Chapter Text
Dream ground his teeth for a moment, considering and discarding the most useless things he could say. He had not run out of useless things when one of them escaped his mouth.
"What if I refuse?"
Destiny nodded ponderously, and turned another page of his book. "Then you will be doing just as my book showed you would do. And yet, the book also states with certainty that you must, and will, marry before this day ends."
Destiny made a flourishing gesture to a mechanical clock that had never appeared in his garden before, and it chimed the hours.
"It is now noon," Destiny announced, when the twelve chimes had rung out. "The next twelve hours will see a spouse found for you, and see you wed."
"And the marriage consummated, we can hope," Desire put in. "That might turn our Dream sweet indeed."
"Oh," Delirium said, though she hardly seemed to have taken in anything that had gone before. "If Dream's having a wedding, will there be cake? Sweet cake, not sour. Or savory. Or zjierb. Or too hard, or..." Delirium looked up, directly at Dream. "It's sweet cake at weddings, isn't it?"
Dream ground his teeth harder, though with Death's hand on his arm he kept still.
"The book indicates that Dream's marriage will be complete and valid in all the usual respects," Destiny pronounced. "And sweet cake can be made available for the celebration."
"Wonderful," Desire declared, clapping their hands together; Delirium did the same much more energetically, floating into the air as she did. "Who wants to go find our brother a bride?"
Delirium waved her hand, but whatever she meant to say came out as a burble of brightly colored bubbles, like orbs of stained glass.
"No," Dream said, determined not to be distracted by his youngest sister's enthusiasm. "Not a bride. I will not marry a human woman—nor angel or demon or fairy or god of any kind."
All his siblings' heads turned to Destiny—even Delirium's, though she was now juggling her colorful baubles—waiting for this objection to be overruled as all others had.
Destiny nodded solemnly. "You have a right to state your requirements for a spouse, of course, Dream."
Of course. Dream scowled more deeply, trying to think of every possibility he could foreclose without simply saying, No, I refuse, this is madness, this will doom me, this will doom whatever poor sacrificial victim you find to marry me off to. That, apparently, was not within his rights.
"There will be no tricks," Dream said to Desire. "You shall not lie to them, nor trick them, nor make cruel bargains. You shall not create lust or desire or any other feeling where there is none, in them or in me. If you are to bring me someone to marry they must agree freely to do so. They must," Dream added triumphantly, for surely this was the one truly impossible condition to meet, "be someone who could be happy, being wed to one such as me."
Desire arched an eyebrow, undeterred as ever. "Well, naturally you wouldn't make it easy on anyone."
"They cannot be mortal," Dream added desperately, though all his siblings were surely aware of that prohibition. "And—and I must like the way they smell."
That last one seemed to take Desire aback for a moment—not so much, Dream thought from the look on his sibling's face, because that would be the most difficult qualification to meet, but because Desire could not believe Dream had made a demand related in any way to his own liking.
Dream could only believe it himself in the resigned sense in which he believed that all of this was happening, simply because Destiny's book could make them all dance to its—his—whims.
It was true, though. He would not like being married to anyone whose smell he did not like. And most humans nowadays smelled terrible, for the short, wretched spans of their stupid, squalid lives.
"All right," Death said, and squeezed Dream's arm before letting go. "Do you want to do your own searching, or will you stay here?"
"You, sister?" Dream looked up at her and felt perhaps more betrayal than he should. Death was always trying to get him to spend more time among humans. She had wanted him to meet her in London today, in fact, only to be preempted by their eldest brother's summons to this family conclave. "You cannot think this will end well."
Death smiled softly. "Most things don't, little brother. That doesn't mean we can avoid our fates, any of us. If you are to marry, I am going to do my utmost to find you the best possible spouse."
"Can you not just look in our brother's book, and spare the searching? If he knows that I must marry, surely he knows who."
"It is all a part of the path we are on," Destiny intoned, tucking his book a little more closely against his chest. "You are welcome to remain here while the search is conducted, and whomever is searching will be able to return here with the selected person once they are found."
"Just one, then?" Desire said. "I thought we might offer him a selection to choose from."
