Evan didn’t wake again that night, and James—true to his word—stayed. He stayed until the first grey light of dawn peaked above the dark, bare branches of the trees beyond the window. Daylight brought his mother, arms laden with fresh bandages, Mippy quick on her heels.
James stood as she entered—his body stiff after another night in the armchair. “He woke up,” he said as his mother deposited her supplies on the bedside table.
Effy mother paused, a slight frown drawing her brows together. “When?”
“About one a.m.,” said James, rolling his shoulders in an attempt to loosen the crick in his neck. “It wasn’t long. I gave him a pain potion, and he fell back asleep about ten minutes later.”
“How was he? Lucid?”
“Lucid enough to be pissed at me,” answered James with a half-smile.
His mother regarded him for a long second, her eyes—the same shape and colour as his— thoughtful, and then she turned her attention back to Evan.
“Good,” she said, pulling the covers down to inspect the bandages encasing Evan’s torso. “It’s a good sign. I expect he’ll be in and out over the next day or so, but waking so soon is promising.” She paused in her examination to look at James. “He’s quite the fighter.”
James let out a small snort, half amusement, half tired relief. “You’ve no idea.”
“No,” she agreed. “I imagine I don’t.”
She straightened slowly, then turned to face him fully. Her hands settled on her hips. The look she fixed him with was one James knew intimately—the one that had preceded many a well-earned bollocking in his youth.
“So,” she said. “You’re going to explain.”
James opened his mouth.
She lifted a hand. “Chal, Shera.” I’m going to change his bandages. You’re going to go and shower—you look half-dead—and then go downstairs. Your father’s making breakfast. I am not the only one who has questions.”
James went.
When he entered the kitchen half an hour later, his father was already seated at the table. James sat opposite him without a word. A plate of eggs and toast was slid across the table, joined by a mug of tea.
James ate.
Neither spoke until James’s mother joined them some fifteen minutes later.
“Son,” his father said, after pouring Effy a mug of coffee and loading her plate with eggs, “I think your mother and I would both like to know how, exactly, we’ve ended up with a Death Eater under our roof.”
James pushed his plate away and leaned back in his chair.
His father’s tone was light—almost conversational—but James knew better. The blue eyes fixed on him were steady and serious. There was no mischievous glint there this morning.
“Evan’s not—” James stopped as Lily’s expression from the day before flashed through his mind—cool, immovable.
The mark on his arm would suggest otherwise.
James tried again.
“I mean—he is a Death Eater. But he’s not like the rest of them. He doesn’t believe in any of it. He’s not a blood supremacist.”
Even as he said it, a flicker of doubt pricked at him. He did not, strictly speaking, know that to be true. Evan moved through the Muggle world with ease—too much ease for someone who despised it—but that was not proof. Regulus had held opinions James had never agreed with, but James had always chosen to look past those, believing he could change Regulus’s mind given enough time—or that Regulus simply hadn’t been exposed to enough Muggle borns to think differently. James wondered now if Evan shared those opinions.
He pushed the thought away. Not important right now.
“My point is,” he continued, more firmly, “he’s surviving. He’s doing what he has to, to keep the people he loves safe. His family are… not like us. His father was one of them.”
Monty cleared his throat.
“I am aware of who your friend is, Son. I was rather more well acquainted with Marcus Rosier than I ever wished to be.” A pause. “For all our sakes, I hope his son is nothing like him.”
“He’s not,” James said at once, conviction sharp in his voice. “He’s—”
The words a good person rose instinctively and then stalled. James no longer trusted himself to define what those words meant, and he didn’t want to lie. Not today. Not about Evan. Not after watching him bleed out across the living room table; not after everything since.
“I trust him,” he said instead.
His father’s dark brows lifted. “Is that so?”
James held his gaze. “Yes. Completely. I trust him with my life.”
“I see,” his father replied, though he did not look persuaded. “That is a bold statement. Are you quite sure he’s deserving of that trust?”
James folded his arms. “Considering I would have died at least three times in the past year if it hadn’t been for him, I’d say yeah—I’m certain.”
A long silence followed. His mother, who had been uncharacteristically quiet, finally spoke. Her voice was cool—measured in a way that told him he was standing on the edge of serious trouble.
“I think,” she said, “you had better start at the beginning, Jamie.”
James exhaled slowly. “Alright. Well, I’ve known Evan since school. I met him in detention in second year. After that we sort of… kept running into each other over the years.” He hesitated. “We weren’t friends exactly. But we weren’t not friends either.”
