2. The Panic

Micah entered his brownstone alone, glancing at Andrew's extra shoes by the door, smelling his almond scent in the air, and trying to tamp down the sour taste of dread. He trudged up the stairs, his socks soaking wet and leaving footprints on the wood. The living room was empty and the kitchen was dark, so he went up the next flight to his father Julian's level. He peeked in his dad's bedroom and found him folding laundry.

"Hey, Dad. I made it home."

Julian looked up with a pair of pajama pants in his hands. He was midway through his sixties, his thick black hair finally going gray around his temples, wire glasses perched on his nose. He had light brown skin and vivid amber eyes. Micah wished he'd gotten Julian's eyes and not just his Pakistani complexion. It would have been better than the obnoxious, magical purple irises Micah inherited from the Redwood Queen.

"Oh, what a relief." He scrutinized Micah. "You look miserable. Where's Andrew?"

Micah stared at the light on in the ceiling to push back his tears.

"What happened? Come here, kiddo." Julian gestured to his bed, so Micah slunk over and sank down onto the mattress as he covered his face with his hands.

"I think I just broke Andrew's heart."

"Oh, now." Julian put his arm around Micah's shoulders. "What'd you do?"

"Someone kissed me at work." With a sniff, Micah sat up and wiped his hand across his nose. "Andrew saw her do it."

Julian sighed. "What happened? With the girl."

Micah shrugged, shaking his head. "I don't know, Dad. I was just trying to be nice."

"You have that effect on people." Julian smiled. "It's your nature. And the cute face I passed on to you." Julian pinched Micah's cheek. "Doesn't Andrew know how much kissing you did in your teens in the Redwoods?" His voice caught only slightly when he said the last word.

"All the more reason to not mess around now." Micah's voice was tight and defensive. The person he was before Andrew hardly seemed real. Being single and moving from tryst to tryst, even once they were in Minnesota, he couldn't even imagine it anymore. All the lying and, most likely, all the charming he'd done to make sure he could gorge himself on pleasure and then vanish.

"I didn't mean you ought to." Julian patted his hand. "I just don't think Andrew seems like he'd throw away your relationship so easily." He stood up from the bed and resumed folding laundry.

Micah ran his fingertip over the diamond of his Ingwaz tattoo on his left index finger. "He doesn't seem like himself right now."

Midway through folding a shirt against his chest, Julian paused. He nodded slowly. "I agree. He's seemed different ever since this summer. I wonder if he hates living with us." Julian grinned. "We do argue a lot."

"I've asked him a hundred times." Micah scraped his hair back from his forehead. "I have given him plenty of times to admit that we annoy him. He says that's not it."

"Not yet." Julian snorted. "He ain't seen nothing yet. I haven't even had an episode since he moved in."

Micah stared at him for a moment, wondering about that himself. These days, Julian's bad days were becoming more and more spaced out. But he had never even told Julian that the Redwood Queen actually stole him away. As far as Micah knew, Julian was none the wiser.

Finally Micah shook his head. "Andrew won't give me any explanation. Just says he's fine. When we all know he's not."

A strange expression flickered over Julian's features before burrowing out of sight. He finished folding the shirt and put it in his drawers before leaning against the dresser. He spoke to the pendant light hanging from the ceiling in the corner, not to Micah. "Have you considered there's a chance it might not have anything to do with you?"

Micah blinked. "I mean…I suppose. But I wish he would tell me either way."

"I know." He looked down, opening and closing his mouth as if testing some words without speaking them. His shoulders began to hunch before he caught himself, biting his lip. Padding up to the bed, he sat beside Micah, wringing his hands. He said with a faint tremor in his voice and ghosts in his eyes, "Take it from me, Micah. There are some truths that would paralyze us if we speak them aloud."

Up to his hips in scalding bath water, Andrew sat hugging his knees to his chest, trembling. He stared unseeing at the silver faucet and his warped reflection stretched long and thin, like a specter. He'd been in his tub for thirty minutes, and he had only moved to refresh the hot water when it cooled.

"Andrew?" Sam rapped his knuckles on the door. "Hey. Are you okay?"