"No," Death said, studying Dream. "I think we can get it in one."
Dream refused to look back at her; he could hear the cheerful confidence in her voice and it made him want to hide. Did she not realize what he was? Did she not realize how badly this would go wrong?
Did she simply not care?
She sounded so cheerful, so careless, as she added, "Are you coming, Del? Anyone else?"
"I don't want Dream to be mad at me," his youngest sister said. "He can't be mad at me if I'm not here, right? And when I come back he'll be getting married, and Dream likes being married, so then he'll be happy." She let the baubles crash to the ground, breaking into glittering sand as Delirium hurried over to take her oldest sister's hand. Desire already stood on Death's other side, arm in arm with her.
Dream went to kneel by the scattering of bright dust, picking it up to admire the jewel-bright colors. The disaster he and his yet-unknown spouse would experience would surely leave uglier wreckage, nor would it all smash to its ending so quickly and decisively.
"There is beauty in the wreckage," Despair said, sitting down beside him, stirring her own fingers through the dust. "It will no doubt make a very compelling story, when it is all over."
"Ah, well, you never know," Destruction said, sitting down on the other side of Dream. "They won't bring you a mortal, after all, so you could have quite a lot of time before things go to pieces. There could be some good parts before it goes wrong. Even while it goes wrong! Sometimes those are the best parts, really."
Destruction was the only one of his siblings who had ever mentioned to Dream having love affairs that in any way resembled Dream's own passions, so this opinion was not wholly unfounded, even if it was unlikely to apply. Dream was the only one of his siblings ever to have married—and now would have married twice. None of them understood what he had shared with Calliope; none of them could understand the grief he anticipated now.
Seized with something very near to panic—he felt his physical form nearly dissipate, reaching for an escape to his own realm before he recognized that the answer he needed was here—Dream lurched away from the other two and went to Destiny.
"I said no women, did I not," Dream demanded. "I cannot—Destiny, I will marry if I must but I cannot—I do not care if I break the universe—"
Destiny shook his head slowly, and made a little gesture as if, were they both entirely different beings, he might have put a consoling hand on Dream's shoulder. "You shall marry, and not to a woman of any sort," Destiny said. "Your marriage will be long, but not fruitful."
Destiny tilted his head slightly, shifting his grip on his book as though he could sense its contents that way, and he added, "Not in that sense, at least. You will engender no children with your new spouse."
Dream nodded, knowing that this was how he had been—had always been destined to be—trapped into assenting to this farce, and assenting anyway.
At least there was that much mercy for him. At least there would not be another Orpheus.
Dream went back to sit with his sympathetic brother and sister in silence, awaiting his fate.
Hob Gadling looked up from his ale and his friends at the feeling of a presence close beside him, and found himself looking up into a dark, beautiful, smiling face. The woman was soberly but finely dressed, a wimple of pale grey covering her hair, but there was an air about her of more than just wealth or nobility. For all her sweet smile—for all she was here in the White Horse among such rabble as Hob and his mates—she was something truly extraordinary.
Hob beamed up at her, delighted already by whatever was about to happen, and then she said, "Did I hear you say you have no intention of ever dying?"
Hob grinned wider; clearly this magnificent woman had been listening to him from across the room, and he had caught her attention, which promised a much more interesting night ahead than he had been expecting.
"Yeah," he said, and he had a feeling he would never want to say no to her. "Yeah, that's right."
She nodded, still smiling, but Hob felt like... she wasn't just playing along with his joke. She was listening to him, had been listening longer than he knew, and whatever she said next was going to matter.
"I think you just might manage it," she said, to a wave of derision from the others at the table. Hob barely managed to tear his gaze away to tell them all to fuck off, and when he returned his attention to her, she was offering him her lovely smooth hand, as though he could possibly be worthy to touch it.
"Come with me," she said. "There's something I want to discuss with you, about how you'll be spending your life if you never die."
Hob nodded sharply in agreement and maneuvered himself out of his seat without knocking into the dark lady, but he did not take her hand. Something made him think that would be a momentous thing, actually taking her hand. He did not want to do it lightly, casually, merely because that hand was offered.
