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There were two hundred and eleven windows in the house in the woods, and Caleb Whitmore had, over the course of a few months, come to know every one of them personally.
He knew which ones caught the morning light and which ones held the long amber afternoons. He knew the one on the second landing that had a crack in its lower pane, so fine that you only noticed it when the sun hit just right. He knew which ones looked out on nothing but pine, and which ones, if you stood on tiptoe and leaned a little to the left, offered a thin silver ribbon of river far below the trees.
He had stood at that last window for most of the morning.
The mansion was a marvel. Arian had built it for him, every stone of it, every beam, in the long winter months before he had stolen Caleb out from under the nose of the Crown and the clutches of his own brother. It sat in a hollow of ancient forest, hours from the nearest town, hidden from roads and satellites and the curious eyes of anyone who might have wished to find a missing prince. It had a library with a rolling ladder. It had a conservatory full of citrus trees that Arian had shipped in from Sicily, lemons and blood oranges that bloomed and fruited as though they had never left home. It had a kitchen staffed by a head chef who wept when Caleb praised his risotto. It had a bed so large and so soft that the first night Caleb had slept in it, he had cried from sheer relief.
It had everything. That was the trouble.
Caleb pressed his forehead to the cool glass and exhaled. A small cloud of fog bloomed on the window and shrank away.
"You are brooding," said a voice behind him.
He did not startle. After all these months he knew the sound of Arian's steps, even though the man moved like a cat for someone built like a wall. Caleb simply smiled at his own reflection, faint and ghostlike in the glass, and watched a taller shape settle in behind it.
"I'm not brooding," Caleb said. "I'm observing."
"You are observing the trees with the expression of a man who is being sentenced." Arian's arms slid around his waist from behind, warm and heavy and certain, and a chin came to rest on his shoulder. "Tell me what you need. I will have it here by evening."
And there it was. That was the thing that made Caleb's chest ache in two directions at once. Arian meant it. He would have it here by evening, whatever it was. A rare book, a particular brand of tea, a violin, a telescope, a Venetian glass chandelier, a live peacock. Caleb had once idly mentioned that he missed a certain pastry from a bakery in Kensington, and the next morning there had been a box of them on the breakfast table, still warm, and a very tired-looking courier being fed in the kitchen.
Arian Conti, godfather of the Conti family, a man whose name made grown men in three countries lower their voices, could bring Caleb anything in the world.
Except the world itself.
"I don't need anything," Caleb said softly. "That's the problem."
Arian was quiet. Caleb felt the shift in him, the way the muscles in his arms went still. He had learned to read that stillness. It was not anger. It was the particular silence of a man turning a problem over, looking for the weak point, and finding that the problem was one he did not know how to solve.
"Explain," Arian said at last. His voice had gone gentle in the way it only ever did for Caleb.
Caleb turned in the circle of his arms so that they were face to face, his pale skin flushed and his dark, deep brown eyes bright with the argument he was about to make. He had to tilt his head back a little. Arian had a hard, handsome face, all sharp lines and sun-warmed olive skin, with dark brown, watchful eyes, a mouth that had been shaped for giving orders and had, somehow, ended up spending most of its time saying Caleb's name like a prayer. There was a faint scar through his left eyebrow. Caleb had kissed it more times than he could count.
"I haven't been outside in weeks," Caleb said. "Not really. Not past the terrace. I know why. I know it's for me, and I know what you saved me from, and I will never stop being grateful, Arian, I mean that. But I feel like I'm going to suffocate. I can see the whole forest from every window and I can't smell it. I can't feel it. I look at the trees and I feel like a man looking at a painting of trees."
Arian's jaw tightened. "It is not safe."
"Nowhere is safe if you think about it hard enough."
"Caleb."
"Your men patrol the whole perimeter. You told me yourself that nothing gets within five miles of this house without your knowing." Caleb lifted his hands and laid them flat against Arian's chest, over the fine black wool of his sweater, feeling the steady drum of his heart underneath. "I'm not asking to walk into a city. I'm asking to walk into a forest. With you."
"With me," Arian repeated slowly.
"With you. We could go together. It would be fun." Caleb let a little of the old mischief into his smile, the one that had once gotten him out of a hundred royal obligations and into a hundred small rebellions. "You do remember fun? It's that thing people have when they're not planning how to protect each other from everything."
A muscle flickered in Arian's cheek. He looked away, out over Caleb's shoulder at the pines, and Caleb could see the war happening behind his eyes. The part of him that had spent thirty-odd years learning that the world was a knife, and the part that could not bear to see the light dimming in the man he loved.
Caleb tried one more thing. He rose onto his toes and pressed a kiss to the scar in Arian's eyebrow. Then another to the corner of his mouth. Then, very lightly, to his jaw.
"Please," he whispered, against the skin there. "Just for an afternoon."
Arian closed his eyes.
"You are going to be very persistent about this," he said, with the voice of a man who already knew he had lost.
"Insufferably."
"Until I say yes."
"Until you say yes."
A long breath left Arian's chest, and with it went a good deal of the tension in his shoulders. When he opened his eyes again, they were very dark and very soft.
"Tomorrow," he said. "I will speak with the head of security tonight. We will go to the river. We will take a basket. If I tell you we leave, we leave, without argument."
Caleb's heart gave a great, glad leap. "Without argument," he agreed, which was a lie, and they both knew it, and Arian's mouth twitched in the beginning of a smile anyway.
"Thank you," Caleb said, and kissed him properly then, and felt Arian's hand slide into his hair and hold him there as though he were something that might blow away on the wind.
The weather, as if it had been told, was perfect.
Caleb woke before dawn with his heart already racing, and then spent an hour pretending to be asleep because Arian's arm was a warm weight across his waist and Arian's breathing was slow and even against the back of his neck. He had learned that Arian slept lightly, always, a creature of old habit. But in the mornings, in the first soft grey hour, there was a window when the man softened all the way. Caleb lay still and let himself feel it. The solid curve of Arian's body fitted along his back. The faint scent of cedar and something darker, something that was only Arian. The ridiculous, impossible fact of being here, in this bed, safe and wanted.
Not long ago, he had lain awake in a different bed, in a different house, listening to the footsteps of guards outside his door and wondering how long it would be before his brother's plans for him became more than whispers.
Andrew had been so patient about it, in the end. That was the part that Caleb still woke up cold over sometimes. There had been no shouting, no cruelty, nothing a sympathetic bystander could have pointed to and said there. Only a smooth, courteous, terrible logic. A king needed allies. A king needed leverage. A younger brother with a pleasing face and a blameless reputation was a very useful thing to have, if he could be given to the right people, bound by the right contracts, made to smile in the right photographs for the rest of his life. Slavery, in all but name. A gilded one, dressed in titles and ceremony.
Caleb had been three days from the signing when Arian Conti had walked into a palace he had no business entering and walked out again with the Prince of England at his side.
He still did not entirely understand how it had been done. Arian never talked about it. All Caleb knew was that there had been a door, and a corridor, and a man with a very calm voice saying come with me if you wish to live as yourself, and that he had gone without looking back.
"You are thinking too loudly," Arian murmured into his hair.
Caleb let out a startled laugh. "How long have you been awake?"
"Since you started holding your breath." A kiss to the nape of his neck. "Whatever it is, put it down. You are going outside today."
That did it. The old shadows broke apart, and Caleb rolled over and kissed him, grinning against his mouth, and Arian made a low, pleased sound and pulled him close, and for a while neither of them said anything that needed words.
The head chef, whose name was Teodoro and who had a mustache of heroic proportions, had been awake since four.
"A picnic," he told Caleb with great solemnity, as though the word were a state secret. "You will not suffer the indignity of sandwiches. I will not allow it."