Jumping, splashing water over the edge of the tub, Andrew glanced at the door and tried to speak, but his lips felt stuck together. In response Sam turned the bathroom door handle and cracked open the door.

"Andrew? Do you want to talk?" Peering through the crack, Sam blinked a hazel eye at him behind tortoiseshell glasses. Sam was twenty-six, and Andrew's sole coworker at Magic's Computer Repair and Programming. Unsettled by the blank look on Andrew's face, the way it didn't even seem like Andrew recognized him, Sam nudged the door open further and said, "What's up? Are you okay?"

For as many weeks as Andrew had been hiding, he knew by the look on Sam's face that it was over. He was caught. Sam's worry shot fire through Andrew's numbness and unleashed his despair. His slender features crumbled; tears jumped into his eyes. He crushed his face into his knees as a sob he'd been holding in since August ripped its way out of his chest, despairing and hopeless. Once it broke out, he couldn't stop the weeping.

"Oh. Oh, no. Andy." Sam shuffled into the bathroom, the toilet lid clinking as he sat down beside the tub. He'd sort of known Andrew hadn't been doing well, but this was terrible to see. Worse by far than when Ingrid had been stalking him. That had been a frantic sort of desperation. This was beyond that. Andrew was like a lost little boat, unmoored, in the shallow water of the tub and hidden behind his hair with his fingers dimpling his biceps and his knuckles blanched.

"I d-don't know if…I can do this anymore." His voice turned into a desolate whimper as the words squeezed out of him.

A cold jolt of fear ricocheted through Sam. "Do…do what? Andrew, are you suicidal?"

Andrew lifted his head, snot and tears shining. "I—I have to break up with Micah." Saying it aloud crushed Andrew's chest so all his breath whooshed out.

"You what? What happened?"

Andrew couldn't answer. The sketch of his rib cage expanded and pressed against his skin every time he gasped for air, highlighting the sharp pink scar above his hip from the Redwoods.

Panicking, Sam dug his phone out from his sweats and sent a quickfire text to Micah. Andrew might be in a disagreement with him, but Micah was the only person who would know what to do.

Down the street, Micah leapt to his feet from his living room couch, ejecting his orange tomcat Cinnamon from his lap. He had his phone in his hand with a single-worded text from Sam: Help.

"Micah," cautioned his father, halfway to taking a drink from a mug of tea that matched Micah's, "give Andrew space."

"Oh, you know…I'm going…uh…somewhere else."

"Yeah right. You don't have other friends."

Shooting his dad a nasty look, Micah dropped his phone in the pocket of his joggers. Then he took the stairs down to their entryway two at a time, pulled on his dad's Columbia jacket, and tugged on his heaviest boots. He tightened the hood of the jacket, picked up a pair of fleece-lined leather gloves, and then he exploded into the fray. In proper footwear, it was easier to run than when he left work. But the snow was too deep, and Sam's text was too terrifying. He had to risk it. Micah reached for the empty air, grasped a ribboned shadow a street lamp cast through a branch, and pulled himself inside.

Andrew was right: folding shadows like this worked maybe every third time. Micah had tried it regularly in the last two years, but the safest time to do it was instances like now, when he was buzzing with anxiety. Otherwise, the shadows spit him back out, like failing to catch a wave on a surfboard.

Though he didn't break stride, the weight of the snow stopped affecting him; the shadows bent him around and through it. He jumped out again when he reached the curb beside the red awning of the two-story building that was Andrew's shop on the ground floor and the apartment above it. When his boots hit the snow on the sidewalk, Micah lost his balance and pinwheeled his arms desperately to stay upright. He gritted his teeth, realizing Andrew was right to scorn him in the winter. The snow and ice turned him into a toddler barely able to keep his feet under him. Embarrassed and frustrated—even though nobody was there to watch him—he thrust his hands into his jacket pockets and shuffled around the side of the building.

Micah had the third and final set of keys to Andrew's building, so he let himself through the large steel door around the back near the parking lot where Sam's Honda sat gathering snow. He hurried up the squeaky stairs. At the top, he shook off the snow that had already collected on his shoulders and hood, stomped it off his boots, and then opened the front door.

