Bryn is already awake. He doesn't sleep well. He sleeps in fragments, two or three hours at a time, always half-listening for the sound of his father falling down the stairs or a creditor pounding on the gate. This morning he's at his desk reviewing grain shipments when the knock comes: a servant, white-faced, holding a scroll sealed with violet wax.
The seal is a dragon coiled around a crown.
His blood goes cold.
He breaks the seal and reads:
By the authority of His Majesty King Thalryn of the Drekian Sovereignty, and in accordance with the Treaty of Ash and Ember signed in the third year of King Viktor's reign, the Princess Mithri of Everen, having reached her eighteenth year, is hereby summoned to present herself at the Court of the Sovereignty for formal betrothal to His Royal Highness Prince Ithyris, Crown Heir to the Drekian Throne. An envoy will arrive in three days' time to escort the princess. Refusal will be considered a violation of the treaty and will be met with the full force of the Sovereignty's displeasure.
He reads it twice. Three times. The words don't change.
His father apparently promised his sister to actual fire breathing beasts before she could even walk. Before he was a drunk who couldn’t make a worthwhile decision more complicated than what wall to piss on. Before things had gotten so dire that it might make sense to whore out their only daughter to a kingdom of hundred year old sovereigns who think picking breeding stock from newborns is acceptable.
Bryn sets the scroll down with hands that are surprisingly steady. It’s entirely possible the shock has not hit him yet and he’s not quite certain what the end result of that is going to be. He presses his free hands flat on the desk to steady himself and breathes for just a moment, in through his nose and out through his teeth. The logical thing to do here is think through every angle like he always does: the political calculation, the very real militaristic threat, the sheer astronomical impossibility of Everen refusing to honor a treaty they signed with the most powerful kingdom on the continent.
They can’t refuse. They just can’t. It’s not even a thought he entertains for longer than it takes to blink it away. Everen no longer has the military power, or the allies, or the treasury to refuse. The Drekian Sovereignty has a standing militarythat would outnumber their entire population and that’s not even considering that their forces are capable of literally flying overhead and setting them on fire. The prince alone could level the castle and be home in time for supper. The treaty is binding and his father signed it, whether drunk or sober doesn’t really matter anymore, and whatever he received in return has most certainly long since been spent on wine and poor decisions.
Bryn takes the scroll and goes to find his twin.
***
She's in her chambers, brushing her hair. She looks up when he comes in and he watches her face change as she reads his, the way it always does when she knows he's about to tell her something that's going to hurt. It's been happening more and more lately. There was a time, years ago, when Bryn used to come to her with good news. He can't actually remember the last time that happened.
"What's happened?" she asks.
He hands her the scroll without a word, because he doesn't trust his voice not to crack if he tries to explain it. He watches her read it. He watches the color drain from her face and the brush slip from her fingers and clatter on the stone floor, and something in his chest cracks clean in half.
"No," she whispers.
"Mithri."
"No, Bryn, I can't. I can't go there. They're..." She presses her hand over her mouth like she's trying to physically hold the panic in. She's shaking. His sister, who has held herself together through every disaster this wretched family has thrown at her, who sat through their father's coronation anniversary dinner last year with a placid smile while Viktor knocked a candelabrainto the soup course, is shaking so badly the scroll rattles in her grip.
He crosses the room and takes her hands. They're cold and small and trembling and he folds them between his and holds tight, because that's the only thing he knows how to do when the world is falling apart. Hold on.
"Listen to me."
"I can't do it. I know I should be brave, I know it's my duty, but Bryn, I can't. I don't even know what they want from me. A bride? A hostage? A..." She can't finish. Her eyes are wet and wide and terrified and she's trying so hard to be the composed princess she was raised to be, but she wasn't raised to be anything, really. Neither of them were. They were raised to stay out of the way while their parents fell apart, and now she's being asked to walk into a dragon's court and smile about it.
Something in Bryn goes very still and very certain.
No.
Not her. Not this. He has let this family take almost everything from him. He has let it take his childhood, his sleep, his future, the years he should have spent being young and foolish and free. He has let it take his name and his worth and his right to be seen as anything more than a convenient stand-in for a dead brother. But he will not let it take Mithri. She is the only good thing left in his life, the only person in this entire crumbling kingdom who looks at him and sees someone worth caring about, and he will not stand in this room and watch her be wrapped up and shipped off to warm some creature's bed because their father was too drunk and too stupid to read what he was signing.
"I'll take care of it," he says, and his voice comes out steadier than he expected.
She blinks at him. "What?"
"I said I'll take care of it. I always do."
"Bryn, you can't negotiate with the Sovereignty. Father tried, I'm sure he..."
"Father hasn't tried anything. Father doesn't know about this yet, and he won't, not until it's already done." He squeezes her hands once, firm enough that she focuses on him instead of the panic. "I need you to listen to me very carefully, Mithri. Can you do that?"
She nods. She always listens to him. It's one of the very few reliable things left in his life.
"You're going to pack a small bag. Only essentials, nothing heavy. You're going to take the east road to Aunt Elowen's estate in the Lowlands and you're going to stay there until I send word that it's safe to come home."
