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Gabriel’s whole body ached, his left ankle clicked with every step, his face felt tight and splotchy, and it was the best day of his life. It had been four months. Four months, fifteen days, and three hours since he had failed to get Nathan his blood. Since Annalise had exploded her father into a thousand tiny, bloody chunks. Since Nathan had eaten the heart and collapsed into them.
They had gotten by so far by stealing cars left unattended on the roadway and relying on Gabriel’s sticky fingers and silver tongue. Nathan and Annalise hadn’t liked it when he flirted his way into a pack of cigarettes or an extra geflügelrolle. He was sure they would have liked it even less when he had to do a little more than flirt, but they had needed a place to stay for the night and what they didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them. Even with Nathan’s new powers blossoming at a truly astonishing rate, he couldn’t keep them dry all night. And anyway, Gabriel had kind of enjoyed them looking at him like he had hung the stars when he slunk back to them with a wad of cash and a lead on a cheap motel room on the outskirts of whatever tiny town they had been in that night.
Today, though, there were no storms on the horizon, they were somewhere in the middle of the Belgian countryside, and the field was full of wildflowers and fat, buzzing bees. They had scrounged up enough of their meager stores to make a passable picnic. Although, at this point, most of their meals could technically be called picnics. Gabriel couldn’t remember the last time they had actually eaten inside a restaurant.
The sun was high in the sky and they hadn’t managed to steal any more sunblock since their bottle had run out earlier in the week. Resultantly, both Gabriel and Annalise were adorned with a dark blush across their noses and cheeks, Annalise’s uncovered shoulders suffused with a light pink. Nathan had snickered at them and their weak constitutions, although he was slightly more flushed than usual as well.
Annalise managed to look as if she had simply been a bit heavy-handed with the blush that morning while Gabriel could feel that his own skin was patchy and unflatteringly red. He was only a bit peeved, though, when Nathan and Annalise ganged up on him, laughing at his pasty misfortune and falling all over themselves on their threadbare blanket. They weren’t even looking at him anymore as they gasped for breath in between rounds of giggles, not needing to have eyes on the subject of their mirth to wring every last drop of mischief-making out of it.
Gabriel gazed at them, both glowing in the late afternoon sunlight, a bit in awe of how these two had barged their way into his life, with no regard for normal social graces, and dragged him along with them. It had been so long since he had had anything even approaching an ally, much less true companionship. He let them have their fun, feeling suddenly, impossibly old as he made a half-hearted attempt to gather up the remains of their lunch.
He couldn’t be much older than them, really, perhaps only a year or two, but it was hard to tell with the remnants of Mercury’s spells still lingering in the cut of his jaw and the slant of his eyes. His memory, or lack thereof, made it impossible to tell how long he had looked like he did and how many years had been skipped over in Mercury’s desire to make him a more effective solo agent. Most people didn’t want to do business with someone who still had spots on their nose, even if they were one of Mercury’s boys. Those who did… well.
Thinking about Mercury was something he had avoided ever since he had escaped with Nathan’s vial. Absentmindedly, he found himself plucking at the wildflowers that were poking through a hole in the worn patchwork quilt. The batting was old—lumpy in some places and worn almost bare in others. The stitching had come loose enough for a few blades of grass and a handful of bedraggled wildflowers to tickle at his knee.
Gabriel didn’t immediately notice that the pair had lapsed back into silence, or that the weight of their twin regard had shifted back to him. The repetitive motion of his hands had soothed him into a state of quiet contentment which had allowed his mind to drift softly away from thoughts of Mercury and other such thorny things. Nathan and Annalise were so much nicer to contemplate. When he finally did turn to look at them, they were smiling indulgently at him, their gazes so warm that Gabriel had to duck his head back down to escape the sudden prickling in his cheeks, glad any blush could be explained away as the effects of the afternoon sun.
In his lap sat a thin chain of small, purple flowers, halfway woven into a fatter chain of dandelions. The tips of his fingers were slightly damp, stained with milk where he had crushed some of the dandelion stems. Gabriel didn’t remember where or when he had learned to make flower chains, if anyone had taught him or if he had taught himself. He had a vague impression of sitting in another field of wildflowers, perhaps when he was much younger, but the memory, if truly a memory at all, didn’t contain anyone but himself.
Annalise was the first to break the silence, as she often was. “Whatcha got there?”
“What does it look like ma petite choupette?”
Annalise scoffed at the name, probably offended at being called a cabbage, but let it go in favor of teasing him further. “I don’t know. It just looks like some torn up bits of grass to me.”
Gabriel opened his mouth in offence, but Nathan cut in, tone almost unfamiliarly excited. “Are you making a flower crown? I always wanted to know how to make one of those! Gran used to make them sometimes, but she never, uh, got around to teaching me.” His enthusiasm dimmed somewhat at the reminder of his grandmother, but his lips still curled up into a hopeful smile.
Gabriel hadn’t really been intending to make a crown, had barely known he was making anything at all before he looked down to find the half-formed circlet in his lap. Looking at Nathan’s face, however, Gabriel decided that that was exactly what he was doing.
