Once the perimeter was checked, the road exhaled.

  The guards loosened by degrees, not fully relaxing, but settling into that practiced in-between where men eat, drink, and keep a hand’s reach from their steel. Horses nosed into the stream and drank loud and grateful. The carriage wheels creaked as the weight shifted, and somewhere down the line a leather strap was tightened with the soft, rhythmic patience of routine.

  Damon and Rush had claimed a patch of shade near the carriage like it was a council chamber. Damon’s cloak was off, sleeves immaculate, hair falling in that infuriatingly effortless way that made it look like he woke up looking apologetic for being handsome. He held a folded map open with one hand, the other tracing routes with a gloved finger. Rush listened with that sharp, dragon-cold attention of his, the kind that pretended to be boredom until it suddenly wasn’t.

  Kairi slipped down from the carriage before anyone could argue. Darius was at her side immediately, not hovering, but present. The kind of presence that didn’t ask permission, because it was his job not to.

  She did a slow look around, checking angles the way she’d taught herself to in Brindlecross, then turned her head toward him, braid swinging.

  “Are you going to follow me everywhere?” she asked, not unkindly. Just tired.

  Darius didn’t flinch. He actually considered it, like she’d asked him how she preferred her tea.

  “How would you like me to follow you?” he replied. “Close enough to intercept stupidity, or far enough that you can pretend you’re alone?”

  Kairi huffed a small laugh. “I’ll think on it.”

  She gestured for him to keep pace and walked straight toward Slate and Onyx, where Jayce and Kylar stood talking in low voices.

  Jayce looked up first, grin already forming as if he could smell entertainment. Kylar followed a breath later, and his posture shifted subtly when he saw her. Not dramatic. Just… ready.

  Kairi didn’t bother with subtle either. She grabbed Kylar’s arm and hugged it tight to her chest like she’d decided that was where her sanity lived now.

  “Dato,” she said with theatrical despair, “I have listened to far too much information about troop movements for a month. Please let me ride with you the rest of the day.”

  Jayce barked a laugh, then immediately angled it toward Darius like the man had become his favorite source of verified gossip.

  “Is Damon buttering up Rush?” Jayce asked.

  Darius gave a small, polite nod that somehow managed to look like a report being delivered to a king. “Yes. Extensively. Ports, supply lines, coastal patrols, inland routes. There were hypotheticals. Diagrams. At least one mention of Saebrian interference that included the word ‘inevitable.’” He paused, then added in the same steady tone, “Also, I learned she climbs towers. I request you do not let her do that while we are out on the road.”

  Kairi’s eyes narrowed. “I climbed one tower.”

  “It was tall,” Darius said. “And you looked pleased with yourself.”

  Kylar’s mouth twitched. He leaned a fraction closer to Kairi, voice low. “Do you want to ride with me, or do you want your own horse?”

  Onyx chose that moment to shove his massive head against Kairi’s shoulder and huff like he’d already made the decision.

  Kylar’s hand went to the stallion’s forehead, familiar and steady. “Or you can just steal my horse. He clearly prefers you.”

  Kairi leaned into Onyx and scratched behind his ear. “Like his owner does.”

  Kylar flushed immediately, the color racing up his cheeks like it had been waiting for an excuse. Jayce’s grin widened into something bright and merciless.

  “Aww,” Jayce said. “Is that true, Kylar?”

  Kylar shot him a look that promised consequences.

  Slate nudged Jayce out of the way with quiet authority and pushed his muzzle toward Kairi too, patiently demanding his due. Kairi laughed, gave him a few strokes along the cheek and forehead, and Slate’s eyelids lowered like a spoiled cat accepting worship.

  Jayce made a show of sighing. “Slate, you missed her. Maybe she has sugar cubes.”

  “She has poor judgment,” Kylar muttered, and Kairi did not deny it.

  Darius stepped slightly closer, forming a subtle barrier between Kairi and the wider road. Not possessive. Protective. The difference mattered, and Kairi noticed it.

  Jayce glanced at him. “Surviving the carriage?”

  Darius nodded. “Yes.”

  Kylar stretched his shoulders once. “Damon behaving?”

  “He is,” Darius replied. “He was the model prince while Rush was engaged, and when Rush began to stare out the window like he was planning an escape, Damon redirected his attention.” He hesitated, then corrected himself with visible effort. “To the Princess and to me. We discussed… what she would like me to be.”

  Jayce’s eyebrows climbed. “And what is he to be, Kairi?”

