The next day, with the ravine still several hours off, Damon had the carriage window open again, arm hooked along the sill, watching dust rise behind Jayce’s horse as the captain moved up and down the line. Kurt drew the unlucky duty of riding nearest.

  “Kurt,” Damon called, brightening immediately. “Just the man I wanted.”

  Kurt looked like a man who had prayed, specifically, not to be that man.

  “Highness,” he said, cautiously. His eyes darted to Damon and then away to watch the road.

  Damon leaned out a little, so they weren’t shouting. “What is your honest opinion of Prince Rush?”

  Kurt’s eyes went slightly wider. “My… opinion?”

  “Yes. You’ve read the reports,” Damon prompted.

  Kurt thought with visible care. “Tall,” he said finally. “Dangerous. Protective. Beast blessed.” After a beat, he added, “Good with a sword.”

  Damon snorted. “Yes, well, that does seem to be a family hobby.”

  Kurt’s shoulders relaxed, but only a little.

  “And the princess?” Damon pressed. “Do you think she’ll prefer to ride in the carriage or on horseback? I’ve been told she’s capable, but some people like… pageantry.”

  Kurt stared straight ahead like the ravine had appeared early.

  “I’ve never met her,” he said carefully. Eyes still focused ahead. “From the briefings… she’s practical. Grew up in smaller spaces. My guess? Horseback. Unless the road’s bad. Then whichever is safer.”

  “Practical,” Damon repeated, thinking of Kairi’s neat lines.

  You promised smaller halls when the palace grows too loud… Please show me the quiet courtyard with no business but sunlight—and the three better routes that avoid parades.

  He could picture it so clearly: her standing on some balcony she did not yet know, scanning the crowd for exits, for quieter doors.

  Kurt, unfortunately, took his silence as an opening to try to escape.

  “So if there’s nothing else—” He began.

  “There is,” Damon said. “Hypothetical. If you were a prince and you had a younger sister—”

  “I don’t,” Kurt said quickly.

  “In this hypothetical you do,” Damon persisted. “And two princes were trying to win her heart, who would you choose? Dato or me?”

  Kurt made a faint choking sound. “Highness—”

  “Come now,” Damon coaxed. “You’ve ridden with both of us. Which one would you trust not to drop her into a ravine?”

  Kurt’s jaw worked. Glanced once to Damon and then ahead again. “The one,” he said finally, “who doesn’t ask me that question.”

  Damon stared at him. Then, despite himself, he laughed. “That is… unfortunately fair. Alright, how about you test something with me and ride in here. I have lots of ideas."

  Up ahead, Darius glanced back, took in Kurt’s expression, and steered his horse closer.

  “Switch,” he called. “I’ll take this one.”

  Kurt seized the lifeline like a drowning man, saluted, and peeled away up the line.

  Damon watched him go, offended. “Was it something I said?”

  “Almost certainly,” Darius said, easing his stallion into Kurt’s place.

  They rode in silence for a stretch. Darius’s eyes scanned the road ahead; Damon fiddled with the window latch, as if he could will it into being a metaphorically non-creaky door.

  “So,” Damon said at last. “What are you expecting?”

  “From the ravine?” Darius asked. “Or the princess?”

  “Both,” Damon said. “But start with the less lethal.”

  Darius’s mouth twitched. “The ravine is predictable,” he said. “Narrow. One way in, one way out. If we’re hit, it’ll be at the bridge.”

  “Comforting,” Damon muttered. "So the Princess is far more lethal in your opinion?"

  “As for the Princess Kairi,” Darius went on, “I’m expecting someone who won’t appreciate having her life rearranged without warning, but will do it anyway if it keeps people alive.”

  “You sound very certain for someone who’s never met her.” Damon muttered.

  Darius adjusted his reins. “I’ve been assigned as her personal guard,” he said. “I make a habit of reading up on the people I’m expected to die for.”

  Damon considered that, his gaze dropping to his hands. “Jayce told you much?”

  “Enough,” Darius said. “She heals. Too much, sometimes. She doesn’t like being fussed over. She likes things that work. Doors that open when they’re supposed to. Kitchens that don’t run out of water. People who say what they mean.”

