Freddie Brightwood1 bends to peer at the swarm of moths fluttering in the terrarium, their powdery wings beating against the glass. He glances around to be sure he’s alone, no footmen lurking in the corners of the solarium or guests hiding behind plants, feeling self-conscious. And then he hums under his breath and makes a small circle with his pinkie, bringing his thoughts to a concentrated point. The moths freeze, suspended.2
At a distance, the occupants of the terrarium might be mistaken for ordinary moths, but up close—Freddie fits a brass jewelers loupe to his eye and adjusts the focus—they look quite different.
There are extra frills to their wings—one’s so lavish he wonders how it stays aloft. More interestingly, the lowest segmented portion of their abdomen is translucent as a milky windowpane. A mutation, he thinks, but to what purpose?
As his focus on the magic begins to slip, the delicate antennae of the nearest taps against the glass.
Though Freddie has been studying the moths every day for nearly two weeks under greater and greater magnification, even going so far as to introduce various stimuli into their environment—from a just-fed frog, to be sure it will threaten the moths but not actually eat them, to a member of an earthly moth species—he has been completely unable to discover what the use of the transparent organ is.
Freddie gives a small huff of frustration. So much of science is endless unanswerable questions.3
In this instance, however, the moths’ survival in the terrarium has a definite end date. He’ll have to release them whether he has answered all of his questions or not.
Freddie slips the loupe into his pocket and straightens, stretching out his back with a sigh. His parents’ guests will certainly be thrilled with them, at least, if he and Jenkins4 can work out what they eat and get them to reproduce in the gardens.
“Dissolvo,”5 Freddie murmurs. He lets go of his magic, feeling the tiny hitch to his breath as time runs on as before. The moths bob in the air as they are freed and drop, beating their wings to overcompensate.
It’s possible he’ll have to import some flowering plant or fruit tree from Faerie for them. It’s often that way, he’s noticed. Try to introduce one plant or insect, and soon you’re bringing in a whole ecosystem.
Freddie’s pale skin is damp with sweat beneath his linen shirtsleeves. Though it’s only early spring, the humid heat of the solarium borders on uncomfortable. The lush green vegetation that climbs the glass walls and spills from pots tucked around the wicker furniture drips with condensation. Freddie yawns, the fine bones of his face stretching. The golden afternoon sunlight makes a halo of his long blonde hair, which curls in wisps over his crumpled collar.6
He crosses the room, staring out through the glass at the brilliant green lawn sloping down to the silver-blue shimmer of the reflecting pool and the budding gardens set out in lines and curves around it. Beyond, the trees of the parkland rise like a dark wall at the edge of the gardens.
Behind him, the rare moths beat their fragile wings against the glass walls of the terrarium.
Charles7 has promised to drop by while his aunt and uncle are busy at tea. Freddie checks his watch—four-fifteen—fidgets, crosses his arms. The sun beats on the glass wall of the solarium; he can feel it on his face.
Charles should be coming up the path across the lawn any moment now. Freddie imagines him beneath the cool trees of the forest, striding along on his long legs, his big coat swinging, the rook whose leg they set—after it had been shot out of a tree and abandoned, flapping frantically on the forest floor—riding on his shoulder, the fox he raised as a kit dogging his steps.
Freddie shakes his head, his lips curling into a smile.8
And then he remembers how the two of them argued the last time they saw one another, and the smile dies.
Idiocy, self-flagellation, or blind stubbornness—Freddie has not yet worked out which the instinct is. But he’s tried again and again to bring up his father’s pressure to marry—and last time, he didn’t let Charles turn the subject aside, that look of startled fear in his eyes, or distract him with protests of “You’re only twenty-four! Surely you’ve years of freedom left!”
The truth is, Freddie doesn’t have years of freedom left. His father has made that clear. The Wiltshire riches that allowed five generations of lords to choose brides based on their faces are running out, and Freddie, as his father admitted, is still young but not getting any younger. Better to bring in a bride of wealth and lands now, his father insisted, and get started on children. He even suggested Freddie might marry one of the fae.9
“I’m not a monster,” his father said. “It’s the best possible solution. I wouldn’t tie you to a sham forever.”
