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By the time Illuga reached the Final Night Cemetery, the sea had gone black.
Wind bent the dead grass between the graves. The old lighthouse stood above them with its lamp burning behind clouded glass, its beam crossing the cemetery and vanishing into fog. Illuga tied his horse beneath the leaning stone arch. The island had always felt too quiet, even by Nod-Krai standards. There were only the graves of Lightkeepers and the man who guarded them.
He climbed the path with one hand around the strap of his lamp and the other clenched around a folded dispatch.
Flins opened the lighthouse door before Illuga knocked.
“My,” he said, looking past Illuga toward the darkening shore. “I had wondered whether the storm might discourage even you.”
He was already dressed for departure.
That was the first thing Illuga noticed—not the calm yellow eyes, nor the elegant tilt of his head, nor the faint amusement that so often made it impossible to tell whether Flins was welcoming him or preparing to make fun of him. His coat was fastened, his gloves were on, and his polearm rested against the wall beside a packed field bag.
The second thing, Illuga noticed, was that Flins did not look surprised to see the dispatch in his hand.
“You knew I’d come,” Illuga said.
“Well, I considered it likely.”
“But you still didn’t tell me.”
“Those are not contradictory statements.”
Illuga stepped inside and shut the door hard enough to rattle the iron latch.
The lighthouse was warmer than the island, though not by much. The blue flame in Flins’s lamp burned on the table among reports, sealed boxes, and artifacts he had never adequately explained. Beside it waited two cups, a bottle of dark liquor, and a small pot.
Two cups.
Illuga looked at them, then at Flins.
“Were you expecting me?”
“You know, I always keep sufficient water for thirsty visitors.”
“...You hate plain water.”
Flins paused. Illuga had known him long enough to recognize the pause as defeat, though no one else would have noticed it.
“An alarming accusation, Young Master,” Flins said. “Have you ridden all this way merely to criticize my hospitality?”
Illuga threw the dispatch onto the table. “No,” he said. “I came to ask why you volunteered for this alone.”
Flins picked up the dispatch, examined it as though he had never seen it before, and smoothed the crease Illuga had put through his name.
“The damaged stones must be sealed before the corruption reaches the inland channels.”
“I can read.”
“Then I need not explain the urgency.”
“You need to explain why there’s no squad.”
“The shore is narrow, unstable, and poorly suited to a large force. More bodies would not necessarily improve the outcome.”
“More bodies,” Illuga repeated. “Is that what you call backup now?”
“I call things by many names. Usually the ones most appropriate to the conversation.”
Illuga’s jaw tightened. “Nikita approved this?”
“Starshyna Nikita approved an operation.”
“Flins, that isn’t what I asked.”
“No,” Flins said softly. “It was not.”
There it was. The small opening beneath all that polished speech. Illuga snatched the dispatch back and scanned the assignment again. The ink naming Flins was darker than the rest. Added later.
“...You removed me.”
At last, Flins stopped smiling. Wind struck the lighthouse and made the upper windows groan. The blue flame on the table bent but did not go out.
Illuga took one step closer. “You removed my name.”
“You command the Nightmare Orioles.”
“And?”
“And they require their captain.”
“They have a second-in-command.”
“They require you.”
Illuga laughed once, without humor. “Of course. Everyone requires me except you.”
Flins’s expression did not change, but his gaze lowered briefly to the scar disappearing beneath Illuga’s collar.
“That is not what I said.”
“It’s what you do.”
Illuga hated how loud his own voice sounded in the round stone room. He hated more that Flins remained composed, as if they were discussing supply routes rather than the possibility that he would walk into the dark before sunrise and never return. He had lived too long among graves.
Illuga had seen too many people accept it that way.
His first home had burned under black fire. The Nightmare Orioles had torn each other apart beneath the Wild Hunt’s whispers, Captain Olsson had ordered him to retreat and died ensuring that he could…
…Every grave at Piramida bore the name of someone who had believed another person’s survival mattered more than their own.
Illuga could honor sacrifice, but surely, he could not forgive how quickly men made a habit of it.
“You think because you’ve survived longer than the rest of us, you’re allowed to decide who gets left behind,” he said.
Flins’ eyes sharpened.
“That is a rather cruel interpretation.”
“Is it wrong?”
The room fell silent.
Flins removed his gloves one finger at a time and laid them beside the dispatch. His hands were pale, almost colorless in the lamplight.
“I have no intention of dying tomorrow, Young Master.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“As you wish.”
“That’s not—” Illuga stopped, exhaled, and pressed a hand over his face. His skin was cold from the ride. “Don’t use that voice with me. Not tonight.”