He looked down at his plate, not really seeing the remnants of his breakfast. It felt odd—giving voice to his history with Evan. It felt like it should be bigger than it was; laid out like this, it sounded oddly insignificant, and that felt wrong somehow.
He cleared his throat, unsure how to explain to his parents why Evan was important. Why he mattered as much as he did. “I always liked him,” he said a little lamely. “Thought he was decent. Honourable, I suppose.” The word felt inadequate, but he left it there for lack of a better one. “I used to think it was a shame things weren’t different—think it was a shame that we weren’t friends.”
He gave a short, humourless laugh. “Manage to be friends now, on opposite sides of a war. Could’ve done it then. Should’ve. But at the time it didn’t seem possible. He was in Slytherin. I was in Gryffindor.” He shrugged faintly. “Thought that mattered back then. Seems stupid now.”
He did not mention Regulus.
Perhaps he was afraid of the way his parents might look at him. Or perhaps he had simply kept Regulus secret for so long that silence had become instinct. Either way, he stepped carefully around that part of the story.
“Didn’t see him for a while after school,” he continued. “Not until…”
He paused, doing the arithmetic. It had been winter when he’d found Evan drunk and grief-stricken in The Queen’s Arms. Late January or early February by his count. Ten months ago, give or take—ten months since he had learned that Regulus was not missing but dead. Ten months in which he had nearly died more than once. Ten months in which he had uncovered Peter’s betrayal. Ten months in which he had come to know Evan properly. Ten months in which Evan had become important.
It felt impossibly long ago.
“…a bit under a year ago,” he finished quietly. “We, er, bumped into each other.”
A loose description if ever there was one.
That night belonged to them, though, and James wasn’t willing to share it. Share the grief. Share the loss. It felt too intimate to disclose under his parents’ scrutiny. And he was certainly not about to explain that he had knowingly got drunk with a Death Eater, nor that he had ended the night sharing a bed with him.
There were some things you did not tell your parents.
That was one of them.
What he did tell them was the rest. Everything that had happened since—most of it, anyway. He told them about Moody’s suspicions of a traitor inside the Order. About being confined to the safe house. About the night the Death Eaters had found him.
He described hiding. And then being found.
The certainty, cold and absolute, that he was going to die.
About looking up and seeing Evan standing above him.
He told them how Evan had covered for him. Redirected the others. How he had walked away alive because of it.
He admitted, too, that he had not told Moody. That he had been conflicted but ultimately decided against it. That he’d done it because he felt he owed Evan his life, because he didn’t want to make him a target.
His mother’s mouth thinned and his father frowned, but neither of them interrupted.
James went on.
The mission to Diagon Alley. Running into Evan again—this time with Sirius and Peter. The warning Evan had given him after. The way it had lodged under his skin.
Then he came clean.
About being an unregistered Animagus. About Sirius. About Peter. He tried not to flinch when his mother’s expression turned murderous. He explained why they had done it. Remus. The full moons. The reckless, desperate logic of fourteen-year-old boys who believed loyalty justified even the most risky endeavours.
His father went from pale to paper-white.
James kept talking.
About asking Evan to meet. About the conversation that followed. About deciding to follow Peter. About confirming the unthinkable—that Peter was the traitor. About the traps he had tried to lay and the way they had failed, one after another.
Then the Ministry.
The last-minute change of plans. The instant he had known something was wrong. The attack.
And Evan his life.
Again.
How he’d tried warn him beforehand, but the message had arrived too late.
About how they had become friends. About working together. About the safe house attacks Evan had tipped him off about. About Evan helping him frame Peter. About the week he had believed Evan dead—about the guilt that had hollowed him out for not warning him in time. About swearing he would not make that mistake twice. The Floo network. Evan teaching him how to hack it. The wards Evan had put on the cottage and his skill with defensive magic. About the trap James had walked into—about how it had nearly killed not only him but Frank and Alice too—and how Evan had saved him again. Had sent Lily and the Order after them just in time.
Some details he omitted.
But mostly, he told the truth.
Right up until Boxing Day morning and finding Evan torn open and half-dead.
When he finished speaking, the sun was high and unforgiving through the tall windows, casting long, pale rectangles across the floorboards.
From the hall, the grandfather clock began to chime.
One.
Two.
Three.
