“Just imagine,” Thomas said. “What if we’d never gone to the Academy together? What if none of those things had happened, and Paris was the first time we’d met? And this was the second?”

Alastair said nothing. This close, Thomas could see the gray flecks in his dark eyes, like delicate veins of crystal in black marble.

Then Alastair smiled. It was the ghost of his old arrogant smile, just touched with the lofty wickedness Thomas remembered from school. It had made his heart skip a beat then; it raced now. “Damn you, Thomas,” he said, and there was resignation in his voice, but something else, too, something dark and sweet and intense.

A moment later he was pulling Thomas toward him. Their bodies collided, awkward and thrilling. Thomas closed his eyes, unable to bear so much feeling, as Alastair’s lips touched his—gently, at first, but with growing confidence, he explored Thomas’s mouth, and it was like flying, like nothing Thomas had ever imagined. The heat and pressure of Alastair’s mouth, the softness of his lips and skin, the sheer intensity of breathing and moving together with Alastair Carstairs.

He had never imagined anything like this. Nothing like the soft growling noise Alastair made as his hands roamed Thomas’s chest, his shoulders, as if they were places he’d been longing to touch for some time. Nothing like the feel of Alastair’s pulse against his lips as Thomas kissed the arch of his throat. And in the moment, Thomas could only think that if he had to be arrested for murder for this to happen, it had been worth it.

Christopher carefully fitted a rubber stopper to the last of the test tubes. Since Grace left, he had busied himself recording the results of his experiments on the pithos so far, but it had been hard to stay focused. He’d been thinking about secrets, about how other people seemed to somehow know what was good to share with others and what should be kept to oneself, what words could encourage and which caused hurt, how some people surprised him by not grasping the simplest concepts, no matter how carefully he explained them, while others…

While others seemed to understand Christopher even without a considerable effort on his part. Not very many others: Henry, certainly; and Thomas, usually; and frequently—though not always—the rest of his friends.

But Grace, confoundingly, seemed to see Christopher clearly. Talking to her had been so easy that he’d forgotten to filter everything he said, going over it to make sure it would come out right before speaking.