The lady began to walk away and Hob followed her, seeing as he did that she was heading toward a pair of people lingering nearer the tavern's door—two people who had something of the air she had, of power beyond the obvious.
One was fair-haired and golden-eyed, a person Hob could not readily identify as either lord or lady, though they were so beautiful his heart ached a little with it. Their beauty was much like the beauty of the sun or the sea, though, too vast and dangerous for Hob to want to approach too closely, or look upon too long.
The other was a woman of very small stature, dressed just as soberly as the dark lady who had approached Hob, wimple and all—except that there were a handful of birds perching on her head or circling near it. Doves, he thought, but their colors were bright and strange.
No one else seemed to notice anything odd about the small woman; no one seemed even to notice her presence. The dark lady went right to her, of course, and the small woman took her hand and went with her, out the front door of the tavern, the golden-eyed beauty following them with an arch look back at Hob.
Hob followed. What else could he do?
He stopped short outside the tavern at the sight of an impossibly grand carriage, with gilt bits all over. There were four fine white horses harnessed to it, but no driver in sight. The door of the carriage stood open, and he could just see the dark lady, the golden-eyed person, and the small one all peering out at him as though they were waiting for him to climb aboard.
The carriage was perfectly clean, as though it had not traveled an inch through London's mud and muck—the horses, too, were perfectly white to the tips of their tails and the tops of their hooves, and they stood quietly and calmly though there was no hand on the reins.
Hob knew already that these were no natural human folk; he knew that he did not want to take the dark lady's hand. He knew that the sensible thing to do would be to back away slowly, with a bow and perhaps an apology for offending.
He also knew that he would rather die at this very moment than never find out what would happen if he boarded their carriage. Hob grinned brightly at all of them and strode forward, pulling himself up into the carriage and swinging into the rear-facing seat, which had been left entirely vacant.
The door closed before he could reach to pull it shut, and the carriage set into motion very smoothly but without any apparent signal to do so, to the driver who wasn't there. Hob felt a wonderful thrill of terror and smiled wider at the three across from him. "Do I get to know where we're going? Or who you are?"
The golden-eyed one looked to the small one and said, "Is he one of yours, sister?"
The small one giggled, and the doves fluttered up from her head and then landed again. "No! Not a bit! He's doing it on purpose for fun!"
The golden-eyed one looked at him again for a long moment, and Hob beamed at them. He was indeed having fun, and he had done all of this on purpose.
The golden-eyed one sat back with a huff and elbowed the dark lady slightly. "Ugh, you're probably right. He does meet all the requirements."
The dark lady snorted, gently amused, and said, "We probably still ought to ask."
Hob folded his hands in silent entreaty and watched them eagerly, waiting to be asked a question that would be another step into whatever fairy story he was now living.
"I should begin by saying that I am Death," the dark lady informed him, with such a wide, warm smile that it took the span of a breath for Hob to understand what she had said.
There was no possibility of misunderstanding, once she had said it. Hob had known she was something other than human, something powerful.
He had known he did not wish to take her hand.
"I... apologize, Lady Death," he said cautiously, though her smile was undimmed, and she had come to his side and said what she said after he'd spoken his piece. "I did not mean that you are... anything I said."
"Stupid?" Death supplied, still smiling. But then what need had Death to make a point of pride? All fell to her in the end, and she obviously knew it. "No, I understood. You meant only that it's stupid of your fellow humans to accept my gift, if they have the option not to."
Hob considered her exact words, then said, "Have I the option, ma'am?"
"Oh, call me Death," she said cheerfully. "Or... well, we'll get to that. But you do have the option, yes. I have decided to withhold my gift from you until and unless you ask me to take you—and here are my siblings as witnesses, if that will help to set your mind at ease."
Hob dragged his gaze away from Death to look at her two siblings, trying to guess who and what they might be.
"Desire," said the golden-eyed one, offering a hand for Hob to kiss in very courtly style. "Of the Endless, to give my full name, as my elder sister did not."
Hob gave a little sitting bow and kept his hands and kisses to himself. Desire could swallow him up as easily as Death; he knew that about himself well enough. Truly it had been his desire for more of everything—more life, more time, more adventure—that he had been speaking of tonight, as much as he had been speaking of death.
