold back from bending back down to put his mouth where his cock just was so he can lick himself back out of Bal’s body. Bal is still shivering through the aftershocks, pretty and perfect, and there’s nothing holding him back from telling him so, so he does.
“You are beautiful, Ballister Boldheart,” he says, smiling soppily at him.
Bal gives him that look that says he thinks Ambrosius is being ridiculous, but all he does is reach down to grab him by the shoulders, use that ridiculously attractive strength of his to haul him up, and kiss him soundly.
“Well, I’m no Goldenloin,” Bal teases once they part, Ambrosius panting from the force with which he’d been kissed.
He groans and flops onto his side, tossing his arm over his face. “Don’t remind me.”
“No, no, it’s cute. What’s your catchphrase in that new modeling campaign? ‘Hey’? And that sparkle in your—”
“Stop!” Ambrosius groans again, laughing even as he pins Bal back to the bed, and then they’re both breathing hard for a different reason altogether, gasping into each other’s mouths as Ballister’s hand wraps around them both.
He’s nineteen, and they’re sitting on Gloreth’s sword, watching the fireworks explode above their heads to celebrate the end of the year just like they have every year since they were sixteen. Ballister’s hand is wrapped around his, fingers laced tightly together. His head is resting on Bal’s shoulder, and every few minutes, he feels Bal turn his head just enough to kiss the top of Ambrosius’s.
This is a happiness that he never thought he would get to have, and he hopes that he’ll get to have it for the rest of their life. He can see their future stretching out before them, protecting the queen, patrolling the wall, fighting back to back against any monsters that try to make it into the city. And afterwards, getting to go home and cooking dinner together and dancing around the kitchen like the people on those old TV shows.
“Hey,” he says softly, drawing Bal’s attention to him. “I love you, you know that?” It’s not the first time he’s said that, but it makes both of them smile every time they do.
Bal nudges him gently. “Yeah, I do.”
“What, you’re not gonna say it back?”
“Nah, I thought I’d just leave you—” Bal can’t even finish the sentence before he laughs. “I love you too.”
He’s twenty, and his father is retiring from his post as Captain of the Queensguard. Ambrosius hadn’t even wanted to go to the ceremony, he hasn’t spoken with his father in years, but it’s expected of all the squires, so there he is in his white and gold armor with Ballister all the way at the other end of the hall. Can’t have a Goldenloin associating with a commoner, of course.
“I do hope you’ve reconsidered your friendship with that one,” his father comments at the reception after the retirement ceremony. “There are other friends for you to make. Better friends. Sir Sureblade’s son is—”
“Thoddeus is a bully,” Ambrosius interrupts through gritted teeth. It would have been difficult to get through the evening having to listen to his father’s snide remarks about Bal, but he could have managed it (mostly by thinking about Bal’s breathtaking body stretched out across Ambrosius’ bed). But he won’t stand for his father suggesting that he sacrifice his honor as a knight just to make connections. The Sureblades may be one of the most well-connected families in the city, but their honor is nonexistent, and he refuses to have anything more to do with the youngest outside of work.
“Ambrosius, dear,” his mother murmurs. “This isn’t the time to—”
“Then when is? I won’t cut Ballister loose just because you don’t approve of his parents. He’s the man I love, and I’m going to spend the rest of my life with him. So you might as well get used to him, Father.” He stands and bows stiffly before marching from the hall, only detouring to grab Bal and pull him after him.
Later, when he’s shaking in his room because he yelled at his father, Bal rubbing soothing circles on his back, Bal says, “You’re going to spend the rest of your life with me, hmm?”
Ambrosius huffs. “That’s the plan. But you can’t count that as the proposal!” he exclaims, thinking of the ring he’s had in the back of his sock drawer for almost three years.
“I wasn’t planning on it,” Bal says easily. “But I appreciate what you said. You didn’t have to do that.”
“Yeah, Bal, I did, and the fact that you think I didn’t is exactly why I had to.”
“Then… Thank you,” Bal says and kisses him until the shaking has stopped.
He’s twenty-one, and he’s going to propose to Ballister. He’s already planned it all out. The knighting ceremony is in a few months so afterwards, he’ll take Bal out to the wishing well where he’d once tried to set him up with Sommer Silverarm. He’s asked one of the other squires to help him get a picnic set up for the two of them while they’re at the ceremony.
And once he has Bal there, he’ll get down on one knee, hold out the ring, and ask him, with all the love in his heart, if Bal will marry him.
(He’ll say yes, of course. Ambrosius is seventy-three percent positive he’ll say yes.)
It’s a perfect plan. It’ll be a perfect night. What could possibly go wrong?
He’s twenty-two, and Ballister is missing and everyone expects him to be the one to give Bal up just because he—he—he… cut off Bal’s arm.
“Ambrosius, I know this is difficult. I wouldn’t have asked you if we had any other options,” the Director says, her voice gentle and soothing. “But you were the one who knew him best, and we must catch the man who killed Her Majesty. Where would Boldheart have gone?”
Does he know him? Ambrosius doesn’t know anymore. The Ballister he had been in love with wouldn’t have done this. He was good, the best of them. All he’s ever wanted to be is a knight. He wouldn’t have betrayed the opportunity that the queen had given him like this. But he had. He keeps seeing those moments in his head, replaying over and over again. The green light, Ballister’s shaking hand, his own arm reacting almost without his permission, responding to his instinctive training.
Everyone else would call it a success, proof that training the knights to drill over and over again works. A threat against the queen and he acted, even if he was seconds too late.
Ambrosius calls it a betrayal.
But Ballister killed the queen. And he can’t—
His eyes catch on the old wizard’s tower in the forest on the map in the war room. West of the city. Ballister’s secret workshop where he goes when he wants to get away from everyone. He has the most incredible inventions down there. Ambrosius has always loved getting to join him there and watch him work. Bal has these incredibly long fingers—artist’s fingers, for all that they’re calloused from countless hours training.
The words are on the tip of his tongue. West. The old wizard’s tower.
“His parents’ house,” he says instead. “In the lower city. No one moved in after the plague. He’d go there sometimes when he wanted some peace and quiet. If he went anywhere, it was there.”
The lower city.
East.
The opposite direction from the old wizard’s tower.
He’s twenty-three, and Ballister is curled up at his side, and Nimona is splashing in a kiddie pool in her otter form in front of the TV growling every time Nate Knight says something she doesn’t like (which is often).
Ambrosius brushes the hair away from Bal’s sleeping face, snickering when Bal’s nose scrunches up. He never thought he would get to have this again, that Bal and Nimona would prove his innocence, that Ambrosius’s first thought—that the man he loved could never have done anything to harm the queen—was right, that the three of them could be here together in the apartment he rents in the city far away from his father.
In those dark days after the queen’s death and Bal’s disappearance, he thought he would spend the rest of his life alone, everyone looking at him suspiciously because here was the man who was Ballister Boldheart’s lover. Surely he must have known something. And with Bal gone, none of it had seemed worth it. He could have faced their scorn if only he had Bal at his side.
But alone?
But it doesn’t matter. He does have Bal (and Nimona too, even if her table manners are atrocious). And the future stretching out in front of them doesn’t seem so lonely after all.
In fact, he might have even gone so far as to say they were all going to live happily ever after.