But the fae woman would divorce him and appear none the worse for it, their marriage the blink of an eye to her. Freddie might be longer-lived than most, thanks to his ancestors, but he’d still have spent the better part of his life on a lie.
Yet it is a lie he cannot think of a way out of. A lie Charles refuses to accept will soon have to be told, no matter how hard Freddie tries to make him listen. If Freddie was strong—if he was the man his father wished him to be—he’d put distance between them, break things off with a few words of explanation and turn his back forever.
But Freddie can’t bring himself to do it. There were bitter words between them the last time they met, and though they quickly made up, neither have forgotten. It lurks beneath their every conversation, like a leviathan threatening to surface.
Freddie continues to shove it back down as best he can, to placate his father with smiles and promises to turn his thoughts to marriage “soon, very soon.” But it will not last forever.10
Freddie rests his forehead against the hot glass, wondering what will happen when he and Charles are together again. If they’ll be able to keep the leviathan from rising to interrupt their happiness.
And there—there is Charles’s familiar figure cresting the rise of the lawn, his brown hair shining in the sunlight, his black coat dark against the grass. Freddie steps back, awash in sudden emotion. And there—the rook does ride on his shoulder, his call penetrating the glass as Charles catches sight of Freddie and stops short to wave.11
Ka, ka.
“Just this week I was insisting to my cousins that you are not, in fact, a delicate hot-house flower,” Charles teases. “And now look at you.” He sweeps into the suffocating solarium with a breath of cool, green air, a wide smile splitting his lean face. The rook gurgles on his shoulder, flapping its wings to steady itself as Charles bends slightly to give Freddie a kiss on the cheek.12
Freddie stiffens, his eyes darting around the room, checking again for any lurking servants or guests. Charles pretends he doesn’t notice, though Freddie sees the momentary hurt flash across his face.
Charles turns, his coat swinging. A frog croaks in his breast pocket. A seamstress’s measuring tape and length of embroidery floss dangle from his left hip. Something on the right squirms, claws scratching fabric.13
“Are these the fae moths?” Charles bends, peering into the terrarium. The rook takes off from his shoulder and flaps away into the greenery with an offended croak.
“The order came two weeks ago,” Freddie says, “along with a fae composer who’s staying upstairs in the Blue Rooms. A distant relation, Mama says.” His voice comes out barely above a whisper, his words tripping over themselves.
Charles presses his fingertips to the glass, his breath fogging its surface. “I’ve never seen anything like them.”
Freddie watches him, stiff and tongue-tied with desire and a new awkwardness, the leviathan threatening to break the surface. His heart beats fast with panic.
What does he say? How does he act?
Does he pretend nothing is happening?
Charles cocks his head to look up at him, pulling his shaggy hair over his pointed ears in that self-conscious way he doesn’t know he has. “Freddie?”
“Your hair is getting long.” Freddie forces a smile. “Dear Aunt Catherine still trying to save on the hairdresser?”
“Too busy running her salons to think of household economy, I’m afraid.” Charles’s voice is deceptively light. “Must keep up with the latest fashions and scandals of the French queen.” He turns his attention back to the moths. “But come, tell me what you’ve learned. I know you’ve been dying to tell me about your research since the moment I walked in the door.”
Relief washes over Freddie, a genuine smile tugging at his lips this time. He eagerly joins Charles in front of the terrarium, and ease grows between them as he talks, Charles listening in that intent way he has, his long brows drawn together, his face still.
Soon Freddie is wondering what he’d ever been worried about.
Once Charles asked Freddie, with all the skepticism of twelve-year-old hand-me-down linens and scraped knees, how nobles like the Brightwoods knew they were being treated fairly by the fae they dealt with. After all, if they were too afraid to visit Faerie themselves,14 how did they know the trinkets they paid such high prices to import were worth what the fae claimed they were worth? For all they knew, Charles pointed out, Faerie might be positively littered with enchanted mirrors. The fae might be glad to be rid of them.
Freddie had laughed, then, but as an adult, he wonders.