He had plenty of desire all on his own; what he wanted was not more desire but more satisfaction, and he knew somehow that satisfaction was the one thing Desire could not give him.
"I am honored to make your acquaintance, Desire of the Endless," Hob said, carefully pronouncing it as a title, not with the familiarity of a name. Desire, he thought, was not so generous in their self-assurance as their elder sister was.
"Hmm," Desire said, studying him. "Not bad, I suppose."
"And I'm the youngest one," burst out the small lady—who had lost her wimple and dark sober gown at some point while Hob wasn't looking. She was dressed now in tattered motley, and her hair was a rainbow to match it. "I used to be different but now I've gone strange. No one ever wants me but I take them anyway when they come to be mine."
Hob smiled encouragingly at her. "Is it a riddle, then? Shall I guess your name?"
She scratched her nose thoughtfully, and reached up to one of the doves, which changed at her touch into something like soft carded wool, also in a rainbow of colors. She held it out to Hob, and he took a puff of it between his fingers, realizing it smelled sweet as he sat back with his prize. The youngest of the Endless crammed half of what was left into her mouth, coloring her tongue and lips in bright unnatural shades.
"If you guess wrong," she said in a wavering voice, "I might make you mine forever and ever and then Death might be mad at me because you're not for me really, you're for—"
She stopped short, looking wide-eyed at her sibling and sister and cramming the rest of the candy wool into her mouth.
"Delirium," Desire said, half-scoldingly, in a way that Hob thought was intended to ruin the game in the guise of rescuing their youngest sister from a dilemma. Was there a Dilemma of the Endless, somewhere?
Possibly that was Hob.
"We came here tonight," Death put in, "seeking someone who might be willing to marry our brother, Dream."
Hob sat back, thrown off balance at the very thought of a male version of these three wondrous beings. His thoughts went rapidly to being married to—which was to say, bedded by—such a one, and he immediately tried to turn his thoughts aside to anything other than the wave of oh yes please that he felt at that idea.
Desire smirked at him like they had felt that anyway, as they surely would.
Hob went to fold his arms and remembered that he had candy wool on the fingers of one hand. He licked it cautiously and then looked down at it, startled by the sweetness of it—purer and sweeter than honey.
"There's sweet cake!" Delirium put in. "For getting married!"
Hob blinked at her and nodded slowly. "That is... surely a point in favor of marriage for me."
He returned his attention to Death. "But I should think one of the Endless would want... something different than myself, if he were to marry."
Someone who was not a landless, penniless peasant soldier, for one thing. Someone who was a woman, for another. But perhaps he was simply failing to think differently enough—the Endless, from what he could see, were stranger and more powerful beings than fair folk or old gods, demons or angels. Death herself, the very person of Desire, the diminutive patroness of all Delirium, and their brother who ruled over all Dreams—these were nothing like human royalty or nobility.
Hob's own liaisons with men had been brief and secretive, but he had known men who inclined to each other as most men did to women, even a few who kept house together. It was not the sort of thing one stood on the church steps to declare before God and everyone, usually, but Hob supposed the rules must be different for such beings as the Endless. What priest could marry a human to Dream?
"Dream's requirements," Death said, "were many and specific, but none of them had anything to do with a title or property or any such considerations. He is the King of the Dreaming, but the Endless have no need of getting heirs or sealing alliances. He cannot marry a mortal, of course, but you are no longer one." Death smiled brightly at that: a problem she had been able to solve, Hob understood.
And yet she had not made his agreement a condition on the boon she had granted him. She had set no conditions at all, except that he himself could choose when to die.
"Dream wished in particular for someone who could be happy being married to him. And I believe that you, Hob Gadling, could be happy in nearly any circumstances at all."
Hob could not help but feel his heart open at the thought of a being as great as one of the Endless whose main requirement in a spouse was not a spouse who could please him, but one who could be happy with him.
Then, too, it was true what Death said. Hob had always found happiness in his life though it was full of death and misery; he only wanted more life, in which to find more happiness. And if he was to be immortal now, that would afford him a very great deal of time indeed to find his happiness.