  Damon felt the folded rasp of Kairi’s letter against his ribs and, on impulse, reached for it. He didn’t hand it out, he wasn’t insane, but he unfolded it across his knee where he could see the tidy script.

  Darius glanced over seeing the Prince's head down looking at a letter. “You tell me,” Darius said. “She wrote to you. What did she say?”

  Damon’s throat went a little dry. It was one thing to hoard her words in his own head. Another to say them out loud.

  “She… thanked me for writing directly,” he said slowly. “Said my letter was like a door that didn’t creak. Unexpectedly kind.” He smiled, small, at the memory. “She asked me to keep my promise about smaller halls. When the palace grows too loud, she wants a quiet courtyard with no business but sunlight. And three better routes to avoid parades.”

  Darius’s eyes softened, just a fraction. "She sounds thoughtful."

  “She called my reputation ‘running faster than I do,’” Damon added. “But she said she’s new to Carlbrin and knows how rumors run races they never entered. She said if I’m practicing ‘useful before charming,’ I can prove it by guiding her to the best stall for mint tea and bread that’s not ready to slice yet.”

  “You did say that once,” Darius recalled. “About that bakery off the south square.”

  “I did,” Damon said. “Apparently I’m quotable now.”

  He glanced down again, tracing one line with his thumb.

  “She said if I laugh too loudly at the wrong hour, she’ll borrow a smile and make it look like it was her idea,” he went on, voice going quieter. “And if she asks too many questions at the wrong hour, she wants me to steer her toward a window seat that ‘does rain properly.’”

  “A window that does rain properly,” Darius repeated. “Very specific.”

  “She likes small constants,” Damon said. “She wants a corner for hopeful maps. A table that doesn’t mind pencil smudges. A chair that forgives tired people. And a kettle that remembers to boil.” His mouth tipped sideways. “She admitted her kettles forget. She promised to try to be civilized.”

  Darius let out a slow breath. “She sounds like someone who knows exactly what keeps her head above water,” he said. “And isn’t ashamed to name it.”

  “That’s what struck me,” Damon admitted. “She ended with… she thanked me for promising she wouldn’t have to navigate the noise alone. Said she’d try to be good company in the quiet and ask plainly when she needs doors kept clear.”

  He didn’t read the P.S. aloud. He didn’t need to. The lines etched themselves in his mind every time he closed his eyes.

  Will you show me the door that doesn’t stick for you. And maybe your secret hideaways throughout the palace.

  He swallowed and folded the letter again, carefully.

  “She sounds like a practical romantic,” Darius said. “Dangerous combination.”

  “Yes,” Damon said softly. “That’s exactly what she is.”

  For a few beats, only the clop of hooves and the rattle of the carriage filled the space between them. Darius cleared his throat.

  “Is this how you are when Fenway’s got you trapped in your study?” he asked. “This subdued version of you?”

  Damon let a smug smile slide back into place. “Whatever do you mean? Subdued? Never. It’s always chaos.”

  He flicked the window latch with one knuckle and shook himself out of the softness. "How do you think my brother is doing?"

  “Cheating,” Darius said, without heat. “Elegantly.”

  Damon grimaced. “I knew it.”

  Darius gave a brief, amused snort. “He volunteered to go ahead as a guard,” he said. “That tells you most of what you need to know. It’s a good assignment on paper—low profile, high stakes. But he wanted it. He wants to see who she is in smaller halls, before we drag her into big ones.”

  Damon looked down at his hands. “You sound very certain he’s serious.”

  “He told me once,” Darius said, “that if he was ever serious about a girl, he’d make sure either me or Zen ended up assigned to guard her. Someone he trusted to keep her alive instead of whatever court idiot got her by rank.”

  Damon absorbed that. “Did he recommend you for Kairi?”

  “Jayce did,” Darius said. “Dato just approved the list.” His mouth quirked. “He didn’t argue. Which, coming from him, is endorsement. And he’s eighteen, but his nineteenth Name Day is close. Soon he’ll have more say.”

