“Sleep all right?” Rush asked, eyes flicking once from Kylar to his sister and back again. Wonder what he just dragged out of my mind now.
“Yes” Kylar said, which was true for once. He only slightly hesitated pulling a chair out to sit. I was thinking about her mouth. Dato stop doing this to yourself.
Tessa signed, slow and obvious for Rush’s benefit,
Kairi’s cheeks pinked for a heartbeat. Kylar busied himself with pouring tea and didn’t comment. Rush watched them both at that and then continued eating.
They ate. They cleaned up. The day started.
The shop had it's door propped open, bell looped out of the way. Cool air drifted in with the sounds of the lane: a cart rattling past, children arguing about who got the last sweet at the bakery, someone calling for a dog that had no intention of coming back yet. Business came in little waves. A farmer’s wife stopped by to trade onions and early potatoes for soap and salves. A pair of boys around ten came in on a dare, sniffed every bar on the counter, declared the mint “too sharp” and the plain “too boring,” and left with the same cheap lye soap they always did, pretending not to care that Kairi slipped them an extra sliver for their mother.
Kylar took up position behind the counter, half-shadow, half-extra hands. He wrapped bars while Kairi talked, stacked jars where she pointed, and counted the pulse of the town in footsteps and familiar names. Every so often her sleeve brushed his fingers when she reached for something; every so often he caught himself noticing and had to go reorganize a shelf before Rush’s presence in the back of his head got too amused.
Late in the morning, the doorframe filled with Rush’s shoulders. He took in the scene with one sweep, Kairi behind the counter, Kylar at her elbow, Tessa perched on a stool mending a strap, and arched a brow.
“Store seems under control,” he said mildly.
Kairi snorted. “Your faith is overwhelming.”
Rush’s mouth tugged, fond. Then his gaze slid to Kylar. “Walk with me a bit?” he asked, too casual.
That tone meant 'talk'. Kylar felt his spine straighten before he could help it. “Of course,” he said, setting the last wrapped bar aside. He glanced at Kairi. “You all right here?”
Kairi nodded. “We’ll manage.” Tessa hopped off her stool, already moving toward the counter. She caught Kairi’s eye and signed, brisk and bright,
Kairi huffed a laugh. “Apparently I’ve been claimed,” she said.
Kylar caught the flicker of relief in Rush’s shoulders at that, Tessa on Kairi, him on the perimeter. It felt right, in a way that had nothing to do with titles. With a quick breath and thought and pray for his own health, he followed Rush out onto the lane.
Rush didn’t say anything at first. He headed down toward the smithy at an easy pace, hands tucked into his belt, looking for all the world like a man simply checking his fences. Kylar let the silence sit. He knew better than to rush this dragon. He would start talking one way or another when he was ready.
At the first corner, Rush finally spoke. “How are the storms?” he asked without looking over. In your special place
Kylar adjusting to speaking and thinking now. “Not many lately, in the past year or so" She and I haven't had too many rough days. They seem to pop up when we are stressed
Rush’s jaw worked. “Good,” he said quietly. “She doesn’t need lightning every night on top of all this.” Is it always a thunderstorm? Or something else?
Kylar didn’t trust himself to answer that. They reached the low stone wall near the well and paused there, as if to check the view up and down the lane. Rush braced his forearms on the stone, looking ahead. Kylar leaned his hip against the wall and took in the view of the lane. There was a breeze and the autumn chill was getting colder. He made a mental note that she may need a thicker cloak for the escort. He then thought some more on his question. When you ask if it's something else...what do you mean?
Rush didn't move or seem to hear him. Kylar was beginning to think maybe he didn't do the thinking talking with him right somehow when his voice came. Tearia. Or other bad memories.
Kylar watched as some of the girls he had seen the other day laughed and quickly walk away when they saw him looking. "No" He said simply.
Rush huffed, not quite a laugh. “Fair.” He was quiet a moment longer, gaze on the distant rooftops. The sun was still high enough in the sky and plenty of people still walking the streets. The chatter was a nice background noise for the silence between them.
“You’re still planning to tell her?” he asked, tone light but blade-sharp under it. “Yes,” Kylar said, before the part of him that wanted to hedge could move.
Rush’s shoulders eased by a degree so small anyone else might have missed it. “Good,” he said. I’d hate to have to persuade you in the middle of a parade. Bad for morale. Kylar made a low sound that might have been a laugh. “I’ll keep your schedule in mind.”
Rush’s mouth curled. Then he added, very casually, “Whatever you do, don’t propose like your brother did.”