  Kairi shrugged, eyes drifting between the horses like they were safer company than politics. “I told him to be himself and do what makes sense.”

  Kylar’s gaze slid to Darius with immediate sympathy. “So you have no idea what to do.”

  Darius narrowed his eyes. “I am figuring it out.” Then he latched onto the one problem that sounded like it came with rules. “Also. Ash Guard. What are the main functions of this role?”

  Kairi’s smile softened. “An Ash Guard is a knight of the Phoenix Vessel,” she said, as if she were explaining a familiar thing.

  The air changed.

  Jayce blinked hard, like his brain had stumbled.

  Kylar went still in that quiet, dangerous way he had when he was processing something too big to show on his face.

  Darius looked from Kairi to Kylar, searching for the explanation he assumed the prince would have.

  Jayce recovered first, because Jayce always did, even when the topic made him want to sit down. “I knew Rush was the Dragon’s vessel,” he said slowly. “I knew you were Phoenix blessed...not the Phoenix's vessel."

  Kairi’s expression shifted into something sheepish and real. “I… never finished my training,” she admitted. “So I don’t know what I’m supposed to know. I know what I’ve had to learn to survive. I know what the Phoenix feels like when it’s quiet, and when it isn’t. But the formal pieces?” She shook her head. “I didn’t get those.”

  Darius’s brow furrowed. “Vessel,” he repeated carefully. “Does that mean… what it sounds like?”

  Kylar’s mouth tightened as he searched for an answer and found only fragments. He lifted a shoulder in a helpless shrug. “My father is the only vessel we have,” he said. “Ryder is blessed. Damon is blessed. But… the Griffin and the Lion haven’t chosen a vessel in centuries.”

  Darius stared at him a moment, then back at Kairi, clearly recalibrating what “personal guard” meant when the person in question could be something old and holy and hunted.

  “So,” Darius said, choosing his words, “what do you need from an Ash Guard that you would not need from… a normal guard?”

  Kairi opened her hands, palms up, honest. “I don’t know,” she said. “Not fully. That’s the problem. I don’t know the doctrine. I know the dangers."

  Jayce pointed toward the distant horizon like it was the simplest thing in the world. “Carlbrin has temples,” he said. “Priests. Texts. Archives. If the knowledge exists anywhere, it exists there. We can go and learn. You should be able to learn.”

  It hit Kairi like sunlight through a window she’d been afraid to open. Her eyes brightened so fast it almost hurt to see.

  “Really?” she breathed.

  Jayce’s grin softened. “Really.”

  Kairi turned her head slightly, scanning the carriage, the guards, the shadows. Then she lifted her chin toward Shade, lounging near the back like a man who belonged to darkness and dared anyone to argue.

  Shade perked immediately when he realized he was being indicated, posture shifting from idle to attentive in a heartbeat. Not quite a soldier’s snap, but something close.

  “He’s dragon-blessed,” Kairi said, voice lower. “A dragon knight. A Draggoon.” Her gaze flicked to Darius. “He may have more information on what you need as Ash Guard. What to expect. What to watch for.”

  Darius followed her gesture. He gave Shade a short nod, respectful and cautious. “If you are willing.”

  Shade’s mouth twitched like he found the whole situation amusing and deadly in equal measure. “Always willing,” he said, and somehow made it sound like a warning and a promise at the same time.

  Before anyone could fall too deep into questions that would take all afternoon, Jayce swung up into his saddle with practiced ease and called down the line.

  “Well,” he said, loud enough for the group to hear, “we can talk more about expectations and guards tonight at the inn. Mount up.”

  He rode off a few paces, already becoming motion and direction again, the way he always did when the road needed a captain.

  Kylar turned back to Kairi and offered his hand to help her up.

  Kairi looked at his hand, then at his face, and her mouth curved with that wicked little confidence she’d been collecting since she stopped being only afraid.

  She ignored his hand completely and mounted Onyx with easy grace, like she’d been born doing it. The stallion didn’t even shift, just accepted her weight as if this was the correct order of the world.

  Kylar stared for a second, then huffed a quiet laugh and swung up behind her, settling close enough that his presence bracketed her. His voice dropped to her ear, private.

  “Is this okay?”

  Kairi leaned back into him, letting herself rest against the solid line of his chest as Onyx moved under them, impatient to be traveling again.

  “Very much so,” she murmured. “Dato.”

  Across the clearing, Damon’s head turned. His charming mask did not slip, not fully, but his eyes narrowed, and something sharp crossed his expression before he smoothed it away.

