Not on foot. Bryn hears the shift behind him, the compression of air and the rush of displaced wind, and then a shadow passes over the canopy, massive and dark, blocking the sun in intervals as the dragon circles above the forest. He doesn't land. He doesn't swoop down and carry Bryn back to the palace, though he could and Bryn knows he wants to. He just flies, circling in wide, patient arcs, a warm shadow against the sky, and the restraint of it is the same restraint the prince has shown him from the beginning. Protecting without pushing. Present without demanding.
Bryn cries on the trail.
He is furious with himself for crying and the fury makes it worse because anger and tears feed each other in a cycle he has never been able to break. The tears are hot and silent and he wipes them with the back of his hand and they keep coming and he walks and cries and walks and hates himself for all of it. For the tears. For the wanting. For the way his body still aches with the memory of the prince's hands and the prince's mouth and the fullness of Ithyris inside him and the eleven seconds where he felt as though he belonged somewhere. Eleven seconds of peace after eighteen years of earning his right to exist, and he couldn't even hold onto that without his brain finding a way to poison it.
The trail winds down the mountain through old-growth forest, under canopies so dense the light comes through in scattered fragments, and across thermal streams that steam in the cool air and smell of minerals. His legs shake with every step. The soreness deepens into a persistent, low throb that he feels in his hips and his lower back and the tender places inside him where the prince was, and the wetness between his thighs is a constant, humiliating reminder that won't dry and won't be ignored. Above him, Ithyris's shadow circles. Constant. Patient.Never landing. The dragon follows him the entire way down the mountain and Bryn doesn't look up at him, not once, but he knows the prince is there and the knowledge sits in his chest next to the shame and the grief and the confused, terrible gratitude of being followed by someone who won't leave even when Bryn walks away from him.
By the time he reaches the palace he is empty. Hollowed out, wrung dry, operating on the residual momentum of a body that has learned to keep moving long after the person inside it has stopped. It's a skill he developed in Everen, this ability to function without being present, to walk and breathe and navigate corridors while the actual Bryn is somewhere far away behind his own eyes, watching from a distance. He uses it now. He walks through the palace corridors and servants move out of his way and he doesn't see them.
He goes to his chambers. He closes the door. He strips off his clothes and leaves them in a heap on the floor and walks into the bathing room and lowers himself into the thermal pool and the heat of the water hits every sore and tender place on his body at once and he hisses through his teeth and sinks until the water reaches his chin and closes over his shoulders and hides the bruises the prince left on his skin.
***
He scrubs.
He scrubs his skin until it's pink and stinging, his arms and his chest and his stomach and between his legs where he can still feel Ithyris, still feel the stretched, used ache of his body and the slickness that isn't just water. He washes his short hair and his neck and the places where the prince's mouth left marks, dark bruises blooming along his throat and collarbone in theshape of the prince's lips and teeth, and he presses his fingers against them and they hurt and the hurt is satisfying in a bleak, punishing way that he recognizes as unhealthy and doesn't stop.
But he can't erase it.
He can't scrub away the feeling of being wanted. It has settled into his skin and his muscles and his bones, deeper than the surface, deeper than the bruises, woven into the tissue the way the thermal rivers are woven into the volcanic stone of this palace, and no amount of hot water and rough cloth will remove it. His body remembers the prince's hands. His body remembers the weight of Ithyris above him and the stretch of the prince inside him and the sounds Ithyris made and the way the prince said his name and the eleven seconds where the world was warm and still and he was wanted, and he sinks deeper into the water and presses his face against his drawn-up knees and breathes and tries not to think about any of it.
He fails. He fails completely and comprehensively, because his body is a traitor and his mind is worse and together they replay every moment of the forest clearing with a fidelity that is cruel.
The knock comes while he's still in the water.
He knows who it is. His body knows before his brain does, the back of his neck warming, his pulse spiking, every nerve ending that the prince woke in that forest lighting up in recognition, and the involuntary nature of the response makes him want to drown himself in the thermal pool, which would be dramatic but is increasingly appealing. He sits in the bath and stares at the door and wills the prince to go away.