Kylar blinked. “You’ve mentioned that before,” he said slowly. “The disaster proposal. Are you ever going to be kind enough to tell me how, exactly, my brother managed to screw up?” Rush cut him a sideways look, clearly enjoying himself now. “Ah,” he said. “So he didn’t tell you.”
Kylar let his gaze fall on Rush. "I'm sure if it was as bad as you say, he would have redacted it from all written records" Rush laughed out loud for that one. " He would"
Rush started moving again down the lane toward the town center now and Kylar followed walking beside him.
Your brother, being Crown Prince got it in his head that he needed to ask her. Not for love, for protection. For a kingdom. Because he was to be King and she was a Princess. It was his duty to ask her.
Kylar listened and thought about his brother. I don't know if he would ask if he didn't love her.
Rush stopped at the well and raised an eyebrow at him. "He did. But, not in the same way you do." He shrugged. "Expectation and all that."
Kylar stopped glancing around the town center thinking on that. "I think I understand now." Crown and Kingdom before his own self.
Rush nudged him with his elbow. "Well aware" He muttered and tapped his head.
Kylar just raised an eyebrow. Great, glad I'm not the only one you torture.
Then Rush’s grin flashed, brief and sharp, then softened around the edges. “Look,” he said, pushing off the well to face Kylar more fully. “I know I’ve been in your head more than is polite. I know I’ve asked questions I had no right to ask. But the fact is, in a few weeks, I’m putting my sister on a horse and sending her toward a palace and a court where everyone’s didn't know we existed for nearly three decades. Carlbrin, uniforms, politics, all teeth. And you’re… standing between her and the bits of it that bite.”
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
“That’s the job,” Kylar said. It came out hoarser than he meant. Rush’s eyes didn’t let him look away. “So I need to know what kind of fool you are,” he said simply. “The kind who runs when it gets hard, or the kind who digs in.”
Kylar thought of pine soap in his pocket, of a girl who was happy here and a crown she hadn’t asked for, of a meadow that would have to learn a new sky. “I don’t run,” he said. Not from my posts. Not from her.
Rush watched him a beat longer, then nodded, like he’d just checked a knot and found it held. “Good,” he said again. “I’m still reserving the right to break your nose or the other option."
“How generous,” Kylar muttered.
Rush snorted. “Oh, I’d enjoy doing it now,” he said. But since my sister has already been kissing you, she might notice if your face is rearranged. Kylar glanced to him and Rush just shrugged. "You yell loudly. I hadn't taken my meds yet."
Kylar felt heat climb the back of his neck. "I yell?" Rush nodded. "frequently" Kylar frowned. Do I really? Rush sighed. Dato
Kylar nodded. "Sorry. So you said meds. What meds?" Rush started back toward the house. "She made some pills that make things quieter. Come on,” he said. “If I stay out here much longer, Your guard will come to see if you are still breathing."
Kylar grabbed his arm and Rush looked down at the contact and then at his face. "Couple questions. When did you know about...us?"
Rush had a flat expression. "When you were shouting it. For sure when we were sparring." You showed me her teaching you our ways of fighting.
Kylar nodded and let go and sighed. Why didn't you know before? She never shouted about me mentally?
Rush's eyes flinched a little. "I can't."
"You can't?" He frowned.
Rush nodded. "Not since they started" The dreams...when she began telling me about you. It's why I believed you were real. I don't believe in coincidences.
He started back toward the home. "So thank you for being loud." And not a psychopath.
Kylar followed and chuckled. "You're welcome Rush. What about Tessa?"
He slowed a little. "She doesn't shout. I'm trying to learn how to talk to her. She thinks in hands and some words. I try to tune most people out most of the time." They made it back to the front of the home and Rush placed a hand on his shoulder, Kylar stopped and glanced to him. Rush just looked at him for a while, his eyes the same shade as hers, but colder, he just squeezed his shoulder and then turned to go inside. He stood there watching him go and wondered. Did I pass another test?
Rush stopped at the door and glanced back over his shoulder. "Yeah".
Inside, the air felt different in a softer way.
Tessa and Kairi had claimed the front of the shop. The counter was half-cleared; a stool had been dragged near the window to catch the best light. Kairi sat on it, shoulders relaxed for once, while Tessa stood behind her with a comb and a small bowl of pins, brow furrowed in theatrical concentration.
“That one is going to stab me in my sleep,” Kairi said, watching a particularly vicious-looking pin in the glass.
Tessa huffed a soundless laugh, set the pin down, and signed in the reflection,
Kairi snorted. “Comforting.”
Tessa sectioned off another strand of hair, fingers deft. For a while, they worked in companionable quiet, only the soft scrape of the comb and the distant murmur of the lane filling the room.