  Rush was watching too, gaze fixed on Kylar’s hands around the reins, on Kairi’s posture against him, on the quiet intimacy of it sitting plainly in daylight.

  For a moment, the entire escort felt like it held its breath.

  Then Jayce’s voice rang out again with a sharper command to move, and the road reclaimed them, one hoofbeat at a time. By the time they rolled out again, the escort had redistributed itself like a deck being reshuffled. Inside the carriage, the world shrank to polished wood, leather seats, and the steady sway of wheels over rutted road. The curtains were half-drawn against the sun, but not enough to stop Damon from angling his head toward the window anyway. He watched the line of riders beside them, eyes tracking the big black war-stallion with the same focus he usually reserved for a gambling table when the final card turned. Kylar sat behind Kairi like he belonged there. Kairi’s head tipped back in laughter at something Kylar said, and Onyx tossed his mane as if he, too, was amused.

  Damon’s mouth curved, but it didn’t reach his eyes.

  “May I ask you something, Prince Rush?”

  Rush didn’t look away from the window at first. The carriage light caught the sharp line of his profile and the faint dragon-scar sheen that lived under his skin like a warning. “Just Rush is fine.”

  “Rush,” Damon corrected easily, as if he’d always had the right to say it. He tapped the window frame once with his knuckle. “And you can call me Damon going forward. If we’re going to be riding together for days, we might as well stop pretending we don’t know each other’s names.”

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  Rush’s attention shifted back to him, slow and assessing. “You want to know about your brother.”

  Damon laughed under his breath, caught and unbothered. “That obvious?”

  “Your eyes keep following him like he’s about to steal your favorite knife,” Rush said flatly.

  Damon’s grin widened at that. “He already has my favorite princess, apparently.” His gaze slid back to the window. “He’s smitten with her. Was he charming?” Damon asked, a note of genuine curiosity threading through the banter. “Or did he go the full dark tall and mysterious route?”

  Rush’s jaw tightened just a fraction. The truth of it had too many layers: six years of dreams, a god-beast bond, a boy who’d held his sister’s storms with bare hands. The kind of story you didn’t tell in a carriage, to a man who smiled like a weapon.

  “He helped her,” Rush said, choosing the simplest stone to throw across the water. “In her work. They got close through normal means.”

  Damon’s brows rose, as if “normal” was the strangest part of that sentence. “Normal,” he repeated, then nodded slowly. “All right. The rarest magic of all.” He glanced back out again. “He said she already knew he was a prince.”

  Rush’s frown sharpened, not at Damon, but at the idea. “Maybe Jayce let something slip,” he said. “Or she overheard something, and decided to test him.” His eyes narrowed slightly as he replayed the week through secondhand reports and what he’d witnessed himself. “He didn’t tell her until near the end.”

  Damon’s expression softened into something almost respectful. “So he tried,” he said quietly, like he knew what trying cost.

  Rush didn’t answer that. Instead he watched Damon watching them, watched the way Damon’s posture stayed relaxed while his mind clearly ran numbers and possibilities behind his eyes.

  Damon noticed the stare and finally turned his head, meeting Rush’s gaze head-on.

  “Got something to say?” he asked, tone light. Not defensive. Just… ready.

  Rush looked out the window again, as if checking the road gave him permission to speak. When he looked back, his voice was calm but deliberate.

  “After the next stop, I’ll leave you to ride with her alone for a while,” he said. “I need to talk to Jayce.”

  Damon blinked, then smiled like he’d just been offered a very expensive drink on someone else’s coin. “Thank you,” he said, the words smooth but not mocking. “For the kind gift.”

  Rush’s shoulder lifted in a shrug that said he didn’t care, and the tightness in his mouth said he cared a great deal. “It isn’t a gift.”

  Damon’s smile lingered. “No?”

  “Options,” Rush corrected. “She deserves them.”

  Damon’s gaze held his for a beat longer than polite. “And you’re hoping she chooses wisely,” he said, reading the subtext without effort.

  Rush didn’t deny it.

  Damon leaned back slightly, settling into the seat as the carriage rocked. “We will work on the trust,” he said, and there was something honest under the charm now. “You don’t trust either of us, do you?”

  Rush’s gaze slid over him, slow as a blade leaving a sheath. “I trust your brother more than I trust you.”

  Damon’s brows lifted. “That’s a harsh ranking.”

  “He let me beat him senseless in sparring,” Rush said.