The television was on but silent in the living room in front of him, with Sam's large gaming laptop open on an IKEA coffee table as if he'd abandoned it suddenly. And that was when Micah heard Andrew crying.

The sound dug into his ears like sharp fingernails, filling him with a terror that made his hands go numb. He dropped his coat on a cushioned stool near the front door, kicked off his boots, and hurried past the kitchen to the bathroom door, where Andrew's sounds were getting louder. He entered without knocking, the door whacking into Sam's knee.

Sam waved off Micah's apology as he leapt off the toilet seat, shimmied out of the way, and squeezed Micah's arm. "I'm in over my head," Sam whispered, "but holler if you need me."

Naked and hugging his knees, Andrew whipped his head up when the door opened. Micah was a mirage seen through tunnel vision and a sheen of tears. He had changed into a knit sweater Andrew had bought him, stuck his hair under a brown beanie, and looked down at Andrew with lips parted and eyes wide and dark, usually violet but now almost burgundy.

"No," cried Andrew. "Please, I don't…I can't…" His heart hurt, clawing inside his chest like a wild animal; clutching his head, he shied away and wedged himself into the corner of the tub. He felt rather than heard Micah kneel beside the tub; warmth radiated off his skin.

Breathlessly, Micah asked, "Is this all about me?"

"No!"

"Can I help you calm down?"

"Yes," he wept.

Micah tugged Andrew's arms down from his head and then pressed one hand to his back between his shoulder blades and the other against his sternum. Like Andrew did to him in Lake Sylvia, before they went into the Redwoods. Under Micah's palm, Andrew's heart was a staccato frenzy.

"Come on, Andrew. You need to breathe. Slower. In, out."

"I can't." Andrew shook off Micah's hands so he could curl up into the fetal position. "It's too much."

"Okay, then we're getting you in bed." Micah grasped Andrew's biceps. "Come on."

"No," wept Andrew, though some small, trapped part of his brain deeply buried beneath the panic desperately wanted to be warm and dry and held. His body was vibrating, dizzy with anxiety, his ribs aching with the labor of his shallow breaths. "I can't." Andrew grabbed the wire-wrapped blood ward and yanked. The wire around the vial bent and came free of the cord. He tossed it at Micah and said, "T-t-tell me to do it."

Clapping it against his chest, Micah opened and closed his mouth. "Andrew, I don't want to do that for the first time—"

"I w…won't listen t-to you otherwise."

"I don't know how to do that on pur—"

Despairing, Andrew clutched his temples and started to weep again.

Micah curled the vial into his palm, calculating. Then he slipped it into his pocket. "Okay," he said, relenting. "All right. Fine. Look—look at me." He tried to tip back Andrew's chin which was pressed into his chest. Andrew didn't respond, fighting against Micah's grasp, nearly unrecognizable beneath his shroud of despair. "Babe. C'mon." Micah stroked his high, bony cheeks, coaxing, coaxing, coaxing his face up and his body to relax. "Andrew. Darling. C'mon, babe. You're okay. Be calm."

Drawn to the sweet music of his voice, Andrew pushed through the panic to meet Micah's gaze. Tears flicked off Micah's lashes as his irises turned like coffee filling with cream, burgundy to lilac, as if the light in the room had shifted. Micah's soft hands caressed his cheeks and made him shiver, enveloping his wild and wayward heart in something cozy and silky like an infant being swaddled. Abruptly, his body followed suit: his pulse cut itself in half, from frantic to languid, exterminating the fire crawling over his skin with a cool rolling mist. Stunned, he coughed and rubbed his throat, blinking rapidly.

Micah released him at once. "D-did I hurt you?"

Clutching his chest, Andrew shook his head, reaching for Micah with his other hand till he closed on his fuzzy sweater sleeve. Micah wordlessly helped him up from the tub and held onto his waist as Andrew unfolded. His knees were wobbly as he stepped onto linoleum, still trembling, teeth chattering. His heel slipped and his weight shifted, trying to take him down to the ground, but Micah wrapped a warm, soft arm around him and held him up.