There were no sandwiches. There were thin slices of cured ham wrapped around ripe figs. There was a round of crusty bread still warm from the oven, and a wedge of sharp pecorino, and a small jar of honey with the comb still in it. There were arancini the size of golden plums, cold marinated artichokes, a tin of olives, a little tart of ricotta and candied orange peel, and in a wooden bowl lined with a linen cloth, a heap of dark, glossy cherries so ripe they looked almost black.
"Teodoro," Caleb said faintly, "there are two of us."
"Then you will have leftovers, Your Highness, and you will be grateful."
"I'm not Your Highness anymore."
Teodoro looked genuinely pained. "You will always be Your Highness in my kitchen," he said, with great dignity, and went back to polishing a bottle of wine that did not require polishing.
Arian, leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed, did not quite manage to hide his smile.
They took the black car as far as the old logging road allowed, with two of Arian's men in the vehicle behind and two more already somewhere in the trees, unseen. Caleb had expected to feel the weight of their presence, but once they stepped out into the open air he forgot them entirely.
The forest smelled.
That was the first thing. It hit him the moment he stepped out of the car, a rush of damp earth and green and sap and sun-warmed bark, so rich and layered that he stopped dead in the middle of the path and simply breathed. Somewhere high above, birds argued in the canopy. The light came down through the branches in long, slanted shafts, gold on the moss, gold on the ferns, gold on the back of his hand when he held it out.
"Oh," he said quietly. "Oh, I'd forgotten."
Arian was watching him. Not the forest. Him. There was an expression on his face that Caleb would have given a great deal to be able to paint. It was so raw and so unguarded that it made his throat tighten.
"What?" Caleb asked.
"Nothing." Arian shook his head and reached for his hand. "Come. The river is this way."
They walked. It was not a difficult hike, Arian had chosen the route with obvious care, a gentle path that wound down through the trees along a creek bed and then followed the slope toward the water. But to Caleb it felt like a pilgrimage. He stopped to touch the bark of a particularly vast oak. He crouched to examine a cluster of tiny white mushrooms, and Arian said, "Do not eat those," in a voice of genuine alarm, and Caleb laughed so hard he had to sit down on a fallen log.
"I wasn't going to eat them!"
"You had the look."
"What look?"
"The look of a man who thinks he can identify a mushroom from a book he read once when he was fourteen."
Caleb stared at him. "How do you know that about me?"
"I know everything about you." Arian held out a hand and hauled him back to his feet. It was said so lightly, so matter-of-factly, that it took Caleb a moment to notice that his heart had skipped.
He held on to Arian's hand a moment longer than he needed to.
The river, when they finally reached it, was a small and shining thing, wide enough to be impressive and shallow enough to be gentle. It ran clear over smooth stones, and at a bend in its course the bank widened into a little meadow of soft grass, shaded on one side by a pair of old willows that trailed their branches in the current. Wildflowers dotted the green, white and yellow and a blue so bright it looked painted on.
Caleb stood at the edge of it and could not speak.
"It will do?" Arian asked, so carefully that Caleb realized, with a rush of tenderness, that he was nervous. Arian Conti, who feared nothing, was standing in a meadow worrying about whether he had picked the right spot.
"It's perfect," Caleb said. His voice came out a little rough. "Arian, it's perfect."
The relief that crossed Arian's face was almost comical. He spread the blanket with the exactness of a man laying out a battle plan, set down the basket, and then stood back with his hands on his hips as if awaiting inspection.
Caleb took off his shoes and walked straight into the river.
The water was shockingly cold. He gasped, then laughed, then gasped again as it swirled around his ankles, tugging at his trousers where he had rolled them to the knee. The stones were slippery underfoot and the sun was warm on his shoulders and he felt, all at once, completely and ridiculously alive.
"You will catch a cold," Arian called from the bank.
"I'm fine!"
"You are standing in a river."
"Come and join me!"
"I am not getting into the river."
"Why not?"
"I am wearing good shoes."
Caleb bent, scooped up a handful of water, and flicked it. The droplets caught the sun like scattered glass and fell short of Arian's boots by a good three feet. He tried again. This time his aim was better.
Arian looked down at his sleeve, now spotted with wet, and then up at Caleb. His expression was very, very calm.
"You have made a grave mistake," he said.
"Have I?"
He did not run, because Arian Conti did not run. He simply walked, steadily and with great purpose, straight toward the water. Caleb shrieked and tried to flee, which in knee-deep current over slick stones was a doomed endeavor. Within three seconds an arm had hooked around his waist and he was hoisted clean off his feet, kicking and laughing and shouting protest, and carried back to shore like a sack of potatoes.
"Put me down!"
"No." Arian deposited him gently on the blanket and then, with great dignity, sat beside him. His shoes were soaked to the ankle. He did not appear to care at all. "There. Now you are on dry land, where you cannot drown yourself in six inches of water."
"You waded in."
"For rescue purposes."
Caleb was laughing too hard to argue. He fell back against the blanket, wheezing, the sky a wide, perfect blue above him through the leaves, and felt Arian lie down beside him, close enough that their shoulders touched.
For a little while they simply lay there.
The river chattered. A dragonfly hovered and darted off. The warmth of the day seeped into his bones, and Caleb thought, with the dreamy clarity of perfect contentment, that this was what it was supposed to feel like. Not a cage. Not a gilded waiting room. This.
"Thank you," he said to the sky.
Arian turned his head. "For what?"
"For saying yes."
A pause. Then Arian's hand found his in the grass and laced their fingers together. "I should have said it sooner," he said quietly. "I was afraid. Not of the world. Of losing you to it."
"You won't."
"You cannot promise that."
"I just did."
Arian huffed out a breath that was nearly a laugh. He lifted their joined hands and pressed a kiss to Caleb's knuckles, slow and reverent. "Stubborn prince," he murmured.
"Overprotective mobster."
"Guilty."
They ate then, and it was wonderful. Teodoro had outdone himself. The figs were honeyed and soft, the arancini crackled and gave way to molten cheese, the bread was warm still, somehow, in its cloth, and the wine was cool and bright and tasted of sun. Arian fed him a piece of pecorino drizzled with honey from his own fingers, and Caleb licked a drop of it from his thumb without thinking, and saw Arian's gaze drop to his mouth and stay there.
Caleb felt a slow heat climb his neck and decided, deliberately, to be wicked about it.
He reached into the bowl and plucked a cherry by its stem. It dangled between his finger and thumb, a dark, shining jewel, swaying a little in the breeze. He held it up. He let it turn, catching the light.
"Are you going to eat that," Arian asked, in a voice that was a shade lower than before, "or is it a decoration?"
"Hmm." Caleb tilted his head. "Do you want it?"
"I want," said Arian, "a great many things."
"Then take it."
Arian leaned in, his eyes never leaving Caleb's face, and opened his mouth, and Caleb whisked the cherry away at the last possible second and popped it into his own mouth with a smug, bright grin.
There was a beat of silence.
Caleb chewed. Swallowed. Deliberately wet his lips with his tongue. And then, very slowly, he lifted one finger and crooked it.
Come here.
Arian's pupils had gone wide. A smile curved his mouth, slow and dangerous and deeply pleased, the smile of a man who had been outmaneuvered and had never enjoyed anything more. "You," he said, "are going to be the death of me."
"Possibly."
He came. He braced a hand on either side of Caleb's shoulders and climbed over him, all that solid warmth lowering until Caleb was pinned gently to the blanket with the sky behind Arian's head and the shadows of leaves moving across his face. He tasted of wine and honey. His kiss, when it came, was unhurried, deep and slow and thorough, the kind of kiss that had no intention of stopping soon. Caleb's fingers curled in the front of his shirt and pulled him closer. The grass whispered. The river laughed. Somewhere high in the willow, a bird began to sing as though it had been waiting for the occasion.
It was a long time before either of them came up for air.