Then Tessa caught Kairi’s gaze in the mirror and, one-handed, signed,
Kairi’s breath snagged. “He is… likeable,” she said carefully, eyes darting away and then back. “Most of the time.”
Tessa’s mouth quirked. She signed,
Kairi blinked at that, then really looked at Tessa in the mirror—at the way she watched her fingers in Kairi’s hair, yes, but also at the way her gaze flicked, almost unconsciously, toward the door Kylar had gone through. The way she talked about him with the easy shorthand of someone who had spent years keeping pace with his thoughts.
“You notice that a lot,” Kairi said slowly. “How he thinks. When he’s gone quiet.” She hesitated, the shape of the suspicion almost tickling. “You know him very well.”
Tessa shrugged, casual, but there was nothing careless about her eyes.
“How do you know him so well?” Kairi asked, trying to keep it light. “You’re not just… two guards who met on a road.”
Tessa didn’t miss a beat. Her hands moved smooth and easy:
It was a good answer. Ordinary. True enough, on the surface. Kairi still felt that small prickle at the back of her mind—the sense that there was a word Tessa wasn’t signing. Personal, maybe. Or assigned.
Before she could decide how far to push, the bell over the door gave a useless little jingle.
Rush and Kylar stepped back in out of the light.
Rush looked the same as when he’d left: steady, measuring, attention first on his sister, then on the room as a whole. Kylar, for all his training, wore just enough of his thoughts on his face that Kairi saw it at once—some new weight behind his eyes, some worry he hadn’t had when he’d gone out.
Tessa’s gaze flicked from Kylar to Kairi and back. She didn’t bother to hide her amusement. She lifted one hand off the braid, pointed straight at him, and signed, broad and obvious so all of them could see:
Kylar blinked, dragged back to the present like someone called from a long way off. “I am not lost,” he said, a beat too late.
Kairi’s mouth curved, something warm and fond under the tease. “You look like you’re trying to solve three wars and a festival schedule at the same time,” she said.
He opened his mouth, realized that wasn’t far off, and shut it again with a faint, betrayed huff.
Rush just leaned in the doorway, watching all three of them with somewhat of a smile.
By the time the sun had climbed past the roofline, the doorway had gone quiet. Kairi wiped her hands on a rag, pins sorted into little bowls, Tessa’s work half undone already by curls that refused to behave, Rush a solid shape in the back doorway like a man trying to memorize the house.
Ordinary, Kylar thought, feeling the weight of it. Ordinary, and running out. Rush set his hands on the back of a chair, focused, then signed at Kairi, halting but proud:
Kairi’s face lit. “You’re getting better,” she said. Tessa tapped his wrist twice and signed
They ate midday bread and cheese standing at the counter, talking around bites about who Rush had spoken with, who needed extra warning about the move, who would be hardest to leave. Kairi went quiet halfway through a slice of bread, thumb worrying the crust.
“Rush?” she asked.
He hummed, mouth full.
“Can I tell Mena and Raelin?” She kept her gaze on the loaf between them. “The truth. Not just the going to be a healer at the palace. The… rest of it.”
The room trimmed itself down around that question. Tessa’s knife paused over an apple. Kylar’s hand stilled on his cup. They waited to know where this would go. Rush chewed, swallowed, leaned back in his chair. He looked at her a long time, the way he did when he was weighing more than just the words. “You think they’ll keep it where you put it?” he said finally. “No tavern talk, no passing it along with the bread.”
“Yes,” she said at once. “They won’t spread it. Not if I ask them not to. They’ve kept every secret I’ve ever given them.”
Something in him eased at that. Kylar saw it in the small unclench of his jaw. “And you think it’ll be worse if they only figure it out when the escort rides in,” Rush went on. “Uniforms. trumpets. You sitting on a horse in the middle of it.”
Kairi nodded. “If I don’t say it now, it’ll feel like I lied. Or didn’t trust them.” Rush tipped his head back, staring at the ceiling beams like they might give him advice. Kylar could feel the faintest brush of thought at the edges of his mind, Rush’s attention skimming him and then away again.
He’s measuring what this does to her, Kylar thought. And what it does to this town.
“All right,” Rush said at last. He dropped his gaze back to his sister. “You can tell them you’re Tearia’s princess. That Naberia’s doing its duty, and the escort is for us. You can tell them you’ll be living near the palace. That there’ll be a household. Lessons. All the nonsense.”
His eyes sharpened. “No talk of god beasts. No palace politics. Let the capital keep its own knots until we’re standing in them.”
Kairi’s breath left her in a small, shaky laugh. “Thank you,” she said, quiet but fierce. "Thank you brother." The way that Rush's eyes gentled, Kylar began to wonder if at one point in his life, his eyes always were gentle and not the cold he was used to seeing.