The baker arrived early, as promised, to collect the mint bars. Kairi handed over the neat-wrapped bundles, took a sack of flour and a paper-wrapped loaf in trade, and sent him off with instructions about his wife’s bandaged hand. A couple of regulars stopped by for small things—a tin refilled, a bar swapped, a question about whether she’d still be here after the festival. She answered that one with a practiced smile and a “we’ll see” that hurt Kylar more than it showed on her face.
Rush was already in motion, too. After breakfast he shrugged on his coat, rolled his sore fingers once, and headed out with a short list of names to talk to: the mayor, Branson at the tavern, Vivian’s husband, the old man with the bad knee who knew everyone’s business. The ones who needed to hear first that changes were coming.
“Try not to terrify them,” Kairi called after him.
“I’ll let them terrify me instead,” Rush said over his shoulder, and was gone.
Tessa disappeared to the small stable out back, and the sounds of saddling drifted in: soft snorts, creak of leather, the thump of a hand on a broad, familiar neck.
By the time the street had settled again, Kairi had two baskets ready by the door, lined with cloth, empty and expectant. She tied her hair up in a quick knot, pulled on her sturdier boots, and glanced at Kylar with a spark in her eyes that was all meadow and all Brindlecross at once.
“Ready?” she asked.
“Always,” he said, and for once it wasn’t bravado.
Onyx was more than pleased to be going anywhere that wasn’t a slow loop around town.
He tossed his head as Kylar tightened the girth, dark eyes bright, hooves shifting on the packed earth. Tessa’s mare, a steady bay with a suspicious look at anything that moved too fast, stood like a rock beside him.
“You’re going to embarrass us both,” Kylar murmured to Onyx as he checked the bridle. Onyx snorted in his face.
Kairi came out with the baskets and handed one up. “You’re sure he doesn’t mind double riders?” she asked, already reaching for the saddle horn.
“He thinks it makes him important,” Kylar said. “Which is unfortunately correct.”
She swung up in front of him with the easy familiarity of someone who’d ridden that way often in the meadow, only this time there was real leather and real dust under them. He settled in behind her, one arm braced lightly along the front of the saddle so she had something to lean against if she needed. Onyx flicked an ear back, satisfied with his new arrangement.
Tessa mounted her mare, checked her cinch, and nudged the horse toward the lane.
“Stay close” Kylar said quietly near Kairi’s ear. “Trail narrows past the last fields.”
“So bossy,” she murmured back, but he felt the way she relaxed into the line they were making: Tessa in front, Onyx behind, the town shrinking behind them as the road opened toward the low blue of the hills. The morning was crisp, sky a clear stretch of blue with a few thin clouds torn across it. Fields faded into rougher ground, scrub and stone taking over. The air changed as they climbed, greener, cooler, with that particular under-scent of pine that tugged at his northern memories.
“Here,” Kairi said eventually, patting his knee. “This is a good place.”
Tessa drew her mare to a halt where the track widened into a small clearing at the edge of the trees. Beyond, a narrow path slipped into the green shadow of the hills. They dismounted. Kylar swung down first and turned to help Kairi; she took his hand without looking, trusting the distance, and hopped lightly to the ground. Her boots scuffed the dust, then turned toward the path, already measuring how much they could gather before the light shifted.
Tessa looped both horses’ reins over a low branch where they could crop at the tufts of grass growing up between rocks. Onyx immediately stretched his neck and began investigating everything within reach with his nose, as if in case the hillside hid apples.
“Tessa, if he pulls that branch down—” Kairi started.
Kairi snorted and started up the path with her basket hooked over her arm. Kylar was about to follow when Tessa’s hand caught his sleeve. She tugged him a half-step aside, just out of Kairi’s line of sight, and her hands moved small and fast, low between them so only he could see.
Kylar blinked.
Tessa’s mouth curled. Her fingers flicked, wicked.
Heat hit his face like he’d walked into a forge.
He spluttered in silence for a beat and then managed, fingers jerky, Another beat.
Tessa’s shoulders shook with a silent laugh. She patted his arm like she was sending him into battle and signed
He shook his head, mortified and, annoyingly, a little buoyed, and turned to catch up with Kairi before she vanished entirely into the green.