"Cherry," Arian said, against his mouth, with extreme and quiet intensity, "is a cruel fruit."
Caleb laughed until he cried.
They stayed until the light turned.
The shadows had stretched long across the meadow, and the gold had gone to copper, and the air was cooling at the edges when Arian finally said, with obvious reluctance, "We should go."
Caleb didn't argue. That was the strange thing. He had expected to, had braced for it, and instead he felt only a deep and peaceful fullness, a kind of quiet repletion, like a cup that had been filled to the brim. He lay with his head on Arian's shoulder, watching a pair of swallows stitch figures over the water, and felt lighter than he had in months.
"You are smiling," Arian observed.
"Mm."
"You have been smiling for an hour."
"I know." Caleb tipped his face up. "Look at me. I'm shameless."
Arian looked. It was the kind of look he gave very rarely, open and unprotected, and the longer it went on the more Caleb's breath slowed. There was something so tender in it, so fiercely, helplessly tender, that when Arian spoke, his voice had a roughness to it.
"I will do everything I can to make you happy," he said. "Every day. As long as I live. I will keep you satisfied, and safe, and whatever else you need, whatever you ask, I swear it. I only wish to see that light in you. This light. I did not know until today how much I had missed it."
There was a lump in Caleb's throat. He reached up and cupped Arian's face in both hands, thumbs brushing the sharp cut of his cheekbones.
"Hush," he said gently. And kissed him, soft and sure. "You're doing more than enough."
"Caleb—"
"More than enough," he said again, against his mouth. "Do you hear me? You have already given me more than anyone has ever given me. You gave me my life. I'm not keeping a ledger. You don't have to earn me."
Arian did not answer. He only pulled Caleb into his arms and held him very tightly for a long moment, one big hand cradling the back of his head, his face pressed into Caleb's hair. His shoulders were not quite steady. Caleb held on and said nothing, because some things were louder in silence.
When they finally stood and gathered the basket and the blanket, the first stars were pricking through the dusk, faint and silver over the trees. They walked back up the path hand in hand. Neither of them spoke much. Neither of them needed to.
The mansion was golden with lamplight when they returned.
Servants appeared at once, silent and efficient, relieving them of the basket and the blanket and the stained linen. Two men unloaded the car with quiet speed. Teodoro could be heard in the kitchen, announcing to nobody in particular that the leftovers had been regrettably few. Caleb, still glowing, trailed grass blades and pollen up the great staircase behind Arian.
"I need to wash," Arian said at the top, brushing a leaf from his shoulder with an expression of faint distaste. "I smell of river and wine and, I think, a small amount of cherry."
"You smell wonderful."
"You are biased."
"Entirely."
Arian went first. Caleb waited in the bedroom, lazily peeling off his hiking boots and stretching out across the enormous bed with a long, contented groan. When Arian emerged from the bath, hair damp and curling slightly at the nape, wearing loose dark trousers and an old soft shirt that Caleb privately considered a national treasure, he sat on the edge of the mattress with his phone in his hand and began scrolling through messages.
Caleb watched him for a minute. Then he crawled across the bed, draped himself over Arian's shoulders from behind, and began to press slow kisses along the side of his neck, one, then another, then another, working up toward the hinge of his jaw.
Arian's breath hitched. A smile tugged at his mouth. "I am trying to read."
"Mm-hm."
"You are making it very difficult."
"Mm-hm."
Arian turned his head and caught Caleb's mouth in a soft, brief kiss. "Go and bathe," he said, not unkindly. "You have twigs in your hair."
Caleb touched his head and discovered, to his dismay, that this was true. He slid off the bed laughing, and went to run the water.
The phone rang while Caleb was still in the bath.
Arian glanced at the screen and felt something in his chest unclench. Domenico. Of all the names that could have lit up the display, it was one of the few that never brought trouble with it. He answered on the second ring.
"If you are calling to tell me that you are in prison again," he said, "I will hang up."
"That happened one time," said a warm, laughing voice, "and I was framed."
"You were found sleeping inside a stolen bell tower."
"A misunderstanding with a priest. We have settled it." There was a pause, and a rustle, and the ambient noise of a busy street. "Arian. It has been too long. Eight months? Nine?"
"Ten."
"Ten. And you do not call. You do not write. You disappear into the woods like a hermit, and I hear it from three separate people that Arian Conti has married. I had to learn from a fishmonger that my oldest friend had a husband."
Arian closed his eyes. Guilt turned briefly over in his chest. "I was going to tell you."
"You were going to tell me," Domenico repeated, with enormous patience. "Yes. At the funeral, perhaps. Mine. After you had finally let me die of curiosity."
"You are being dramatic."
"I am being wounded. Let me come and see you. Let me see this man who has the audacity to make you smile. I can hear it, you know. You are doing it right now."
Arian was, in fact, doing it right now. He rubbed a hand over his face, torn.
Domenico Ferrante was the closest thing he had to a brother. They had been boys together on the same crumbling Palermo street, two scrawny kids with skinned knees and big plans. Domenico had held his hand at his father's grave. Domenico had shared bread with him when there was no bread. Domenico had never once, in thirty years, asked him for anything he could not give, and had given back double.
And yet.
There was a prince asleep in this house, or would be soon. A prince who had been hunted. A prince whose whereabouts were the single most valuable secret Arian had ever guarded. Every instinct he had screamed at him to refuse, to keep the doors closed, to let no one in.
But this was Domenico.
"You will come alone," Arian said finally. "You will tell no one where you are going. You will leave your phone with my men at the gate."
There was a silence on the other end. When Domenico spoke again, the teasing had gone out of his voice, and what remained was quiet and sincere. "Arian. You know I would die before I let anything happen to him."
"I know." He did know. That was why he was saying yes. "Come in three days. I will send a car."
"I will bring wine," Domenico said, the humor creeping back. "And a gift. Do not ask what it is."
"I am already afraid."
"You should be. Goodnight, old friend."
The line went dead. Arian stared at the phone in his hand for a moment before setting it aside.
"Domenico?" Caleb repeated, his hair still damp, curled against Arian's side beneath the covers.
"My oldest friend. My brother, in everything but blood." Arian's fingers moved idly through Caleb's hair, untangling a last stray strand. "I should have told you about him before. I have been... careful. But I have known him since we were seven years old, and I trust him with my life." A pause. "With yours, too, or I would not allow him within a hundred miles."
Caleb was quiet for a moment, thinking. He had spent a lifetime reading people, the practiced art of every royal child, and he had learned to hear the difference between I trust him and I want to trust him. This was the former. Plain as stone.
"Then I trust him too," he said.
Arian went still. "Just like that?"
"Just like that." Caleb tipped his head back to look up at him. "You don't give your trust cheaply. If he's earned it from you, he has it from me. Besides," and here a sleepy smile crept in, "I'd like to meet the man who knew you when you were seven. I bet you were terrible."
"I was a delight."
"I bet you bit people."
"I bit one person. He deserved it."
Caleb laughed into the pillow. Arian's arm tightened around him, and he kissed the top of Caleb's head, slow and warm and without hurry, and the lamp was turned down, and the house settled around them in the dark. Somewhere beyond the windows, the forest breathed, vast and green and guarded.
Caleb fell asleep with the taste of river air still on his skin, and the sound of his husband's heartbeat against his ear.
For the first time in a very long while, he dreamed of nothing at all.
Domenico Ferrante arrived on a Thursday, in a cloud of dust and bad driving, in the back seat of a car whose driver looked as though he had aged ten years on the road.
Caleb watched from the great front doors, standing on the top step with Arian beside him, a pale English prince next to a man the Sicilian sun had burnished to olive gold. He had changed his shirt three times that morning. He was embarrassed by this and had told no one.
"He is going to say something outrageous," Arian warned him, for the fourth time. "Ignore it. He says outrageous things to everyone. It is a medical condition."
