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The silence in the royal carriage was a physical thing, thick and heavy as velvet. Regulus Black, second son of the most feared house in the kingdom, stared out at the passing countryside, seeing none of its vibrant greens and golds. A year. It had been a year to the day since the world had ended.
Across from him, his brother Sirius was a study in contrast. His boot tapped a restless rhythm against the floorboards, a grin playing on his lips as he scribbled a letter. The scent of sandalwood ink and cheap ale clung to him, a testament to the raucous tavern they’d left that morning. Regulus could feel the thrum of Sirius’s newfound happiness like a low current, and while he loved his brother—fiercely, desperately—the chasm between their states of being was a canyon he could not cross.
“Remus says the inn in the next village has a library,” Sirius said, not looking up from his parchment. “Apparently, it’s got first editions he’s only read about in catalogues. I told him we’d stay a week, at least. Let him geek out to his heart’s content.”
Regulus didn’t answer. His fingers found the cool, familiar shape beneath his tunic, tracing the outline of the ring hanging from a simple silver chain. A habit, a tic, a prayer.
Sirius’s pen stilled. He looked up, his grey eyes—so like Regulus’s own, yet so different—softening. “Reggie.”
“I’m fine, Sirius.”
“You’re not.” Sirius sighed, folding the letter. “You haven’t been fine for a year. You’re… you’re a ghost wearing my brother’s skin.”
“And what would you have me do?” Regulus’s voice was flat, devoid of emotion. It was how he survived. “Dance a jig? Take up the lute and sing bawdy songs in the tavern like you?”
“I’d have you live,” Sirius said, his voice low and intense. “He’d have wanted you to live.”
He. The single syllable was a dagger, expertly wielded. Sirius never said his name. It was as if speaking it would make the pain more real, more permanent.
“Don’t,” Regulus whispered, turning back to the window.
Sirius had saved him. He knew that. On that horrific night a year ago, their parents had summoned them to the opulent, chilling drawing-room. Walburga Black’s smile had been a sickle. “We have disposed of your little distraction, Regulus,” she’d said, her voice sweet with venom. “The guard, Potter. He was becoming… inconvenient. An example had to be made.”
Orion Black had merely nodded, sipping his wine as if discussing the weather.
Regulus’s world had not so much shattered as vaporized. There had been no scream, no tears. Just a silent, screaming void where his soul had been. Sirius, his face a mask of terror and fury, had acted. He’d seen not just his brother’s heart break, but the deadly intent in their parents’ eyes. Regulus was now a liability, a ruined thing. They would dispose of him, too.
That very night, Sirius had taken him. They’d fled on horseback with nothing but the clothes on their backs and the small bag of jewels Sirius had been secretly hoarding for years. They were exiles, fugitives from their own name, but they were free. Sirius found his freedom in the open road, in the arms of a kind, scholarly man named Remus Lupin they’d met in a dusty bookshop three months into their flight.
Regulus’s freedom felt like a cage of a different kind.
He was happy for Sirius. Truly. Remus was steady and smart, with warm eyes that crinkled when he smiled. He gentled Sirius’s wild edges and gave him an anchor. But their love was a mirror held up to Regulus, reflecting the hollow, aching space where his own love had been.
That evening, they arrived at the village Sirius had promised Remus. The inn was cozy, smelling of yeast and woodsmoke. Remus, as predicted, vanished into the library with a gleam in his eye. Sirius, after clapping Remus on the back, dragged Regulus to the crowded common room.
“One drink,” Sirius insisted, pressing a tankard of ale into his hand. “Just one. For me.”
Regulus sipped the bitter liquid, the noise of the room washing over him—a wave of laughter, clinking glasses, and boisterous conversation. He felt utterly separate from it, an island of grief in a sea of merriment. He couldn’t bear it. Muttering an excuse to a Sirius who was already arm-wrestling a local farmer, he slipped away.
The night air was cool and clean, a relief after the stuffy tavern. He walked without direction, his boots scuffing on the cobblestones, drawn towards the quiet darkness at the edge of the village. He found a small, stone bridge arching over a babbling stream, silvered by the moonlight. It was peaceful. It was the kind of place James would have loved.
Leaning against the cold stone parapet, he pulled the chain from under his shirt. The ring, a simple band of white gold engraved with a tiny, elegant stag, glimmered in the pale light. He remembered the night James had given it to him. They’d been hiding in the palace orchards, the air sweet with the scent of blooming jasmine.
“Run away with me,” James had whispered, his thumb stroking Regulus’s cheek. His eyes, behind his spectacles, were deadly serious. “You and Sirius. We’ll go north. I’ll keep you safe. I’ll build you a life.”
He’d fumbled in his pocket, his hands trembling slightly. “I know I’m just a guard. I have no title, no land to offer you. But I have this.” He’d opened his palm to reveal the ring. “And I have my heart. It’s yours. It has been since we were eight years old. Marry me, Regulus. Be mine.”
Regulus had said yes a hundred times between kisses, the ring a perfect fit on his finger. They had a plan. They were to leave in a fortnight.
A week later, James was dead.
A tear, hot and shameful, finally escaped. He brought the ring to his lips, a nightly ritual. The metal was always cool, never warming to his touch. A ghost of a promise.
“I miss you,” he breathed into the stillness, the words carried away by the stream. “My Jamie. I miss you every second of every day.”
“That’s good,” a voice said from the shadows behind him. A voice he heard every night in his dreams. A voice that had been silenced forever. “Because I’ve missed you every second of every day, too.”
