V.

DG was sure her mother and Glitch were going to talk of a subject they wished she wouldn't overhear. Glitch, resplendent in his new suit, kissed the little princess at her temple. "Go and talk to Wyatt, would you? It's his wedding and he's already bored." DG trilled a sparrow's laugh, patted Glitch's fluffy, lacy cravat, and wended her way between Glitch and her mother. She would let them speak as adults, and she would pretend not to mind.

"What do you think Glitch wanted to say to Mother?"

Throughout the day, Wyatt's smile was never-ending. The ghosts of his past had been replaced with the realness of Glitch.

"I used to have dreams," Glitch told the embodiment of royalty, finery, the lovely friend he'd once had. "I used to dream about a young man. He wasn't tangible. He was a dream. What are they made of? Gossamer fairy wings. But I met him in this life as a man. He used to have dreams, too. He dreamed about a young man. Somehow, and I don't know how," but Glitch tried staring into those lavender eyes, trying to find a blockade, a response, something she couldn't hide behind, "we dreamed about each other trapped in our twisted worlds, stuck there, living the past on repeat—him with his wife's death, me—me—well—everything with me is on repeat. I studied science, but I never studied much magic. I promised Wyatt I would never find an answer to why we dreamed. Is there an answer? I'm not so sure there is. Magic is supernatural, paranormal: it defies exploratory science, as it's supposed to, as it will continue to do. That's all I came to say."

"Ambrose."

He stopped because she'd summoned him to, not because she'd called him by the proper name. He anticipated a coy remark, a shuffle of congratulations.

"Congratulations. I know the two of you will spend your lifetime being—being happy with one another, and not afraid of the future any more than you're now afraid of the past."

"Thank you," he murmured, longing to escape this entanglement of royalty, the shimmer of gowns and the tightness of cravats.

But as she walked by to force Ahamo into a dance, Glitch caught the sly tilting of her head, the merest, smallest, wimpiest little grin lifting the far corner of her gentle mouth into a recognizable quirky wrinkle, a tiny incurvation of a dimple.

He wondered if it was possible for a queen to shower upon loving souls a dream. He wondered if it was possible for a queen to string along the lighted threads of souls and twist them together, all while she lived in captivity, under the strangulation of her daughter the sorceress. He wondered if a queen had drawn him and Wyatt together by the simulation of youth in their sleep.

He wondered.

But he shook his head, laughing at himself.

"Nah."