"I'm sure he's lovely."
"He is not lovely. He is a menace. I adore him. Do not encourage him."
The car door opened before the vehicle had fully stopped, and a man unfolded himself from the back seat with the loose, easy grace of someone who had never once in his life been in a hurry. He was tall, nearly as tall as Arian, but built leaner, all long limbs and loose shoulders. His hair was dark and a little too long, falling over his forehead in a way that suggested he had stopped fighting it years ago. He wore a rumpled linen jacket the color of sand, a shirt open at the collar, and an expression of such open, delighted mischief that Caleb felt his own mouth begin to curve before the man had even spoken.
Domenico looked up the steps. His gaze moved over Arian, a quick, fond sweep, and then slid to Caleb.
And stopped.
He stood completely still for about three seconds. Something in his face went slack, and then, very slowly, reverent.
"Madonna santa," he breathed.
Arian's eyes narrowed to slits. "Domenico."
"Arian. I need you to know that I have been lied to." Domenico pressed one hand to his chest, his eyes still fixed on Caleb as if on a vision. "Everyone told me. Everyone. They said the Prince of England was beautiful. I thought, ah, yes, a pretty royal, they all have the good teeth and the good hair. But no one said this. No one said that the light would do that to his face. Is the light doing that? Is it the house? Have you enchanted the house?"
"I am going to hit you," said Arian pleasantly.
"You are not going to hit me, I have brought wine."
"I will hit you and take the wine."
Caleb, who had been trying very hard to look dignified, lost the battle completely. A laugh burst out of him, bright and helpless, and he pressed the back of his hand to his mouth. Domenico's head whipped around and he stared with an expression of such delight that Caleb laughed harder.
"He laughs," Domenico announced to the surrounding forest. "He laughs, and it is also lovely. This is unfair. I came here to be insufferable and you have made it impossible."
"You've been insufferable for about forty seconds," Caleb managed, wiping his eyes. "I think you're doing wonderfully."
"He is witty," said Domenico, in the tone of a man receiving a mortal blow. He turned to Arian. "Why did you not tell me he was witty? I am not emotionally prepared."
Arian pinched the bridge of his nose. But Caleb, watching him from the side, saw the corner of his mouth twitch, and saw the way his shoulders had loosened in a way they had not in days, and understood something quietly: this was a man who did not often get to be teased. Who had spent most of his life being feared. And here was someone who had never once been afraid of him.
Caleb came down the steps and held out his hand. "Caleb Whitmore. Though I suppose you knew that."
Domenico took it, and instead of shaking it, bowed over it with theatrical solemnity and brushed his lips against the knuckles, a quick, warm, absurd little kiss. "Domenico Ferrante," he said. "Humble servant. Childhood friend. Professional disappointment to the man beside you."
"Not professional," said Arian.
"Gifted amateur, then."
"That is more accurate."
Domenico finally released Caleb's hand and clapped Arian on the shoulder, and then, abruptly and without ceremony, pulled him into a rough, tight embrace. Arian stiffened for exactly one second. Then his arms came up and gripped his friend back, hard. Caleb saw his eyes close, and looked away to give them the moment.
"Ten months," Domenico said, quietly, into Arian's shoulder. "Do not do that to me again."
"I will try not to."
"You will not try, you will do."
"I will do," Arian conceded, gruff.
When they separated, Domenico's eyes were suspiciously bright, and he covered it at once by turning to the trunk of the car and announcing, "Now! The gifts!"
The gifts, it transpired, were many, and deeply unwise.
There was the wine, which was extraordinary, a dark Nero d'Avola that Arian regarded with grudging respect. There was a wheel of aged caciocavallo that required two men to carry. There was a bag of pistachios from Bronte that Domenico claimed had been blessed by a bishop, and a tin of sweets shaped like tiny fruits, and a hand-painted ceramic plate, bright with lemons, that he pressed into Caleb's hands with the air of a man bestowing a crown.
"For the prince," he said. "Because a prince of England must have, at least once, a proper Sicilian plate."
"It's beautiful," Caleb said, and meant it. He ran a thumb over the glaze. The lemons were painted with such joyous exuberance that he could almost smell them. "Thank you."
"Is it? I painted it myself."
Caleb looked up. "You did?"
"No," Domenico admitted cheerfully. "I paid a woman in Caltagirone. But I stood next to her while she did it and gave encouragement, so it is almost the same."
"It is not the same," said Arian.
"It is spiritually the same."
"It is a lie."
"It is generosity of framing."
Caleb pressed the plate to his chest and laughed again, and decided that he was going to enjoy the next four days very much indeed.
Dinner on the first night was a long, loud, glorious affair.
Teodoro had been given eight hours' notice that a guest was coming and had spent every one of them in a state of pure culinary rapture. The table, in the vast panelled dining room, groaned with it. A first course of tiny crisp panelle with lemon. Pasta con le sarde, rich and fragrant with wild fennel and toasted breadcrumbs. A whole fish baked in salt, cracked open at the table with a ceremonial tap of a silver spoon. Caponata, glossy and sweet-sour. A bowl of bitter greens dressed with nothing but oil and salt, because, as Teodoro said, a man must have something to remind him of his sins.
Domenico ate like a man who had been starved in a desert. He talked with his mouth full. He gestured with his fork. He told stories, which Arian regularly interrupted to correct, and which Domenico regularly ignored.
"So there we are," he was saying, tearing a piece of bread in half for emphasis, "the two of us, fourteen years old, perched on the roof of the fish market in the dark, and Arian has convinced me that the best way to get down is to jump to the awning of the cheese shop."
"It was a sound plan," said Arian.
"It was a catastrophe. The awning collapsed. We fell into a cart of ricotta. I was wearing ricotta for a week."
"You enjoyed it."
"I enjoyed it a little," Domenico admitted, to Caleb's delight. "But the point is: this man. This one, with the very serious face. He planned it. He was certain. And I trusted him, because he had the eyes of a man who knew things."
"I did know things."
"You knew nothing. You were fourteen."
"I knew that ricotta would break your fall."
"You did not know that."
"I suspected it."
"You suspected it." Domenico threw up his hands and addressed Caleb with great gravity. "You see what I have lived with? Thirty years. Thirty years of I suspected it."
Caleb was laughing so hard he had to set down his glass. "I think," he managed, "I would have loved you both at fourteen."
"We were extremely lovable," said Domenico.
"We were feral," said Arian.
"Lovable and feral. It is the best combination." Domenico pointed his fork at Caleb. "Like you. A prince with very good manners, and underneath, a man who laughs like that. I see through you. You are also feral."
Caleb opened his mouth to deny it and found he couldn't. Beside him, Arian made a small sound, somewhere between a snort and a laugh, and Caleb turned to look at him. Arian was watching him with unconcealed fondness.
"He is not wrong," Arian said.
"I am not feral."
"You pushed a footman into a fountain at your cousin's wedding."
"That was a misunderstanding—"
"You were aiming for the best man."
Domenico slapped the table and let out a whoop of laughter. "Yes!" he crowed. "Yes, this is the prince! I knew it! He is one of us!"
Caleb buried his face in his hands, shoulders shaking, and felt a warm, steady palm settle on the back of his neck. He peeked out between his fingers. Arian was not laughing aloud, but the corners of his eyes were crinkled, and his thumb was stroking slow circles against Caleb's skin, and the look on his face was unbearably soft.
Across the table, Domenico watched the small gesture with an expression that was suddenly, briefly, serious. Then it was gone, replaced by his usual grin, and he lifted his glass.
"To the prince," he said. "And to the man who did the impossible and found someone who can stand him."
"I'll drink to that," said Caleb, and did.
The second day was spent, for the most part, in a state of friendly war.
It began at breakfast, when Domenico appeared in the dining room in a silk dressing gown of an alarming shade of purple and announced that he had slept like a king, wept for his lost youth, and would now like coffee.
