Danny couldn’t sleep. He lay awake in bed, staring into the depths of his humble Enfield cottage, wondering if it would still be his in a few weeks’ time.
Sighing loudly, he turned onto his back. The curtains were drawn across the window near his bed, but moonlight shone through the crescent window above, splashing across his sheets. Most nights, the moonlight crept up the bed, caressing his face briefly before it hid beyond the window. It seemed almost purifying.
He didn’t want to think about tomorrow, or the day after. He wanted to stay right where he was and force the moon to stay still, to refrain from pulling the night onwards. But on the nightstand his timepiece ticked away the seconds, reminding him that the night would eventually end and time would go on as usual.
There had been a moment—just one moment—when Danny had been able to manipulate time beyond the normal limits of the clock tower. Reaching out, he picked up the small cog that rested beside his timepiece and ran a thumb over its surface, thinking about how his blood had connected him to Enfield, when he had shifted time with just a thought.
In India, time was moving forward even when towers were destroyed. Who was to say someone wasn’t controlling it the same way he’d controlled Enfield’s?
A small knock made him jump. Danny threw off the covers and hurried to the door.
Colton stood on the threshold with a sheepish smile.
“What are you doing here?” Danny demanded.
“Sorry. I wanted to see you.”
Danny leaned out the doorway, looking both ways, then ushered Colton inside before he was seen. “Is something wrong?” Colton usually didn’t knock, taking great joy in waltzing into the cottage whenever Danny least expected it.
“No, nothing’s wrong.”
“You saw I couldn’t sleep,” Danny guessed.
Colton shrugged. The spirit, like Cassie, tended to worry about him. Danny recalled the fever he had run back in February. He’d been too sick to leave his bed, so Colton had fed him broth and watched over him as he slept. It had almost felt normal.
“I just wanted to see you,” Colton insisted. “To stay with you.” When Danny hesitated, studying him for the signs of weakening he’d shown in the factory, Colton added, “Please?”
The thought of having Colton beside him was more comforting than having only the moon for company, so Danny passed him the small cog to put in his pocket for strength.
“I still have to sleep, though,” Danny said as he crawled back under the covers. “You’ll be terribly bored.”
“I won’t be.” Colton joined him under the blankets, settling into the space Danny left unoccupied.
Danny shifted so they were face to face. “Did you mean it? About speaking to my father?” Colton nodded. “I don’t know if it will help, but you can try. Dad’s not unreasonable. I think he’s just scared.”
“He was trapped in Maldon. It makes sense.”
Danny breathed, in and out, a slow and steady pattern that Colton couldn’t imitate. As if reading his thoughts, Colton placed his fingers against Danny’s neck, feeling for his pulse.
“I wish I could be like you. Things would be so much easier.”
“Stop talking about it, Colton.” It’s too painful.
Colton idly traced the vein down Danny’s neck until Danny shivered. “But it’s true. Your father likely wouldn’t have a problem if I wasn’t … this. I could offer you so much more.”
“You’re fine just the way you are.”
He couldn’t tell Colton that he secretly wished for the same thing: for them both to be the same, equal in all things. That he wanted what Colton could never give him. That life didn’t have to be made up of secrets and compromise.
Slowly, Colton scooted closer. Danny could see the faint glow of his skin, the amber gleam of his eyes. The moonlight inched up the bed, contesting its silver shine against Colton’s gold.
The spirit leaned in and kissed him. His lips were soft and parted easily. Danny closed his eyes and returned the pressure, matching the slow, thoughtful rhythm of his mouth as Colton’s thumb swept over his throat.
The air around them warped slightly, and Danny could almost sense it gliding over his body. The timepiece still ticked on his bedside table. The moon still journeyed through the sky. But in this bed, time was momentarily forgotten.
Colton reached under the covers and slid a hand up Danny’s nightshirt, over his bare ribs. Danny’s breath hitched.
“I can’t give you much,” Colton said, “but I can give you something.”
Colton gently turned him onto his back. The touches on Danny’s chest and sides seared into his skin. They made something deep within him tremble, the first signs of an earthquake traveling from core to surface. It didn’t feel like his body—it was as though Colton were touching someone else entirely.
When Colton’s fingers reached his stomach, he finally found his voice. “You don’t have to.” His words barely stirred the air between them.