Anxiously thinking about how much Andrew probably didn't want him here, Micah began, "I can let Sam take over—"

Silent, gulping in air, Andrew shook his head and stumbled alongside Micah past the living room. His wet feet squeaked on the kitchen tiles and left footprints when they trod onto the carpet in the second bedroom in the corner of the flat. Sam was close enough to see Andrew's answer, and blinked in understanding as he pushed his glasses up and watched them pass.

Micah flicked on the light switch in the barren bedroom. Andrew's bed was made neatly in the far corner, his dresser on the wall across from it, red curtains closed over the small window.

The room was unadorned, and filled Andrew with a new kind of sorrow as he pulled back the covers and climbed into bed. This would be his life without Micah. Plain, cold, and hopeless. Tears still squeezed out of the corners of his eyes, residual, like the last grumble of thunder on the tail of a storm. He could think again, and the tunnel vision retreated. The sudden tranquility almost made him giddy.

Micah put a handful of tissues in Andrew's palm. Gratefully, Andrew cleaned up his messy face and then dropped them into the small waste basket Micah held out.

"I didn't know you had a history of panic attacks." Micah kept his voice to a gentle whisper. "That looked terrible for you."

Andrew didn't answer. Rolling onto his side facing the wall, he flipped the dusty covers up over his head and stared at the pinpricks of light coming through his sheets. It had been at least five years since he'd last fallen apart like this. In the middle of Ingrid's haunting, when he thought he would never have relief. But even then…even then he didn't feel this empty.

"Andrew, I know…I know…what I did. But I hope you understand that I can't leave you until I know you're going to be safe." Micah turned the blood vial over in his fingers, wanting to sit on the bed but not moving.

Andrew snorted. "Who cares."

Micah shot back, "Me, obviously. I don't have feelings for anyone else. I love you, Andrew."

"I don't care that some girl kissed you," murmured Andrew. "I mean. I do. But…"

"I can't hear you."

Sighing heavily, Andrew raised his voice. "Get in bed then."

Micah sagged with relief. He climbed onto the space near the pillow, his weight rolling Andrew's body back toward him so they leaned together. Andrew didn't move away. His usually cool skin was hot and feverish, making Micah's heart lurch. The only other time Andrew had felt so warm was outside The Squire on the night they met. Was Andrew so warm now because he'd just been hyperventilating, or because Micah had used Fae magic to calm him down?

"I said I don't care that some girl kissed you," Andrew whispered under the sheets. "I saw her do it. I know you didn't initiate it. I…I just think…I'm h…"

Gently, Micah scrunched up the sheets to see Andrew's face. He cringed back from the light, and Micah jumped up and ran to switch them off.

When he came back, Andrew was on his back staring blankly at the dark ceiling. Then Sam knocked lightly on the door, stepping in with an awkward wave.

"Hi." Before they could answer, Sam went on, "I'm sorry if I was wrong to call Micah over, Andy. It…it was the first thing I could think of. I've just never seen you like that. But I figured, it's Micah, and anyway, he helps Julian when he—"

"You weren't wrong," Andrew said to the ceiling.

"Can I do anything? Do you want some water? T–to drink?"

Andrew managed a tremulous smile. "Sure. Sorry. For the scare."

Sam picked his lip and then smiled. "Nah, I get it. Mental health." He patted the door frame. "Micah? Anything?"

Mustering a smile for him, Micah shook his head.

Sam disappeared. The refrigerator clunked open and shut around the corner. When he ran back in with a glass of water and a metal straw, Andrew struggled upright and took it with a faint smile. Sam said to him, "Let me know how else I can help. I'm probably gonna be up for a bit." On Andrew's dresser, Sam clicked on a table lamp, casting gentle light across the room. It glinted on a moonstone ring kept on a tray beside it. He turned back, serious. "Hey, Andy. I just want you to know that I love you. And I hope you feel better. That's all, bye." Awkwardly, Sam scuttled out of the room, his bedroom door thumping closed on the other side of the living room.

Micah reached down to the bare cord around Andrew's neck so he could loop the vial back onto it.

Andrew shook his head, straw in his mouth, and pushed Micah back. He said with his teeth around the straw, "I don't need it back on." Lowering the cup, Andrew said more clearly, "I think I want to keep your calm chemistry flowing. Especially b-because I want to know what happened, back at your shop."

