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Not one of them looks twice at Dark, or at Hex, or at Dis. Whatever’s wrong with the sky is apparently taking up all the space that human attention has to give.

“Ever thought about keeping bees?” Big Brian asks, falling into step beside Dark without any warning at all.

Dark blinks at him. “I had not.”

“Very calming, bees. Good for a man carrying a lot of responsibility,” Big Brian says.

“I shall give it serious thought,” Dark says, with grave courtesy.

“Good lad.” Big Brian claps Dark once on the shoulder. Dark flickers, startled. The shape of him goes briefly indistinct at the point of contact, like he genuinely isn’t sure what to do with being touched that casually. Big Brian carries on up the path, entirely unbothered, having apparently just baffled a king completely.

Felix walks close beside Dark the rest of the way, not speaking. Just present, the way you stay near something you haven’t decided whether to trust yet but aren’t willing to leave unwatched either. Hex has his arm slung around Adam, the saucepan finally abandoned somewhere back at the flat.

Then there are the stairs. Narrow, spiralling, exactly as endless as I remember. Felix mutters about the lack of a lift the whole way up. Nobody tells him to stop. It’s oddly comforting.

We come out onto the viewing platform at the top. A handful of people got here before us, phones raised towards the frozen sky, none of them speaking. The wind is thin and cold. Below us, the whole of Bristol lies held in the same strange twilight. The harbour is flat and silver, and the streets are full of tiny, stalled figures looking up.

We spread out along the railing. I find Dark’s hand without either of us quite deciding to, fingers threading together. We stand here as one, the whole strange assembled family of us, waiting.

“Whatever happens,” I say, “I’m glad it’s happening with you actually here.”

“As am I.” He turns to face me, the frozen twilight reflecting in the amber of his eyes. “I have spent this entire war wishing to be standing exactly where I currently am. It seems absurd that it took the world nearly ending for me to simply walk through a door.”

“Not absurd. Just us,” I say.

“I love you,” he says suddenly. “And I apologise if loving you has broken the universe, but I cannot bring myself to care all that much.”

My eyes are all watery. “I love you too.”

His hand comes up to cup my jaw, slow, deliberate. For a moment, neither of us moves at all. We just stand there breathing the same air, the whole city and the frozen sky and everyone we love falling away. Until there’s nothing left in the world except the small distance between his mouth and mine.

Then he closes it.

His lips are cool and misty against mine. Soft and firm and real under the coiling shadows. And certain. I feel the shudder go through him the instant we touch, like even now, even after centuries and thrones and a war neither of us wanted, this specific thing still undoes him completely. I kiss him back, both hands fisting in his shirt, pulling him closer.

Somewhere behind us Hex makes an exaggerated gagging noise that fools absolutely nobody, least of all himself.

The kiss deepens, unhurried, like we’ve got all the time in the world rather than a frozen sky waiting to see what we do with it. His other hand slides to the small of my back. Mine curls tighter into his collar. And it’s right there, his mouth against mine, that I feel it.

Warmth. Against my closed eyelids, spreading, growing, impossible and undeniable. I feel him go still against my mouth for half a second. Feel him notice it too. Feel the exact moment he smiles into the kiss instead of finishing it.

We break apart at the same time, neither of us letting go of the other’s hand. The entire horizon is moving, gold flooding outward from the edge of the world like something enormous has finally, finally exhaled.

“It’s moving,” Adam says, barely a whisper.

It’s moving now. Colour floods back into the world exactly the way it’s supposed to, spilling gold across the harbour, across the rooftops, across every single face turned up to watch it. Strangers and friends alike. Down in the park, the man who was shouting about the end times abandons his sermon mid-sentence to simply stare. A great breath of relief rises from the streets below. Everyone exhales at once. Felix is actually laughing, real and unguarded. Morgana presses both hands to her mouth. Even Dis allows himself something that might, in the right light, be called a smile.

I don’t join the noise of it straight away. I stand there with Dark’s hand still in mine and let it land. All of it. The doubt I’ve been carrying since a coffee shop full of people cheered for me to become a weapon. The fear that loving him instead of fighting him was naive rather than right. It wasn’t naive. The sky just proved it in front of an entire city. Something in my chest that’s been clenched tight for far too long finally, quietly, lets go.

Magdalene steps into the middle of the platform, kaftan practically glowing in the new light. It’s the exact spot where she once shouted BEHOLD at an empty sky. She throws both arms wide like she’s addressing a congregation of thousands rather than a bunch of exhausted people and three shadow beings.

“I KNEW it,” she announces, to the city, to Bristol, to whatever’s still listening up there. “Forty years! Forty years I have been saying dark and light were never meant to destroy each other, that they were two halves of one whole, practically the exact same thing, meant to find one another, and did anyone listen? No. Everyone was far too busy arguing about the biscuit rota at Tuesday sessions to hear the actual depth of what I was saying.” She’s already pulling a fresh scrap of paper from somewhere inside her kaftan, scribbling as she talks. “I shall need to revise several key verses immediately. Possibly the entire third chapter. This changes everything, and frankly it is precisely what I have been saying all along.”

“You have never once said any of that,” Felix says.

“I said it in spirit, Felix,” Magdalene says, “which is really the important part.”

Nobody argues further. Nobody quite has the energy.