  Damon glanced back toward the carriage wall, where the poem sat in his pocket. The phoenix lines suddenly felt… young, next to her quiet lists of maps and kettles and non-creaking doors.

  “She asked me for smaller halls and clear doors,” he murmured. “And I wrote her bird metaphors.”

  “You also rode out here,” Darius said. “That counts for something.”

  Damon huffed a soft laugh. “I suppose my approach tomorrow will have to be adaptable,” he said. “Grand gestures if they fit. Smaller halls if they don’t.”

  “If her brother turns out to be terrifying,” Darius advised, “start with the smaller halls.”

  “If her brother turns out to be terrifying,” Damon said, “I’m pushing Fenway in front of me.”

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  From the driver’s bench, Fenway’s put-upon sigh drifted back through the open window. “I heard that, Highness.”

  “You were meant to,” Damon called. Darius shook his head, but there was real amusement in his eyes now.

  Up the line, Jayce’s voice cut through the clatter, sharper. “Ravine ahead! Tighten up! One at a time over the bridge. Eyes open.”

  The land had been narrowing for the last mile: hills shouldering closer, rock hemming the road. Now the world pinched properly, the air changing as the ground dipped. The ravine yawned ahead, a dark cut in the earth. The stone bridge that spanned it looked indecently thin.

  “Comforting,” Damon muttered again.

  Darius’s whole posture shifted into readiness. His hand settled on the hilt at his hip, thumb resting against the guard. “We’ll be through before dusk,” he said. “We’ll be stopping at a inn tonight. Talk to Jayce tonight if you still need more stories about her.”

  “I’ve already asked him many questions,” Damon sighed.

  “Me too,” Darius said. He hesitated, then added, “Before I leave you to your thoughts—you didn’t call her your future wife once while we talked. I’d keep that up. Just use her name. She sounds old enough to know her title. She might not get enough people who remember her name.”

  He touched two fingers to his brow in a brief salute and nudged his horse forward as the line compressed for the crossing.

  The carriage rattled as it rolled onto the first stones of the bridge. Damon started to lean toward the window, then the driver hatch scraped open and Fenway looked down at him.

  “Don’t look out the windows,” Fenway said, like he’d done this before.

  Damon simply nodded and fixed his gaze on the floor. Heights were not, and had never been, his forte.

  The wheels thumped over stone. The sound of the drop was different here, air hollow under the bridge. Damon closed his eyes as they rattled forward, focusing on the weight of the letter instead of the empty space beneath them.

  Useful before charming, he thought. Maybe that could start with not screaming on a bridge.

  He thought about what Darius had said, about doors that opened, about someone who knew her own anchors and wasn’t ashamed to name them.

  Maybe, when he finally met her, he could try being more honest, less show. Less performing Damon, more… himself. At least when they had hours in a carriage and nowhere to hide.

  He nodded once to himself, a small, private resolve. That’s the plan, Damon. For now, not dying seemed like an excellent first attempt.

  The inn at the waystation wasn’t much to look at from the outside, leaning sign, tired shutters, but the stew was hot, the bread was soft instead of brick-hard, and the beds upstairs had actual mattresses instead of boards. By the sound of it, Zen and Kurt would have married the mattresses on the spot.

  “This,” Zen declared around a mouthful of bread, “is civilization. I don’t care what the map says.”

  Kurt nodded fervent agreement, staring into his second bowl of stew like it might vanish. “Soft beds,” he murmured. “Real pillows. This is what we fight for.”

  Darius sat with them at the corner table, turning his cup in his hands, letting their chatter wash past. From here, he had a good view of the room. Fenway sat near the hearth with Damon’s folded page in hand, lips moving as he read. Sometimes his brows drew together; sometimes his shoulders shook like he was smothering a laugh. Dedicated personal guard, Darius thought. Not just to the man’s body, apparently to his poetry, too.

  Against the far wall, Damon had cornered Jayce. The captain still wore the day’s dust, mask pushed up on his head, a ledger open beside his elbow. Damon sat leaning forward, hands moving as he spoke; Jayce’s expression was the particular flat exhaustion of a man who’d already answered too many questions and could see more coming.

