"Good. That's where you live. Right here. The stone, the chair, the roses, my voice." I kept my tone even and low, the way the healer had taught me: a handrail, not a push. "Wherever your head tries to take you, these things are your anchor. They are still here, and they're real."
We worked like that for a while, and it went well, but then something fell on the other side of the wall, a crate perhaps, or a barrow, something heavy and wooden that hit the flagstoneswith a flat loud crack, followed by a clatter of whatever had spilled.
Arlen reacted before the echo died.
His pupils blew wide, his hands came up, his whole body wrenched sideways and down in the chair as if to throw himself clear of a window that wasn't there, and the breath went out of him in a sound I hated.
He was no longer in the garden.
He was on a fourth floor with the glass coming in, and his body was trying to do the thing it had done that day, and it could not, because his legs wouldn't answer, and somewhere under the terror he knew it, and that made it worse.
I didn't grab him. The healer had warned me not to.
"You do not seize a drowning man, you give him the rope," he'd said.
"Arlen," I said in a low, even tone. "The stone. Put your hands on the stone. It's cold. Feel it. You're in the garden."
Nothing. His eyes were somewhere five weeks behind us.
"The roses. Grandmother's roses. You can smell them. The light's coming over the wall." I didn't touch him. I put my hand on the bench beside his, in his line of sight, an example to follow, not a grip to fight. "Here. Now. The explosion is not coming. It already came, it's over, and you lived. Hands on the stone, big brother. Right next to mine."
It took longer than it had in days. Long enough that my heart was hammering and I had to breathe and count inside my head to keep my voice level. But his hand moved, found the stone, and his fingers spread on the cold of it. I saw him grab that single thread and haul himself up it, hand over hand, out of the gymnasium, and back into the garden.
The wildness drained out of his eyes by degrees.
He sat there shaking, breathing in fours without being told, his hand pressed white to the stone.
"There you are," I said softly. "And you did it much faster than I could hope for. You're doing great."
"I'm still here." His voice cracked on it. "I'm doing great." He let out a long breath. "It was a window. The gym on the fourth floor, the one Father wanted to skip that day. I made him keep the appointment. The glass came in from the left, and I had half a second, and I knew exactly what it was." The words came out flat and shaking, and his eyes stayed focused the whole time. "Saying it helps."
I made myself breathe before I answered, because the healer had told me that I shouldn't push, that the healing couldn't be rushed. I could help point Arlen in the right direction, but he had to be the one to crack the door open.
"I think that's enough for today," I said. "You can rest now."
He nodded, spent, and we sat in the sun while his breathing came back down, and something had changed between us that hadn't been there an hour before. He'd let me see the worst of him, and I hadn't flinched.
"I'm going to tell you a secret," I said. "One nobody knows but our parents. Not the twins, not Avren. But you have to promise it stays between us."
I don't know what inspired me to say that, but I knew the rightness of it the moment the words had left my mouth.
I'd been allowed to tell him that I had been in Elucia during the five months I'd been gone, but only the version approved by our parents, that I had been on a mission for our father, negotiating a secret treaty. Now I was going to tell him the rest of it. The part our parents didn't want anyone to know.
His eyes brightened, filling with the old spark that had been a permanent feature before the incident. "You have my word, Alar." He glanced toward where his manservant was standing, then leaned closer to me. "But if you don't want the entire palace to be talking about it at dinner, you should whisper it in my ear."
This was the Arlen I remembered.
I leaned closer to him and wrapped my arm around his shoulders so it looked like I was comforting him.
"When I was in Elucia, I wasn't really negotiating. Codric and I joined the pilgrimage on the slim hope that the drop of Elucian blood we'd discovered we have would allow us to become dragon riders."
I stopped because Arlen gasped. "We have Elucian blood?"
"Yes. Keep your voice down."
"Sorry."
"It's our family's dirty little secret, and Father would do anything to keep it that way."