The sound rolled through the house, deep and measured.
By the twelfth soft strike, the echo had settled into the silence between them.
“I think,” Monty said after what felt to James an eternity, “it would be in your best interest to tell Alastor Moody exactly what you have told us.”
James tried—and failed—to hide a grimace, but before he could answer, before he could argue—
“No.”
James turned to his mother, startled. Her expression was set, hard.
“Eff—” Monty began.
“No, Monty,” she said, firm and unyielding. “I have not spent the better part of three days keeping that boy alive only to deliver him into Alastor Moody’s hands.”
“He’s a Death Eater, Eff. However good his intentions may be, whatever his reason for joining, he still bears the mark of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.”
“I said no,” his mother snapped. “He is my patient, and while he is under my care, you will do as I say.”
Then she turned on James.
“You on the other hand,” she said, eyes narrowing, “have clearly taken leave of what little sense you were born with. Do you have any idea how many things can go wrong in an Animagus transformation?”
James opened his mouth with the intention of defending himself. His mother did not allow him the chance.
“There is a reason it is regulated. People lose themselves. You could have died. Or worse. Do not get me started on everything else—pagal bachcha—it is like you have a death wish. I’ve half a mind to hand you over to Moody. At least then I would know precisely where you were. Safe. In a cell in Azkaban.”
She stood then, in one smooth movement, the chair legs scraping across the floorboards.
“I have another round of potions to administer,” she said briskly, already halfway across the room. “Which reminds me—Monty, I’ll need another batch of pain draughts. I’ve nearly exhausted my stores.”
“Yes, dear,” Monty said with a small sigh, the words directed towards the kitchen door as it swung shut behind her.
He turned his attention to James then, brow furrowing.
“I understand that you wish to protect your friend,” he said, and there was something almost careful in the way he was looking at James, “and I am not suggesting you are wrong for that, but I think it would be wise to think on just how much you are willing to sacrifice for him, Son.”
He paused, eyes raking James’s face.
“We cannot always govern our hearts. Nor can we prevent ourselves from wounding others with them. What we can govern is how we respond to the consequences. And that is the true distinction between a man and a good man.”
His father stood then, offered James a small smile, and said, “I’ll be in the lab if you need me.”
The room fell quiet, and James was left feeling deeply uncomfortable, his father’s words echoing over and over, although why exactly, he wasn’t sure.
That night, James resumed his post beside Evan’s bed.
Evan did not wake. The potions held him under, the rise and fall of his chest the only movement in the dim room. The curtains were half drawn, and moonlight cut a pale strip across the floorboards, climbing slowly up the bed as the hours unfurled.
With nothing to tend and no crisis to outrun, James was left alone with his thoughts.
They returned to his father’s words; they tugged at something in him that he did not quite understand. He leaned forward, elbows braced on his knees, his eyes fixed on Evan. The moonlight had drained the colour from his skin and hair, rendering him muted silver and grey, and like this he looked wrong somehow. No smirk. No sardonic lift of the brow. No flat, unimpressed stare.
Awake, Evan was many things—clever, cutting, occasionally a little scary. There was always something there, a layer between him and the world. A performance of indifference he wore like armour.
Asleep, there was none of that.
He was simply still.
And unguarded.
In sleep, the lines of his face softened.
He looked younger.
He looked almost—
No. Not harmless. Evan Rosier would never be that. But stripped back like this, he was striking in a way that felt almost unfair. Almost unreal. A face that belonged to statues and saints and tragic heroes carved into cathedral stone—not in a war, not pale and asleep in a bed.
James let his eyes wander. Let himself examine Evan’s face in a way he never really had before. Studied him with the quiet, illicit attention that was only possible in the stillness of another’s sleep. His features held a symmetry that bordered on unreal, as though he had stepped out of the margin of some artist’s sketch rather than from the fabric of the real world. As though someone, somewhere, had taken too much care in making him.
James thought, then, of another night. Moonlight on the grounds. Thirteen years old. Walking beside him in the dark and thinking, with vague surprise, that Evan was… pretty.
Pretty.
James was fairly sure Evan would not appreciate being called pretty.
And yet.
Asleep and still, free of everything that made Evan who he was, the description fit. More than fit. There was something undeniably gentle about him like this. The armour of carefully placed indifference gone.
It was an odd sort of realisation.
Not because James hadn’t known Evan was attractive. He had registered, in a distant, impersonal way, that Evan was objectively very good looking.