“I want to.” Colton looked at Danny through his lashes, and they were spangled with moonlight. There was a tenderness in him that broke Danny’s heart a million times over. It was in the way Colton caressed his cheek, the slope of his neck. It was in the way he leaned down and kissed Danny on the mouth, slow and gentle, like testing new waters.
“Can I?” Colton asked against his mouth.
Danny shaped the word yes.
Colton’s lips trailed down his neck. He found his pulse, life under his lips, and then there were teeth. Danny gasped, and Colton let out a small laugh, lower than usual, as he traced his name on Danny’s hip.
Danny was burning. It scared him; he had never felt this way before, this punch-drunk sensation of affection and longing, allowing his body to speak for him. Allowing Colton to read that body to his own interpretation. Even the slight weight of him lying on top of Danny was too much, too close, too everything. He was going to turn the bed to ashes.
His bones ached with the force of his want, this intangible thing now being measured in sighs and kisses and whispers. He ran his hands over Colton’s shoulders, pressed his palm to the still chamber where Colton’s heartbeat would have been. But Danny’s heart beat so hard he could feel it for the both of them, monstrous with desire.
Everything was raging and desperate and splintering. The cracks started straight from the middle of his chest, where Colton’s tongue tasted his skin, to the insides of his thighs, where Colton made patterns with feathery fingertips. He opened his eyes but couldn’t see. Only feel. Only breathe. Only hear his blood echo on Colton’s lips.
His chest pulled like a magnet, toward this brilliant golden boy who was everything.
And those eyes, looking at him that way, devouring him like he was the shining one, like he was the one full of light. But it was Danny who was blinded. He pulled Colton closer and buried a hand in his hair, putting his lips to his temple, his jaw, anywhere he could reach. He tried to reach under his shirt, for the waistband of his trousers, but Colton gently caught his hand and pressed it to the bed.
He nearly didn’t catch the way time contracted around them. Almost effortlessly Danny cast out his own power, reining Colton’s in, recognizing the moment when Enfield’s time got snarled in Colton’s emotions.
But together they made a shield against the night, a barrier of golden threads where time was theirs to control. Each small contact scattered him across the sky, as distant and bright as stars. Every second Colton took from him was a second he gave back. Each gasp was like being reborn. Building and stretching, as thin as glass.
“Danny,” Colton whispered in his ear.
He shattered.
Danny woke in the middle of the night to find Colton watching him. Half-embarrassed, Danny smiled shyly.
“You don’t have to stay if you feel tired.”
“I feel fine,” Colton said. Danny smoothed away the spirit’s fair hair. “What about you?”
“Good. Thirsty.”
Colton rose before he could get up, so Danny fell back onto the pillow. Fully dressed, Colton padded to the kitchen and returned with a glass of water. Danny sat up and let the covers slip off his bare shoulders. Strangely, he wasn’t embarrassed anymore. He savored the weight of Colton’s hands and lips on his body, the welt of burn marks without the pain.
“Come here a moment,” Danny said. Colton put the water on the nightstand and stood before where Danny knelt on the bed. He held Colton by the hips, looking up at him with curiosity.
“You really can’t feel anything?”
Colton shook his head. “I can feel your touch, but not like you do. It’s not the same.”
“But …” He thought of what they’d just done, and that intense moment in the clock room, when time had skewed so sharply.
“It’s more emotions than touch,” Colton explained. “I’m not sure how it works. I just can’t … do certain things. The things your body does.”
“Oh.”
Danny’s thumbs brushed up under Colton’s shirt. A silent question passed between them, and Colton nodded. Danny carefully removed the shirt to reveal Colton’s belly, flat and flawless and smooth to the touch. Danny couldn’t even feel any small, downy hairs on his skin. “You have a navel,” he said, surprised.
Colton looked down. “Is that what it’s called?”
Danny circled the spot with a fingertip. He leaned in and kissed it.
“Are you sure you can’t feel anything?”
Colton smiled sadly. He framed Danny’s face with his hands, then trailed one down to his chest.
“I feel this.” He pressed his palm over Danny’s beating heart. “That’s all I need.”
Danny rested his head against Colton’s chest and wrapped his arms around his waist. There was a strange urgency to this moment, as if he held a memory, something made out of prisms of light. He didn’t want to separate himself from this thing that grew sharp and irresistible every time they were close. Every time he held him in his arms, or counted every shade of gold within his eyes, he felt it grow and spread and tangle deeper. It bled him with every tiny kiss Colton pressed to his jaw and every laugh he managed to draw from within him. He chimed like a bell, infectious and unfading.