Still, he had not intended to wed anytime soon, and he supposed it would make sense to ask a few questions. "If I were to wed him, would I have to go live in his... house?"
He didn't know where or what that might be, the home of the Lord of Dreams, but surely it would be outside the England Hob knew and loved.
The siblings exchanged glances, and Death said carefully, "His first wife did not always stay in his realm. She maintained her own life. Her own work. And Dream... accepted that."
"How, ah..." Hob considered, various old tales curling through his thoughts now. "How many wives has he had?"
Desire snorted. "Not nearly enough."
"Just one," Death put in sternly. "He has had a few other lovers, but... for most of his life he's been lonely."
Hob's heart widened a little further for this strange being he'd never yet set eyes on.
"What..." Hob didn't suppose he could ask what is wrong with him outright. In Hob's experience, folk who wanted to pair off mostly did so in fairly short order when free to do so; Hob himself bounced in and out of attachments that he could never make permanent, having no means to make a proper home with anyone when his only steady work was at war. He was lonely some nights, but he never stayed lonely for long.
Dream was, perhaps, a natural singleton—Hob had known a few of those, looking lonely from the outside but content with their own company more than not. Perhaps he was compelled to choose a spouse for some reason and was trying to make the best of it. Such a person probably wouldn't be deliberately cruel, not in ways that would be obvious to their siblings. But Dream's siblings were what Hob had as a source of information, so he might as well ask more questions.
"What is he like?" Hob tried.
"Boring," Desire said immediately. "Obsessed with his work and with following the rules, absolutely sure that he knows better than anyone else."
Hob automatically looked to Death for some countering opinion, but she smiled wryly and said, "Some of us find that endearing."
Delirium, when Hob turned to her, was looking off to Hob's left and about a hundred leagues beyond. He wondered if she had even heard his question, but then she said, in a slow fluttering voice, "I always think he's not happy to see me but I think really he's just... not happy. And I'm there so he sees me and he's not happy. But he tries, usually. He does try. Sometimes I think he really ought to be mine, only he can't be because he's my big brother and it doesn't work that way. But I think he might be happier if he were a little bit mine anyway."
"Well," Hob said, when it seemed she would say no more. "Maybe I could cheer him up a bit."
Delirium turned a brilliant smile on him and then burst into a thousand butterflies. Hob made an alarmed noise, but Death and Desire said in unison, "That means she's happy."
Hob sat very still, careful not to crush any of the delicate butterflies when dozens of them lighted on and around him, until gradually they gathered again on the other seat, and Delirium reappeared in her more familiar form.
Hob had no chance to ask any further questions before the carriage came to a halt.
He felt a pang of fear and a thrill of excitement at the thought that his future spouse might be waiting just outside, but Desire said, "We're stopping at my place first. Dream's other requirement was that he has to like the way you smell—and we're not allowed to cheat, but..."
Desire looked him over dubiously. "A bath couldn't hurt. And you're hardly dressed for an occasion like your wedding, are you?"
Hob looked down at himself. "Can't say I am, no." He smiled brightly, curious to see what bathing facilities would be worthy of the Endless, and followed eagerly when they led the way out of the carriage and into the realm of Desire.
The end of Dream's vigil was heralded by a door opening into Destiny's garden and Delirium skipping through, flinging foil-wrapped candies of a kind that would not exist in the Waking world for hundreds of years as if they were flower petals. "Dream! Dream, we found you the wonderfulest human, and I promise he's not any of mine or Desire's or Death's at all! He's all for you!"
Dream stood, clothing himself in suitable, if perhaps funereal, finery as Despair and Destruction took their places beside him. There was no use pretending this was not going to happen as Destiny had said it would. Still, Dream observed, "I believe I said I would not marry a human."
"Human woman, you said," Destiny intoned, standing now at Dream's right hand. "And your bridegroom is neither woman nor mortal, but very human."
His elder sister's doing? "I also specified no cruel bargains."
"So you did," was all Destiny said before Desire strutted in, brilliant in red and gold, with Dream's bridegroom following on Death's arm.
