"And if I fail?"
Ithyris is quiet for a moment. The amethyst of his eyes darkens by a shade. "You won't fail."
"That's not what I asked."
"I know." He looks at his hands. They're resting on his knees, and the claws have retracted, and without them his hands look almost human, large and scarred and capable, the hands of someone who works with them rather than simply commands with them. "If you fail, the bond remains. I will still be yours. But the court will not recognize the marriage, and you would have no formal protection under Drekian law."
No formal protection. Meaning the elders, the courtier in the gallery, anyone who wanted to challenge Bryn's place in this court would be free to do so with impunity. Ithyris could defend him, but not with the weight of law behind him. He would beprotected by the prince's strength and the prince's temper and nothing else, and while both of those things are considerable, they are not infinite, and eventually even the most powerful prince in the world has to sleep.
Bryn runs the calculation quickly. It's not good.
"Why do you still want this?" he asks.
Ithyris looks up. "Want what?"
"Me. As your bride, or your mate, or whatever the appropriate term is. You know I'm not Mithri. You know I'm not a princess. You know I showed up to your court in a stolen dress and lied to your entire kingdom and I am currently sitting on your bed in a shirt that could fit two of me. Why would you still want to go through with this?"
Ithyris holds his gaze. The amber light catches the scales at his throat and they shimmer, violet on violet on violet, and his eyes are steady and certain in a way that Bryn finds both reassuring and deeply unsettling, because certainty is a luxury he has never been able to afford and seeing it on someone else's face makes him aware of its absence in his own.
"I don't care about the princess," Ithyris says. "I don't care about the treaty or the dress or the deception. I care about the fact that you are my mate. I knew it the moment you walked into that hall. The bond doesn't lie, Bryn. It doesn't make mistakes. You are the one I've been waiting for, and the fact that you came to me in a dress instead of armor or finery doesn't change what you are. It just means you came to me brave."
The words land in Bryn and he doesn't know where to put them. They are too large for the space he's built inside himself over eighteen years of being overlooked and undervalued and told in a thousand small ways that he is not enough. That internal architecture, the one he constructed carefully and deliberately, the walls and the rooms and the locked doors where he keeps the things that are true about his worth, was not builtto accommodate words that say he is wanted. Not useful. Not convenient. Not the acceptable substitute for something better. Wanted. The word presses against walls he didn't know he'd built and he feels them creak under the pressure and that is terrifying in a way that has nothing to do with dragons or courts or treaties.
He swallows. "That's all that matters to you? A biological response?"
Something flickers in Ithyris's eyes. Hurt, maybe. Or surprise that Bryn would reduce it to that. "It's not a biological response. It's a recognition. The deepest kind my people are capable of. It means I know you. Not the details of your life or the sound of your name, but the shape of you. The part that matters."
Bryn looks away. His hands are twisted in the fabric of the too-large shirt, worrying the hem the way he worries the threads on his own sleeves back home, the habitual fidget of someone whose hands need to be doing something or they'll shake. The sleeves hang past his wrists and he's rolled them three times and they're still too long and he is so tired of wearing things that don't fit him.
There's a tension in Ithyris that wasn't there in the great hall, or rather, it's a different kind of tension, quieter and more deliberate. A controlled hunger, leashed tight but visible in the small things that Bryn is cataloging even though he shouldn't be: the way the prince's gaze drops to his mouth and then pulls away. The way it tracks down to the hollow of his throat, to the place where the too-large shirt has slipped off one shoulder and is baring skin that Bryn keeps meaning to cover and keeps forgetting about. Ithyris catches himself every time. His jaw tightens. He looks away, at the wall, at his hands, at anything that isn't Bryn, and the effort it costs him is visible and considerable and Bryn doesn't know what to do with the knowledge that he is the thing the prince is trying not to look at.
No one has ever tried not to look at him before. No one has ever found it difficult to look away.
Ithyris starts to say something. "If you want to refuse the trials, I would not..."
"I'll do them."
The prince stops. Blinks.
"I'll do the trials. All three. Whatever they are."
"Bryn."
"I came here to keep Mithri safe. That hasn't changed. If going through with this marriage is what it takes to make sure the Sovereignty never comes for her, then I'll do it. I'll be whatever you need me to be."
The words come out harder than he intends. He hears them and he hears what's underneath, the machinery that drives them: the fear, the resignation, the bone-deep training of a boy who has only ever survived by being useful, who has only ever been kept because he could be put to work. He's offering himself as a transaction. Safety for Mithri in exchange for whatever Ithyris wants from him. It's the only currency he has. It's the only currency he's ever had.
Ithyris goes very still. The hunger in his gaze has been replaced by something else, something quiet and sad and careful, and Bryn realizes with a lurch that the prince heard the subtext too. Heard the offer for what it actually was: not bravery, not defiance, but a boy putting himself on the table because he doesn't believe he's worth anything unless someone is getting something out of him.
"You don't have to be anything," Ithyris says. His voice is low and stripped down to something raw and simple. "You don't have to perform for me, Bryn. I'm not asking you to earn your safety."
"Everyone asks me to earn my safety."
It comes out before he can stop it. Raw and honest and small, and he clamps his mouth shut immediately, horrified at himself. He doesn't say things that sound this way. He doesn't show the soft parts, the bruised parts, the parts that never healed properly because there was no one around to help them heal and he didn't have time to tend to them himself. He is dry wit and sharp edges and strategic competence. He is the boy who holds the walls up. He is not a person who sits on beds in borrowed shirts and confesses his wounds to strangers, no matter how gently they look at him and no matter how bare their feet are.
Ithyris says nothing for a long moment. The silence between them is full but not heavy, not the kind that demands to be filled but the kind that holds space for what's just been said, and Bryn has the uncomfortable sense that the prince is choosing very carefully what to do next because he understands, somehow, that the wrong move here will cost them both something neither of them can afford.
Then Ithyris stands, and the too-small chair creaks with relief, and he crosses the room to the door. He doesn't approach the bed. He doesn't approach Bryn. He stops with his hand on the door handle and turns to look at him, and his expression is open and raw and unguarded in a way that Bryn has to look away from because it's too much, because people don't look at him that way, because if he lets himself see it he'll have to feel it and he's not sure he'll survive that on top of everything else.
