“I’m quite sure I never mentioned any of you to him,” said James, and tipped the flask back. He choked. It was blue ruin: the cheapest, harshest kind of gin. It went down like lightning. He coughed and thrust the flask away.

“Even worse,” said Matthew. “How sharper than the serpent’s tooth it is to have an ungrateful parabatai.”

“I’m fairly sure that isn’t the original Shakespeare,” James said. “It was a good thing Bane was there,” he added. “I was in a bad state. I barely recall it. I know it was because of Grace—she had written to me to say we should cut off contact with each other. I couldn’t understand it. I went out to drink, to forget—” He broke off, shaking his head. “The next day she wrote to me again to apologize. She said she had only been frightened. I wonder now if it would have been better had things ended then.”

“We do not get to choose when in our lives we feel pain,” said Matthew. “It comes when it comes, and we try to remember, even though we cannot imagine a day when it will release its hold on us, that all pain fades. All misery passes. Humanity is drawn to light, not darkness.”

The sky was full of London’s black smoke. Matthew was a pale mark against the storm-dark sky; the bright fabric of his waistcoat shone, as did his fair hair. “Math,” James said. “I know you never liked Grace.”

Matthew sighed. “It doesn’t matter what I think of her. It never did.”

“You knew she didn’t love me,” James said. He still felt dizzy.

“No. I feared it. It is not the same. Even then, I could never have guessed what she would do. Charles will never make her happy.”

“She asked me to marry her last night—to run away and marry her in secret,” said James. “I said no. Today, she told me it had been a test. It was as if she had decided that our love was already a broken and ruined thing, and was trying to prove it.” He took a ragged breath. “But I cannot imagine loving her more than I have—more than I do.”

Matthew’s fingers whitened where he grasped the flask. After a long moment, he spoke with some difficulty. “You cannot torment yourself,” he said. “If it had not been that test, it would have been another. This is not an issue of love, but of ambition. She wishes to be the Consul’s wife. Love has no place in this plan.”