My throat tightened.
Jasira gave him a look. “That is both touching and infuriating.”
Alaric stood, brushing imaginary dust from his knee. The warhound sat beside him, ever still. Bran, as people called him, embodied shadow and steel; his ears twitched at every sound, always alert. Loyal beyond reason, he had followed Alaric onto battlefields and into ballroom halls with equal poise.
“If anything happens, Wyn—”
“I’ll have Gideon to guard me,” I said. “And Erindor.”
He raised an eyebrow. “The quiet one?”
I nodded. “Apparently.”
“Good. Quiet men are harder to bribe.”
He reached into his sleeve and pulled out a pressed red poppy. “For courage,” he said, tucking it into the palm of my hand. “And memory.” He looked at me with an understanding gaze.
I accepted gratefully, gently closing my fingers over it. “I’m not small.”
He kissed my forehead. “Not where it matters.”
I knelt, and Bran padded forward, resting his massive head in my lap.
“Oh, you sweet boy,” I murmured, burying my fingers in the thick fur behind his ears. He gave a low huff of approval, his tail thumping once on the rug.
Ignoring the slobber already soaking into my nightgown, I continued to scratch him under his chin. “I’ll miss you the most,” I exclaimed, enough for Alaric to hear.
Alaric gasped in mock betrayal. “Bran, how could you?”
“He’s clearly the better brother,” Jasira added dryly, grinning.
Bran snorted and nuzzled closer. I rested my cheek against the side of his head, breathing him in.
“Take care of him for me,” I whispered. Bran made a soft sound, almost like a promise.
Alaric pivoted, halting near the door, and as he left, he plucked his old lute from its usual spot by the doorframe, strumming a soft, wistful chord as he walked away. “It won’t be the same without you here, Wynnie.” Alaric sighed before closing the door behind him.
His departure hung in the air long after he was gone.
I lingered a while longer, sitting back against the edge of my bed, watching the light shift across the floor in bands of honey and dust. It all seemed so final.
“Do you remember when we used to pretend we were priestesses?” I asked Jasira quietly, still staring at the sunlit dust.
She looked up from tying the last ribbon on my cloak. “You mean the time you made a crown from garden weeds and declared yourself ‘Wynessa the Merciful’?”
“You called yourself Jasira the Blasphemer.”
“Because you made me sacrifice my hairbrush to the bees.”
The sound that emerged was a mere whisper of a laugh, thin and fragile, as if it might shatter at any moment.
“I wish we’d stayed in that game,” I said. That world seemed so much simpler.
Jasira crossed over to me and took my hand. “It was easier. It was ours.”
I squeezed her fingers. “Promise me you’ll take care of Alaric. And Bran. And the garden.”
“Only if you promise to come back with stories.”
