a cross in the void // christopher lightwood {4}

one // found and lost and found again

act one // i have not slept

in this—our tender southern winter—we had believed

home something more solid than a warbler's nest.

harder fight for clouds' whim. some days one knows while living them

were already written in apocryphal gospels.

Marissa Davis, If we had known,

— — —

Christopher stopped walking, again, and rubbed at the back of his neck. He'd been walking all morning, and all yesterday. He was really trying not to give up hope but it wasn't easy. He dropped the little flint knife with the tracking rune into the grass and sat down next to it. What if he couldn't find the goblins? What if they couldn't, or wouldn't take him to Pluto? What if . . . what if Pluto was . . . gone?

Christopher grabbed for the flint knife again and took a deep breath. He had to get moving, he had to—

And there they were. A dark figure backlit by the sun but he'd know that mess of pinkish copper hair anywhere. It was like something had answered a prayer he didn't even know he'd been praying.

Christopher lurched to his feet and started running. "Hey! Hey!"

They were walking away from Christopher but she turned around and yes, yes, it was Pluto, and he knew immediately it was actually Pluto and not some dark facsimile, he saw no sapphire jewelry, no jewelry at all they must have lost their earrings in whatever mess brought them here. They looked . . . well, quite frankly, they looked awful, they were covered in dust and their eyes were shadowed and hollow and Christopher didn't care, he ran at them and hugged them and they sagged into him and hugged him back and buried their face in his shoulder.

"You're alright?" Christopher asked, stunned. "What happened?"

"I—" Pluto pulled back. Up close they looked even more exhausted yet. "Look, it's a really long story, I'd really rather . . . you know what, never mind." And they kissed him. It was unexpected, deeper, rougher and hungrier than they'd ever kissed him before, their arms tight around him, pulling him so close he lost his balance and they both went into the grass.

The ground was cold, and he knew they really shouldn't be doing this, it was highly improper to be making out right in the open and in the dirt of all places, but the relief of seeing Pluto again, when he thought they might have been gone, it was too much and it took over, knocking practicalities away.

Christopher pulled back, and Pluto reached up to touch his cheek, their face troubled. Christopher caught a flash of red and turned his head, pulling Pluto's hand away.

"What is this?" He whispered, touching the red string wrapping Pluto's hands.

"The goblins," Pluto whispered, "they needed me to . . . cleanse some kind of demonic magic out of their soil. Residue of some ritual someone did on their land. This . . . this was part of that. Except the string wasn't tied in knots like that. Not when I did it. I just wrapped it . . ."

Christopher nodded slowly, processing. "So that's what they took you away for," he murmured.

"Yeah." Pluto let go of him and fumbled in their satchel, coming up with a small jackknife. "Here."

Christopher took the blade and began to cut the strings away from Pluto's hands. Beneath, there were thin white scars on their skin, ringing the bases of their fingers and the joint of their wrist and forming a neat 'X' over the back of each hand, where the string had run. And that wasn't the worst of it. The scars had cut right through their Voyance rune, shattering it into four ragged-edged sections.