Alastair winced. “I insulted your father and blackened his name. You were under no obligation to care about mine.”

“I know, but sometimes I think that it is much harder to lose someone who we are on bad terms with than it is to lose someone with whom all is well.”

“Bloody hell, Thomas. You should hate me, not be thinking about what I must be feeling—” Alastair swiped at his eyes; Thomas realized with a stunned shock that they were bright with tears. “And the worst of it is, you’re right, of course. You always understood other people so well. I think I partly hated you for it, for being so kind. I thought, ‘He must have so much, to be able to be so generous.’ And I thought that I had nothing. It never occurred to me that you had secrets too.”

“You were always my secret,” said Thomas softly, and Alastair turned a startled gaze on him.

“Does no one know?” said Alastair. “That you—like men? How long have you known?”

“Since after I came to school, I think,” Thomas said in a low voice. “I knew what caught my eye, quickened my pulse, and it was never a girl.”

“And you never told anyone?”

Thomas hesitated. “I could have told my friends that I liked men. They would have understood. But I couldn’t have told them how I felt about you.”

“So you did feel something for me. I thought—” Alastair looked away, shaking his head. “I didn’t see you—you were this boy, following me around at school, and then I met you in Paris and you’d grown up and turned into Michelangelo’s David. I thought you were beautiful. But I was still caught up with Charles—” He broke off. “Just another thing I’ve wasted. Your regard for me. I wasted my time and my affection on Charles. I wasted my chance with you.”

Thomas felt light-headed. Had Alastair just said, I thought you were beautiful? Alastair, who was literally the most beautiful person Thomas had ever known? “Maybe not,” he said. “About me, I mean.”

Alastair blinked. “Speak sense, Lightwood,” he said testily. “What do you mean?”

“I mean this,” said Thomas, and leaned in to kiss Alastair on the mouth.

It was a quick kiss—Thomas had never kissed anyone before, really, just a few furtive moments in a shadowy corner of the Devil Tavern—and nearly chaste. Alastair’s pupils flared; even as Thomas drew back hesitantly, Alastair caught hold of Thomas’s shirtfront in a firm grip. He slid onto his knees so that they faced each other; with Thomas sitting back on his heels, their heads were at the same level.

“Thomas—” Alastair began. His voice was rough, unsteady; Thomas hoped he had something to do with that. Abruptly, Alastair let go of Thomas’s shirt, started to turn his face away.