Not the way he stares in the corridor or in the dark. Not the consuming, heated gaze that makes Bryn's body respond before his mind has caught up. This is different. This is the look of a man watching something he has never seen beforeand his expression is a mixture of awe and desire so blatant that Bryn can feel it through the bond, a pulse of warmth that is half intellectual admiration and half the specific, devastating attraction of a man discovering that competence is the thing that undoes him.
"You're staring," Bryn says.
"You've just identified a revenue leak that my entire economic council has missed for six years." The prince's voice is strained. His eyes are dark. "In two hours. With no training in Drekian financial systems."
"Financial systems are financial systems. The numbers don't care what species designed the ledger." He taps the scroll. "This tariff exemption for processed crystal goods was clearly intended to incentivize domestic refining, but it's been applied to raw crystal exports through the Veshan pass, which means your northern trade partners are shipping raw crystal out, processing it in their own facilities, and selling the refined product back to you at a premium. You're subsidizing your own competition."
The prince's pupils dilate. Visibly. Bryn watches it happen, the black expanding into the amethyst, and the bond flares with a heat that has nothing to do with tariff policy and everything to do with the look on Bryn's face when he is dismantling a problem, the sharp focus, the certainty, the way his hands move when he is tracing a pattern through data and his mind is running at full speed.
"You're disgusting," Bryn tells him again, because he can feel exactly what the prince is feeling through the bond and it is not an appropriate response to trade analysis.
"I am going to need you to keep talking about tariff exemptions." Ithyris's voice is low and rough and his jaw is tight. "For at least another hour. And then I am going to need the archive to be empty."
"We are not having sex in the archive."
"We are not having sex in the archive," the prince agrees. His eyes have not moved from Bryn's face. "We are going to have sex in my chambers. After you finish explaining the tariff exemption. Because I need approximately one hour to regain control of myself and you are going to give me that hour by continuing to be the most brilliant person in this kingdom."
Bryn's face is hot. His body is responding to the undisguised want pouring through the bond and the low register of the prince's voice and the absurd, intoxicating fact that his political competence is what is taking Ithyris apart. He looks back at the scroll. Clears his throat.
"The Veshan pass exemption," he says, and his voice is only slightly unsteady, "was ratified in the third year of your grandfather's reign."
The prince leans back in his chair. Folds his arms across his chest. His eyes are black.
Bryn makes it forty minutes before Ithyris reaches across the table and takes the scroll out of his hands and they barely make it to his chambers.
He calls the prince husband against his door.
The word makes Ithyris feral. It has this effect every time, a trigger that bypasses the patience and the composure and goes straight to the ancient, possessive core of him, and his hands are on Bryn's body before the second syllable has left his mouth and Bryn is lifted and pressed against the wood and the prince's mouth is on his throat and the tariff exemption is the furthest thing from his mind.
***
Mithri and Bryn are inseparable again.
He did not realize how much of himself had gone missing until she gave it back to him. The Bryn who existed before the Sovereignty, before the dress and the bond and the trials, the Bryn who was Mithri's twin and Mithri's protector and the boy who carried his sister on his shoulders through the corridors of a dying kingdom, had been packed away in a box marked not needed here and stored in the back of his mind and he had not noticed the absence because he was too busy surviving.
Mithri unpacks the box. She does this by simply being herself, by existing beside him with the casual, absolute intimacy of someone who has shared a womb with him and cannot be impressed or intimidated by anything he has become. She sees through every version of him to the original, the boy who makes terrible jokes and eats too fast and argues about nothing because arguing is how he processes joy.
They drag Ithyris to the market.
This requires some convincing. The crown prince of the Drekian Sovereignty does not, apparently, frequent the market stalls that line the lower terraces of the mountain palace. He has people. People who have people. The concept of browsing is foreign to him in the way that flight is foreign to Bryn: something he can observe others doing but has no personal experience with.
Mithri and Bryn flank him on either side and march him down the carved steps to the lower terraces and the look on the prince's face, bewildered and faintly alarmed, is something Bryn will treasure for the rest of his life. Ithyris is the tallest person in the market by a head. His violet scales catch the light and draw stares and whispers and he is acutely, visibly uncomfortable with the informality of the situation, which makes it perfect.
"Try this," Mithri says, shoving a pastry into the prince's hand. It is an Everen honey cake, made by a human baker who has set up shop on the lower terrace and whose stall Mithri foundon her second day because Mithri can locate Everen food in any kingdom the way a compass locates north.
Ithyris looks at the honey cake. He looks at Mithri. He looks at Bryn.
"It won't bite you," Bryn says. "Eat it."
The prince eats it. His expression shifts from skeptical to surprised to something approaching delight, a rare, unguarded pleasure that softens his face and makes him look younger and Bryn feels a rush of warmth through the bond that is partly the prince's enjoyment and partly Bryn's own fierce, unexpected pride in this small, stupid victory: he has given the dragon prince of the Drekian Sovereignty a honey cake and the prince liked it.
"We had these at every feast day growing up," Mithri tells him, already buying three more. "Bryn used to sneak into the kitchens the night before and eat half of them raw. The cook banned him when he was twelve."
"The batter is the best part," Bryn says.
"The batter is raw eggs and flour."
"The batter is the best part."