"Where did you get that?" Caleb asked, staring.
"A gift from a woman in Naples. She said it brought out my eyes."
"Does it?"
"It does nothing for my eyes. It makes me look like an overripe plum. I wear it out of respect for her." He sat down heavily and reached for the coffee pot. "Caleb. May I call you Caleb? I feel I have earned it. I was very charming last night."
"You were," Caleb agreed.
"You may call him Your Highness," said Arian, from behind his newspaper.
"Arian—"
"Or Mister Whitmore."
"That is very cold," said Domenico, wounded. "I come into your house. I bring you pistachios from a bishop. And you will not even share your husband's first name."
"He is mine," said Arian, without looking up. "His name is also mine."
Caleb choked on his tea. Domenico looked, for one gleeful moment, as though Christmas had come early.
"Oh," he said softly. "Oh, this is wonderful. You have no idea. I have waited my whole life for this. Arian Conti, possessive. Say it again."
"I will not."
"Say it for the record."
"Eat your eggs."
They ate. Caleb, still flushed and trying to disguise it behind his teacup, felt Arian's foot nudge his under the table, a small, secret, steady pressure. He nudged back. Arian turned a page of his newspaper and did not look up, but his mouth curved.
It was ridiculous. It was a ridiculous, domestic, warm little scene, and Caleb thought, with a swell of astonishment: this is my life. This was the life he had been handed instead of the one he had been meant for. Eggs, and bickering, and a man in a purple dressing gown, and a foot nudging his under the table.
He had never imagined it could be like this.
"You should know," Domenico told him that afternoon, "that I have a theory about you."
They were on the terrace. The sun was high and gentle, and the pines threw lacy shadows over the flagstones. Arian had been called away for a phone call, something to do with shipping, which had made him mutter darkly in Sicilian, and so Caleb and Domenico were alone with a pitcher of lemonade and a bowl of the little fruit-shaped sweets.
"Do you?" Caleb said, amused. "Let's hear it."
"I think," said Domenico, leaning back with his ankle propped on his knee, "that you are the first person who has ever looked at Arian and not seen the fear."
Caleb blinked.
"I do not mean you are not afraid of him. I think perhaps you are a little. You are not stupid. But the fear does not stay. You see it, and then you look past it." Domenico popped a marzipan strawberry into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. "I have watched him with you for a day and a half. He is not the same man. He is the man I knew when we were seven, before the world taught him to carry a knife."
Caleb's throat felt a little tight. "He was kind to me," he said. "From the first moment. I don't think he knows how to be anything else with me."
"No, he does not." Domenico's smile turned quiet. "That is what I wanted to say, I think. Thank you."
"For what?"
"For letting him be that man again. I thought he was gone." He shook his head, and then the brightness returned like a lamp being lit. "Also, you are absurdly beautiful, and I intend to tell you so as often as I can get away with it, so I am warning you now."
Caleb laughed. "You've been doing that since you stepped out of the car."
"I have been warming up."
"Is it going to get worse?"
"Oh, much worse."
"Domenico."
The voice came from the doorway, and it was not loud, but it carried the weight of something very close to a threat. Arian stood with his arms crossed, still holding his phone, looking at his oldest friend with eyes that had gone narrow and dark. It was, Caleb noted with great interest, almost exactly the expression he had worn at the front door. The look of a man deciding where best to land a punch.
Domenico did not so much as flinch. He lifted both hands in a gesture of angelic innocence.
"We were speaking of philosophy," he said.
"You were speaking of my husband's face."
"Philosophy of the face."
"I am going to throw you into the river."
"You will not. You have already ruined your good shoes in it once. Your valet told me." Domenico reached for another sweet. "Come, sit. Be happy. I am very good company. Ask your husband."
Arian turned his gaze on Caleb. Caleb, who was doing everything in his power not to burst out laughing, schooled his expression into one of mild, innocent agreement.
"He is very good company," he said.
Arian looked at him for a long second.
"Traitor," he said, with great feeling, and sat down beside him with a thump.
Caleb patted his knee. Domenico beamed. And the lemonade, which had been in danger of going warm, was finally poured.
It was on the third day that Arian began to notice the pattern.
It was not a large pattern. It was a small, insidious thing, the kind of thing that a man of lesser self-awareness might have ignored. But Arian Conti had survived thirty-eight years in a profession that punished inattention with a bullet, and he noticed everything.
He noticed that Domenico had a way of finding Caleb in any room. That he drifted toward him like a plant toward a window. That he always seemed to have a story ready, a joke, a flourish, and that Caleb, whose laugh Arian had spent months learning to coax out, was giving it to him, easily, like coins into a fountain.
He noticed that when Caleb laughed, Domenico watched his face with open delight.
He noticed that his own jaw had begun to ache, and that this was because he had been clenching it for most of the morning.
This is absurd, Arian told himself, firmly, at the breakfast table, stirring his coffee with a precision that bordered on violence. He is your brother. He is harmless. He has flirted with a lamppost in your presence. This means nothing.
"And so," Domenico was saying, leaning one elbow on the table and fixing Caleb with wide, earnest eyes, "the bishop says to me, my son, it is not a sin to love pistachios. And I say, Your Excellency, I have come to you because I love them too much. And he says—"
Caleb was already laughing. His whole face had gone bright, his nose scrunched, his shoulders shaking. It was, Arian thought, the most beautiful thing in the world. And it was being produced by a man in a purple dressing gown telling a story about a bishop.
Arian put down his spoon.
"More coffee?" he said, to nobody in particular, and stood up to get it, although there was a perfectly good footman by the sideboard.
The hike that afternoon was Domenico's idea.
"I have been inside for two days," he announced. "I am a man of the sun. I will wither. I will turn into a raisin. Take me to your river, Arian. I wish to see this famous river that has ruined your shoes."
"It did not ruin my shoes."
"It ruined his shoes," Caleb told Domenico, in a stage whisper. "He had to throw them away. He pretended it was a decision he made a long time ago."
"I did not—"
"He wept," said Caleb.
"I did not weep."
"A single tear. I saw it."
Domenico clutched his heart. "I would have given anything to see it."
"You are both going to walk in front of me," said Arian, "where I can see you, so that when I push you into the river, I do not have to chase."
They went.
The forest was brilliant that day. A cool wind had come in overnight, scouring the sky to a hard, clean blue, and the leaves of the oaks had begun, at the very edges, to turn. Golden flecks drifted down through the sunlight. Their boots crunched. Two of Arian's men followed at a respectful distance, and a third had gone ahead to the river, and Caleb found himself, absurdly, getting used to it, the quiet ring of protection that moved with them like a shadow.
He walked between them. Arian at his right shoulder, silent and watchful. Domenico at his left, talking.
"You must tell me," Domenico was saying, "about the palace. I have never been inside a palace. I imagine it is mostly corridors."
"It is mostly corridors," Caleb admitted. "And draughts. You would not believe the draughts. There was one particular hallway on the north side where the wind came through the stone so hard that the tapestries moved. My nanny used to say it was ghosts."
"It was not ghosts."
"It was an architectural flaw. But I preferred the ghosts." Caleb smiled, a little wistfully. "I used to leave out biscuits for them."
Domenico stopped walking.
He turned, slowly, and looked at Caleb, and there was something in his face that Arian had not seen in it for years. Something very open and very unguarded.
"You left out biscuits," he said, "for the ghosts."
"I was six."
"For the ghosts."
"Domenico, it isn't—"
"I am going to protect you from everything," said Domenico, in a voice of absolute sincerity. "I wish you to know that. From this moment forward, I will defend you from all harm. I do not care what it costs me."
"He's very emotional," Arian said, flatly, to the trees.
"I am a man of feeling."
"You are a man of theater."
"They are the same thing."
