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T he suit clings just as tightly as it did the first time around.

Now that I’ve squeezed into it, I wish I’d had the sense to ask Lysander to make adjustments before the show.

I was too preoccupied at the dress rehearsal by his ethereally pretty — and extremely fucking sexy — gossamer robe-thing, which I told him in great detail later as I pushed it up his thighs and fucked him in the hallway of our apartment.

He begged and whined and clung to me, thoroughly distracting me from the fit of the suit, and afterward I’d had to get everything dry cleaned at Fitzie’s building.

Again.

By the time it came back it was too late to get anything tailored. Now I’m paying the price of itchy balls and a too-cinched waist.

The music swells. Dark fog billows across the stage to simulate shadows. I adjust the crown and the pins holding it in place, wondering not for the first time how I got roped into this. I’ve always hated being the center of attention, so how the hell am I about to willingly step out on stage?

I can’t have anyone else play the Night Prince to my Fairy King, Lysander had said coaxingly, fluttering his pale eyelashes at me. He was also naked at the time. Maybe that’s what did it.

Maybe it’s just that his bravery has infected me.

The cymbal clashes, signaling my cue. I stride onto the stage, trying to project princeliness. Hah. Me, a prince. But the crowd whoops and cheers.

“What awful commotion do I hear?” I growl, lifting the heavy scepter in the air — I suspect it’s not a costume piece at all, just like the crown.

I try to ignore that fact because I’m on stage in front of a hundred monsters and my goddamn parents .

“What are these birds singing? This music playing? This warm laughter? It pierces the veil between worlds and infects my domain of shadow, withering my ears…”

The Night Prince gives a speech about how selfish the Fairy King is for making pretty things and inflicting them on others, then he curses the land to shadow and stabs his scepter into the ground, leaching all the green away.

The huge wooden set pieces turn, the trees that Lilian painstakingly painted spinning from the green side to the black one. Fog swirls around me in a cool mist.

Lysander is lowered from the rafters in his swing, looking radiant. His silky robe billows around him as he touches down delicately. His hair ripples freely down his back.

“Who disturbs the beauty of my eternal summer?” His voice rings out bell-like over the stage, and the crowd hushes.

I step forward. “Tis I, the Night Prince.”

The monster kids titter as we circle each other with exaggerated steps. I have to concentrate to make sure my feet land on the beat of the music, but Lysander makes it look effortless. His eyes glitter and he improvises a little spin, showing off.

“I have claimed this realm, and thus I have the power of Time on my side,” he says, procuring a branch laden with white flowers. “Begone, dark prince! Return to the shadows.”

He shakes the branch at me and fragrant petals fill the air.

I shield my face and pretend to shrink away.

The kids laugh. Defeated, I slink off stage.

Lysander prowls the stage gracefully, making new wooden ‘flowers’ sprout up with his magical branch.

The spotlight follows them, occasionally catching on the glitter in his hair.

In the wings, Larch works the mechanism that gets them to pop up from the floor.

I wink at him as I don the dark cape studded with crystals. “Almost time for my surprise attack.”

“Better you than me,” he murmurs with a smile.

When Lysander is lifted into his bower, I sneak into the meadow once again.

This time I grasp the scepter and my dark magic sucks the light from the whole room, turning the hall black.

The kids — and some of the adults — gasp in unison as tiny winking lights suddenly spin across the midnight blue cloth we draped over the ceiling of the ballroom, creating stars.

I chortle into my microphone and the Night Prince’s theme comes to a crescendo.

After a few more back-and-forth struggles, we battle, each of us trying to control the meadow.

Neither of us can win because we’re perfectly matched.

The battle turns into a frenzy of flowers popping up and dying and trees rapidly growing and losing their leaves.

Other actors join us on stage to represent the people of each realm, begging us to find a resolution.

Eventually, the Night Prince and the Fairy King come to an agreement to share Time.

Best of all, the agreement is sealed with a kiss.

Well, in the myth it’s a lot more than a kiss. After a passionate battle they basically give in to lust, as far as I gather, but in the kid-friendly version it’s a sweet peck. Lysander smiles against my lips as I wind an arm around his waist. When he pulls back, I dip him and steal another one.

The curtain comes down and he laughs breathlessly, one hand in my hair and the other snaking up my chest as I cup his ass and deepen the kiss. He groans.

“Curtain’s going up again!” Larch hisses, and we separate hurriedly.

I’m sure anyone with eyes knows exactly what we were doing.

I hold Lysander’s hand proudly as the rest of the cast assembles on stage behind us.

The hall is filled with monsters, lots of them my friends and community — something I never dreamed of before I walked into The Sanctum.

Fitzie and my parents stand and cheer from the front row.

Syril and Elsabeth are in the makeshift VIP box we set up, and I even spot Bear in the shadows behind them.

Plato, Orion, and Lilian are behind us on stage, of course.

And I swear in the very back row I can make out the familiar horned shape of a certain Watcher and the human who set me on the path to this crazy world.

Lysander’s fingers tangle with mine. This time it’s his hand on my collar dragging me down, his soft lips clinging to mine, his heartbeat under my palm, and as more flower petals rain down on us he whispers, “Thank you.”

I break the kiss and take the little velvet box out of my pocket.