"Are from the prince. Yes."
"The dragon prince."
"Yes."
"The dragon prince who was supposed to marry me."
"Technically, yes."
She stares at him. He stares back. The silence stretches and he watches her process it, watches the pieces rearrange themselves in her mind, and then she does something he is entirely unprepared for.
She laughs.
It's not the delicate laugh she uses at court, the careful, measured sound she produces when something is expected to be funny and she is performing the appropriate response. It's a full, startled, slightly hysterical bark of laughter that she immediately claps her hand over, eyes wide above her fingers, and then she laughs again, harder, her shoulders shaking and her eyes streaming.
"You put on my dress to save me from a dragon prince," she manages between breaths, "and instead of killing you he decided you're his soulmate and now you're sleeping with him."
"That is a reductive summary of a very complex situation."
"Is it wrong?"
"...No."
She laughs until she cries and Bryn sits in the chair and feels the back of his neck heat and he is mortified and relieved in equal measure because she's laughing, not screaming, not crying in fear, not looking at him with the horror he'd been bracing for. The laughter means she isn't afraid. The laughter means she sees the absurdity of it, the cosmic joke of Bryn putting on a dress to die and instead finding the one person in the world who wants him, and the absurdity is easier to hold than the gravity.
When she recovers, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand, her expression settles into something more serious.
"Why did you come back?" he asks. "I told you to stay with Aunt Elowen."
"Because I couldn't sleep," she says simply. "Because every night I lay in that guest bed and stared at the ceiling and thought about you here, alone, in a court full of creatures that could kill you without effort, and I couldn't stand it. I tried. I tried for days. Aunt Elowen tried to stop me and she's persuasive and she made excellent arguments and I agreed with all of them and then I climbed out a window."
"You climbed out a window."
"It was a low window."
"Mithri."
"You don't get to lecture me about reckless decisions, Bryn. You wore my dress to a dragon court."
Fair point. It is, in fact, an unanswerable point, and he files it away in the growing category of arguments he has lost to his sister.
She reaches over and takes his hand. Her fingers are warm and familiar and the shape of them in his is the most grounding thing he's felt since he left Everen, more grounding even thanthe prince's hand on his neck, because Mithri's hand in his is the oldest constant in his life. It predates everything. The ledger, the kingdom, the grief, the prince. Her hand was the first hand he ever held and it still fits the same way.
"I need to meet him," she says.
His stomach drops. "Mithri."
"The man who's been leaving marks on my brother. I'd like to look him in the eye."
Bryn cannot think of a single thing he wants less than standing in a room while his twin sister evaluates the dragon prince who has been fucking him. But Mithri's jaw is set and her grip on his hand is firm and he knows this expression. It's the expression that precedes her getting exactly what she wants through sheer, immovable stubbornness, and resistance is not only futile but counterproductive because it will only make her more determined.
Fine.
***
Ithyris meets them in the main hall.
Bryn sent word ahead through Lira, who seemed entirely too delighted by the prospect of this introduction, practically vibrating with her green scales bright as she carried the message, and the prince is waiting when Bryn and Mithri arrive. He's dressed formally, dark tunic and polished boots, his hair ordered and his posture straight, and he looks every inch the crown heir, composed and authoritative and devastatingly handsome in a way that Bryn finds deeply inconvenient given that his sister is standing beside him and about to form opinions.