Caleb was laughing again, helplessly, and Domenico was beaming like a man who had won a medal, and Arian felt the ache in his jaw tighten another turn. He told himself it was nothing. He told himself it was a normal, healthy, civilized thing to be happy that his husband was happy.
He was happy. It was just that he had hoped, perhaps, that he would be the one to make him laugh.
At the river, the wind dropped.
They spread the blanket on the same sun-warmed grass where, not a week before, Arian had been outmaneuvered by a cherry. Caleb tried not to think about this, and failed, and caught Arian watching him with a very slight, very private smile, and felt his face heat. A look passed between them that was entirely their own, and some of the tightness went out of Arian's shoulders.
Domenico, naturally, noticed everything.
"Oh," he said, looking between them. "Oh, I am interrupting something. This is a place. This is a place where things have occurred."
"Sit down," said Arian.
"Is it the willow? It is always the willow. The willow has seen things."
"Domenico."
"I am only saying that if I had a husband and a willow—"
"Sit."
Domenico sat, grinning, and began to unpack the basket. Teodoro had, once again, outdone himself. There was a cold roast chicken with lemon and rosemary, a salad of blood oranges and fennel, a sheet of focaccia dimpled with olive oil, and a heap of the small, sticky almond biscuits that the Sicilians made for the dead and the very much alive alike. Domenico bit into one, closed his eyes, and made a noise of pure ecstasy.
"Caleb," he said. "I want you to know that I would marry this chef."
"He's already married," said Caleb. "To a woman named Concetta. She terrifies him."
"I would marry her too."
"That's illegal," said Arian.
"I did not say I would do it legally."
They ate. The afternoon unfolded in that slow, golden way, the sun sliding across the meadow, the river murmuring on its stones. Domenico, after some persuasion, took off his boots and waded in, shrieked at the cold, and was instantly delighted. He splashed. He sang. He attempted to catch a fish with his hands and failed, and attempted to blame the fish.
"This is so much better than sitting in a bar," he called back. "Why did you not tell me? Ten months! Ten months I could have been standing in a river!"
"You would have been arrested," Arian called.
"Only a little."
Caleb, sprawled on the blanket with his hands behind his head, watched him with a fond, lazy smile. "He's wonderful," he said, to the sky.
Beside him, Arian went rather still.
"He is," he said, after a moment, evenly.
"I can see why you love him."
"Yes."
"I love how he does things. Without apology. He just walks into a room as though it belongs to him." Caleb's smile widened. "I wish I could do that."
"You can," said Arian. "You do. You walked into my house and rearranged the furniture."
"That was one chair."
"It was a very important chair."
Caleb rolled onto his side to face him, propping his head on his hand. "Are you all right?"
"I am perfectly all right."
"You've been quiet."
"I am always quiet."
"You've been quiet in a new way." Caleb studied him, head tilted. "A pointy way."
Arian, to his enormous annoyance, felt his ears heat. "It is nothing. I am enjoying the sun."
"Mm." Caleb let it go, for now, but his eyes lingered a moment longer, bright and curious, and Arian had the distinct, uncomfortable feeling of having been seen through like a pane of glass.
It came to a head that evening.
Dinner had been, if possible, louder than the night before. Domenico, flushed with sun and wine, had fully abandoned all restraint. He had, over the course of the meal, compared Caleb's eyes to a moonless midnight, to a very expensive black pearl, and to a bowl of dark cherries, "a compliment," he had assured them, "a delicious one." He had asked Caleb whether he had ever considered modeling. He had asked Caleb whether he had ever considered sainthood.
"I think," Caleb said, wiping his eyes, "I would be a very bad saint."
"You would be a spectacular saint. I would build you a shrine. I would make pilgrimages. There would be a feast day."
"There would be a lawsuit," said Arian.
"Against whom?"
"Against you."
They had retired to the drawing room afterward, a long, warm room hung with old tapestries and lit by lamps and a low fire. Caleb curled into a corner of the deep leather sofa with a glass of dessert wine, and Domenico, with an air of casual proprietorship, sat on the arm beside him and began to tell a story about a man who had once tried to smuggle a live goat through customs.
Arian stood by the fireplace, with a drink he was not drinking, and watched.
He watched the way Domenico leaned in, gesturing broadly, and the way Caleb tipped his head back to laugh. He watched Domenico say something low and sly, and Caleb swat at his arm. He watched, with a slow, slow burn, as Domenico reached out and brushed a bit of lint from Caleb's sleeve with absurd, theatrical care and said, "There. Now you are perfect. Though you were perfect before."
Something in Arian's chest went hot and sharp.
He put his glass down on the mantel with a click. It was not loud. But Caleb's head turned immediately, as it always did when Arian made a sound, as though he were tuned to him like a compass needle.
The two men looked at each other across the room.
Caleb's expression was inquisitive. Arian's was carefully, deliberately blank. And in the silence, Domenico, who had been about to launch into the climax of the goat story, looked from one to the other, and a slow, terrible, delighted understanding began to dawn across his face.
"Oh," he breathed. "Oh, my friend."
"Do not," said Arian.
"You are jealous."
"I am not jealous."
"You are so jealous." Domenico pressed both hands to his cheeks, eyes wide. "Arian Conti. Don of Dons. The Lion of Palermo. Jealous. Of me."
"I am going to count to three."
"This is the greatest day of my life. I will tell my grandchildren."
"One."
But Caleb had begun to laugh, and it was the kind of laugh that could not be stopped, the full-bodied, shoulder-shaking, sloppy-wine-glass kind. He had to put his glass down. He had to wipe his eyes. And through the haze of his own mortification, Arian watched his husband laugh until he had to fold himself over his knees, and could not, for the life of him, summon a single ounce of the fury he had intended.
"Oh, Arian," Caleb gasped, when he could speak. "Oh, my love. Is that what the pointy was?"
"I do not know what you are talking about."
"You are." Caleb straightened up, flushed and radiant. "You're jealous of Domenico. You've been jealous since this morning. You nearly put your spoon through the table."
"I did not—"
"You got up to fetch your own coffee."
Arian said nothing. Domenico let out a wheeze of laughter and had to hold on to the arm of the sofa.
"I am sorry," Domenico wheezed. "I am so sorry. But you must understand. I have known this man for thirty years. He once watched me be stabbed and said you will be fine. And now, this."
"You were not stabbed."
"I was slightly stabbed."
"It was a scratch."
"It was a dramatic scratch."
Caleb pressed his lips together, trying and failing to rein in his smile. He stood up, crossed the room, and stopped in front of Arian, close enough that Arian could see the firelight caught in his eyes.
"Hey," he said, softly.
Arian looked at a point somewhere over his shoulder. "I am fine."
"You're not."
"I am a grown man. I am not jealous of a man in a purple dressing gown."
"You are a little bit jealous."
A long, stubborn silence. Then, gruffly, to the tapestry: "...A little."
Domenico, on the sofa, made a small, strangled, joyful noise and pressed a cushion to his face.
Caleb's expression gentled. He lifted a hand and rested it against Arian's chest, over his heart. "Look at me."
Arian looked.
"I like Domenico," Caleb said. "I do. A great deal. I like how he talks and how he laughs and how he can never, ever stop being ridiculous. He makes me feel like I'm fourteen and have gotten away with something. I like that about him."
Arian's jaw worked. He did not look away, but there was a flicker of something in his eyes, hurt, or close to it, and Caleb's heart squeezed.
"But," Caleb continued, so quietly that only Arian could hear, "he is not you. He has never been you. No one has. You're the one who took the ghosts away. You're the one who came for me. When I look at you, I don't feel like I got away with something, Arian. I feel like I came home."
The flicker in Arian's eyes went still. His throat moved. His hand rose, slowly, and covered Caleb's where it rested against his chest, holding it there.
