They reached Val’s offices, and even as his brother stopped outside the room, clearly awaiting a response—nay, more specifically, clearly awaiting an indication that this was the year when his efforts would be met with a different outcome.

Val, however, continued on his course, making for his sideboard, where he fetched a bottle of fine French brandy and a single snifter. Carrying his provisions over to his desk, and without bothering to offer his younger brother a drink of his own, Val poured.

Undeterred, Sidney joined him, settling into the winged seat opposite him with his usual smile in place. “I believe you want to come.”

“You also believe in gold at the end of rainbows and fairies and—”

“Ah, point taken! But what a better life it is when one believes in magic and goodness.”

And what a miserable one it was to have lost the love of one’s life and realized goodness was fleeting and magic didn’t exist.

Val stared emptily into his glass before giving his head a firm shake. He tossed back another swallow.

“I’ve no intention of coming to spend the Christmastide Season,” he said bluntly so his brother could disabuse himself, and their mother, on whose behalf he’d no doubt come time and time again.

And with that, Sidney’s usually smiling, lighthearted demeanor ceded the way to an unusual-for-him solemnity. He leaned forward in his seat and turned a hand up. “Mother wishes for you to be there.”

There it was. The first his brother had ever acknowledged that in all the years since that tragic winter’s night.

And Val expected she did wish for him to come.

Without fail, she arranged and threw the most lavish, the most exuberant Christmastide holiday party. The house filled with guests, distant kin and close friends alike; it was a celebration that, as a boy and young man, he’d always looked forward to enthusiastically.

It was also the affair his late wife had looked forward to as well.

It had been the place where they’d first met.

The event at which they’d fallen in love.

And then vowed to someday continue the tradition of spreading Christmastide joy to—

Feeling his brother’s gaze on him, Val shook his head hard.

Sidney’s eyes were still serious, his expression more than faintly knowing. “Mother regrets very much what happened, Val,” he said quietly. “She feels to blame.”

“Of course she’s not to blame,” he responded in terse tones meant to end this discourse, one that they’d never had, and one Val didn’t wish to have. Because he preferred to let the hell of that day live on in his own memory. The misery and suffering of it belonged to Val, exclusively. What his mother, or anyone else, for that matter, felt was irrelevant. “So do feel free to reassure her; I do not hold her responsible.” It was Val who was to blame.