I stand with my own shoulders squared. Everyone is looking at us—
Everyone dancing. Everyone standing around the courtyard, drinking punch. Coach Mac and the Minotaur and Miss Possibelf, all standing with their punch glasses stalled on the way to their lips.
“They’ll know,” I say. “They’ll talk about it.”
“What?” He’s a million miles away. He’s always a million miles away lately.
“They’ll know that we’re gay.”
“There go my job prospects,” Simon says flatly. “What will my family say?”
I’m not sure where the joke is.
He looks at my face and huffs, exasperated. “Baz, you’re actually, literally the only thing I have to lose. So as long as doing gay stuff in public doesn’t make you hate me, I don’t really care.”
“We’re just dancing,” I say. “That’s hardly gay stuff.”
“Dancing’s well gay,” he says. “Even when it isn’t two blokes.”
I frown at him. “You have Bunce.”
“To dance with?”
“No. You have Bunce to lose.”
His face falls.
I tug him closer. “No. I meant, you have more than just me. You have Bunce, too.”
“She’ll move to America.”
“Maybe,” I say. “Maybe not. And, anyway, not immediately. And beyond that—America’s not amnesia. She’ll still be your friend. Bunce only has two and a half friends; I don’t think she’ll drop you.”
Snow starts to say something, then shakes his head once and looks down at his feet. A few curls escape onto his forehead.
“What?” I say, squeezing his hand. I’ve become very familiar with his hands. Dating Simon Snow hasn’t been the erotic gropefest I’d always imagined—so far, it’s a lot of sitting in silence and thousand-yard stares—but we do hold hands almost all the time. Snow’s like a child who’s afraid of getting lost in the market.
He squeezes my hand back, but doesn’t lift his head.
I decide not to push him. He’s here. Against all odds. Wearing a tie, dancing. That’s all something.
I start to let my head rest against his—and he jerks his head up, just missing my nose. I pull my torso back. “Crowley, Snow!”
His face is red. “It’s just—” He presses on my shoulder.
“It’s just what?”
“You guys don’t have to do this.”
“Do what?”
He squints and grits his teeth. The fairy lights strung across the courtyard catch in his hair. “Just—you—it’s not—”
“Use your words, Simon.”
“You don’t have to do this, you and Penny. I’m not. I’m not like you. I was never—I’m a hoax.”
“That’s not true.”
“Baz. I’m not a mage.”
“You lost your power,” I argue. “You sacrificed it.”
His tail whips out of my hand. It tends to slash around when he’s upset. “I don’t think it was ever mine,” he says. “I don’t know how the Mage did it, but you and Penny were right all along—magicians don’t give up their children. I’m a Normal.”
“Snow.”
“I was bad at magic because I wasn’t supposed to have any! The gates wouldn’t even open for me tonight. Penny had to let me in.”
A couple is drifting closer to us, clearly listening—Keris and her damnable pixie. I sneer, and they drift away.
Snow’s crushing my hand and shoulder. I let him, even though I’m much stronger than he is. “Simon. Stop. You’re talking nonsense.”
“Am I? You and Penny care more about magic than anyone in the World of Mages. That’s what you saw in me—power—and it’s gone. It was never me.”
“It was!” I say. “You were the most powerful mage who’s ever walked. That was real.”
“I was a sorry excuse for a mage, how many times did you tell me so?”
“I said that because I was jealous!”
“Well, there’s nothing to be jealous of now!”
I let go of him. “Why are you saying all this?”
Simon clenches his fists, hunching in on himself, like a bull. “Because I’m tired of waiting.”
“For what?”
“For all of you to stop feeling sorry for me!”
“I’ll never stop feeling sorry for you!” It’s true. He lost his magic. It will never stop breaking my heart.
“But I don’t want that either!” he says through his teeth. “I don’t belong with you anymore.”
“Wrong,” I say. I take his hand again and put my arm back around him. “The Crucible drew us together.”
“The Crucible?”
“I was eleven years old, and I’d lost my mother, and my soul, and the Crucible gave me you.”
“It made us roommates,” he says.
I shake my head. “We were always more.”
“We were enemies.”
“You were the centre of my universe,” I say. “Everything else spun around you.”
“Because of what I was, Baz. Because of my magic.”
“No.” I’m nearly as frustrated as he is. “Yes. I mean, Crowley, Snow—yes, that was part of it. Looking at you was like looking directly into the sun.”