It was all so quiet. Muffled, even when they spoke, as the stone failed to reflect and seemed to absorb the noise instead. Whether it really did or not, Malachi could not have been sure, but that was how it had always felt to him.

He wanted to apologize for bringing Arthur here. To ask forgiveness for having exposed something so personal, vulnerable, something that upset him far more than even he would let himself ever express; it was over, now, and once he stepped out there was a chance that he would never set foot in this little room again.

Was it wrong of him to feel some small measure of sadness at that?

Terrible, it was. Everything about his youth after his father abducted him had been terrible. But, just as he loved and missed his father, this house – this cell – meant something to him. It would hurt, letting it all go.

Malachi let the scrap of fabric (what remained of it) fall back to the floor.

“Nothing, now,” came his answer. Dust knocked from his fingers when he pat his hand against his leg.

His father had not suffered. Not any more than anyone else getting the life strangled out of them, that was, but Malachi had hardly cared. It had been long enough now that he missed him more than he hated him, these days.

Holding the candle aside, Malachi turned to face Arthur. The flame flickered and reflected back at him in his lover’s eyes, a beautiful gradient of greens and golden yellows.

“Neither of them have ever seen this,” he said. “Miriam and Levi. Miriam knew, but she didn’t… know.”

It was the closest thing to an excuse that he could scrape together for her, but it was one that he thought worth mentioning all the same.

Malachi reached for Arthur’s hand, fingers still smudged with old dust.

“I thought about burning it,” he whispered. “All of it. But… all of it is mine. If I can find someone to buy this place – we would be set, wouldn’t we?”