James kept his face pressed into the tweed of Matthew’s coat. It smelled like brandy and the Penhaligon’s cologne Matthew nicked from Charles. James knew his body was bent in a somewhat awkward way, his hand gripping Matthew’s shirtfront and his face jammed into his shoulder, but there was something about the comfort of your parabatai—no one else could give it to you, not mother or sister or father or lover. It was a transcendence of all that.

People were wont to dismiss Matthew—because of his clothes, because of his jokes, because of the way he took nothing seriously. They assumed he was liable to break, to give way when things became difficult. But he wasn’t. He was holding James up now, as he always had—and making it look easy, as he always had.

“I suppose there are a lot of useless things I could tell you,” he said in a low voice, as James drew back. “That it was probably better this happened sooner, and that it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all, and all that. But it’s all rot, isn’t it?”

“Most likely,” said James. He was aware his hands were shaking in a way that reminded him of something. He couldn’t quite recall what. He was having trouble focusing, ideas skittering about like mice diving away from an approaching cat. “I thought my life would be one thing. Now it seems it is to be entirely different.”

Matthew screwed up his face in a way parents often found adorable. James thought it made him look like Oscar. “Believe me,” he said. “I do know how that feels.”

James was slightly surprised to hear it. He’d walked in on Matthew in compromising positions before with girls and boys, but he’d never thought Matthew’s heart was engaged with any of them.

There was Lucie, of course. But James suspected that Matthew did not love her, either, beyond the remnants of a childhood infatuation. Somewhere along the way, James sensed, Matthew had lost faith in most things. It would be easy for him to keep his faith in Lucie, but faith alone was not love.

James reached his hand into Matthew’s coat. Matthew grumbled but didn’t slap his hand away as James unbuttoned the inside pocket and drew out his parabatai’s silver flask.

“Are you sure?” said Matthew. “The last time you were feeling heartbroken, you took shots at a chandelier with a mundane gun and nearly drowned yourself in the Serpentine.”

“I wasn’t trying to drown myself,” James pointed out. “Besides, Magnus Bane saved me.”

“Don’t mention that,” said Matthew, as James uncapped the flask. “You know how angry I am about that. I idolize Magnus Bane, you had one chance to meet him, and you embarrassed us all.”