Dream stared in fascination—and too many other things to name—at the human who stepped into Destiny's realm, brought here for him. The man had a full beard, perhaps more neatly trimmed than the average human's, and dark brown hair that fell shining to his shoulders, where it met the sable trim of his cloak. His raiment was otherwise pale ivory and gold, a tunic that ended above the knee and matching hose.
He was looking back at Dream and smiling beatifically, as though at some vision of Paradise.
Dream shot a narrow look at Desire, who stepped aside to stand by Delirium. "None of my doing," they said, raising graceful hands in a gesture of innocence. "He's just like that, I swear. We found him that way."
Dream looked back to his impossibly cheerful bridegroom, who said, impossibly cheerfully, "It's true! I was simply too curious to resist such a fantastical opportunity."
Dream let himself look into the man's—Robert Gadling's—dreams, and saw first a wildly optimistic profusion of daydreams regarding himself and their imminent marriage. Farther back...
Farther back, there was no end of wildly optimistic daydreams. Robert Gadling had dreamt his family would survive the plague; dreamt he would be taken in by others in his village when he was orphaned; dreamt he would find brotherhood and glory when he took up arms and marched off to war; dreamt he would find peace and solace when he returned to England. He had dreamt that he could ward off the death he felt at his heels by declaring that he would not ever die.
There was no sharp change in his dreams, no moment when an obvious influence had interfered. He had simply seen a chance to finally have a dream—any dream—come true, and grabbed hold of it with both hands.
Dream glanced over at Despair, who was watching Robert Gadling with something like greed; she knew, of all of them, just how such a brightly hopeful creature could be destroyed. She understood the shape of the doom that awaited him, and by her nature, she could not help hungering for it.
Still, Dream was not eager to be meat to feed any of his siblings.
"There was one other requirement," Dream said, stepping forward and reaching out a hand.
Robert Gadling gladly stepped away from Death and approached Dream with both hands outstretched. He had his palms turned up, offering himself willingly though he could not possibly know to what fate he was led, like a lamb to slaughter.
But the slaughter was not yet; Dream wrapped his hands gently around Robert Gadling's wrists, knowing that for this night at least they would not come away bloody. He tugged, and Robert stepped up close to him with an eager look on his face. Robert's hands came to rest easily against Dream's chest, making no effort to brace or push away.
Dream tilted his head and pressed his nose to the human's throat. There was a faint hint of rosewater—naturally Desire would have done all they thought they could get away with in the way of rendering the prospective bridegroom sweet-smelling—but it did not hide the natural human smell of his skin.
His future husband smelled... warm and alive, salty under the sweet. Robert's thumbs were sweeping gently over where Dream's heart would be if he had one, and Dream let his lips brush the warm skin of Robert's throat as he breathed him in, surrendering to the inevitable.
Dream dropped Robert's wrists and whirled away from him to face Destiny, who had taken the officiant's place. "Very well," Dream said. "I will marry him."
"Come, then," Destiny said, gesturing for Dream and his bridegroom to take their places; the rest of their siblings ranged themselves on either side as attendants.
Dream stood for one last frozen moment, resisting, and then Robert stepped up beside him, curling an arm around his waist and drawing him into place.
The man was still smiling when he took both of Dream's hands in his, and Dream let him.
Boring, his siblings had said, describing Hob's intended.
None of them had mentioned that Dream was beautiful enough to put angels and princes to shame, and so veiled in melancholy that Hob felt at once that he would gladly spend the rest of his newly-granted eternal life working to earn a smile from those berry-pink lips.
Certainly Hob had been given no warning of how the merest hint of a kiss from those lips against his throat would set his senses aflame, or how the grip of those pale elegant hands around his wrists would make him want to fold to his knees and worship his new husband in all the best ways he knew. But then, that was probably not a thing a sibling—even Desire—would either know or say about their brother.
And now it was time to wed him, and Dream let Hob put an arm around him, guiding him into place before a robed figure who could only be the eldest of the siblings, Destiny, who stood with his book as a priest would. Death and Desire and Delirium stood to one side and the other siblings they'd described to Hob, Destruction and Despair, stood to the other. Hob took both of Dream's hands in his, turning to face him.