"That," he said, with great difficulty, "was extremely unfair."
"I know."
"You said it on purpose."
"I did."
"In front of an audience."
"He's very discreet," said Caleb.
"I am extremely discreet," said Domenico, in a muffled voice, from behind the cushion. "I am a vault. Do not mind me. I am furniture."
"You are a menace," said Arian, but there was no heat in it, and when Caleb rose on his toes and kissed him, soft and sure and unhurried, in front of the fire and the tapestries and the shamelessly eavesdropping Sicilian, Arian made a low sound in his throat and kissed him back like a man who had been drowning and had found a rope.
"Ah," sighed Domenico, from the sofa. "L'amore."
A slim, expensive loafer struck him squarely in the cushion.
The fourth day was Domenico's last, and he spent it with a strange, bright, elegiac energy, as though trying to fit as much as possible into the hours that remained.
He woke early. He wandered the conservatory, picking a blood orange from a tree and peeling it as he walked, leaving a trail of fragrant rind behind him. He found the library, ran a finger along the spines, and pronounced it "very sad and very beautiful, like all good things." He sat for an hour in the kitchen with Teodoro, learning the secret of the panelle, which Teodoro refused to tell him and then told him, which was the way of such secrets.
He teased Caleb about everything. His tea. His posture. His sleeves, which he insisted were too long.
And Caleb, to Arian's visible chagrin, delighted in it.
"He is enjoying it," Arian muttered to himself at lunch, watching Caleb tear into Domenico's most outrageous claim yet (that the Queen of England had once, secretly, been a Sicilian) with gleeful, devastating counterarguments.
"The Queen of England," Caleb was saying, "was born in Mayfair. I have seen the certificate."
"A forgery."
"It was signed by the doctor."
"A Sicilian doctor."
"There is no such thing—"
"There is always such a thing."
Arian rubbed his eyes. Beside him, he heard a rustle of paper, and turned to find Teodoro setting down a small plate of lemon biscuits with the expression of a man delivering a comfort to a patient.
"Eat," said Teodoro, gravely. "It helps."
"I am fine," said Arian.
"Of course, Don Conti."
"I am not jealous."
"No, Don Conti."
"It is only that—" Arian gestured, helplessly, at the table, at the shouting, at Caleb, who had just thrown a bread roll at Domenico's head with deadly accuracy. "He is so happy."
Teodoro looked at the scene. His mustache twitched, in what might, in a less dignified man, have been a smile.
"That," he said, "is generally considered a good thing."
Arian ate a lemon biscuit. It was a very good lemon biscuit. He ate another.
That afternoon, he found Domenico alone on the terrace.
The sun was lowering already, a long amber light spilling across the stone, and the first chill of the evening was coming up out of the trees. Domenico sat on the balustrade with his legs swinging, a half-peeled orange in his hands, looking out over the forest. Without the performance, he seemed quieter. Older. Like a man putting down something heavy.
Arian stood beside him. For a while, neither spoke.
"I was teasing," Domenico said at last, without turning. "You know that."
"I know."
"I would never—"
"I know, Domenico."
"Good." He pulled a segment of orange free and held it out. Arian took it. "Because I think he is wonderful, and I think you are wonderful, and I think the two of you are the sort of thing I did not believe existed. And I would sooner cut off my hand than do anything to disturb it."
Arian ate the orange. It was sweet and tart and a little bitter at the center, exactly like the ones from home. He looked out over the trees, and the light, and said, slowly, "I was afraid you would take him from me."
Domenico finally turned to look at him. His face was open, and a little sad, and unusually serious.
"Arian."
"I know it is foolish. I know. But I have been holding on so tightly that I forgot how to let anyone near him. I forgot that he needs more than I can give him." His voice dropped. "He needs a world. And I only know how to build him walls."
"You built him a house," said Domenico.
"A very beautiful cage."
"No." Domenico shook his head, firm. "A cage is a place you cannot leave. Do you understand? He leaves. He walked out of that door on his own two feet, and he came back on his own two feet, and he came back smiling. That is not a cage. That is a home." He paused. "You are allowed to be afraid. You are allowed to be jealous of a clown in a dressing gown. But do not mistake what you have built. He chose it. He chooses it every day."
Arian was silent for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was rough. "When did you become wise?"
"I have always been wise," said Domenico, with great dignity. "I simply hide it under my charm."
"It does not hide very well."
"Do not tell anyone."
"I will tell no one."
"Good." Domenico bumped his shoulder against Arian's. Arian bumped it back. They stood there, two grown men who had once jumped off a roof into a cart of ricotta, and watched the sun go down over the pines.
The last dinner was quieter.
Not subdued, exactly. Domenico was incapable of subdued. But the noise had a different texture, softer and slower, like the last warm hour of a long day. Teodoro had made a dish he called the farewell, a rich, slow-braised lamb with wild herbs and white beans that filled the dining room with a scent so good it felt like an argument against leaving. They ate by candlelight. They drank the last of the Nero d'Avola. They told old stories, and then older ones, and Caleb sat with his chin propped on his hand, listening to two men who had known each other for thirty years laugh over things that had happened in streets he would never see.
It struck him that he had never had this. A friend who could tell the truth about him and still stay. A family that was not a throne.
And it struck him, too, with a small private warmth, that in some way he now did.
"I have a confession," Domenico said, when the plates had been cleared and the candles had burned low. "I did not only come to see you because I was lonely. Though I was. A little."
"Oh?" said Arian.
"I came because I was afraid." He turned the stem of his glass in his fingers. "When I heard that you had married, and that you had taken the Prince of England, and that the Crown was looking for him with everything it had, I thought: they will eat him alive. My friend has made himself a target the size of the sky. I thought I would come and find a man in ruins."
The room had gone quiet.
"And instead," Domenico said, softer, "I found a man who has finally stopped looking over his shoulder. I do not know what you did, Caleb. I do not know what magic you have. But I have not seen him sleep through the night in thirty years, and the servant told me this morning that he sleeps until seven."
Caleb's eyes had gone a little bright. He reached under the table and found Arian's hand and held it. Arian did not look at him, but his fingers closed around Caleb's, hard.
"Thank you," Domenico said, and for once there was no performance in it at all. "Both of you."
"Do not cry," said Arian, roughly.
"I am not crying. It is the wine."
"You are crying."
"It is a very emotional wine."
Caleb laughed, and dashed a hand across his own eyes, and Arian, after a moment, did too, and then the three of them were laughing in a candlelit room with tears on their faces, and the lamb was cooling on the plates, and it was the best evening Caleb could remember.
In the morning, the car was waiting.
The sky was the color of pearl, faintly pink at the horizon, and the forest was hushed and dew-bright. Domenico stood in the driveway in his sand-colored jacket, his bag at his feet, looking like a man who did not at all want to leave and was trying to hide it behind a broad smile. Teodoro had pressed a hamper into his arms, covered in a linen cloth, and had stood in the doorway wiping his eyes with the corner of his apron and denying it fiercely.
"You will write," Domenico told Arian, jabbing a finger at his chest.
"I will write."
"You will call."
"I will call."
"You will let me come back in the spring, when the almond trees bloom, and you will not make me ask."
"You may come back in the spring." A pause. "And you will bring more of the bishop's pistachios."
"I will bring crates." He pulled Arian into an embrace, long and tight, and murmured something into his ear that Caleb could not hear. Arian's eyes closed. He nodded once, his hand pressed flat between his friend's shoulder blades.
Then Domenico let go and turned to Caleb, and held out his arms with exaggerated, theatrical resignation.
"May I?"
"You may," said Caleb, smiling.
"He permits it," Domenico told the sky. He folded Caleb into a hug, and it was a good one, warm and sincere and smelling of orange peel. "You are the best thing that has ever happened to him," he said, low, for Caleb alone. "If he is stubborn, tell me. I will come and shout at him."