The moon was already gone. Tomorrow beckoned, and beyond was a land too far away and too unfamiliar to fully imagine.
“Wait for me,” Danny whispered, holding Colton tighter.
“I always do.”
Danny stared at the fading wood of the front door for several minutes, silently willing his hand to reach for the knob. He was still caught up in memories of the night before, the weight and promise of Colton’s touch. It turned the world around him fuzzy and inconsequential.
When he finally opened the door, he found his mother reading the paper at the kitchen table. She leapt to her feet.
“Thank goodness!” She hurried over to hug him, the top of her head resting just underneath his chin.
Danny was out of practice with hugging his mother, but as he uncertainly returned the embrace, it helped his mood somewhat. It was like embracing a thought instead of a woman, the kind of nostalgia that brings both a smile and a sigh.
She stepped back to wipe her eyes. “We were afraid you wouldn’t come back. Your father was upset for scaring you off. For all he insists you’re grown now, he still has trouble remembering you aren’t fourteen anymore. We tried to call you.”
Jane had told him his mother had rung twice, but Danny had claimed he was too busy. “Sorry, Mum. I just needed some time.” He looked around the room. “Where is he?”
“He was called to the office for something minor. He should be back soon.”
They had tea and discussed the India trip. Leila was still flustered—“And on such short notice, the nerve of it”—but she seemed more willing to let him have his way so long as he wasn’t cross with her. There had been too much tension between them in the past to risk opening up a new rift.
She helped him pack upstairs. He was only taking one trunk, and as he latched it closed, they heard the front door open and shared a look.
“I’ll tell him you’re here,” Leila said, standing.
She went downstairs while Danny sat on the trunk, hands clasped between his knees. Just as he was unused to being on good terms with his mother, he was unused to being on poor ones with his father. The reversal made his mind that much foggier.
Christopher didn’t waste time, nudging the door open a moment later. He let out an almost pained breath when he saw the trunk.
“Hard to believe you’ll be gone.”
“Not for long,” Danny reminded him. It was the same thing he’d said to Colton that morning before giving him one final kiss goodbye.
Christopher sat on the edge of Danny’s bed and mirrored his pose, perhaps unintentionally. “I’m sorry for how I acted.”
“I don’t blame you.”
“But it was wrong.” He started to jostle his leg up and down. “I almost didn’t think you’d bother coming to say goodbye.”
“Of course I would.” Danny and his father had argued before Christopher had left for Maldon, and Danny had carried the guilt of his words like a sharp-edged stone for three years. If he went to India and something happened to him, or to his father, he would regret this argument just as much.
“Danny, I only want what’s best for you. I hope you know that.”
“Dad—”
“It might be exciting to love a spirit—I was your age once, and loved to do the things I shouldn’t—but you’re so young, and he’s … well, not human. You’ll grow old, and he won’t. It just won’t work. More than that, it’s dangerous. Every day could potentially jeopardize Enfield.”
Danny thought back to the day they’d visited the factory, and the way the clock had run slow then fast. He hung his head to hide the wetness in his eyes.
“I’ve seen what this spirit’s been doing to you,” Christopher went on. “You keep putting Enfield—him—before yourself. Before anything else. That’s not right, Danny.”
Danny couldn’t even argue. Given a choice between what he wanted and what was right, he would choose Colton every time.
“I know that,” he said softly. “I know.”
“Then why are you letting this continue?”
Danny tried to swallow and almost couldn’t manage. “Because I lo—I—” Danny angrily rubbed his cheeks with a quick motion of his wrist. “I can’t control what I feel.”
They sat in silence as clouds rolled across the sun, briefly sheltering them from its glare.
Christopher moved off the bed and knelt before him. “I’m sorry, Danny. I don’t want to see you get hurt.” He rubbed Danny’s head, mussing up his hair. “You don’t have to make a decision now. We can discuss it when you come back. Let’s have a nice dinner as a family, and your mum and I will see you off tomorrow morning. I’m sorry.”
Danny shook his head. “I’m sorry, too.” Sorry I can’t change the way I feel.
That night he dreamed of fire rolling across a barren desert. It consumed the ground, traveling toward a looming palace of white and gold. Between the fire and the palace stood a tower.
He watched helplessly as tongues of flame licked up the sides of the tower. A golden figure was trapped inside, pounding on the glass of the clock face, screaming for help. Danny screamed back. He tried to get up, but he was chained to the earth.
The tower burned.