“What voice?”
“The one that makes everything sound harmless.”
Flins studied him for a long moment, then he unfastened his coat and hung it on the peg by the door. The gesture should have eased something in Illuga, but it really didn't. It only meant that Flins had decided to delay leaving, not abandon the mission.
“The storm will worsen,” Flins said. “You’ll stay here until morning.”
“I wasn’t asking for permission.”
“You rarely do, once you have already decided upon something.”
Illuga frowned. “I learned from you.”
“Well, that should concern us both.”
There was a faint return of humor in his tone, and Illuga hated that it worked. Some of the pressure in his chest loosened though the anger remained. Flins moved to the table and lifted the lid from the pot. Steam rose into the cold room and Illuga recognized the scent of root vegetables, smoked meat, and bitter herbs used to keep Ratniki awake during long patrols.
“...You cooked,” he said.
“Indeed I did.”
“So you were expecting me.”
“Again, I considered your arrival likely.”
Illuga sat heavily in the nearest chair. “Hmph.”
Flins merely just laughed, filled one bowl, and placed it before him. He poured liquor into one cup for himself, water into the other for Illuga, then took the chair beside him rather than the one across the table. Their shoulders almost touched.
Illuga ate because the ride had been long. The soup was too salty but otherwise decent.
“Well?” Flins asked.
“It’s good.”
Illuga set down the spoon. “When do you leave?”
“Before dawn.”
“For how long?”
“If the route remains passable, two days.”
“And… if it doesn’t?”
“Then, longer.”
“And if the stones have fully ruptured?”
Flins lifted his cup, but did not drink.
Illuga turned toward him. “Finish the answer, please?”
“You usually complain when I finish stories.”
“I complain when you stop just before the ending.”
“A subtle distinction.”
“Flins.”
The use of his name, without title or distance, changed the air between them. Flins looked at him—properly looked. There was no easy smile or teasing remark prepared behind his teeth.
“If the Tideseal Stones have ruptured,” he said, “the Abyssal seepage may have drawn the Wild Hunt into the caverns beneath the shore. The passage is too narrow to fight effectively. I would have to reach the central stone before the structure collapses.”
“Could you?”
“I can.”
“Could you get out?”
A longer silence.
“Possibly.”
Illuga pushed away from the table and stood, but Flins caught his wrist before he could turn away. His grip was not hard and that made it worse.
So, so much worse.
Illuga felt each bare finger against his pulse, cool and deliberate.
“Sit, please,” Flins said.
“No!”
“You have ridden through half the night, and you even said the soup was good.”
“You’re making jokes.”
“I am attempting to prevent you from spending the evening pacing holes into my floor.”
“You’re leaving to crawl under a collapsing cliff.”
“Tomorrow.”
“As though that makes it better?”
“It makes tonight available.”
Illuga stared at him.
The words had been spoken plainly. Flins did not look away, and something in Illuga’s anger shifted, becoming more dangerous because it hurt less cleanly. He looked at Flins’ hand around his wrist, then at the packed bag by the door.
“You planned this,” Illuga said.
“The mission?”
“This!” He gestured at the table. “The soup. The second cup. You knew I’d find the roster.”
“I know you read every assignment involving my name.”
“You knew I’d come, but… why?”
Flins’s thumb moved once over the inside of his wrist.
“Must every reason be spoken aloud?”
“Tonight? Yes.”
Wind moved around the tower. Somewhere above them, the great mechanism of the lighthouse turned with a low iron complaint.
Flins rose. He was taller at this distance, close enough that Illuga had to lift his chin. His face remained composed, but the hand on Illuga’s wrist had tightened.
“I have become accustomed to your visits,” Flins said.
“That isn’t a reason.”
“No?”
“That’s another unfinished story.”
A small, weary smile touched the Ratniki’s mouth. “You have grown difficult to entertain.”
“You made me come back for the endings.”
“Did I?”
“Yes.”
“Then perhaps my methods were too effective.”
Illuga’s free hand closed around the front of Flins’ shirt. He had not decided to do it. One moment they were standing beside the table, the next he had pulled Flins down and kissed him.
For a heartbeat, Flins did not move.
Illuga tasted the dark liquor on his lips. Beneath it was cold air and something faintly metallic, like the scent left after lightning. He kissed him harder, angry at the stillness, angry at the mission, angry at every careful word Flins had ever placed between them. Then Flins’ hand slid from his wrist to the back of his neck, and then, the restraint vanished.