But it had always been easy not to think too much about it.
Easier, when Evan was awake.
When he was being dry and sardonic. When he was explaining some obscure bit of magic. When he was tossing out an offhand remark like a thrown knife and watching it land. When he was guarded and deliberately unreadable.
When he was himself.
Without all that, it was harder to ignore.
Something shifted in James’s chest.
A faint, sickening sense of movement. Like the first give in a door he had been leaning against for years without quite admitting that he was holding it shut. The feeling made his stomach dip. It was uncomfortably familiar. The same hollow drop that came with realising that you had been caught out. Caught doing something you weren’t supposed to be doing.
Except this time he wasn’t doing anything, not really.
Nothing except—
He looked away.
Too late.
The memory was already there.
Waiting.
One he had spent four years pressing down and flattening, smoothing into something manageable. Filed under mortifyingly embarrassingand then pushed away. Something he had trained himself to think of only in passing, only vaguely, only at a distance. A stupid accident in a broom cupboard. Nothing more. Except that now, it would not stay that way. The memory rose up intact, overwhelming in its clarity.
A dark, airless space. The scrape of his back against the door. Hands on him, one at his neck, the other raking down his back. Lips against his. Warm. Hungry.
James, frozen. And then, not frozen, then responding.
Kissing back. And how it should have been all wrong but wasn’t. How quickly he’d forgotten everything else in that moment. Forgotten Regulus. How much he had wanted more. And then, when the moment broke, the realisation of who had just kissed him.
The confusion.
The humiliation.
The guilt and panic.
And then—worse. The part he had never quite known what to do with. The unwanted awareness that came after the panic. That James had liked it. He had liked the way Evan’s mouth moved against his. Liked the way his body had fitted too easily into place. He had liked it enough to lose himself in it, however briefly.
James pushed himself to his feet.
Too fast. The armchair legs scraped softly against the floor, and he froze for a moment, heart in his throat, waiting to see if Evan stirred.
He did not.
Still asleep. Still oblivious.
James exhaled and turned away.
He needed air.
He needed—
He needed to be somewhere that was not here, not in this room, not with his thoughts spiralling into places they had no right going.
He slipped out into the corridor and checked his watch. Quarter to five. He had barely slept in four days. There was his excuse, ready and waiting. Exhaustion. Stress. Worry. The argument with Lily. The constant low-level fear that Evan might not be all right. It was all too much. Of course his head was doing strange things. Of course he was overthinking. He told himself this firmly as he walked. Out through the house. Across the grounds. Under bare, frost‑laced branches. The moon hung low and bright over the estate, casting pale light over snow and stone and shadow. He kept going. Up the slope behind the house. Past the trees. Onto the open hillside. Cold air burned in his lungs. His legs ached. His breath fogged in front of him. The physical discomfort was grounding. It kept him in his body. Kept him from circling back to the same thoughts. Up there, the sky was enormous. Dark blue bleeding slowly into pink and lilac. Night giving way to morning in slow, reluctant stages. He walked until his mind finally quietened. Until his legs were tired. Until the tight knot in his chest loosened into something duller and more manageable.
When he returned, the sun was up.
The house looked solid and ordinary and safe, smoke curling from its chimneys as though nothing had happened, and it hadn’t—James assured himself. Nothing had happened. Nothing had changed. He was just tired and worn thin.
He checked his watch.
After nine.
A brief stab of guilt flickered through him at the thought that he’d left Evan alone for the better part of four hours.
He pushed it aside.
The walk had helped. It had cleared his head. Whatever that had been—whatever his brain had been doing in the dark—it was gone now.
James stopped outside the door to Evan’s room, pausing when he heard voices from within. His mother’s, and then Evan’s low answer. James pushed the door open, Evan was propped up on his pillows, and James’s mother was seated in the armchair beside the bed. She looked up as the door opened, a notebook in her hand, her hair twisted into its customary knot on top of her head—though strands were already beginning to escape. Her spectacles were perched low on her nose, the thick glass making her eyes appear larger than they were and giving her a distinctly owlish look.
“There you are,” she said with a slight frown.
James crossed his arms and leant against the doorframe. “Went for a walk,” he said by way of explanation, then turned his attention to Evan. “How are you feeling?”
“Like someone tried to kill me,” said Evan.
“Not much trying about it,” muttered Effy, her eyes returning to her notebook. “They very nearly did.”