Hob couldn't keep from smiling brightly at his soon-to-be husband, who looked back at him very solemnly. He did not smile, but nor did he scowl or sneer.
"The family conclave is assembled, the Endless stand witness," Destiny announced. "Make your marriage vows, and so your marriage."
Hob tightened his grip on Dream's hands involuntarily as he tried to guess what he was meant to vow. Proper church weddings were done in Latin, and the poor bastards getting married hardly had to say anything but what the priest told them to. Ordinary common marriages were mostly accomplished by exchanging wedding gifts and then telling everyone you'd taken someone to wife—or husband. The gifts were rings, usually, but for all the finery he'd been dressed in, Hob had no ring nor other gift to offer to Dream, and no idea what vows to make, to shape what their marriage would be.
Hob had no idea what marriage to an Endless was supposed to look like.
Luckily, Dream spoke first.
"I, Dream of the Endless, take thee, Robert Gadling, to be my husband, until such time as you repudiate our marriage."
"Oh, call me Hob," Hob said. "Everyone does."
Dream's lip curled a little at that, and Hob hastened to return to the point. Luckily he'd always been quick to catch on, and he could recite back easily enough. "I, Hob Gadling, take thee, Dream of the Endless, to be my husband, until such time as you repudiate our marriage."
He only properly heard that last bit as he was saying it, and he squeezed Dream's hands and added, "Hope you're not planning on it any time soon, though."
Dream did frown, then, but before he could say another word Destiny said, "It is done. You are wed. There is cake."
This last sounded so portentous that Hob looked hastily around for some dire development, and then discovered that a table had appeared in the garden, laden down with a variety of foods including a strange snowy white towering thing he could make no sense of at a glance.
"Cake?" Hob repeated uncertainly. Dream's hands flexed in his grip, making Hob aware that he was still holding on.
"Delirium insisted," Dream said, and let go of one of Hob's hands but drew the other through his arm, bringing Hob close to his side before leading them over. "This is a cake not yet dreamed of, but all times are one time in Destiny's garden."
"A cake not yet dreamed of," Hob repeated wonderingly, still not at all certain how such a thing as that pristine white tower could be food, let alone a cake. "Is it—will I live to see it, now?"
Dream glanced over at him, a spark of nastiness in his eyes, a sly little smirk curling his lips, and said, "I am the wrong member of this family to ask about things that will be. Brother?"
It was obvious he considered this a set-down, or was inviting Destiny to deliver one, but Hob had no more turned to look toward his new brother-in-law than Destiny said simply, "Yes, you shall. Some centuries hence."
Dream's smirk dissolved into an irritated scoff at his eldest brother. "You will simply tell him that?"
"So the book indicated, and so I did," Destiny replied imperturbably. "Perhaps some certainty of his new immortality was the gift I was meant to give to your husband on the occasion of your wedding."
Hob tightened his grip on his new husband's arm, beginning to see already the ways in which his new family, for all their power and all their strangeness, were like any set of siblings. Hob had seen it plenty of times: the second-born son and the eldest constantly at odds, the eldest perfectly assured of his place, the second-born sure of his own merits but still bridling against his elder brother's superiority.
"I thank you for the assurance, good-brother," Hob said, and added, lower, "And I promise you, husband, no matter how long I live, I shan't ever eat such a cake as this until you and I may share it again, as we do today."
Dream gave him a quizzical look. "We have already made our vows, husband. You need promise me nothing else."
"Well, it is our wedding day!" Hob said cheerfully. "Surely that is a day for promising things just because I wish to be a good husband for you? Would you not do as much for me, dearest husband?"
A second too late, Hob remembered the glimmer of almost-cruelty in his husband's eyes, the smirk that said he was entirely ready to make Hob the butt of a joke. Dream did not know Hob yet; Hob had been pushed upon him as a spouse, and Dream might well be the kind to take out his feelings on his newly-wedded husband.
Dream might have been right, after all, to think his siblings must choose carefully to find a spouse who could be happy being wedded to him.
Then Dream's lips turned up in the tiniest possible smile, and he said, "I vow to you, husband, that no food or drink shall pass my lips in the Waking world, unless I share it with you."
