March 2012

Johann Storm,

For this is, in fact, one of the last times I may call you that. When did I start to fall in love? I cannot remember an exact instance - when I cast my eyes to the past I see love in every step we have taken towards the present.

And I see my faults, arrogance, the little ways in which I ought to have been kinder and more cautious. Be patient with me, husband-to-be.

I am writing because love is a small word for how I feel. An ordinary man might be content with a wedding ceremony, wedding vows, wedding dance, public declarations of commitment sealed with a kiss that will no doubt send eyes rolling to the heavens. How can I aspire to the ordinary, however, with a wizard so out-of-the-ordinary?

I must go a step further afield. I must tell you that I am yours and how I am yours, and I must tell you in secret.

You save my life every single day and I owe you every good thing. There is no way of knowing how events would have turned out in a world in which we never met (my love I can’t imagine a world in which we never meet) but know for a fact that I did not envisage a lasting future prior to our meeting. No doubt a dragon - or witch of a dragon - would have had my head. I would not have minded giving it, until that night at Le Masque.

Your memory runs sharper than my own so you must remember the soft, fumbling moment as well as I do, in the damp alleyway, telling me with the honesty of a drunker man that you had never…?

And do you remember your nails digging into my back, Johann, urgent? Do you remember whispering that you wanted this? And there had been tears in your eyes.

I am so in love with you. When I wake to your presence, curls nestled against the pillows, the smell of you, of us. When I work you open, darling, when I work you open your face does the most indecent things - and your voice, when it calls my name so desperately and keenly, as if coming from somewhere deep inside you nobody else can reach. You are a dangerous man.

Or should I say that we are dangerous men? I can’t delude myself into thinking we are innocent, who draw our instincts from wells of peril. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Soon we are to be married in front of our loved ones, in the home we have made with one another. In my absence, or should I ever err, you may hold me to every word in this letter. Especially to this:

Johann, there is something inside me that answers only to you.


Yours, always,

Balfour Spectre