Micah slumped against the headboard. "Yeah. Okay."

Andrew reached around Micah and set the cup on the windowsill. He paused, wanting to press his lips to the curve of Micah's neck above his sweater. The sudden wave of desire was staggering. Andrew wondered if it was from the absence of the blood ward, but he knew better. He hadn't cooled to Micah since the moment they met, not even now, when Andrew was facing the end.

The heat of Andrew's deep, slow breath rippled across Micah's throat. Goosebumps prickled his skin as he strained to resist the urge to stop Andrew's lips with his own.

Tearing himself away, Andrew leaned back, tucked his knees up, and pulled the covers to his chin. Then he turned and watched Micah, waiting.

Micah pulled off his hat, dropping it over the edge of the bed. "What do you want to know? I…I want to tell you helpful things, and I don't want to hide anything, but I don't even understand how it happened."

"You're desirable." A humorless, nearly hysterical laugh tumbled from Andrew's lips. "People stare at you and long for you wherever we go. Men, women, everyone. It's constant. I become a public enemy when people realize I'm ‘with' you."

Micah made a face. Truthfully, he never really noticed people checking him out, especially not since meeting Andrew. "Well, regardless. The woman was Diana. She's, I don't know, twenty-eight? Thirty? She's in grad school for…I don't know. Something."

"I'm oddly comforted by how little you know about her." said Andrew.

"She has been completely beyond my notice," Micah told him emphatically, "with the exception of her excellent customer service and sub-par tea-making. That was my first time ever being alone with her. She certainly wasted no time." Micah raised his eyebrows. "And if I didn't take that damn tea shop so seriously and came home when you told me to, I could've avoided the whole thing."

"Until the next time," said Andrew.

Micah's expression hardened. "I don't follow."

"Until the next time. Or the next person who falls for you. Or the next time you wish you could kiss someone pretty, but you're stuck with me, as I wither and get creaky and fat."

"Andrew, what?" Micah was incredulous. "What are you talking about? This isn't at all how I think. I thought you'd know that by now." It was true that Andrew had never thought extraordinarily well of himself over the course of their relationship, but he'd never admitted explicitly he believed he wasn't good enough for Micah.

Andrew glanced at him, and then away. He quickly wetted his lips with his tongue and then blurted, "You should forget we met. I'm holding you back."

Hot rage shot through Micah with such intensity that he snapped, "Shut the fuck up."

Andrew sat back as if struck. His expression grew blank and guarded and he curled a lip. "Excuse me?"

"You are a choice I choose every single day," Micah said, hoping both of them could pretend like his voice hadn't broken.

"I don't bel—"

"Stop saying that. You can't say you don't believe me. If you don't believe me then that means you don't trust me, and I hate that." Micah's teeth bared around his words, contorted by his disbelief and heartbreak. He inhaled and held his breath, blinking rapidly, smoothing his features. Stay neutral. Don't lash out.

Andrew just stared at him, blank and distant, bony shoulders hunched.

More quietly, but still with an edge of frustration in his voice, Micah asked, "What is going on with you? We got through a whole calendar year together last year and I never heard a whisper of doubt about my feelings. Now, you make fun of me every time I say something nice to you. You sleep less than I do. You've gotten skinnier, if that's possible. You yell at me and even Sam and sometimes my dad over the smallest things, and then you clam up and won't talk for an hour."

Andrew's eyes glistened with sudden tears. A vein rose on his forehead. He started to cry again, silent, pressing his lips together. Finally, he swallowed, the apple of his throat bobbing, and he whispered in a voice that broke, "I'm so depressed."

"What?" Micah's eyes widened. Then his shoulders slumped. "Oh." He reached out and brushed Andrew's hair over his shoulders. "Oh, Andrew. I'm so sorry. I didn't…I should have put it together."

Wiping his cheeks, Andrew took a few unsteady breaths. "It wasn't your responsibility. I've dealt with this my whole life and I…I should have known. But I thought I'd be rid of it, to be honest, when I found you. So I stopped going to therapy, and…this summer…this episode hit me harder than any of the others." He stifled a hiccupping cry. "I was buried by it before I even realized. And the thoughts now, they're so much worse now that I'm not alone."