It isn’t that the dangers of Faerie are exaggerated. Many European families have a story of a child stolen, a young man or woman seduced and lost, a fortune snatched away.15
It’s the price they pay, Freddie supposes, for the wonders and magic of the fae. And so they try to maintain as much distance as they can, for safety—believing if they don’t become too enamored, if they don’t fall too fully in love, they can avoid the tragic fate of others—and they tell themselves they’re making a bargain everyone can live with.16
“Mr. Brightwood? Lady Wiltshire has asked me to inform you that dinner is being served in the garden.” The footman’s low, suave voice interrupts Freddie and Charles at their work. The servant risks a glance in Charles’s direction, who lounges with his chair tipped back, pretending not to listen. He stripped his coat off hours ago and threw it over the nearest table, and now his sleeves are rolled above his forearms. “She insists Mr. Summerhaven must join you as well.”
“Well, if Mama insists,” Charles says, grinning ironically and reaching for his coat.
Freddie scowls at him. He turns to the footman. “Very good, Anders.17 Tell Jenkins I want him to meet us outside. And carry these moths for me, will you? Charles and I are quite done with them. We’ll release them in the gardens tonight.”
“Very good, sir,” Anders murmurs.
Freddie sweeps outside into the cool dusk, an amused Charles and stoic Anders, one pulling on his coat, the other clasping the glass terrarium against his chest, in tow. The rook sails out the door after them.
He and Charles spent the past few hours at separate tasks, Freddie sketching his moths, Charles picking at a bit of embroidery stretched on a wooden frame that he pulled from one of his dozens of pockets. The rook had rustled in the greenery somewhere, croaking softly to itself. Charles’s silver thimble flashed in the afternoon sunlight. Freddie wondered where he’d stored the needle.
Normally they’d have worked in companionable silence, but today Freddie felt the need to keep up a steady stream of bright conversation to keep the leviathan at bay.
Charles “hmm-ed” and “indeed-ed” in his sunny corner, pretending not to notice when Freddie stopped sketching the moths and turned to sketching him instead.
His lanky body. His soft hair. His strong jawline and the way his ear folded against his head, the ease of his posture and the shadow at the base of his throat and…
“What?” Charles had looked up, interrupting Freddie’s reverie, as if no longer able to pretend he didn’t feel Freddie’s gaze.
Freddie blushed.
“Nothing.”
Twilight draws a veil of blue gauze over the garden. The cool breeze carries the scents of early roses and green grass and the damp of yesterday’s rain. A fountain gurgles somewhere in the background.
A long table has been set out on the grass,18 topped with a white tablecloth and gleaming dinner service and suffused with the soft, golden light of dozens of lit candles. Footmen stand respectfully at a distance, napkins draped over their stiff arms. Freddie’s parents sit at one end of the table, sipping champagne, his mother laughing.
They are dressed for dinner, Lady Wiltshire in a towering white wig, her figure laced into gleaming silk and intricate embroidery, Lord Wiltshire stiff and frowning beneath his powdered curls and heavy velvet jacket. They rise as Freddie and Charles approach.
“There you are, dear!” Lady Wiltshire cries.19 “We’d been waiting on you to serve.” She waves a hand, and the footmen step forward bearing the first course. She pats Freddie’s cheek. The cold dew creeps up Freddie’s stockings.
Charles bends at the waist to kiss Lady Wiltshire’s hand, and she titters. “Mr. Summerhaven. Always a pleasure to have another young man around.”
“Freddie, Mr. Summerhaven.” His father nods. “Sit,” he commands. “We’ve waited long enough.”
They sit.
Lady Wiltshire turns to Charles as the family begins to eat. “I was just telling Edward it’s been a while since we’d seen you last. I remember when you were in and out of the gardens and house at all times of day!” She smiles at him, sneaking a small glance of concern at Freddie. “I hope you still view this as your second home. It can’t be comfortable, living as you do with your aunt and uncle.”20
Freddie’s father frowns.
In the background, Anders shuffles awkwardly as his grip on the glass terrarium begins to slip.21
Freddie is relieved when the arrival of Jenkins interrupts the third course. The twilight has grown as they ate, deep purple shadows creeping across the grass. Frogs and crickets sing in the hedges.
There’s a brief commotion as Jenkins and Anders explain their mission to the serving footmen.
“What’s that gardener doing here?” Lord Wiltshire complains.