The path into the hills narrowed quickly, shouldered in by scrub and low pines. Stones showed through the earth here and there, and the air was cooler under the scattered shade. Kairi moved with purpose, but not hurried, scanning the ground and the edges of the path the way he’d scan a line of rooftops.
“Here,” she said after a bit, dropping to a crouch beside a clump of low plants. “Comfrey. See the leaves?” He knelt beside her, basket resting against his shin, and looked where she pointed. Broad, slightly fuzzy leaves, faint veins like a map.
“Roots are the best part,” she went on. “But I don’t want to strip it. We’ll take some leaves, leave enough for it to recover.”
She showed him how to pinch and cut so the plant would keep growing, not just be harvested and forgotten. He watched her hands more than the leaves at first, the way she handled the living thing with the same care she gave to people. They moved on.
Yarrow, white and clustered, for fevers and wounds. Plantain hugging the ground, good for stings and bites. She pointed each out, explained what it did, where she’d used it, the times it had helped and the times it hadn’t been enough and she’d had to reach for something else. He listened, asked questions where it felt natural, and filed each bit away the way he would a new drill. Different sort of battlefield, same urgency underneath. At a bend in the path, the trees opened enough to give them a sliver of view back toward Brindlecross. The town looked small from here, smoke rising in faint threads, the river a dull line of light.
“Up north,” he said, after a stretch of companionable quiet, “we used to collect pine sap. Different trees, but… similar.” He nodded toward the nearest trunk. “We used it to patch gear. Salves, sometimes. Made the barracks smell better than they had any right to.”
Kairi straightened from where she’d been cutting yarrow and shaded her eyes to look at the line of pines. “Sap is good,” she said. “You can make salves with it, yes. Or a wash for chests when people are coughing. If it’s sticky enough, you can even use it to seal small leaks in roofs or buckets. Depends on what else you have with it.”
He watched her as she talked, the way she was already turning possibilities over in her head, matching them to the world she knew. “If I can get you some from the northern front,” he said quietly, “would you use it?”
She glanced at him, something bright kindling behind her eyes. “I’d try,” she said. “There’s always something we haven’t made yet. Or a better way.”
He nodded, filed that as another promise to keep, and followed as she moved a little farther off the path, into a patch of taller grass where the ground dipped toward a narrow, rocky stream.
“Careful here,” she said. “It can be slick.”
He shifted his basket to his other hand and stepped where she stepped, trusting her memory of the place. Water chattered softly over stones, the sound threading between them.
“Come here,” she called a moment later, voice low but urgent enough to make him think she’d found some rare plant. She was half-turned away from him, standing near the curve of a mossy rock, basket resting at her feet.
He picked his way over, boots careful on the damp stone. “What is it?” he asked, scanning the ground for something unusual.
“Closer,” she said.
He took another step, about to ask if he was about to trample whatever she was trying to show him—
She turned.
There was no warning this time, no fumbling preamble. One moment he was looking past her shoulder toward the stream; the next she was right there, hand catching lightly at the front of his shirt to balance herself as she rose onto her toes and pressed her mouth to his.
Surprise hit him in a flash, heat, the faint taste of mint from her morning tea, the soft, undeniable fact of Kairi kissing him in the waking world with the sky wide open above them and no willow to hide under. His mind blanked for a heartbeat and then did the only sensible thing it could: stopped trying to narrate and just felt.
His fingers tightened reflexively on the basket’s handle, then loosened. He let the basket tip gently into the grass and brought one hand up, not to pull her closer, not yet, but to steady her at the curve of her waist, an anchor more than a demand.
He felt the moment her surprise at her own boldness flickered, just a hitch of breath against his mouth, and then she committed to the choice she’d already made, leaning in that fraction more that turned the kiss from question to answer. When she finally eased back, it was only far enough to look up at him, breath a little uneven, eyes bright and searching.
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“I…” She swallowed once, then let the words be simple. “Just wanted to.”
His heart was going too fast to be entirely dignified. He rested his forehead against hers for one brief, stolen beat, letting himself have that much.
“Always allowed,” he said softly. “Just… maybe warn me next time if we’re near a cliff.”