Regulus froze. His heart stopped. This was it. The grief had finally stolen his mind. He was hallucinating. He squeezed his eyes shut, waiting for the phantom to fade.
“Aren’t you going to turn around?”
The voice was closer now, raw with emotion. Slowly, trembling so violently he could barely stand, Regulus turned.
And there he was.
James Potter. Alive.
He was leaning against the other side of the bridge, just as he’d leaned against countless doorframes in the palace, watching Regulus with a fond, exasperated smile. His dark hair was as hopelessly messy as ever, though he wore simple traveller’s clothes instead of his guard’s uniform. His spectacles were perched on his nose. He was real. He was solid.
Regulus’s breath hitched. He was dead. He had to be. This was heaven, or some cruel, final trick of a broken mind. “James?” The name was a plea, a prayer, a sob.
“Hello, my prince,” James said, his own voice cracking.
Regulus stumbled forward, his legs barely supporting him. James moved at the same time, crossing the space between them in two long strides. Regulus’s hands came up, trembling, to touch his face. He expected his fingers to pass through mist, through memory.
They met warm, solid skin. The rough texture of stubble. The familiar curve of his jaw.
A broken sound escaped Regulus, half-sob, half-laugh. “They said… they said they killed you.”
“They tried,” James said, his hands coming up to cover Regulus’s, holding them against his face. He turned his head and pressed a fervent kiss to Regulus’s palm. “They staged an ambush. I was left for dead in a ditch. A farmer found me. It took… months to heal. The first thing I did when I could walk was go to the palace. You were gone. Sirius was gone. I thought…” His voice broke. “I thought they’d killed you both. I’ve been searching for a year. I heard rumours of two noble-born brothers travelling with a scholar… I never stopped looking. I would have spent my whole life looking.”
Tears streamed down Regulus’s face freely now, washing away a year of dust and despair. “You’re alive.” It was all he could say, a mantra of wonder. “You’re alive.”
James pulled him close, crushing him in an embrace so tight it stole what little breath Regulus had left. He buried his face in Regulus’s hair, inhaling shakily. “I’m here. I’m here, my love. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry I wasn’t there to protect you.”
They held each other for a long time, on that bridge under the moon, two halves of a whole finally, miraculously, sutured back together. All the loneliness, the sleepless nights, the endless aching—it all dissolved in the reality of James’s arms.
Finally, James pulled back just enough to look at him. His eyes, bright with unshed tears, dropped to the ring glittering in Regulus’s hand. His breath caught. “You kept it.”
“I never took it off,” Regulus whispered. “I wore it on my finger until the day we fled. Then I put it here.” He guided James’s hand to the chain under his shirt, pressing his palm over the ring where it lay against his heart. “Right here. Next to you. Always.”
The look on James’s face was one of such devastating love and sorrow that Regulus felt his knees go weak. James leaned forward and kissed him.
It was not like their first kiss, all youthful curiosity and sweet passion. This was a reclaiming. A vow. It was lips and tongue and a year’s worth of desperate, starved longing. It was James pouring every ‘I love you,’ every ‘I’m sorry,’ every ‘I missed you’ into him. Regulus kissed him back with everything he had, his hands tangling in James’s hair, pulling him closer, fearing he might evaporate.
“I need you,” James gasped against his mouth, his voice rough with desire and emotion. “Regulus, I need to feel you. I need to know you’re real.”
They stumbled back to the inn, a tangle of limbs and hurried, breathless kisses. James’s room was small and simple, but it was theirs. The moment the door shut, the world narrowed to just the two of them.
James made love to him that night for the first time. It was not rushed, but it was intense, a sacred, fervent communion. Every touch was a memory rewritten, a ghost laid to rest. James worshipped him with his hands, his lips, his body, tracing the map of a year of hardship on Regulus’s skin and replacing the memory of pain with the sensation of love.
It was passionate, a storm of a year of pent-up longing. It was romantic, filled with whispered endearments and tears wiped gently away with trembling thumbs. It was them. It was everything.
And as they moved together, their bodies remembering a rhythm their hearts had never forgotten, as the world outside ceased to exist, James looked down at him, his face etched with love and wonder in the moonlight filtering through the window.
“Marry me,” he breathed, the words a groan, a prayer, a promise against Regulus’s skin. “Please, Regulus. Please, say you’ll still marry me. Be my husband. Let me spend every day for the rest of my life making up for the one we lost.”
Regulus looked up at him, at his Jamie, alive and real and here, and he felt the last shard of ice in his soul melt away. A true, genuine smile—one he thought had died forever—broke across his face, brighter than the moon, more radiant than the sun.
“Yes,” he moaned, arching into him, his heart so full he thought it might burst. “Yes, James. Always yes.”
Later, wrapped in each other’s arms, limbs entwined, Regulus listened to the steady, strong beat of James’s heart. His head was pillowed on James’s chest, James’s fingers idly tracing patterns on his bare back.
“We’ll find Sirius and Remus in the morning,” James murmured, pressing a kiss to his hair. “We’ll tell them. We’ll all go north, just like we planned.”
Regulus lifted his head. The ring was back on his finger, where it belonged. He looked at James, his guard, his love, his fiancé, alive. The lonely prince was lonely no more.
“We’re free, Jamie,” he whispered.
James smiled, that brilliant, sun-bright smile that had captured Regulus’s heart a lifetime ago. “We’re together,” he corrected softly, pulling him close again. “That’s the same thing.”
And for the first time in a year, Regulus knew it to be true.