Freddie stands. “Charles and I are going to release my moths into the gardens. I asked Jenkins to come help.”
Lord Wiltshire frowns. “The fae moths? The ones I had to sign the import order for? Will they live?”
Charles stands cautiously. His pocket croaks.
“I hope so,” Freddie says. “Jenkins and I are still working out what their habitat needs.” Anders steps forward with the terrarium.
Lady Wiltshire claps her hands. “Oh, Freddie—how lovely! Edward, darling, let’s watch.” She waves for a footman to refill her champagne glass.
Lord Wiltshire inclines his head in assent.
Freddie steps away from the table into the cool shadows of the garden, Charles, Anders, and Jenkins trailing behind.
“Don’t go far!” his mother’s voice calls. “We’ll be right there!”
Freddie feels more than hears a rustle behind him. And then Charles is at his shoulder, slipping his cool hand into Freddie’s. Freddie stiffens in surprise. But then he relaxes, letting his body melt towards Charles’s side.
“You didn’t tell me Mama liked me so much,” Charles says, his voice close to Freddie’s ear.22
“You know how Mama adores company,” Freddie says. “I think she still sees you as some kind of stray, like those animals of yours.” At the look on Charles’s face, Freddie bites his tongue, suddenly wishing he can take his back his words.
“That’s what I was afraid of,” Charles says. He slips his hand from Freddie’s and strides ahead, into the hedges.
“Charles—” Freddie calls.23
“Where should I set this, Mr. Brightwood?” Anders asks from behind him.
Freddie turns. Jenkins and Anders hover at a distance with the terrarium. Freddie looks around. “Just here, I think.”
They’re standing in the dark at the edge of the reflecting pool, frogs and insects singing in the tall plants that border its edge. Anders sets the terrarium down on the stones of the path.
Jenkins bends over it. “Ready, sir?”24
Out of the corner of his eye, Freddie sees Charles pause further down the path and turn to watch them, his shoulders slumped. On the other side of the pool, his parents are coming unsteadily down the lawn, his mother waving one hand, a champagne glass held in the other. The golden lights of the dinner table flicker in the distance. Beyond, the house rises, palatial, the windows lighted like stage sets.
A profound wave of sadness crests in Freddie’s chest—the leviathan surfacing at last.
“Do it.” He nods to Jenkins.
Jenkins lifts the mesh lid.25
The moths pour into the air, their jewel-colored wings fluttering as they disappear into the night. Freddie watches them go, his breath held.
The frogs shriek. Charles’s coat rustles as he shifts behind Freddie.
The candles of the table dance in the dark.
And then a sparkling light flickers on in the hedges. On—on and then off.
An answering flash comes from the thick beds around the pond. On, off—on, off, like a lost ship signaling in the dark.
And then the lights are everywhere, fluttering around their heads, flashing in the hedges, spreading across the pond.
Freddie releases his breath, blinking back tears in wonder. That rustle at his side—Charles’s fingers slipping wordlessly into his own.
“It’s the moths,” Freddie chokes out.
To his right, Jenkins and Anders blink in astonishment, and Jenkins removes his hat in awe. Further up the lawn, his mother spins, laughing, surrounded by bobbing lights, and even Lord Wiltshire smiles.
“Freddie,” his mother calls, “Did you know they did this? Why didn’t you tell us?”
“That clear section of their abdomen,” Freddie says, “I didn’t know what it was for. They never did this in the terrarium.”
“It’s the candles,” Charles says. He gazes steadily up the lawn, his voice low and even, just a touch of wonder lifting his vowels.
Freddie turns to look at him. “What?”
“It’s the candles.” Charles smiles, and there is something sad in it. “It’s what you would call a ‘mating behavior,’ isn’t it? All the moths—you see?” He raises a hand to point. “They flash in the exact same pattern. But the candles are different.”
“They’re all the same sex.” Freddie doesn’t know whether he should laugh or cry.26 Charles stares into the night. Lady Wiltshire’s laughter drifts towards them on the breeze.
“They think the candles are other fae moths,” Charles says, “away up there in the dark. They’re in love with the lights, screaming at the top of their voices: ‘I’m here, I’m here!’ Not knowing there’s nothing to signal for.”