Ithyris knocks again.
Bryn gets out of the water. It takes effort. His muscles have stiffened in the heat and his body protests the loss of warmth and the soreness between his legs flares fresh as he stands, a sharp reminder that travels up his spine. He pulls a robe from the hook on the wall, the heavy Drekian kind that drowns him infabric and is designed for someone a foot taller and significantly broader, and wraps it around himself and belts it at the waist and it's still gaping at the chest because his chest is not the chest it was designed for. Nothing in this palace is designed for him. The clothes, the furniture, the robe, the expectations. Everything is too large.
He is dripping. His hair is wet and plastered to his neck and his skin is flushed pink from the scrubbing and the heat of the bath and the robe is slipping off one shoulder because the shoulder it was cut for is twice the width of his. He opens the door.
Ithyris stands in the corridor.
He's dressed again, his hair still windswept from the flight, and his eyes drop to Bryn and the look that crosses his face is so many things at once that Bryn can't catalog them all. Relief that Bryn opened the door. Worry at whatever he reads in Bryn's expression. Pain at the redness around Bryn's eyes. And want, always want, his gaze catching on the wet hair at Bryn's neck and the bare collarbone where the robe has slipped and the flush on his skin that could be from the bath or from the crying or from both, and the prince's jaw tightens and his hands curl at his sides and he pulls his gaze back to Bryn's face with visible, considerable effort.
Bryn flinches. It's involuntary, a full-body recoil that he can't control and can't hide, because the want in the prince's eyes is the thing that broke him in the clearing. It is the evidence that he interpreted as proof of his own inadequacy, and seeing it again, here, in the corridor, while he's standing in a wet robe with his eyes swollen from crying, is more than he can absorb.
He tries to close the door.
Ithyris catches it. His hand flat against the wood, holding it open with an ease that reminds Bryn of the fundamental physical disparity between them, and his strength means Bryncan't push it shut no matter how hard he tries. The prince doesn't push it open further. He just holds it where it is and looks at Bryn through the gap, and his expression is patient and pained and steady.
"I cannot leave you upset," he says. His voice is quiet and strained and stripped of the authority it usually carries. "I can't, Bryn. I can feel it through the bond, the distress, and I cannot rest with the thought that I've done something to hurt you. I will stand in this corridor all night if I have to, but I would prefer to understand what happened."
Bryn stares at him through the gap in the door. Water drips from his hair onto the stone floor. The robe is sliding further off his shoulder and he doesn't have a free hand to fix it because both of his are on the door, pushing uselessly against a strength that doesn't even register his effort.
"You didn't hurt me," he says.
"Then what happened?"
He presses his forehead against the edge of the door and closes his eyes. He should send the prince away. He should tell him he's fine and close the door and lie in his too-large bed and feel sorry for himself in private, the way he's always done, the way he did in Everen when the numbers didn't work and the grain was running out and there was no one to tell because telling someone would mean admitting he couldn't handle it alone. But the bond, the thing Ithyris told him about in the library, the thing he didn't fully believe in, is doing something to him that he can't explain and can't ignore. He can feel the prince's worry. Not as a thought, not as words, but as a pressure in his chest, a second pulse of distress layered over his own, and it's Ithyris's. The prince is standing in the corridor hurting because Bryn is hurting and the feedback loop of it, the shared pain, the knowledge that his distress is causing the prince distress, dismantles the last of his resistance because Bryn can endure hisown suffering but he has never been able to endure causing it in someone else. It's why he held the kingdom together. It's why he took Mithri's place. It's why he's letting go of the door now.
He lets go of the door.
Ithyris enters the suite slowly, as though moving through a space that contains something fragile, and closes the door behind him with a care that makes no sound. Bryn has retreated to the center of the room, arms crossed over his chest, holding the robe closed with both hands, dripping on the stone floor. The prince doesn't approach. He stops by the door and waits, giving Bryn the full width of the room, and the patience of it is the same patience he has shown Bryn from the beginning and it makes Bryn's eyes sting again.
"It's not your fault," Bryn says.