  For a heartbeat, Damon just stared. Then his mouth twisted into a grin again, helpless and amused. “He would,” he murmured, watching Kylar’s profile through the glass. “He always did have that self-sacrificing streak. Makes him easier to love and easier to kill, depending on the day.”

  Rush’s eyes sharpened. “Don’t talk about killing him.”

  Damon’s grin didn’t move, but his tone sobered. “I wasn’t planning to. I was acknowledging how he survives. There’s a difference.” He glanced back at Rush. “Besides. I don’t do sparring.”

  Rush’s expression stayed flat, but his eyes said of course you don’t.

  Damon lifted a hand, palm up. “Verbally,” he added. “I can spar verbally.”

  Rush gave a short exhale that might have been a laugh in another man. “Yes,” he said. “I’ve noticed.”

  They rode in silence for a few moments after that, the carriage’s motion filling the space. Outside, the escort line shifted around a bend, riders adjusting their spacing. Kylar leaned closer to Kairi to say something, and she tipped her head back against him briefly like it was the most natural thing in the world.

  Damon watched it with a thoughtful frown, then looked back to Rush.

  “You’re afraid,” Damon said, quiet enough that the words didn’t feel like a challenge. “Not of me. Not of him. Of what happens if she gets hurt again.”

  Rush’s gaze stayed forward. When he spoke, his voice was controlled, but something rough lived under it.

  “I’m afraid of what I’ll do if she does,” he said.

  For a beat, the carriage only held the creak of leather and the soft rattle of harnesses outside.

  Then Damon’s mouth curved, slow and bright, like he’d found the one shared language that didn’t require trust yet.

  “To being older brothers with younger siblings,” he said, and lifted an invisible glass in the air between them.

  Rush didn’t smile, exactly. But the tightness at the corner of his mouth eased, the smallest loosening of a knot that had been there too long.

  “Mm,” he agreed, and the sound was half curse, half toast.

  They stopped again not long after, the escort tightening into a practiced coil. The horses snorted and stamped as guards fanned out to check lines of sight. The carriage rocked once as Rush stood.

  “I’m going to stretch my legs,” he said, already halfway to the door.

  Damon inclined his head. “Try not to terrify anyone just by existing.”

  Rush shot him a look that promised nothing good, then stepped down into the daylight and the bustle. The door shut, and the inside of the carriage fell quiet in a way that felt… weighted. Like a room after someone snuffs a candle.

  Damon stayed seated for a moment, hands folded loosely, staring at the opposite bench as if the wood grain might offer him a prophecy. Outside, he could hear voices, metal on leather, the soft murmur of townsfolk who always appeared when royalty did, like the world itself leaned in.

  The window curtain shifted.

  Fenway’s face appeared in the opening, shadowed by the angle of the sun. He looked like he’d been carved out of long days and longer patience.

  Damon brightened on instinct. “Fen.”

  Fenway sighed the way only a man who had served this family for years could sigh. Not disrespectful. Just… tired in a familiar way. “Need anything?”

  Damon shook his head. “I’m good, Fen.” His gaze slid toward the window again, to where Kylar and Kairi would be somewhere in the moving constellation of people. “Soon I get to try.”

  Fenway’s eyes narrowed just a fraction, not unkindly. “Do try,” he said softer, as if he were speaking to a younger man than Damon liked to be.

  Then he withdrew, the curtain settling back, and Damon was alone again with the quiet and the very loud thud of his own intention.

  Time passed in small motions. Hooves shifting. A guard calling something down the line. A faint laugh somewhere. The clink of a canteen being set down.

  Finally the carriage door opened again.

  Kairi climbed in first, Darius right behind her like a shadow that had decided it was allowed to be seen. Dust smudged the hem of her dress. Her braid had loosened just enough to make her look more like herself and less like a portrait.

  Damon rose with the sort of graceful ease that made it look like he’d been standing there the whole time, waiting only because it pleased him to wait.

  “Welcome back, my lady,” he said, and bowed in a way that made the carriage feel briefly like a ballroom.

  Kairi laughed, the sound warm and unguarded, and sat beside him with a familiarity that surprised him even as he savored it. “Thank you, my prince.”

  Damon’s smile turned smug in the way he couldn’t help. “I'll accept that promotion from you.”

  Across from them, Darius settled into the other seat, posture straight, eyes alert, but his expression had that faintly resigned look of a man who had accepted that guarding Kairi meant enduring the social consequences of Kairi. He didn’t interrupt. He simply listened, cataloguing, like a blade being sharpened against information.

  Damon angled his body toward her, voice dipping into the conversational cadence he used when he actually cared what the answers were.