He turned Illuga and pressed him against the edge of the table, scattering the spoons. The bowl rocked, broth spilling over the rim, but Illuga barely noticed. He didn’t care. Flins kissed him with a hunger so controlled it felt more intimate than desperation. One hand remained at Illuga’s nape and the other settled at his waist and pulled him close until there was no polite distance left between them.
Illuga breathed against his mouth. “You could have done that months ago.”
“My apologies. I was under the impression that you were visiting for the stories.”
“I was.”
“Only the stories?”
Illuga caught Flins’ lower lip between his teeth. The answer drew a low groan from him, quiet enough that Illuga might have imagined it if Flins’s fingers had not flexed against his side.
Flins moved his mouth to Illuga’s jaw, then lower. The kiss beneath his ear was slow. The next, against the scar on his neck, was almost reverent.
Illuga shuddered.
“Careful,” he murmured.
“Do you wish me to stop?”
“...No.”
“Then you must be more specific.”
Illuga’s face burned. “You really choose now to be difficult?”
“I have been reliably informed that I am always difficult.”
Flins kissed the scar again, less gently. Illuga’s hand tightened in his hair. The lighthouse beam passed over the windows, throwing a pale band across the room before darkness returned.
He moved his palm beneath the hem of Illuga’s shirt, cold against warm skin, spreading over his waist with unhurried possession. Illuga drew in a breath and felt Flins smile at his throat.
“That’s unfair,” he said.
“What is?”
“You don’t even breathe.”
“Well, I suppose that’s an advantage in several situations.”
Illuga shoved at his shoulder, and Flins let himself be moved half a step, amused, and Illuga used the opening to reverse their positions. His back met the stone wall beside the shelves.
For once, surprise crossed his face.
Illuga pressed close, one hand braced beside his head. He was the youngest captain among the Lightkeepers, not a stupid child to be protected through deception. He had led people into the night and buried them. He knew what he wanted.
“You don’t get to make tonight into a consolation prize,” Illuga said.
Flins’s amusement faded.
“I would never insult you so.”
“Then say you want to come back.”
“Desire and outcome are not the same.”
“I know!”
“You ask for a promise I may not be able to keep.”
“I— I didn’t ask for a promise.”
Illuga took Flins’ hand and placed it flat against his own chest. His heart struck hard beneath Flins’ palm.
“I asked you to want it.”
The blue flame on the table crackled and Flins looked down at his hand as if the simple proof of Illuga’s heartbeat were more frightening than the mission waiting beyond the sea. Centuries had taught him how nations fell and cities vanished, but they had never taught him what to do with one ordinary heartbeat. Those had always been the hardest things to hold.
At last, he said, “I want to return.”
Illuga’s throat tightened. Flins lifted his gaze.
“I want to hear you criticize my cooking again. I want you to bring me documents I have already read and supplies I do not need. I want you to ask questions in that elaborate manner of yours. I want—”
His voice stopped. Illuga waited. Then,Flins gave a soft, humorless laugh. “There. You see? Even I am capable of losing the ending.”
Illuga kissed him before he could hide again. This kiss was slower, though no less desperate, but no longer angry. Flins held him with both hands, drawing him close, and Illuga felt the edge of the table against the back of his legs as they moved through the room without looking.
They reached the narrow stairs. Flins paused with his mouth near Illuga’s.
“The upper chamber is warmer,” he murmured. “It has a bed.”
The look Flins gave him was dark enough to send heat through his whole body. Illuga caught him by the collar.
“Take me upstairs.”
Flins obeyed without argument.
✧✧✧
Rain struck the lighthouse windows, then turned to sleet. From the upper room, the cemetery appeared only when the turning beam crossed it: rows of white stones, wet grass, iron lamps burning among the dead. Illuga lay awake beneath a heavy blanket, listening to the weather. His coat hung from the bedpost. One boot had landed near the door and the other was somewhere beneath the chair. Flins’ jacket remained downstairs, but his dark undershirt lay open at the throat, its fastenings abandoned with carelessness.
He was sitting against the headboard beside Illuga, one hand resting on the blanket over Illuga’s hip.
“You’re awake,” Illuga said.
“I rarely sleep.”
“I know.”
Illuga turned onto his side. In the intermittent lighthouse glow, Flins looked nearly colorless. His hair fell untidily across his forehead. Without his coat, gloves, and polished posture, he seemed less like the elegant keeper of the cemetery and more like what he truly was: something old that had chosen, for reasons of its own, to remain among human beings.
Illuga touched his face.
Flins leaned into the contact so slightly that anyone else might have missed it.
“Tell me something true,” Illuga said.
“I have told you many true things.”
