Flor was dressed in a pink coat, his cravat a waterfall of white. Clematis wore an old shirt with a brown waistcoat. He did not know the knots a gentleman might use and left his cravat carelessly undone the majority of the time. Somehow, this seemed the most painful thing about looking at Flor now.
Clematis wiped a hand across his cheek, but he had used the ash on his hair, so it likely did little. He was poor and common, and as dirty and dull as dishwater. He was Clematis of the Cinders, and that was as it should be. But the lump in his throat would not let him speak.
Flor’s gaze never left him. “I thought it was you.”
Clematis twitched. He had been so careful never to be alone with Flor for long in this place, never to let Flor see him, or speak with him.
“You did not,” Clematis denied, giving everything away once again. “You didn’t know me. I didn’t want you to.”
Flor frowned; a sight Clematis had missed last night. “I didn’t at first,” Flor admitted, uncharacteristically cautious. “But you knew me. And you mentioned a house like this one, and a married lord who would give you his invitation to a masked ball, and a mask to go with it. You knew Tu, and David, and I… remembered you.” Flor studied Clematis again, from his simple shoes and breeches to his unflattering waistcoat and the streak of ash across his face. Then he met Clematis’s eyes. “I remembered you, and how Hyacinth spoke of you. I know your name, but I would like to hear you tell me. Please?”
“Clematis.” Clematis revealed it in a whisper and wished for so many things when Flor sighed and thanked him for it. He dropped his head to stare at his gray, dusty fingers. “I will help manage the estate someday,” he said, with a small amount of pride. “I will not be kept.”
“Kept?” Flor demanded, outraged. “Who said anything about that?”
Clematis dared to look up. “If you are not here to offer to put me under your protection, then are you here to mock me? That does not sound like you. Neither sounds like you, but I would understand the first if you… if you enjoyed kissing me.”
“You have such faith in me.” Flor’s expression was wondering, then pleased, then determined. He put his shoulders back, lifted his chin, and gave Clematis a sideways, rueful smile. “I must say this first, before I forget—I will not always be a treat. I am difficult, even David would say so—though he will use the word stubborn. But I suppose you know that. You have a head start on knowing me, but I aim to remedy that. I will need to discover your faults, if only to be fair. See how they might align with mine, if we are as suited as I feel we could be. But that is the point of courting, after all. If you find it agreeable. Also, since you mentioned it,” his voice went a little deeper, “yes, I very much enjoyed kissing you.”
Clematis dropped the ashbin, ruining his shoes. “Courting?” No one opened the door behind Flor to laugh at Clematis or drag him away to box his ears for getting ideas. Flor continued to regard him with hopeful bravery. “Courting! Flor, I am servant!” Flor should not have needed the reminder, no matter how egalitarian. “You are expected to marry well,” Clematis added. “You could have had the Prince himself.”
His objections were growing fainter. He looked up, again, to watch Flor approach him. Flor took Clematis’s hand, unconcerned with the ash now also staining his fingers.
“Oh,” Clematis realized, flushing hotter than could be explained by the steam, “you are Flor de Maga, and you will do as you please. Protocol be damned.”
“Not entirely,” Flor corrected gently, sending Clematis’s thoughts whirling, or perhaps that was the way Flor held his hand. Flor lowered his head to study Clematis’s fingers, exploring the writer’s callus with a tiny smile on his face. He looked up again quite suddenly. “I will not do as I please if you do not want me to. In this matter, I mean. I am often forceful. But I have been up all night thinking about how you ran from me, and, while there might be other reasons for that, I would never, ever have it be because I had frightened you or pushed you too far.”
It was a very pretty speech. He meant it, because Flor was an honest person, but the words had the sound of Prince David’s calming influence.
“You did not frighten me,” Clematis replied after several moments of trying to make himself believe this was happening.
Flor gave him a brief, relieved smile before frowning, ever so slightly. “The others did. And that is something you will have to deal with, from time to time, if you… if you decide to keep company with me. More people. The occasional crowd. You should know that as well.”
He stopped and seemed to be waiting. It was not natural for him to wait for long. Clematis was already familiar with Flor’s energy and impatience. Watching Flor attempt to control both was novel and strangely breathtaking.
Clematis turned his hand to hold Flor’s, to help him keep still. “I don’t know how I feel about that,” he admitted truthfully. “But I spent the night wondering how I would manage without your company, now that I have known it.”
Flor met his eyes. “Truly?” he asked, and sounded almost awed. Then, with a sudden lift to his chin and a return to formality only somewhat betrayed by how he continued to let Clematis hold his hand, Flor cleared his throat. “If you are free now, Clematis,” he pronounced the name carefully, and visibly struggled to seem patient, to not whisk Clematis away, “we can discuss it. If not, I can wait until you would like to see me. If you would.”
“I would.” It fell from Clematis’s lips and made him pull in a startled breath.
But Flor’s smile was wide and lovely.
Clematis held his hand tighter, and then, because Flor’s fingers were interlaced with his, and he could not remember what cold was as he burned with such passionate affection, he smiled back.
Martin the Wrong
MARTIN OFTEN traveled through the ancient woods despite the warnings not to, to be careful, to never walk them at night. The parts of the forest closest to the town were managed for the town’s needs, but everything beyond the town’s immediate reach was wild, a wrong place where wrong things lived. The trees had existed before the town, and would exist after it, and whatever lived with them had no interest in people like Martin unless they strayed from the paths.
Most traders and visitors took the road from the south that avoided the woods altogether. If one had to travel by way of the forest, the most-walked path was the one that led to the mountains. Martin took this path to see Joseph in his lonely house. The other path was one created and tended to by Alyce, who was the sort of brave oddity to live by herself on the edge of the woods, and show no fear of the people in town or whatever lived in the shadows of the trees.
Martin sometimes walked these paths even when he had no intention of visiting his friends, which was reason enough to call Martin an oddity as well, aside from his friendships with the town’s most infamous outcasts. He walked the paths to get away from the townspeople teasing him for his interests and his lovelorn state, from those who were content to roll with him a few times but had no wish to speak to him otherwise, from his mother and her ear-pinching lectures on how he could make himself better instead of sewing clothes and fixing shoes or baking pies.
It was easier to breathe in the woods. Martin put on his big brown cloak with the big brown hood, and sometimes filled a basket with goodies for Alyce or Joseph, and wandered for hours. He could take his time as long as he didn’t get caught there after dark—not even Martin was that foolish. They said to stay on the paths, so he did… most of the time. But off the paths were tasty acorns, or nice flowers, or the most beautiful streams. He could sit by them and pretend he was far from the town, far from his mother and everyone else.
That did not mean the forest was safe. The deep woods were ancient and held many secrets. Bucks fought to the death there. Hungry bears lived closer to the mountains alongside the lions but could wander down. Some plants were poison. Some berries held magic for spells. Hawks killed, and spheres of lightning danced along the treetops.
And creatures walked in the shadows. Spirits or gods or something in between. The townspeople whispered of them and marked the trees with red stripes and put white rocks along the paths, so the spirits could not cross.