Freddie steps closer to Charles, his chin resting on the rough wool of Charles’s shoulder.27 The sparkling gold lights flash around them. Freddie hums against Charles’s ear, spinning his pinkie in the air. He concentrates his thoughts to a point.
The bubble of time surrounding them slows to the creep of treacle.
“Well,” Freddie says, “perhaps—if only for a little while28—they’ll find each other.”29
1 Son of Edward Brightwood, Lord Wiltshire, and heir to the title
2 Freddie has always been able to pause and manipulate time—for a few minutes, for a few individuals anyway—though he finds the process to do so a bit embarrassing and liable to give him a headache if he takes on too much. A small magic from his fae heritage—the better to study his specimens without harming them.
3 Freddie has never been good at knowing when to stop questioning, when to stop pressing at some sore spot and let things alone.
4 Head gardener of the Brightwood estate
5 Latin: “Release, break”
6 Freddie is beautiful in the way only a man born from distant fae royalty and generations of lords who can pick their bride for her face can be. An uncomfortable truth, the way his wealth and future status is an uncomfortable truth, and one that brings the kind of privilege that’s more trouble than it’s worth. Freddie would rather do without it. He’d rather do without all of it. Only with Charles does he ever feel truly comfortable in his own skin.
7 Charles Summerhaven: Fatherless ward of his aunt and uncle, named for their estate (Summerhaven), the Brightwoods’ closest neighbor for miles. Twenty-two, dependent on his relatives’ grudging charity, possessor of soft dark hair, a wry smile, and infuriating stubbornness. Freddie and Charles were lucky to find one another, for all their proximity. Charles’s movements are restricted, his circle of acquaintance barely extending past his three cousins.
8 Charles and Freddie met in the forest when Charles attempted to run away from home at the age of nine. Afterwards, even Charles’s aunt and uncle could not deny repeated requests for a visit from the future Lord Wiltshire.
9 A human/fae marriage is often dissolved once the children are of age, allowing the fae party to disentangle themself from a partner who has aged past their prime—in this case a concession, or so Freddie suspects, to his nature.
10 Beneath his protests and his anger, Freddie thinks Charles knows this. He’s scared.
11 Despite everything, Freddie’s heart turns over in his chest with joy.
12 His lips are dry; his breath smells of the wild mint he chews on his forest walks.
13 A mouse, rescued from Summerhaven’s kitchen traps?
14 The usual fears include time slippage, the murderous games of fae nobleman, and being trapped without a way to return.
15 Charles’s mother was seduced by a traveling silversmith, the fae rover leaving her heavy with child.
16 But are they?
17 Freddie prides himself on knowing all the vast household staff by name.
18 Dining “fae fashion,” has always been popular with the upper classes.
19 She is startlingly beautiful still, or so Freddie has often heard whispered, with a full fae grandmother who rules three minor kingdoms in Faerie.
20 For a moment, Freddie fears Charles will answer something along the lines of “Yes, Mama,” but when he sneaks a glance at his friend, he finds him looking distinctly uncomfortable.
21 A story is a terrarium, a miniature ecosystem, an insect trapped under glass. Pick it up and turn it around; study it from all angles. It is us, it is our pain, rendered down small and insignificant enough to safely look at. What happens if we lift the lid just a little? if it gets away from us, if the glass slips? If it breaks?
22 His words are teasing, but Freddie thinks he can hear a strange melancholy behind his words.
23 What will happen afterwards? To the pieces of the story, to us?
24 Freddie is not ready. He never will be.
25 Are you ready?
26 How like the fae, to give Freddie what he asked for but make sure he cannot hold onto it. The moths will live for a season and die, unable to reproduce.
27 Charles’s coat smells like the green wind and wet loam of the forest. Oak and ash and thorn—and damp earth, and moss.
28 A season, a year, the brief span of their lives
29 Here is the secret, the leviathan lurking beneath the text: No story lasts forever. Everything breaks. Some things burst beyond their boundaries; some stories are told and retold, metamorphosize and grow and change. We are the pieces. We are the moths. We will find one another, again and again.
© 2025 Jordan Taylor