"He is very stubborn."
"I know. I have seen the evidence." He pulled back, his hands on Caleb's shoulders, and his grin was crooked and fond. "Goodbye, principe. Remember: you are allowed to be feral."
"I'll remember."
"And do not leave out biscuits for any more ghosts. They are fat enough."
Caleb burst out laughing, and Domenico, with a flourish, kissed him once on each cheek in the proper Sicilian manner, climbed into the back of the car, and rolled down the window.
"One more thing," he called, as the engine started.
"What?" said Arian.
"You are so jealous."
"Go!"
The car pulled away, and Domenico's laughter trailed behind it, long and bright, until the trees swallowed the sound. The dust settled slowly over the gravel. A single golden leaf drifted down from the oak and landed on the step.
Caleb and Arian stood side by side and watched until the road was empty.
"He is going to tell everyone," said Arian, grimly. "He is going to tell every man in Palermo."
"Probably."
"I will never be able to show my face in the city again."
"They'll be very sympathetic."
"They will be delighted."
Caleb slipped his hand into Arian's. "I think," he said, "that it's the best thing anyone's ever said about you."
Arian looked down at him, and the tension eased from his face, leaving something warm and rueful in its place. "You are a terrible influence," he said.
"You adore it."
"I adore you," said Arian, as if it were a long-standing grievance. "It is a serious condition. I have been advised there is no cure."
The house was very quiet that afternoon.
It was a different quiet from before. It no longer pressed. The windows, two hundred and eleven of them, no longer felt like a row of frames. Caleb walked through the halls with his hands in his pockets, noticing things. The empty guest room, bed already stripped, a single purple thread caught on the doorknob. The conservatory, where someone had left a half-peeled orange on the edge of a planter. The library, one book pulled halfway out of its shelf, as if someone had been interrupted in the middle of a thought.
It was a very particular kind of silence. The silence of a house that had been lived in.
He found Arian in the study, standing at the window with his back to the room, a cup of coffee going cold in his hand.
"Hey," Caleb said, from the doorway.
"Hm."
"Are you all right?"
"I am perfectly well." A pause. "It is only very quiet."
"It is."
"I had forgotten what it was like. Having him here." Arian turned, and he looked, for a moment, a little lost, a big man in a quiet room. "I did not expect to miss the noise."
Caleb crossed the floor and took the coffee out of his hand and set it aside. Then he put both arms around Arian's waist and laid his head against his chest.
Arian's arms came around him without hesitation. They stood like that for a long time. Caleb could hear the slow, steady drum of his heart.
"You know," Caleb said, into his shirt, "I did mean what I said. About Domenico. I like him very much."
"I know."
"I like his jokes and his comebacks and his terrible dressing gown."
"I know."
"But I like you in a different way." Caleb tilted his head back to look up at him. "I like the way you go quiet when you're thinking. I like that you notice everything and say nothing and then show up with a pastry the next morning. I like that you tried to hide that you were jealous and did it so badly that you tipped over your own coffee."
"I did not tip over my coffee."
"You tipped over your coffee on the second day."
"That was a different incident."
"It was the same incident."
Arian's mouth twitched. "You are insufferable."
"I learned from the best."
"Caleb." His voice dropped, and his hand came up to cradle the side of Caleb's face, his thumb brushing a slow arc along the cheekbone. "I am sorry. For being petty. You did nothing wrong. You were only happy, and I should have been glad."
"You were glad."
"I was glad and also an idiot."
"That's allowed." Caleb turned his face into the palm and pressed a kiss there. "You're allowed to be both. That's what I love about you."
The words hung in the air between them. They had said I love you before, of course, many times, at many hours, in many moods. But there was something about it, in the quiet, in the late afternoon light, that made the words land like something new.
Arian's eyes went very soft and very dark. "Say it again."
"I love you."
"Again."
"I love you," said Caleb, smiling, "you ridiculous, jealous, wonderful man."
Arian kissed him.
It was slow, and deep, and unhurried, and it tasted of coffee and something sweeter beneath. It felt like a promise being made in a language that did not require words. Caleb's hands slid up to curl in the back of his shirt, and Arian's arm tightened around his waist until there was no space left between them at all.
When they parted, Arian rested his forehead against Caleb's, breathing slow.
"Come," he murmured. "I think I would like to lie down. With you. For a very long time."
"I think," said Caleb, "that's the best idea you've had all week."
They did not light the lamps.
The bedroom was full of the last of the day's light, a long, deep, honeyed gold that came slanting through the tall windows and lay across the rumpled sheets. Outside, the forest had gone to rust and amber and shadow. A single bird was singing somewhere near the eaves, in a patient, unhurried voice.
Caleb lay on his side with his head on Arian's shoulder and one leg tucked over his, and Arian's arm around his back, his hand moving in slow, absent strokes up and down the line of his spine. The blankets had been dragged up around them in a warm, soft heap. Somewhere in the folds, Caleb had lost a sock. He did not intend to look for it.
For a long time they said nothing.
It was the best kind of silence. The kind that was full instead of empty. The kind that asked for nothing and offered everything.
"Do you know," Caleb said at last, his voice drowsy and soft, "what I thought, the first time I woke up here?"
"Tell me."
"I thought: this is a dream. I thought I would wake up in that cold room with the guards outside and Andrew's solicitors waiting with their pens." His fingers traced idle patterns on Arian's chest. "I used to wake up every morning for weeks and check. I'd look at the ceiling. I'd look at the windows. I'd look at you. Just to be sure."
Arian's hand stilled on his back. "I remember. You used to hold my wrist when you slept."
"Did I?"
"Every night. As though I might disappear."
Caleb was quiet for a moment. "Do I still?"
"Sometimes."
"I didn't realize."
"I do not mind." Arian pressed a kiss to the top of his head. "You may hold on for as long as you wish. I am not going anywhere."
Caleb closed his eyes. A warm, heavy, dissolving peace was moving through him, loosening every muscle, softening every edge. The world had narrowed down to this: the steady beat of a heart beneath his ear, the scent of cedar and sleep, the weight of an arm that held him as if he were something precious.
"I'm glad he came," he murmured. "Domenico."
"So am I." A pause. A small, wry huff against his hair. "Do not tell him."
"I won't."
"He would be unbearable."
"He's already unbearable."
"He would be more."
Caleb smiled into Arian's shoulder. "He's coming back in the spring."
"God help us."
"We'll show him the river."
"We will show him the willow."
"We will not show him the willow."
"Agreed," said Arian, with feeling.
A soft laugh moved through them both, a shared, sleepy tremor, and settled into stillness. The light was going now, slipping from gold to rose to a deep, quiet blue. Somewhere in the house, a clock chimed the hour, and a long way off, in the vast green dark of the woods, an owl answered.
Caleb shifted, pressing closer, and Arian's arms tightened around him, drawing him in until his cheek rested over his heart and their legs were tangled and there was no telling where one of them ended and the other began.
"Arian."
"Mm."
"Thank you for the river."
The hand on his back paused. When Arian spoke, his voice was low and a little rough. "Thank you," he said, "for asking."
"Thank you for saying yes."
"I will always say yes to you."
"Even when I'm persistent?"
"Especially when you are persistent." Arian's lips brushed his hair. "It is my favorite thing about you."
Caleb smiled, eyes closed, and felt a kiss land on his temple, soft as a breath. Then another on his brow. Then, slowly, with great tenderness, one on his lips, brief and warm and certain. The kind of kiss that did not ask for anything. The kind that simply said here.
Here. I am here. You are home.
Outside, the forest breathed in the dark. The stars came out one by one over the pines. Two hundred and eleven windows glowed softly in the night, and behind one of them, in a bed too big for one person and exactly the right size for two, a prince from England and a king from Sicily held each other close, and listened to the quiet, and slept.