  Darius couldn’t quite help the small smirk that tugged at his mouth. He wondered, briefly, if Kylar was getting his own questions answered. If Brindlecross had given him what he’d wanted: a chance to see if she’d see him as himself, without the crown.

  He looked down into his cup and remembered the way Kylar had looked when they’d pinned him in the barracks kitchen and started asking him when they learned both of the Princes were invested.

  “Remember, masks up tomorrow,” Darius said, lifting his cup a little to get Zen and Kurt’s attention. “All of us. So Kylar doesn’t look strange being the only one hiding his face.”

  Zen groaned, but nodded. Kurt did too, though his shoulders slumped. “Dare,” Zen said, elbowing him lightly, “you have some big responsibilities tomorrow. You think she’ll be kind to you? Or ignore you completely?”

  Kurt let his head fall back over the chair, staring at the rafters. “I hope she’s kind and quiet,” he said. “And doesn’t ask me hypothetical questions.”

  Darius snorted into his drink. “Kurt,” he said mildly, “have you ever hypothetically thought about being the Tearian prince’s personal guard? I don’t think anyone’s been assigned to him yet.”

  Kurt froze. Then he slowly lowered his head to stare at Darius, horror dawning. “Hypothetically,” he said, voice very small, “I think the Tearian prince would be better at protecting me than I would be at protecting him.”

  Zen burst out laughing. “Don’t sell yourself short, Kurt. You’re a great guard.”

  Kurt blinked. “…wait,” he said. “Is this your way of telling me that’s what my future post is going to be? Please say no.”

  Darius kept his face straight. “Would you prefer the princess instead?”

  Zen and Darius both watched the last bit of color drain from Kurt’s face. Zen actually wheezed, folding over the table.

  “You are not being put on the Tearian prince,” Zen gasped. “Breathe, man.” Kurt made a faint noise like his soul had just exited through the ceiling.

  Zen turned back to Darius, still grinning. “So what are you worried about, really, for your first official personal guard assignment?”

  Darius set his cup down and turned it once between his palms. “That she won’t know what to do with me,” he said, after a moment.

  “Really?” Zen’s brows went up.

  Darius nodded. “She hasn’t lived as a noble or a royal in decades, from what Jayce said. She’s used to small shops, small houses, doors that don’t creak because she fixed the hinges herself. What if having me following her everywhere is just… one more weight? What if she spends half her time trying to ditch me?”

  Zen thought about that, mouth twisting. “But isn’t that what Kylar is doing right now?” he pointed out. “Following her around everywhere? Hopefully he’s already preparing her for your brooding quiet and broad shoulders.”

  “I do make a good wall,” Darius admitted. “You do,” Zen agreed. “Very scenic wall.”

  Kurt finally dragged himself back into the conversation. “What if she dislikes both of them,” he blurted.

  Both of them looked at him. Kurt swallowed. “The princes, I mean. What if she doesn’t like Dato or Damon?”

  Zen’s grin came back, sharp and immediate. “Then we all have a fair chance.” Darius sighed and scrubbed a hand over his face. “I’ll make a note,” he said dryly, “to stand between you and the princess.”

  Zen raised his cup in a mock toast. “To duty,” he said.

  Kurt raised his as well, still pale. “To… hypotheticals never coming true.”

  Darius huffed a soft laugh. “You two finish up and enjoy the beds,” he said, pushing back his chair. “I’m going to get pointers from Fen.”

  Zen and Kurt waved him off, already arguing quietly about which beds upstairs would be farthest from the snorers. Darius crossed the room to the table by the hearth and pulled out a chair. Fenway glanced up from the page in front of him, Damon’s ballad draft, judging by the cramped lines and occasional crossed-out flourish, and then went back to jotting a note in the margin.

  “Darius,” he greeted.

  “Fenway,” Darius returned, lifting his cup in a small salute before taking the seat. He let the silence sit a moment, listening to the crackle of the fire, the murmur of the common room, the scratch of Fen’s pen.