There was a certain tone in Dream's voice that led Hob to suspect that Dream wasn't in the habit of eating or drinking in the Waking world anyway, but that didn't matter so much as the fact that Dream had met him vow for vow. "I shall have to find the very best I can get my hands on to share with you, then, husband. You're surely used to the finest."
Delirium popped up from the other side of the table just as they reached it, brandishing a thing like a very small, thin sword with a rounded end, of some metal that was so shiny as to flash rainbows all down the length of the blade. It had a very elaborate jeweled hilt. "You must cut the cake together," she announced, "and then feed it to each other!"
Hob was nearly ready for it this time when she burst into a flock of brightly particolored doves, leaving her blade behind. Dream was still quicker, and caught the blade before it could fall. He took Hob's hand, wrapping it around the hilt along with his own, and sliced through the top part of the towering white object, releasing a smell of pure sweetness and something else Hob couldn't place.
An assortment of doves settled on his and Dream's shoulders and on top of their heads as they drew the miniature sword out of the cake and made another cut and then a third, creating two wedge-shaped slices. Dream laid the sword aside, and each of them reached for a slice at once.
Hob noticed, just as his fingers were sinking into the white outer coating of the cake, which was soft as summer butter, that the rest of the Endless were now arrayed on the far side of the table. Even Delirium had taken shape again, though there were still a multitude of those bright doves scattered across the heads and shoulders of her siblings. She was crouching right up against the table, her arms folded on the edge and her chin propped on her wrists as she looked up at them, beaming.
Hob winked to her as he took his slice of cake and held it to Dream's lips. He couldn't see anything but Dream's mouth once he looked there; he watched his husband's lips part, watched his teeth and tongue appear like shy creatures peeking from a covert.
The cake looked like dense black bread, despite its strange and wonderful rich smell. Hob meant only to nudge it closer to Dream's sweetly parted lips, to encourage his husband to take a healthy bite, for Hob wouldn't have put it past him to lick a single crumb and call it plenty.
Hob had not reckoned on how very soft the cake actually was, or the way it would slip in his hand with the white coating squelching around his fingers. It felt like it was slipping from his grasp, and he tightened his grip, which had the rather impressive result of smashing dark cake and white coating into his husband's finely shaped nose as well as his barely-open mouth.
"Oh, bollocks," Hob said, or tried to—he barely had time to see the look of vast offense in Dream's eyes before there was a piece of cake smashed likewise against his own nose and mouth. Having opened his mouth to speak, he did actually get some of the cake and coating into his mouth, where the incomparable sweetness and mysterious wonderful flavor of the cake burst across his tongue.
There followed an undignified few minutes in which Hob was simultaneously trying to eat as much of the cake as he could get off Dream's hand while instinctively smashing his own handful just as hard against Dream's face as Dream's hand was pushing against his.
Right about the point when Hob was down to working his tongue between Dream's fingers in search of more sweetness, Dream finally jerked his hand away, and Hob did the same a second after.
Dream was giving him an absolutely poisonous look through his mask of smashed cake and white coating; Hob didn't know whether to help him wipe it away or turn and run.
Then the laughter and applause started, yanking Hob back to awareness of his six new siblings-in-law, who were all watching and all seemed thoroughly pleased by the show Hob and Dream had put on.
Hob looked back a little apprehensively at his husband, only to find that he had somehow magicked his face clean of cake and was looking the tiniest bit amused.
Hob immediately grinned. "Did you actually get to eat any, love? Shall I serve you another slice?"
Dream arched a brow and stepped close enough to touch again, letting his hand hover beside Hob's cake-smeared cheek without quite making contact. "From the abundance you have in your possession?"
Hob might have pointed out that if Dream didn't like Hob's face covered in cake he shouldn't have done it, but Dream apparently had the same thought. In the next moment he did touch Hob's cheek, and Hob realized his face and beard were clean.
"Course not," Hob said, "wouldn't serve you secondhand anything, would I? But there's plenty—"
Hob looked over at some motion in his peripheral vision, just in time to see Destruction strike the cake with his own, much larger, sword. The cake burst as if it had been a barrel struck with a warhammer, bits of it flying everywhere.