  “So,” he said, “tell me something I can’t learn from a report. What do you like? Not what you should like. Not what’s appropriate to like. What’s yours.”

  Kairi leaned back, considering him, eyes bright with that particular mischief that looked less like trouble and more like a dare.

  “I like height,” she said. “I like towers and rooftops and anywhere you can see the world stretch out and pretend it isn’t complicated.”

  Darius cleared his throat so pointedly it could have been a weapon.

  Kairi didn’t even glance at him. “I like books that smell like old paper,” she continued, “and tea that’s too hot, and…” She paused, as if deciding whether Damon had earned the next part. “…and I like when people tell the truth even if it’s inconvenient.”

  Damon’s brows rose. “Dangerous preference.”

  “Only to liars,” she said easily.

  He laughed, delighted in spite of himself. “All right. Then I’ll give you one: I like places where I can make people smile. It’s a selfish habit. I enjoy the result.”

  Kairi hummed, thoughtful. “And food?”

  “Bread,” Damon said immediately. “Not fancy. Good bread. The kind that makes you stop talking so you can pay attention to it.”

  “That’s the most noble thing you’ve said so far,” she teased.

  Damon pressed a hand to his heart in mock offense. “I’ll recover.”

  They talked as the carriage began to roll again, the gentle sway returning. Damon asked about music. About weather. About whether she liked cities or open fields more. About what she missed from Tearia that wasn’t a title or a tragedy.

  Kairi answered with the sort of honesty that kept slipping around his charm and landing somewhere real.

  And slowly, like he’d done it a hundred times with a hundred different rooms, Damon began to thread the smallest of tests into the conversation. Not cruel ones. Not traps. Just openings.

  At one point, when her laughter softened and her gaze drifted toward the window as if her thoughts had wandered to something heavier, Damon let his hand rest on his knee, palm up. Open. Waiting.

  No words.

  Just the question in the shape of his hand: Will you meet me here?

  Kairi’s eyes flicked down. She smiled at his palm, then placed her hand in his with deliberate gentleness, like she understood exactly what she was allowing and exactly what she wasn’t.

  Her fingers were warm. Her grip was light but steady.

  Damon’s breath caught in a way he refused to show.

  “You have pretty smooth hands,” she noted, amused, thumb brushing his palm as if confirming it.

  Damon’s smile turned crooked. “I verbally spar,” he said. “No physical endurance.”

  Darius made a quiet sound that might have been a cough and might have been judgment.

  Kairi’s eyes crinkled. “So you’re admitting you’d lose a sword fight.”

  “I’m admitting,” Damon said, closing his hand around hers and holding it, “that if I had to survive on swords alone, I’d be dead by lunch.”

  She didn’t pull away.

  He took that as a win, small and shining and dangerously hopeful.

  Kairi lifted their joined hands, turning Damon’s palm this way and that like she was reading a map written in calluses and faint lines. Her thumb traced the heel of his hand with a healer’s absent-minded precision.

  It was such a small thing. It felt… personal anyway. Damon watched her as if she’d pulled a curtain aside and he’d accidentally seen a room that was only meant for family.

  His gaze flicked to her fingers. Hers were rougher than a court lady’s ought to be. Honest hands. Working hands.

  “Are you comparing my hand to Dato’s?” Damon asked, half tease, half genuine curiosity he couldn’t quite smother.

  “No,” she said simply, without even looking up.

  That bluntness made him blink.

  She finally raised her eyes, and the seriousness there softened the next words. “To mine, actually. I was thinking I should probably tend to my hands and skin… before other ladies notice that I use my hands.”

  Her mouth quirked as if she knew how ridiculous it sounded and didn’t care. Like she’d rather be practical than pretty and was only now remembering the palace would have opinions about it.

  Damon’s expression gentled. Without making a show of it, he lifted their joined hands toward his face and pressed a slow kiss to her knuckles.

  “Most ladies wear gloves,” he said, voice low, easy. “So no need to fret about it.”

  The tension in her shoulders eased. Not much. Just enough that Damon saw it and filed it away like a victory he didn’t want to jinx.

  Kairi studied him again, thoughtful now, the way she looked when she was weighing what sort of person someone was beneath the words they offered.

  Then she leaned slightly closer, as if the carriage walls could overhear.

  “Can you show me the lake from the walls?” she asked. “Ryder spoke of it sometimes when he came.”

  Damon’s smile held, but something behind it shifted. He didn’t pull away. He didn’t deflect with a joke. He just… chose honesty.