  “What are some things you wish you’d known,” Darius asked finally, “before you became a personal guard to royalty?”

  Fen didn’t answer right away.

  He finished the line he was writing, then carefully laid the pen down and folded the page once, fingertips resting on it while he thought. Up close, Darius could see the tiny ink calluses on his fingers, the kind that spoke of reports as much as swords.

  Fen watched the younger man from under his lashes, taking him in properly. He remembered him as a lean, sharp-eyed first-year, half an inch shorter than Kylar, trying twice as hard to keep up with the prince and refusing to be impressed by his title. He’d watched that same boy grow into this: shoulders broader, eyes narrower, the kind of man who read assignments twice and then went looking for the people who could tell him what the reports left out.

  Good, Fen thought. At least one of them is studying for this.

  “I wish,” Fen said at last, “someone had told me some days were going to be really hard.” He looked up, eyes steady. “Not hard like taking a blade for them. Not hard because they’re impossible. Hard because all you can do is sit there and watch them fall apart.”

  Darius hadn’t been expecting that answer. His mind flicked, unbidden, to the people he’d seen in those orbits: Ezra, always near Niveus’s shoulder; Jayce, planted at Ryder’s side whenever council let him; Tessa, a permanent shadow at Dato’s back. The quiet hours after bad news. The way the room bent around grief or anger.

  Fen’s thoughts went further back, to days when he’d been the one watching from a doorway as older men argued about maps with Tearian borders. He remembered Mylain as a place in a book before it became a word people lowered their voices for. He remembered the day the news had come of its fall, how the palace had gone strangely still. Naberia had absorbed the shock, adjusted its treaties, trained its sons. Tearia had vanished from the map but not from the corridors.

  And now they were riding out to greet the ghosts of that story. Not polished royals raised on court dances, but a prince and princess who had been on the run for thirty years.

  “In your honest opinion,” Darius said slowly, “do you think the princess will have more of those moments than the princes?”

  Fen shrugged one shoulder, a small, economical gesture. “They’re all just people, Dare,” he said. “You know Dato. You’ve been at enough outposts with him. You’ve seen him have panic attacks. You’ve seen Damon burn himself out trying to be everything at once. Ryder grind his teeth down over a council paper.” His mouth twitched. “They all have their moments. Same as we do.”

  He picked up the folded sheet, looked at it for a breath as if weighing more than Damon’s rhymes, then set it aside again.

  “Princess Kairi is elven,” he went on. “She’s from Tearia. She had to have escaped Mylain when the city fell. I was a boy when that happened, barely tall enough to see over the table, but I remember the way the adults talked.” His gaze went distant, then refocused on Darius. “Don’t be surprised if there are remnants of that trauma. Old ghosts. Old storms. Our king read about it in reports. She lived it.”

  Darius’s fingers tightened slightly around his cup. “You think it’ll be… that bad?”

  “I think,” Fen said, “you shouldn’t go in expecting her to be grateful for a shadow she didn’t ask for. Or for you to fix what happened to her when she was a child.” His gaze sharpened, the way it did when Damon tried to duck training. “Your job isn’t to keep her from ever breaking. No one can do that. Your job is to make sure she doesn’t break alone. And that she doesn’t stay there.”

  Darius sat with that, letting it sink past the easy answers.

  “Don’t hover,” Fen added. “She grew up in small rooms and bigger silences. If you loom over her like a badly placed wardrobe, she’ll find ways to slip you. Give her space when she reaches for it. Be there when she doesn’t.”

  Darius huffed a quiet breath, the closest he’d come tonight to a laugh. “Zen said something like that,” he admitted. “That Kylar was already preparing her for my brooding quiet and broad shoulders.”

  “He’s not wrong,” Fen said. “Kylar’s been following her around Brindlecross for a week now. If she hasn’t shoved him into a river yet, that’s a good sign.”

  Darius huffed a little laugh. “Should we be concerned for the health of our prince?”

  Fen shrugged, lazy but not unkind. “Are you concerned for Kylar?”

  Darius thought about it. “No,” he said finally. “If he ends up in a river, it’ll be his own fault.”

