Free The Green's Hill Novellas by Amy Lane

touch, every smile, every time Charlie came in his mouth (Whim was unfailingly generous—it was almost as though he’d been taught “sex manners”) convinced Charlie that Lithas weren’t an anomaly; they weren’t a magic pocket of time with a mystery lover. Litha was magical because of Whim. Whim was magical in broad daylight, in the dark of a moonless night, or when he was ambling over Charlie’s lawn in his bare feet on a bright, dry morning, singing a plaintive version of “The Little Drummer Boy.”
    The morning of Whim’s fourth day, Whim woke up suddenly from a dead sleep and said, “They’re missing me. Oh, Charlie, Green is worried sick. I need to go.”
    Charlie was caught flat-footed, horrified. “Go? Go? Whim—you… now?”
    Whim’s smile added a whole new level to the mourning he’d been doing since he’d arrived. “I want to take you with me.”
    “In a heartbeat.”
    “But I can’t.”
    Charlie’s beating heart plummeted to his toes. No. Not a rejection. Not after this.
    “I wanted to…. Goddess, Charlie, I was going to ask you this year. Small”—a little quirk of his lips—“wonderful house be damned, I… I need you. I miss you. My years used to fly by, without anything to anchor them. Now they crawl by, from Litha to Litha. I was going to ask you. Beg you. I was going to make you every offer under the sun, fall to my knees if I had to—”
    “You don’t!” Charlie burst out, hurt, moved, confused. “You just have to ask.”
    “Ask what? Ask you to leave a good life for a country at war?”
    Charlie opened his mouth, surprised by the analogy, surprised by the idea. “A country? It’s a place….”
    “It’s a people, Charlie. And we just lost our prince. And now we’ll be besieged by enemies. Adrian left his vampires to his beloved—the girl, Charlie. A nineteen-year-old mortal girl-child is in charge of a kiss of vampires. Do you have any idea how badly this could go?” Whim took a shuddering breath and wiped the back of his hand across his cheek. “We lost six shape-shifters in this attack, Charlie. They’re the first ones to die. They’re our weakest members. Stronger than humans, yes, and longer-lived. But in my world they’re cannon fodder.”
    Whim shook his head, his hair a mournful, aching twilight color, and took both of Charlie’s hands in his, even as they sat up in Charlie’s bed, naked—both physically and in any other way two people could be.
    “Can you wait another year, beloved?” he asked, his voice raw. “Can you wait until I at least know what I am asking you to become a part of?”
    Charlie searched his face and saw only sorrow. “Beloved?” he asked, playing for time. Whim’s face fought against collapsing again, fought to stay composed.
    “It’s our word at the hill, our endearment. Can I say it? Will you be my beloved, even if I can’t take you home with me?”
    Maybe it was the word. Maybe it was the taut way it passed through Whim’s throat. But Charlie was convinced. This denial—it hurt Whim possibly more than it hurt Charlie. Charlie had a life without Whim. Whim didn’t like his life without Charlie.
    “Yes,” Charlie whispered, and it was his turn to pinch the bridge of his nose and squeeze his eyes shut. “I’ll be your beloved. And, beloved, I will be soooo sorry to see you go.”
    Whim kissed Charlie’s forehead then, and Charlie closed his eyes and tried to imprint this feeling, this warmth of having Whim there near him, the smell of him, the sound his breathing made in the silence. One more year, he thought resolutely. He could wait one more year.
    “Whim?” he asked, trying not to whine. “Could you do me a favor?”
    “Anything.”
    “Could you let me see you into the car? Don’t just disappear on me. Not this time.”
    Whim’s eyes, which really did move from blue to green to turquoise in the light, flashed bright turquoise, and his hair grew tints of gold.
    “That I can do,” he said simply. Then he