"How come?"

Andrew curled up, shrinking himself, forehead on his knee, hugging his chest. "I don't understand why the fuck you chose me, back at the bar where we met. I don't understand why you choose me now. It doesn't make any sense. And…and I'm mad at you for it."

"You're mad at me because I love you," clarified Micah, trying and failing to hide his indignation.

"If you'd never met me, I could've just killed myself and been done with all of this." Andrew choked on the possibility, on the longing for such final relief.

Watching Micah's expressions shift through the veil of his hair, Andrew realized he could physically feel the emotions passing. Incredulity, to heartbreak, to frustration, to sadness and back again, back and forth with dizzying speed. It was like the seasons kept changing, how the smell of the air outside shifts, Micah's anger like scalding sunshine hot enough to blister, while his sorrow was the cold snap in autumn. Micah pressed his lips together, brows furrowing a line into his otherwise unblemished tawny skin.

Andrew went on, "Being around you and…and Julian, and even Ingrid…it's reminded me how…how incredibly, painfully abandoned I have been by anything resembling family."

Micah looked away and began lamely, "My dad adores you…and…and there's Sam…"

"Stop. Micah, it's not your problem to fix." Andrew waved his hand. "I'm not looking for you to cheer me up. Nothing about how I think right now is your problem to fix. I'm the broken one. I'm the hopeless one. Don't make me your problem."

"You're not my ‘problem.'" Micah put the word in air quotes, scornful. "And I should remind you that this whole breakdown was triggered because I kissed someone. Why exactly am I getting away with that? How did this spiral so much?"

Tearful again, Andrew insisted, "You should be able to kiss someone. You should be able to shine your blinding light everywhere. I'm only snuffing it out."

Another flash of frustration. Andrew felt it like heartburn in his chest. Was this the effect of not wearing the vial of Micah's blood? Was Micah always this emotional to everyone around him—so much that you could taste his feelings?

Micah gritted his teeth. "Stop telling me how you're making me feel."

Andrew looked away, silent.

"Listen," continued Micah, gentler, "I messed up tonight. With Diana. And I'll take responsibility for that in any way you want me to. But if you don't consider us over, then I'm not letting you convince me to leave you. Got it?"

Andrew pushed his hair behind his ear, running his hand down the side of his neck. He wiped his cheeks dry and then stared at the threadbare rug next to his bed. "All right."

"Now," Micah said, his voice a lullaby with only the sweetest notes, "how can I help lessen the depression? What do you need?"

Andrew shrugged. "I'm back on my therapist's schedule in two weeks. I…I can't do much else but wait it out. Try not to get suicidal. Er, more suicidal."

"That doesn't feel like enough."

Andrew sighed. "There's something I've been thinking about since this summer, actually." He glanced across the small room at the moonstone ring on his dresser.

Micah followed his gaze and went to pick up the ring. He held it out to Andrew, who slid it onto his finger.

Watching the light glint against ghostly blue flecks, Andrew thought in silence for a moment. "You got to save your dad when the Redwoods lured him in. Just like you two, my mum and I were on our own. And just like your dad, the Fae-spelled foods caught my mum, too. Only I ditched her. Just…got angry and bounced." He sighed, soft and remorseful. "I don't know if she died, or had a heart attack, or ran away," Andrew went on. "And ever since Ingrid found your dad in her scrying glass, I've been hoping I'd just stop caring what became of her. But being in Lilydale has had the opposite effect. So I think I need to ask for Ingrid's help, and see where my mother is. She already said she would, remember? That first autumn we were together."

"Okay. Yeah." Micah nodded. "I'm surprised you waited this long."

Andrew stared at the ring, spinning it on his finger, tears pooling in his lower lashes. "I really haven't wanted to care. I wish I could just grow the memory of my mother into a tree."

Micah paused. He understood the reference, but the implication that Micah never thought of the Redwood Queen anymore was misguided. She'd still been his mother. Even if she'd never so much as hugged him, the biological cords could never truly be severed. It was just that Micah mostly felt terror at the thought of her, and relief to have her gone. The absence of Andrew's mother clearly came as no relief for Andrew.