“Something you’ve never told anyone.”
“That is a demanding category.”
“You’re leaving in a few hours.”
Illuga traced the faint darkness beneath his eye. “So tell me why you stayed here.”
Flins’s gaze moved toward the window.
“The lighthouse required a keeper.”
“That’s the official answer.”
“The dead appreciate consistency.”
“That’s the joke.”
“My, you have catalogued my evasions.”
The beam passed. Darkness folded over the room again. Flins’ hand moved from Illuga’s hip to his back, drawing him nearer until Illuga’s forehead rested against his shoulder.
“When my squad died,” Flins said, “everyone assumed I remained because I could not bear to leave them. They were partly correct. The cemetery was familiar and the work was useful, to say the least.” His fingers moved slowly along Illuga’s spine. “But grief was not the only reason. I had begun to find ordinary human life… tiresome. People swearing that each brief attachment was irreplaceable, then surviving its loss.”
“That sounds lonely.”
“It was peaceful.”
“That isn’t the same thing.”
“No,” Flins said. “I have recently been forced to reconsider the distinction.”
Illuga lifted his head. “Because I keep bothering you?”
“Among other disasters.”
He smiled, but it did not last. Flins’ hand rose to the back of Illuga’s neck, fingers slipping into his hair. Illuga kissed him softly this time, but the softness did not stay innocent for long.
Their mouths met in the dark, unhurried at first, then deeper, warmer. Flins drew the blanket higher around Illuga’s shoulders even as his other hand slid beneath the loose fall of his shirt. His palm was cold against Illuga’s side, and his body reacted before he could stop it, arching slightly into the touch.
Flins noticed and his thumb traced a slow line over Illuga’s ribs, and his breath caught against his mouth.
Illuga moved closer until his thigh slipped between Flins’ and the last narrow space between them disappeared. Flins’ hand tightened at his waist, holding him there, and for one dizzy second Illuga felt exactly how badly Flins wanted him.
It should have embarrassed him but instead, it made him reckless.
He pressed closer.
Flins’ mouth left his lips and found the corner of his jaw, then the line of his throat. Illuga tilted his head back before he could think better of it, giving him more. The blanket slipped down one shoulder. He followed the exposed skin as if he had been waiting all night for permission to stop pretending he was civilized.
His teeth grazed Illuga’s throat and Illuga made a sound he did not mean to make.
Flins paused against his pulse. The silence that followed was worse than any teasing remark could have been.
“Shut up,” Illuga whispered.
Flins’s lips brushed his skin. “I'm not talking.”
“...Just don’t make me hear myself.”
For a moment, Flins was very still. Then his hand slid lower, slow enough to be cruel, settling at Illuga’s hip and pulling him firmly into place. Illuga shut his eyes.
Then Flins kissed him again, open-mouthed and hungry, while the lighthouse beam moved over the room in pale flashes. His touch stayed deliberate, not rushed nor clumsy, but there was nothing distant about him now. No polished courtesy. No careful unfinished story.
Just his mouth at Illuga’s throat, his hand under Illuga’s shirt, the hard press of him through too many layers of clothing.
Illuga clutched at his shoulder and tried to steady himself, but Flins only dragged him closer. The movement drew a broken breath out of him, and this time, Flins did not pretend not to hear it.
He kissed lower, following the bare line of Illuga’s chest where the shirt had fallen open. Illuga’s fingers tangled in his hair.
“F-flins—”
His name came out rougher than intended. Flins lifted his head. In the dark, his eyes looked almost gold.
“Yes?”
Illuga hated him a little for sounding composed. Hated him more for the way his mouth was swollen from kissing and his hand was still fitted to Illuga’s hip like it belonged there.
“You are unbearable.”
“So I have been told.”
Illuga pulled him down again.
The next kiss was not soft at all. It was teeth and heat and the quiet scrape of fabric as Illuga shifted into his lap. Flins held him at once, one hand braced at his back and the other firm against his thigh. Illuga felt the faint tremor in his fingers and understood, with a sudden rush of satisfaction, that Flins was not nearly as controlled as he wanted to seem.
Good. Let him want. Let him be afraid of wanting. Let the old lighthouse keeper of Final Night Cemetery spend one night unable to pretend he was above desire.
Flins broke the kiss only to breathe words against his mouth.
“You should sleep.”
Illuga laughed once, breathless.
Nothing about it felt like farewell. Not the blanket tangled around their legs, not Flins’s hand beneath his shirt, not the way Illuga kept moving closer, as if he could force him to stay through warmth alone.
Rather, it felt like wanting.
Which, well... that frightened him most.