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“Well,” I say, stepping back to let him in. “You look like you’ve had a night.”

“That’s one way of putting it,” Felix says, dropping into the nearest kitchen chair like his legs have finally given up arguing with him.

“Should I make the good tea?” I ask, already reaching for it. “I feel like whatever this is calls for the good tea.”

“Bunny.”

“That bad, then. Right. Good tea it is.”

I get as far as the cupboard, hand actually closing round the good mugs, the ones with the chip Felix pretends not to mind about, when he starts pacing behind me, and something in the rhythm of his footsteps tells me tea is no longer the priority here. I set the mugs down on the counter, empty, and turn around properly instead.

I lean back against the counter and wait, because pushing him never works. He’ll get there in his own time, or not at all. He picks up one of the mugs I’ve just washed, examines it like it might contain the right opening line, and sets it back down without using it.

“Dis talked,” he says, eventually.

“And?” I prompt when he doesn’t say anything else straight away.

“And it’s bad,” he says. “Not immediately, apocalyptically bad. But bad.”

“Felix,” I say, when he goes quiet again instead of continuing.

“Night’s thinking about stepping down. The throne. Properly, permanently, not some temporary arrangement.” He stops pacing, faces me properly. “Because he’s fallen in love. With a human man. And apparently that’s not allowed, not for a king.”

I feel something cold settle in my stomach. “Not allowed how?”

“Night is already engaged. To a nightmare twink called Fiend who apparently …” he pauses and makes an exasperated gesture with his hands. “Can get pregnant.”

I blink as my mind refuses to process and instead jumps to a possible solution. “Can’t Night get unengaged?”

“The Shadow Realm won’t accept a human consort beside the throne,” he says. “Not because he’s human, not exactly. Because he’s a cis male, and human, and between the two of those there’s no way he could ever give Night an heir. The king has to be able to produce one. It doesn’t matter who anyone loves. It’s blood, succession, keeping the line unbroken. It’s a very old law, and as far as anyone knows, an absolute one.”

“So he steps down,” I say slowly. “And then what?”

Felix doesn’t answer straight away, and something in the way he doesn’t answer tells me everything before he actually says it.

“Dark,” he says. “There’s no one else the realm would accept without a fight. Actual civil war, apparently, if the wrong person tried to take it. Dark is the only blood claim left standing.”

The kitchen goes very quiet. I can hear the tap still dripping, one slow drop at a time. Somewhere outside, a car goes past, ordinary and unbothered, entirely uninterested in the fact that my whole world’s just tilted slightly on its axis.

“He’d be king,” I say, mostly to hear how it sounds out loud. “I once watched that man try to work out how a toaster functioned for twenty minutes. He’s going to run a kingdom.”

“Bunny.”

“Sorry. Coping mechanism. Please continue.”

“If Night actually steps down,” Felix says. “It’s not decided yet. But Dis thinks it’s close.”

“How close?” I ask.

“Weeks, maybe. Not years. Dis wouldn’t put a number on it exactly, but the way he talked about it, it didn’t sound like something anyone thinks can be put off much longer.” Felix rubs a hand over his face, the tiredness showing properly for a second before he catches it and smooths it away again. “Everyone thinks it’s a matter of when, not if.”

I try to imagine Dark on a throne, crowned, ruling an entire realm I’ve never seen. I can’t quite make the image hold together properly. It doesn’t fit the version of him I know. The one who once spread peanut butter on the outside of a sandwich because he genuinely thought that was how it worked. Who cut a belt clean through purely because someone was rude to me in a study room.

“And the king has to marry a shadow being,” I say, mostly to hear how flat it sounds out loud.

“Apparently,” Felix says.

“I wonder what one’s even meant to wear,” I say, and it comes out thinner than I mean it to, the joke arriving already half collapsed. “To your ex’s royal wedding. Is there an etiquette guide for that specific situation, do you think? Something tasteful. Nothing that says, ‘I was his first kiss, congratulations to the happy couple.’”