His foxlike expression torn, Andrew opened his mouth and then closed it.

"And?" Micah urged softly.

Andrew blinked. The tear he dislodged fell almost in slow motion, a tiny drop of tragic starlight reflecting the lamplight a hundred times over. "And if my mum is still alive…I want to go to her." He paused. "Alone."

Micah's shoulders dropped. He rolled his head down and grabbed a handful of his hair. Cynicism and sarcasm burbled behind his sternum and begged to come out with a sharp rebuke or sarcasm. "Sure," he managed instead.

Andrew stole a quick glance at Micah out of the corner of his eye. He had learned over the last two years what it looked like when Micah was gnawing on the inside of his cheek, a habit Andrew was convinced lived on even though Micah hadn't self-harmed anymore since that night in the mountains. It was his indicator that Micah's attempt at nonchalance was a lie, and that Andrew had just hewn the bond between them with an ax. He explained, "Maybe it's the thing I have to reconcile between me and myself."

"I brought you with me to my mother," Micah muttered.

Andrew smiled halfheartedly, nudging their elbows together. "She and I were fast friends, eh?"

Micah grumbled wordlessly.

"Will you come with me to Lilydale tomorrow to see Ingrid?"

Micah eyed his smile with the smallest flicker of resentment. It was easy for Andrew to smile as he was pushing Micah away to carry on without him. It was easy for Andrew to leave him behind. He swallowed painfully, and by the way Andrew still looked soft and at ease, he must not have picked up on Micah's frustration. Good. Determined to keep it to himself, he fixed his bangs and pushed down the negative feelings. Maybe he could deal with them later. At least, that's what he always told himself. He wetted his lips and then answered, "Yeah. I wanted to see how they held up in the storm anyway."

"I'm sure Ingrid took good care of them." Andrew's head spun, and he had an ache behind his eye socket. He slid down his pillow and onto his back, hair spreading out around his head like a mane of fire. The smell of sage and turmeric swelled over him from Micah's clothes, bringing with it a clear vision of the brownstone, which always smelled like that. Andrew gazed at Micah's chiseled chin and plush lips just as Micah pushed his sweater sleeves up to his elbows. Andrew hungrily followed the reveal of his tawny forearms, forgetting everything else about this godforsaken blizzard at the sight of those rippling muscles beneath a fine layer of moss-green hair.

Micah glanced down at him, swallowing. For how the night had gone, this was an intimate arrangement, with Andrew laying in bed naked and still damp from the bath. He was radiating heat from the exertion of his panic attack as if he was a woodburning stove. The half-lidded stare from Andrew's coffee-colored eyes was reminiscent of that night at The Squire. They talked about that night now and again, but Andrew was dismissive of it, treating it like a silly meet-cute rather than Micah demonstrating a reckless amount of power he couldn't control.

Micah dug his fingers into his thighs, looking away as Andrew burrowed deeper in the blankets. "You should get some sleep."

Andrew responded with an ambiguous purr, which drew Micah's eyes back to his face and that irresistible quirk of his lips.

Micah started to get off the bed. "I can go h—"

But Andrew reached up, grasped the collar of his sweater, and pulled Micah down on top of him. He pressed their lips together, sweeping away any residue of cardamom and tamarind. Andrew's cool hand reached under Micah's sweater and held him by the small of his back, his touch tingling like a breeze after a rainstorm. Then he lifted the sweater up and over Micah's head, pulling him free of it.

Hair mussed, Micah leaned on his elbows for a moment, searching Andrew's face, looking for eclipsed pupils and scalding skin. He swallowed, collecting himself, intent on pulling back any escaped Fae influence.

Andrew hummed in irritation over Micah's delay. His high cheekbones were bright with color, and his lips were slightly parted. His hands roamed across Micah's bare chest. "Micah," he pleaded raggedly.

Micah bit his lip, and Andrew's eyes devoured the sight of it. Micah asked, "Wh…what if you can't…consent right now?"

"I can and I do," growled Andrew, and untied Micah's pants.