  Fen’s mouth curved. He’d watched Kylar grow from a boy with scabbed knuckles into the man currently cheating his way into a princess’s good graces, and he’d watched Darius try to keep up with him every step of the way. This new assignment was heavy. It was also exactly the kind of weight Darius had been training his shoulders to carry.

  “What else do you have to ask, Dare?” Fen prodded, after a beat.

  Darius looked into the fire for a long moment. “What about you?” he said at last. “If you could go back to the first day you were assigned to Damon… what would you tell yourself?”

  Fen considered. His gaze drifted past the flames, past the walls, to far too many rooms and roads: a boy-prince with ink on his fingers and bruises on his shins, one who laughed too loud and hid too well when the world pressed in.

  “I’d tell myself he’s louder than you think,” Fen said, “kinder than he pretends, and more breakable than he’ll ever admit.” A small, crooked smile tugged at his mouth. “And that you’re allowed to care. It’ll make the bad days hurt more, but it’ll make the good ones make sense.”

  He glanced back at Darius, saw the way the younger man soaked that in like instruction instead of comfort. He’d seen plenty of guards treat assignments like promotion. Darius was treating this like a promise.

  “Same will be true for her,” Fen went on. “If you do this properly.”

  Darius nodded once, feeling something steady and solid settle in his chest, like a post being driven in. “Thank you,” he said quietly.

  Fen reached for Damon’s folded poem again, expression turning wry. “Do me a favor in return.”

  “Name it.”

  “When your princess is overwhelmed,” Fen said, “don’t let Damon near her with poetry.”

  Darius actually laughed. “I’ll add it to my list of duties,” he said.

  “Good man,” Fen muttered, and bent back over Damon’s latest lines, crossing out a particularly egregious rhyme. Beside him, Darius went quiet, shoulders squaring a little as he imagined what it would mean to be a wall someone could lean on without it creaking.

  “Another thing,” Fen said, pen pausing mid-scratch.

  “Hm?” Darius glanced over.

  “Be ready to be a wall between her and whichever prince she doesn’t choose.”

  Darius went still. He’d been picturing blades and ambushes, crowded halls and bad-tempered nobles, standing between her and obvious threats. He hadn’t let himself dwell on this one yet: being the man who stepped, politely but firmly, between a girl and a heartbreak that came with a title.

  “Dato or Damon,” he said slowly.

  “And maybe Rush, one day, in a different way,” Fen said. “Brothers don’t always agree on what’s best. You’ll be in the middle of more than arrows.” His tone carried the weight of someone who had watched these princes grow from boys into problems, against the backdrop of a kingdom that never quite forgot Tearia’s fall.

  Darius let out a slow breath, seeing it then: Damon, charming and loud and earnest with his ballads; Dato, quiet and stubborn and already cheating with small-town days; Rush, he didn't know the man, but from what he learned from Jayce, his family was his biggest concern; that remaining family the princess he was to protect.

  “If she picks one,” Darius said, “the other still has to live in the same palace.”

  “And see her at breakfast,” Fen said dryly. “That’s where you come in. You make sure ‘no’ doesn’t turn into punishment. You make sure doors still open when she needs them. Even if someone’s pride is bruised.”

  Darius’s fingers tapped once against his cup, then stilled. “Stand between her and their worst impulses,” he summarized.

  “Exactly.” Fen’s gaze softened for a heartbeat. “You’re not just her shield against enemies. You’re her shield against the people who swear they love her and forget what that means when they’re hurt.”

  Darius nodded, slower this time, the understanding sinking past armor and training. Ravines. Ambushes. Crowded courts. Quiet rooms where old ghosts breathed too loud. And somewhere in all of that, two princes nursing bruised egos and one dragon-brother whose love could scorch as much as guard.

  “I can do that,” he said.

  Fen watched him, saw the way the words settled and held. The boy from first-year drills, now about to stand between a princess and the world.

  “Then you’ll do fine,” Fen said, and turned back to Damon’s poem about phoenixes and windows, while Darius stared into the fire and quietly added broken-hearted princes to the list of things he was willing to stand in front of.