She huffed a small, startled laugh at that, some of the tension spilling out of her shoulders. Her hands trailed down his arms and came to rest lightly at his wrists.
“We’re not that high,” she said. “Your heart is racing.”
“Feels like it,” he murmured, stealing one more quick, helpless brush of a kiss before he straightened, remembering with a jolt that Tessa was somewhere back with the horses and could, at any time, decide they’d had enough of a head start. “My heart was surprised.”
Kairi stooped to pick up her basket, ears a little pink now, but the new line to her mouth unmistakable: pleased. Chosen. Certain.
“Come on then,” she said, voice almost steady. “There isn't enough time to tap the pines for sap, but we can still fill the baskets. Comfrey, yarrow, whatever the hills are willing to share today.”
She glanced up at him, a smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth. “And maybe… a couple more surprises.” He picked up his own basket and fell into step beside her, the air cool and green around them, her words and her kiss both burning like a small, steady flame behind his ribs. They finished the herb run with only a handful more “surprises.”
Kairi was efficient about it, most of the time. She’d point out plants, talk through uses and cautions, make him repeat names back like a trainee. Then, every now and then, she’d catch his wrist when he straightened up and pull him down into the shade of a leaning rock or the shelter of a low branch.
He learned, very quickly, that his real body had opinions about her fingers in his hair. The first time her nails scraped lightly along his scalp while her mouth coaxed his brain away from thoughts of patrol routes and chain of command, his knees nearly lost the argument with gravity. Her tongue brushed his lower lip and every drilled response he had to surprise—shield, step, strike—melted into stay, breathe, memorize.
By the time the baskets were respectably full, his shirt was still properly fastened, his belt in place, but his hair… had lost the war.
Tessa had both horses in view when they came back down the path, baskets bumping against their sides. Onyx lifted his head and gave a pleased snort when he saw them, then lowered it again as if to say he had been perfectly patient and deserved praise and possibly an apple.
They loaded the baskets onto both horses, evening the weight. Kairi patted Onyx’s neck, murmured something under her breath that made his ears flick, then swung up into the saddle. The gelding stood rock-steady for her, smug and content.
Kylar checked a strap, adjusted a knot, mostly to keep his hands busy.
Across the small clearing, Tessa watched him with a look that was all too sharp. When his eyes finally met hers, she lifted her hands, signing small and fast at her waist where only he would see.
Heat slammed into his face. He ran a useless hand through it, which only made it worse. He signed back, choppy with embarrassment,
Tessa’s shoulders shook with a raspy, almost-silent laugh.
Kairi, already settled on Onyx, noticed the motion and turned her head. “What?” she asked, suspicious.
Without even looking away from Kylar, Tessa broadened her signs just enough for Kairi to catch.
Kairi’s face went scarlet. “What?!” squeaked out.
“We didn't take a tumble...Tessa” Kylar said at once, voice coming out perhaps a shade too stiff. He got a boot into the stirrup and mounted like the horse might bolt if he didn’t move immediately. “Some of the paths were… overgrown.”
Tessa smirked openly now, utterly unconvinced. Kairi made no sound and tried very hard to look anywhere but at either of them. Onyx flicked an ear back, as if amused. They turned the horses toward home.
Back in Brindlecross, the afternoon bent itself around the work of coming back from the hills.
Herbs were spread, sorted, then hung in tidy bundles from rafters or laid out on clean cloth to dry. Kairi’s movements grew brisk again, slipping back into the rhythm of her workroom. Kylar followed her lead: carrying baskets, tying string, anchoring stools when she had to climb to reach a beam. Tessa moved between them and the doorway, keeping an eye on the lane and their hands both, plucking stray leaves from Kairi’s hair with a smirk that made Kylar reconsider ever letting Tessa have a day off again.
Rush returned as they were setting the last bundles to hang. He smelled like tavern smoke, horse, and the particular dust of long conversations.
“How’d it go?” Kairi asked, handing Kylar a knife to trim stems while she started on bread.
Rush dropped into a chair and scrubbed a hand over his face. “Mayor was… fine. Curious. Branson at the tavern already knew something was coming, he always does. Vivian’s husband offered to help with packing. The old man with the knee told me six different ways I was making a mistake and then promised to check on the house after we’re gone.”