She paused, then looked up. “Jamie, why don’t you go and fetch him something to wear—”
It was a clear dismissal. James wanted to argue, but the expression on her face told him it was pointless, so he nodded—and was turning to go when Evan spoke.
His voice was even, his attention fixed on James’s mother.
“It’s alright. I figure he’s seen enough of my blood and guts firsthand that he’s probably entitled to the gory details if he wants to stay.”
Effy regarded him for a long moment—assessing, not unkind, but thorough. Then she gave a small nod and looked back down at her notes.
“Very well. Aside from the damage we’ve already covered, I had to regrow your spleen and your liver.”
Effy looked up at him over the rim of her spectacles, eyes serious. “As your physician, it is my responsibility to tell you that aside from the trauma caused by your injuries, your liver was not in good condition. In fact, had I not regrown it, I suspect it would have failed within the next ten years. I would expect that level of deterioration from someone with two decades of sustained heavy drinking, not someone barely a month off twenty.”
Her voice sharpened, though it never rose.
“I want you to seriously reconsider your alcohol consumption. Regrowing a liver is not a simple procedure. Your body accepted it this time. There is no guarantee it would do so again. And believe me when I say that liver failure is not a pleasant way to die, young man.”
If her words unsettled him, Evan gave no sign of it. He did not look away. Did not bristle. Did not deflect.
“Thank you for the warning,” he said evenly. “I’ll keep it in mind.”
Effy made a small, sceptical noise in the back of her throat.
“I’m sure you will,” she replied, in a tone that suggested she was quite certain he would not. Then, after a beat, she added: “And while you’re keeping it in mind, you may as well stop smoking too.”
The corner of Evan’s mouth twitched—that familiar flicker of amusement.
“With all due respect, Mrs Potter,” he said, tone dry as kindling, “if I live long enough for whisky and cigarettes to take me out, I’ll consider it a win.”
It was such an unmistakably Evan response that James had to duck his head to hide his smile.
And the relief.
It came all at once—sudden and almost dizzying. Because rationally, he had known Evan was going to be okay after the fever had died. His mum had told him so. But it had not felt real.
Not until this. Not until Evan was awake—awake and accepting a lecture about liver failure from James’s mother with the same streak of sardonic humour he met most things with. James could’ve hugged him—wanted to. For a split second he imagined it—wrapping his arms around him: the solid and real, proof that Evan was here and breathing and alive. And then, just as quickly, his mind betrayed him—flicking, unhelpfully, back to the direction his thoughts had taken earlier that morning. He pushed the impulse away forcefully.
Relief. That was all this was. Relief and tiredness.
James turned his attention back to his mother, who was speaking about scarring.
“Nothing to be done about that, I’m afraid. Dark magic always leaves its mark. The bandages will need to stay on for the next seven days—you’re still at risk of infection. Ideally, I would prefer to keep you here during that time, but if you must go, you should be able to manage the Floo or side‑along Apparition within a day or two. I will, however, require assurances that you have someone to assist you at home.”
She paused, lifting an eyebrow in quiet enquiry.
Evan nodded once.
Effy made a small note.
“You’d best avoid any physical exertion for several weeks at the very least. No exercise. No duelling. No sex.” She looked up over her spectacles, frowning slightly. “And absolutely no drinking. If you insist on smoking, keep it to an absolute minimum. One of your lungs was punctured, and smoking will slow the healing process.”
Evan absorbed this with the air of a man being informed it was going to rain later that day. “So no fun, then. Got it.”
He paused.
Then added, dryly: “Don’t suppose you could write the Dark Lord a healer’s note excusing me from duelling, do you?”
The room held still for half a second.
Effy held his gaze—assessing, weighing something James could not quite name.
And then, to James’s surprise, she smiled.
It was small. Reluctant. But real.
She glanced at James, dark eyes warm with something dangerously close to amusement.
“Is he always like this,” she asked, “or should I be concerned that I’ve missed a concussion?”
James snorted before he could stop himself.
“He’s usually worse.”
Effy shook her head and made a small tsk sound, but she was smiling. She pushed her glasses off her nose and up into her hair.
“Mippy will be up in a moment with your potions,” she said to Evan. “You will take every single one of them. No arguments. They’ll put you to sleep for a few hours. That’s intentional, you’ll heal faster that way. When you wake up, if you feel up to it, you can eat.”
She stepped closer to the bed and looked down at him sternly.
