Chapter 8: Where The Horizon Ends

In which we make out final escape, and I, at last, understand love.

I had never known a morning so still as the one in which we departed London. It was as if the city held its breath, uncertain whether to let us go or bind us to its streets forever. The air was thick with fog, curling between the carriages and clinging to the river like a ghost reluctant to move on.

Anthony walked beside me, his coat drawn tightly around his shoulders, his gloved hands flexing now and then as if testing their own redness.

We were leaving. Harriet came back and had seen to it.

"France is no longer an option," she had told us the night before, standing at the window of her grand town house, the flickering candlelight plating in her eyes. "Nor Spain. Nor any kingdom that might think twice before handing you into the pope."

The pope. The memory of our near-trial in Italy still burned. Anthony had laughed when she mentioned it, but it was a hallow sound.

"So where do we go?" I had begged.

Harriet turned to face us full, her gown pooling at her feet like spilled ink. "East," she whispered with delight.

"Beyond Vienna. Beyond the places where your names have been spread. There is a world that doesn't care for the affairs of Catholic men on the run."

Anthony had glanced at me, his eyes dark searching for some meaning in mine. I knew what he was thinking. The world we had known - Venice, Paris, London - had been one of music and deception, of swift hands and silver tongues. But the world Harriet spoke of was different. It was quiet, unknowing. Would we, in such a place, still be ourselves?

I did not answer him then, but I take up my pen now to say this: Yes

---

We left at dawn. Harriet kissed Anthony's cheek and clasped my hand in both of hers. " You are better than you think you are," she pleaded, I did not ask if she meant me or him. It hardly mattered.

The road stretched long before us. The further we traveled, the more the world seemed to let go, as though the burden of our presence had lifted from its shoulders. The air warmed. The fields grew golden. We passed through lands I had only heard of I travelers' tales - Hungary, where the hills rolled like waves from a distance, and the rivers ran through smooth mimicking glass.

The ottoman countryside, where the wind carried the scent of spices and honey, and the markets hummed with voices I did not understand.

And through it all, Anthony never left my side.

We rode in silence for most of the journey, speaking little when necessary, but the silence was not empty. It was weighted. Full.

At night, when we stopped to rest, we would sit by the fire and watch the embers slowly smolder. And though I had spent my time spinning stories, lying as easily as breathing, I found that, with him, I had nothing left to tell.

---

One evening, as the sky melted into deep violet light, he turned to me, "Jack," he cried, slowly turning to me showing the tears streaming down his face. "Do you regret it?"

I didn't ask what he meant.

I thought of Venice. Of the city's narrow streets, of the canal waters lacking the edges of the world I once ruled with careless charm. I thought of the games I had played, the tricks, the women who had taken me into their beds with such confidence.

I thought of the box I had born before Anthony kissed me, and ruined everything.

And then I thought of now. Of this moment. The firelight painting his face un gold, the wind shifting through his short curls. The way he looked at me - not as a man to be worn or fooled, but as a man to be known, to be loved.

"Do I miss it? Yes," I announced sharply. "Do I regret it? No, never." And I meant it.

He exhaled, long and slow, and in that sound I hear everything. Relief. Hope. The quiet unspoken knowledge that we were together and would remain so.

Then he reached for me, and u let him.

And when he kissed me - this time, I didn't run. I kissed him back.

The fire crackled beside us, but all I could feel is Anthony - his warmth, his lips moving against mine, slow and uncertain at first, then deeper, surer. My heart pounding so hard I swear he could feel it. His hand found my jaw, his thumb brushing my cheek, sending a shiver down my spine. I press closer, breathing him in - smoke, pine, something undeniably him. His fingers tangled in my hair, and I drown into the kiss, letting myself sink into the heat of it, into him. The world beyond this moment doesn't matter. Right now, it's just us, the fire, and the way he maked me feel like I'm burning from the inside out.

---

We settled in a village not far from the sea. It was a place of olive trees and dust of rolling hills and soft-spoken people who didn't ask too many questions. We bought a small house with what little coin we had left, and built the rest of our lives with our hands. Anthony sang in the evenings, his voice carrying through the fields, and I - well, I wrote.

Not stories of deceit or adventure, not tales of a man who once danced through the courts of Europe with a devil's grin. No. Those days were gone. Instead, i wrote this.

A story of love, of escape, of a boy who thought he knew the world and the man who taught him what it truly meant to live.

And if, one day, a traveler should pass through our village and wonder of the two strange men who sit beneath the olive trees, singing songs and holding eachother as if to say 'nothing can harm us anymore', let them wonder.

The world is vast. There is no one left to chase us.

It took decades to find our place in this world, we figured out we only have to find that place in ourselves.

I love you, Anthony James Cane.

At last, I am free.

THE END