Kairi’s mouth twisted, equal parts fond and pained. “Sounds like him.”
“They’re worried,” Rush said, not sugarcoating it. “But no one threw anything at me, so we’ll call that a success.”
Tessa, leaning against the table, signed
Then, after a beat,
“Compliments from both my bodyguards,” Rush muttered. “I’m honored.”
Kairi nudged Kylar toward the small kitchen space. “Sandwiches?” she asked. “Before I get pins in my hair again?”
“On it,” he said, grateful for something simple and immediate. They worked side by side: she sliced bread and cheese, he layered them, handed plates out. It was domestic in a way that made something deep in his chest ache, but he kept his face smooth, his hands steady. They ate quickly, aware of the time. As if summoned by the last swallowed bite, Raelin and Mena arrived with the evening: voices, laughter, and the rustle of fabric taking over the front room again.
Kylar retreated to the couch with his share of bread and cheese already consumed, mask tugged up, hood pulled just low enough to shadow his eyes. He stretched out along the cushions, boots still on, one arm folded loosely over his stomach.
He closed his eyes.
He did not go to sleep.
Rush and Tessa wandered off toward the back at some point, quiet voices, the faint clink of something being put away. That left the front of the house to the three women and one allegedly unconscious guard.
He liked that they thought he was asleep. It gave their voices a different shape.
“Willow,” Raelin said at one point, lower now that pins were in danger of falling, “you should snag him. Or the other guard. Either one. He is a catch.”
Kylar did not move. Not even a twitch. Mena sighed. “Raelin, honestly. Willow is moving to the capital. She’s not worrying about convincing a guard she just met to court her.”
“Why not both?” Raelin said. “New city, new guards, new everything. Might as well have someone tall and dangerous looking around to carry the heavy things.” Kairi made a helpless sound somewhere between a laugh and a groan. “I am not bringing a guard just to carry things,” she said. “And it’s… complicated.”
“How complicated?” Raelin asked immediately. Mena’s tone gentled. “Complicated how, Willow?”
Kairi hesitated. Kylar could hear the faint slide of fabric as she shifted, maybe fidgeting with a pin or a fold of her skirt.
“He’s here on duty,” she said at last. “He answers to the capital, not Brindlecross. And when we go back, he’ll still be… working. I don’t even know what my days will look like there yet, let alone his. And Rush already worries enough without adding ‘local gossip about my guard’ to the list.”
Raelin snorted softly. “Rush worries about you when you cross the street.”
“That’s my point,” Kairi said. “So. Complicated.”
That earned a thoughtful hum from Mena. “You are excited, though,” she said, gentler. “You keep talking about it when you forget to be sad.” Kairi was quiet for a moment. “I am,” she admitted. “The festivals. The lanterns. The big markets. All the healers and apothecaries I might learn from. It’s… huge. Life changing.” A small exhale. “I’ll miss here. I’ll miss you. And Rush will be busier. I won’t have you two barging in with hair pins and gossip whenever the mood takes you.”
Raelin made a dismissive noise. “I told you—I will move in with you. We’ll smuggle Mena in a trunk if we have to.”
Mena laughed. “I am not riding in a trunk.”
“You don’t have to,” Raelin said. “You can just marry some rich fool in the capital and keep us all in nice soap.”
“Raelin,” Mena protested, but she was laughing too.
Kylar lay very, very still, letting the sound of their futures, half-joke, half-real, wash over him. It was oddly grounding, hearing the ways they were trying to build a bridge between worlds he already knew were going to collide. The talk drifted, as girl talk did, to more treacherous territory. “I’m just saying,” Raelin insisted, “if you want to win over a guard, you have to signal. They’re dense. You can’t just smile at them and hope they realize you’re not about to hand them a bandage.”
“He isn't dense. He got the signals.” Kairi shot back, then immediately went silent, as if she’d only just realized what she’d admitted.
Kylar’s heart stuttered. He prayed it didn’t show in his breathing.
“Oh?” Raelin pounced. “Did you?” Mena made a scandalized, delighted noise. “Raelin…”
“What?” Raelin said. “She’s moving away. She’s allowed to have a little fun before she goes. And after. Capital guards have to be good for something other than brooding and looking mysterious.”