“Do not attempt to get up without assistance. If you need to use the bathroom, Jamie will help you. I would rather not have to regrow anything else this week.”
Only then did she turn towards the door.
“Think your mum,” said Evan, once the sound of Effy’s footsteps had faded along the corridor, “might be the most terrifying people I’ve ever met.”
The way he said it made it sound suspiciously like praise.
James pushed himself off the doorframe and crossed the room, dropping into the armchair his mother had just vacated.
“You’re not the only one who thinks so. She can make Sirius cower with a single look.”
That earned a raised eyebrow from Evan.
“I’d pay good money to see that,” he said—just as Mippy appeared with a soft pop, her tiny arms laden with glass vials.
“Mippy is glad to see Master Bellamy is awake,” Mippy squeaked, bowing deeply to Evan.
James opened his mouth to correct her—the reflex immediate—but the expression on Evan’s face stopped the words dead in his throat. A flash of unfiltered surprise, then something that might have been sadness—though that second emotion was shuttered away too fast behind a raised eyebrow for James to gauge.
Evan regarded the vials of potion and said dryly, “I bet those all taste fantastic,” taking the first vial and swallowing it in one controlled movement. Four more followed in steady succession.
Mippy gathered the empty vials with brisk efficiency and vanished.
Silence settled. James considered him.
“Bellamy?” James asked.
“Middle name,” Evan replied. He shot James a thoughtful look. “Curious how your elf knew.”
James frowned faintly. “I have no idea,” he said, and meant it.
Evan leaned back into the pillows, grimacing faintly at the movement.
“How much have you told your parents?” he asked after a moment.
“All of it,” James admitted. Then, after a beat, “Well. Almost all of it. I may have left out a few details. But they know who you are. And that I owe you my life—”
“You don’t owe me anything,” Evan said quietly, cutting across him.
James huffed a faint, incredulous breath. “I think I do.”
Evan’s eyes met his, and there was a hardness in them. “No,” he said, firmer now. “You don’t. My choices are mine. Mine to make. Mine to own and answer for. You don’t owe me shit, alright?”
James felt the instinct to push back rise in his throat. It felt wrong that Evan could so easily dismiss the risks he had taken. The number of times he’d saved James’s life—James wanted him to know that it mattered. But he could see from the way Evan was looking at him that he wasn’t going to budge on this.
And so, James said nothing.
The room was quiet for a while—and then Evan asked:
“What’s your middle name?”
James shot him a look. “You really want to know?” he asked, accepting the change of subject without objection.
The corner of Evan’s mouth hitched up. “Yeah. Seems fair. You know mine.”
“Fleamont. After my dad.”
“James Fleamont Potter,” Evan repeated. “It’s got a ring to it.”
“I don’t know,” said James with a smile, “only time I ever hear it is when I’m in trouble, can’t say the associations are particularly good.”
Evan snorted and slid lower down his pillows. This time he didn’t grimace—and James thought the pain potion must be kicking in, a theory supported by the way Evan’s eyes drifted closed a few seconds later.
James considered him for a moment and then said, “You know, think that might be the first time you’ve ever actually called me by my name.”
“Not true,” came the answer.
“Definitely true,” countered James.
Evan’s eyes opened again—he turned his head slightly to look at James. The usual sharp, now hazy and soft. And then he smiled. Not his usual smirk. Not the wry half‑curve. The full grin. Dimples and all.
“Pretty sure it’s Tosspot.”
James laughed, and it felt good—like something unclenching in his chest. He shook his head, still grinning.
“Pretty sure it’s not.”
“Maybe it should be,” said Evan, closing his eyes again. After a moment, he added, lazily, “Always liked Tosspot better.”
“Unbearable by association, right?” James joked lightly. “I remember.”
Silence stretched for a while.
When Evan spoke again, his voice was slower, soft and blurred at the edges by potion.
“Nah,” he murmured. “Liked it ’cause it was mine.”
“Yours?” James asked, something tightening low in his stomach. Not fear. But something close to it—a sharp rush of nerves and adrenaline, like pulling out of a steep dive seconds before impact. That suspended instant between falling and flying, when you cannot quite tell which way is up and which is down.
But Evan didn’t answer this time. And James was left staring at him with a hollow creeping sense of… something. Something horribly similar to the feeling he’d had that morning, the one that had sent him running out onto the hills behind the estate. The feeling that he’d been caught doing something wrong.