"That's not an answer."
"I know."
She waits. Patient. Immovable. His twin, who knows every deflection he's ever used because she's watched him build them all and has been taking notes the entire time.
He opens his mouth to say something strategic. Something safe. Something that sounds like an answer without actually being one, the kind of careful non-response he's been giving to people for six years. What comes out is neither.
"I don't know what I want. I've never been in a position to want anything. I've been in a position to need things and manage things and survive things and I'm good at that. I'm very good at that. But wanting? I don't know what that feels like without the fear underneath. I don't know what it feels like to want something and not immediately start calculating what it will cost me to lose it."
Mithri's eyes go bright. She doesn't cry. She climbs off the bed and crosses to him and wraps her arms around his neck from behind, her chin on his shoulder, her cheek pressed against his, and the warmth of her and the familiarity of her and the smell of lavender soap and the feel of her arms around him is so overwhelmingly, simply good that his throat closes and he has to breathe through his nose for a moment.
"You are a self-sacrificing idiot," she says, soft and fierce, her mouth near his ear. "And I love you more than anything in this world. And you deserve to want something, Bryn. You deserve to want something that isn't just keeping everyone else alive."
He reaches up and holds her arm where it crosses his chest and he closes his eyes and leans into his sister and lets her hold him the way he's been holding her their entire lives. The role reversal is disorienting and necessary and he didn't know how much he needed it until it was happening.
"He's very handsome," she says after a moment.
"Shut up."
"The scales are quite something. Do they go all the way..."
"Mithri."
"I'm just asking."
"You are not just asking. You are fishing for information that you absolutely do not need."
She grins against his shoulder. He feels it, the curve of her mouth against his shirt, and something in him cracks open and fills with warmth that has nothing to do with the volcanic stone or the bond or the prince. His sister is here. She's safe and she's here and she's teasing him about the dragon prince whose marks are still fading on his neck and for one moment, just one, the world feels manageable. Not small. Not safe. But manageable, which is a lower bar and one he can actually clear.
"Stay," he tells her. "Please. Stay for a while."
"Wild dragons couldn't drag me away," she says. Then she pauses and considers what she's said. "Poor choice of words."
Bryn laughs.
It's small and rusty and surprises them both. It sounds as though it hasn't been used in a long time, which it hasn't, and it catches in his throat on the way out and comes out rough around the edges. But it's real, and Mithri tightens her arms around him and presses her face into his hair and he sits in the chair in his borrowed shirt in a palace carved from a volcano and he laughs, and outside in the corridor he feels the bond pulse warm and certain, which means Ithyris felt it too. Felt the laugh. Felt whatever the laugh did to Bryn's chest. Felt the warmth of it through the door and the stone and whatever distance lies between them.
Good.
Let the prince feel it. Let him know what Mithri's presence does to Bryn, how it fills the hollow places, how it makes him braver and softer and more himself. Let him feel Bryn laugh and know that this is who he is when he's not afraid.
This is who he is when he's loved.
Chapter 12
The council is furious about Mithri.
Bryn learns this from Lira, who has developed an uncanny talent for gathering information from every corner of the palace and delivering it to him with the cheerful efficiency of a particularly well-informed spy. It's possible she's always had this talent and merely lacked a recipient who appreciated it. It's also possible she's cultivating it specifically for Bryn's benefit, which he finds both touching and slightly alarming given the breadth of her sources. The elders are livid, she tells him over breakfast in the kitchens, because the real princess is now within the Sovereignty, within their reach, and the prince will not choose her.
"Syreth petitioned the king this morning," Lira says, tearing a piece of bread in half and handing Bryn the larger portion without comment, which is a gesture so casually caring that he doesn't know what to do with it and so he just takes the bread. "She wants to present Mithri as an alternative candidate. Formally. Before the court."
His hand tightens on his cup. "And?"
"The prince shut it down. Publicly. In front of the full advisory council. He said, and I'm quoting because I was polishing silver in the next room and the walls in that part of the palace are thinner than the elders think, 'I have already chosen. The matter is closed.'" She pauses, her expression shifting into something between awe and amusement. "Then he put his hand on your chair. The empty chair, I mean. You weren't there. He put his hand on the back of the chair where you usually sit and just rested it there. While staring at Syreth. He didn't say anything else. He just rested his hand on the back of your chair and looked at her."
"That's not especially threatening."
"It was the most threatening thing I've ever seen in my life."