Mena, ever the softer one, cut in. “Just… be careful with your heart, Willow,” she said quietly. “That’s all. New city, new people, old promises.”
Kairi sighed, the sound small. “I know.”
There was a beat, and then Raelin’s voice dropped, coaxing. “So. Details.”
“Raelin,” Kairi protested. Mena’s laugh slipped out. “You knew this was coming.”
Another pause. Kylar could almost feel Kairi burying her face in her hands.
“It wasn’t—” she started, then stopped. “He was just… very tense. Thinking too hard. So I…” Her voice grew muffled, then clearer again. “distracted him.”
Raelin sounded positively triumphant. “And? His reaction?” Kairi’s answer came out softer. “well he was distracted”
Mena let out a little breath that was almost a sigh. “Oh.”
“That’s not a plan,” Kairi said quickly. “It was just—something I wanted. Before everything changes.”
“Wanting is allowed,” Mena murmured. “Just remember what I said. Heart, Willow.”
“I will,” Kairi said. “I promise.”
There was a small pause.
“I’ll have… Jayce there,” she went on, voice steadier again. “And Tessa. And Kylar.” There was a tiny weight on his name, enough that even half-prone on the couch, he felt it. “I’m glad I have them.”
The room went quiet for a beat. Kylar could feel her gaze on him; the steady, even breathing he’d been keeping suddenly felt like a performance.
Raelin broke the moment, bless her. “You could always leave him here with us,” she said. “We’d take good care of him.”
The laughter that followed, Kairi’s brighter, Mena’s softer, Raelin’s wicked, pulled a small, helpless smile onto his mouth, safely hidden under the edge of his mask.
“He has a job in the capital,” Kairi added once the laughter ebbed, more practical again. “Right now he’s on a job. I don’t think they’d be thrilled if I just… kept him.”
“That escort you mentioned?” Mena asked. “The one coming for you?”
Kairi hummed agreement. “It’s going to be a grand thing for this town,” she said quietly. “Official. Shiny. Lots of uniforms and horses and people trying not to stare.”
Raelin snorted. “You say that like we are going to try not to stare.”
“You’re going to climb on the forge roof to stare,” Kairi said.
“Obviously,” Raelin replied.
As the talk finally began to ebb, pins tried, adjusted, declared acceptable or hopeless, Kylar decided he’d pushed his luck far enough.
He rolled over to face them and let his eyes open.
The three of them froze.
Mena’s eyes went wide. “You weren’t asleep!”
Kylar reached up, pinched the edge of his half-mask, and tugged it down just far enough to show his smug smile. “I’ve learned so much,” he said, utterly unrepentant. “For instance: if you want to win over a guard, you have to signal, because we’re dense. You can’t just smile at us and hand us a bandage.”
Raelin made a strangled noise somewhere between outrage and glee. Mena buried her face in her hands. He chuckled and pulled the mask back up.
Raelin recovered fastest. Of course she did. She crossed the room in a few decisive strides and leaned over him, hands on her hips, studying his face at far too close a distance for his comfort.
He blinked up at her. “You have a lady, don't you.” she declared.
He hesitated a fraction too long.
Raelin narrowed her eyes. “Don’t you dare fall asleep now.”
Kylar considered his options, the web of truths and half-truths he was already walking. He let out a slow breath.
“…I have someone I care about,” he confessed.
Raelin stared at him, clearly weighing how much to press. “Care about,” she repeated. “Noted. Useless for my purposes, but noted.”
He huffed a quiet laugh. Across the room, Kairi had gone very still. Mena glanced from her to Kylar and back, reading more than either of them said.
Kylar let his head tip back against the arm of the couch again, gaze on the ceiling, heart loud in his own ears.
He didn’t say who. He didn’t have to.
Later, when Raelin and Mena finally gathered their things to go, Raelin swept out first in a swirl of skirts and opinions. Mena lingered just long enough to tug gently at Kairi’s hand near the door.
“He was talking about you, wasn’t he?” she murmured, voice too low for anyone else to catch. Kairi thought of pine and hills and his heart racing under her fingers, of the way his voice had gone soft when he told her always allowed. She swallowed once, then nodded. Mena’s smile was small and real. “Good,” she said. “Someone should.”