  “That will have to be something you do with Dato,” he said, and rested their hands back on his knee like he was anchoring himself to the carriage floor. “Heights… I don’t do heights.”

  The admission cost him more than he let show. He watched her carefully for the flicker of amusement, the flash of disdain, the teasing that could turn sharp if a person wanted it to.

  What he feared most wasn’t the joke. It was the look some nobles gave when they discovered a crack in a prince’s armor and decided it was entertainment. He hated that his fear was something a court could turn into sport. Kairi didn’t give him any of that. She just nodded once, accepting it as a fact about him the way she accepted rain or wind. No judgment, no push, no eager urge to test it.

  “Okay,” she said, like the word itself was a promise: I heard you.

  Damon exhaled without meaning to.

  Then Kairi turned her head toward Darius with the kind of expression that meant someone was about to be interviewed whether they agreed or not.

  Darius blinked, already bracing.

  “Darius,” she started.

  He nodded, resigned. “Yes, my lady.”

  She gestured vaguely, as if indicating all of Carlbrin with one hand. “Is the wall a place you would be anxious about me walking on?”

  “Yes,” Darius said immediately.

  Damon’s brows lifted. No hesitation. No polite cushioning. Just truth fired like an arrow.

  Kairi didn’t look offended. She looked satisfied. “Even with Dato or Ryder?” she asked, as if she were narrowing down variables in a spell.

  Darius paused this time, actually considering. His eyes drifted briefly to the window, as if he could see the palace walls in his mind and measure distances the way guards did.

  “Either would be fine,” he said at last. “They go up there a lot. To think.”

  Damon made a small amused sound. “To brood,” he corrected gently.

  Darius’s mouth twitched like he wanted to argue but didn’t because it was undeniably accurate. “To think,” he repeated, firmer, as if brooding was not an official royal activity and therefore did not exist.

  Kairi’s lips pressed together, fighting a smile. “So,” she said, looking back to Damon, “you won’t take me to the wall because you don’t do heights.”

  "Correct." Damon answered

  “And Darius won’t like me on the wall because he will worry.”

  "Also correct." Darius answered

  “And Dato and Ryder go to the wall to… think.”

  Darius nodded solemnly, as if he’d just delivered wisdom.

  Damon watched Kairi’s face as she put it all together. There was something bright in her eyes, not childish excitement, but the spark of a person who’d spent too long without options and was now cataloguing them with hungry, careful hope.

  He tightened his fingers around hers, just slightly, enough to say: I’m still here.

  And because he couldn’t help himself, because charm was his native language even when he was being brave, Damon added softly, “If you want a view without walls or heights, I can show you the market rooftops from a safer angle. There are balconies in Carlbrin that pretend they’re daring while still being attached to something sensible.”

  Kairi’s gaze warmed. “That,” she said, “sounds like a compromise.”

  Darius, across from them, muttered something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like gratitude. Kairi watched his hands. Relaxed. No white-knuckle tension. Good. That meant he was listening, not bracing. "Darius, why don't we figure out what we want an Ash Guard to be?"

  His attention went back to her and gave her a curious look. "What did you have in mind Princess?"

  She gave him a small look. "Kairi"

  He nodded. "Kairi" He said it like an order he intended to follow.

  Damon looked between them. “When I was reading up on Tearia so I didn’t embarrass my brother,” Damon said, casual as if it didn’t matter, “I saw a note that a vessel’s guard adapts to the vessel.”

  Kairi and Darius looked to Damon. Kairi's eyes lit up. " Maybe that is why. When I became the vessel, they began to train guards for me. I only had two when everything happened. But they attended all my training. Maybe it was a combined sort of thing. We just didn't get far enough in for me to see it."

  Darius was thoughtful about that. "How did Rush's draggoons train?"

  Kairi thought about it for a while. "Well, they all trained together. The draggoon's that were blessed, practically were attached to Rush at all times." She had a small smile. "Krez would laugh about it... how Rush never had a moment of peace. He still doesn't"

  Darius took that in and resolved to ask the Draggoon more about it. It might help to bridge his expectations before they could learn more back in Carlbrin.

  Damon looked out the window again. "I have a book in my room that talks a little about the abilities. I'll give it to you when we get back."

  Kairi’s expression warmed with immediate, unguarded gratitude. She leaned over, kissed his cheek quick, and gave his hand a gentle squeeze. “Thank you, Damon.”

  Damon flushed and kept his eyes on the passing road like it was the safest thing in the world. “You’re welcome.”