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“In you get,” Mattias said. “You’ll be dead on your feet later if you don’t get some sleep.”

Náli smiled. “I didn’t know you did puns.”

Mattias realized what he’d said and made a face. “Náli–”

“Matti,” Náli countered, serious. He did walk forward and climb up into bed to mollify him somewhat. But he caught and held his gaze, and let his own face go naked and unguarded. “Matti,” he repeated, taking his hand, where it gripped the blankets, between both of his own and pressing tight. “I want you to tell me what you think – what you really think – about all of this. Not as my captain, not because I’m your lord. Just you, as Mattias.” The sword calluses beneath his fingers were worn-smooth and achingly familiar. Náli dug his blunt nails into them and pleaded with his gaze. “I think the war needs me, and that means I need you…but if you think the risk is too great, then I’ll–”

Mattias swooped down, fast as a blink, and silenced him with a kiss.

Náli gasped as he pulled back.

Mattias smiled, small and sad; close, and warm, and with a conviction that punched Náli straight in the chest. “Do you remember, when you were four, that time you told me that you were going to kill the mountain?”

“I was four. So no.”

Mattias chuckled, and the sound hummed pleasantly in Náli’s lower half. “Brat,” he accused, fondly. “You’d had a bad day.” Here his expression shifted, twinged with sympathetic pain. Because though they didn’t speak of the thing that had happened when he was eight – the night of the horses – they sometimes spoke of his other, earlier attempts at true necromancy. The birds, those fox kits. His pet kitten, that time. His “bad days” had been, in fact, rather horrifying when he was young. “And I had to carry you down,” Mattias continued, “and I thought you’d nodded off, but right before I handed you into the water, you looked up at me, and you said, ‘I’m going to kill that bloody mountain one day. I mean it.’

“And now look at you.” Mattias’s smile stretched, deepening the lines at the corners of his eyes, dark and warm as strong-brewed tea. “You were born with the threat of a whole mountain hanging over your head, and you’ve figured out how to kill it.”

Náli swallowed with difficulty. “Calm it. Hopefully. You can’t actually kill a mountain.”

Mattias chuckled again, an amused breath through his nose. His free hand lifted and cupped the side of Náli’s face, thumb smoothing across the fine skin of his cheek. “My teacher put you in my arms when you were a baby, and I dedicated my life then to you: to your safety, your education; your comfort and your grief and all the hard lessons I knew were to come. But when I put you in the water that day, I wanted to go in your place, to drown if I must, if it meant sparing you another moment’s anger and fear.”

Náli’s throat was tight, his pulse tripping.

“I loved you long before I fell in love with you,” Mattias continued, as if those words weren’t devastating. “Watching you push yourself too far, watching you tear yourself apart out of sheer stubbornness hurts me in a way that–” He faltered, gaze clouding. “In a way I can’t put into words and in a way I’m not sure you’ll ever understand.”

It was an effort, given the burning in his eyes, but Náli managed to pout. “That’s not fair.”

“No, it isn’t. Nothing is. It’s not fair that I can’t cross over with you; that I can’t protect you beyond the veil just as I do here.” He frowned. “And because I can’t be there, I don’t know if I believe this shaman you meet there. This Lucian. Who’s to say he’s even really–”

Náli sighed, and he pressed his lips shut a moment. Nodded.

“I’ve been…resistant,” he said, and Náli gave him a who, you? face which earned him a frown. “I know, I know. It’s…” His gaze tracked across Náli’s face with an intensity that left Náli squirming internally. “I don’t trust the world, of the living or the dead. But I trust you. You’re the strongest person I’ve ever met, Náli. I’d slit my own throat if you needed to animate my corpse to save your own life.”

“Matti.”

“So, yes. I will share the burden of your magic. We all will.” His voice still quiet and intimate, still him, and not the captain, so that it carried immeasurably more weight: “If you believe this is the best way to go forward, then we’re with you.”

Náli blinked hard and leaned into the warm palm at his cheek. “Even with all your grumbling?”

“Even with all my grumbling.”

As the years had passed, Mattias’s regard had become increasingly concerned; that notch between his brows was permanent at this point. The grins and soft chuckles of Náli’s early childhood had given way, time and again, to cautions; to warnings; to ever-present frowns. Mattias’s cheer had dimmed as Náli had grown stronger, and pushed himself farther – too far. A worry, he knew, that was born of love; a longing as keen and painful as his own. Those frowns, those admonishments, had made it easier to tolerate their state of mutual, denied want. Easier to think that Mattias was angry with him than to wallow in all the things they couldn’t have. Frowns and admonishments that he now realized had been a shield for Mattias as well; it was kinder and less complicated to play the disapproving nursemaid than the hopeful, would-be lover.

Seeing Mattias now, this rare, shining beacon of not just affection, but open, unhidden love, to feel the faith and trust he radiated…it was too much. Náli closed his eyes, and felt the tears well up against the lids.

“I don’t deserve it,” he whispered. “I’ve done nothing to deserve you looking at me like that.”

Warm lips pressed to his forehead, a long, lingering moment. Mattias murmured against his skin: “Love’s not something you earn. It’s not a battle trophy.”

“Isn’t it, though?” But, in truth, he didn’t know what it was, only that it weighed heavy in his chest while giving him the strength to get to his feet each morning. An ache and a balm; the bright flare of a torch, and the soothing warmth of freshly-poured tea. He’d never not loved Mattias; it was an emotion that had settled deep in his bones, as much a part of him as his magic.

Having it reciprocated felt like fantasy.

He gripped the front of Mattias’s tunic and pitched forward; pressed his face in snug at his throat, where the skin was warm and salt-smelling; where his strong pulse beat steady against Náli’s temple.

Mattias gathered him in even closer, one hand on his nape, his other arm looped around his waist, snug and sure. “I don’t mean to be joyless,” he said, like a confession. “I know the way of things, and I’m content – truly, I am. There’s no place I’d rather be. But…sometimes…”