“Yes, darling, I am making a crown for the king of the Blood Witches,” Gabriel intoned in what he thought was a suitably dramatic manner to take any potential sting out of the words. Nathan just grinned softly at him.
“Well what about me? Doesn’t the queen deserve a crown as well?”
“And who says you are the queen?” Gabriel arched an eyebrow, one of his favorite ways to annoy her ever since he had caught her trying to replicate it in the bathroom of a dingy hostel.
“Well, it’s obvious isn’t it? Anyway, you can be the prince.”
“A bit incestuous, isn’t it darling?”
Annalise huffed and rolled her eyes, looking very put-upon but unable to completely disguise the smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. If he wasn’t mistaken, the slight flush to her cheeks was from more than a sunburn. “Alright, you can be the squire. Or the court jester or something.”
Gabriel couldn’t find it in himself to truly be annoyed at her. There was a lovely, mischievous spark dancing in her eyes. “Well,” Gabriel drawled, “I was going to make you one too until you insulted my craftsmanship by calling it ‘bits of grass.’”
It was a bit difficult to keep the delicate blooms from being crushed after Annalise launched herself at him—so violent that girl—and demanded he make one for her too. Without even waiting for his assent, she bounded up off the blanket and tramped off to go find different flowers because “she didn’t want to look like the wrong end of a color wheel, haven’t either of you ever heard of complementary colors?”
Gabriel yelled after her that it was impossible to look like the wrong end of a color wheel because wheels didn’t have ends. She threw up two fingers behind her, not even bothering to look back at him, and cackled all the way down the hill toward a small patch of orange flowers at the edge of a copse of trees.
“When did you learn how to make these?” Gabriel looked back at Nathan to see that he had scooted closer across the blanket.
“Oh, here and there. I lived a very cosmopolitan life before you two came along, you know. I’ve picked up many skills on my travels.”
Nathan shot a dubious look at him out of the corner of his eye. “I don’t think that’s what cosmopolitan means. And anyway, I thought you were complaining that you had ‘never hung around so many fields in your life’ before now. When on your ‘cosmopolitan travels’ did you have time to learn how to make daisy chains?” Even if Nathan hadn’t provided a helpful visual aid, Gabriel would have been able to hear the air quotes all the same, and Gabriel despaired again at having found himself with not one but two travelling companions who were not the least bit impressed with him.
“Who says you have to hang around in fields to learn how to plait flowers? You know, you can pick up all sorts of things from lovers, and flowers are quite romantic–”
“Alright, alright! Don’t tell me!” Nathan was laughing again and waving his arms as though he could physically ward off Gabriel’s shamelessness. His eyes, though, told Gabriel that he wasn’t fooled and had decided, for the dignity of all those involved, not to pry any further. Gabriel was grateful, even as it rankled a bit to be treated with kid gloves.
He looked back down at the two chains in his lap and returned his focus to finishing the crown. He preened a bit internally, not having missed the little something that flickered through Nathan’s eyes at the mention of other lovers, even as he laughed it off. They let the creaking of trees overhead do the talking for a while, content to sit in each other’s company and occasionally glance over to where Annalise was diligently picking through the little patch of flowers she had spotted.
The join between the two ends of the chain turned out a bit wonky; apparently Gabriel’s muscle memory didn’t extend as far as finishing the circle, but he had managed to secure them with something approaching an artistic flair. It was only slightly lopsided when he placed it atop Nathan’s hair, the purple and yellow blooms peaking out from between curls that had started to grow a little unruly after being dragged through the European wilderness for almost five months.
Just as Nathan reached up to feel his new coronet, smiling brightly, Annalise crashed back into their peaceful little bubble and dumped handfuls of orange blooms into his lap. It was a little embarrassing that he hadn’t heard her, caught up as he was in Nathan sparkling at him. She certainly hadn’t been trying to be subtle.
They both turned to her as she threw herself down on the blanket, nearly upending the uneaten crusts of Nathan’s sandwich. She kicked her legs out in front of her, leaning back on her palms and turning her face to the sun. As if sensing their eyes on her, she cracked open one of her own and leveled a look at Gabriel.
“Well? I’m waiting for my crown.” With all the haughtiness of a true monarch, she closed her eyes again and tipped her head back even further, her hair pooling below her. Her hair had grown out too; it had always been long, but now it seemed that she was well on her way to Lady Godiva territory as she seemed uninclined to chop it off, even as she complained, ad nauseum, about how much of a hassle it was to deal with. Gabriel suspected that cutting her hair off felt too much like severing ties with her old life (even if she had already done so rather decisively by killing her father and running off with a pair of blood witches, one of whom was the son of enemy number one).
Gabriel huffed in disbelief—she really was a menace—and glanced over at Nathan who was gazing between them with unabashed fondness. Gabriel didn’t even have it in him to tease him because he could tell that his own expression was equally sickening.
He sighed and got to work. If Annalise wanted a crown, he would make sure it was the best damn crown she had ever seen. He tried halfheartedly to convince himself it was just to stop her from complaining and not because he wanted to see them together, bathed in the late afternoon sun, twin wreaths a riot of colors against their hair. His little monarchs.