Kylar stood with his own cloak on, mask pushed up for the moment, hand tucked into his belt like he was trying very hard not to fuss with his weapons or the door or the fact that Kairi was watching them from the step. Jayce swung into the saddle, settled, then looked down at Kylar with that particular mix of friend and fellow-guard and man-who-sees-too-much.
“Make a good impression today,” he said. “Festival’s a good time to learn who she is around her people. And when Damon gets here to collect you…” His mouth tugged in a crooked half-smile. “Try not to lose her to him in the first five minutes.”
Kylar snorted, looking up at him through his lashes. “Don’t worry,” he said, letting his voice stay light. “She already said she was kidnapping me. Means she likes me, right?”
Jayce barked a soft laugh. “Unfortunately for Rush’s blood pressure, yes,” he said. “It usually does.”
He sobered just a fraction, leaning down enough that only Kylar would really hear the next part. “Don’t waste that. You’ve got days without palace walls. Use it well. Read that letter and dont make me a liar about getting it to you.”
Kylar’s throat worked once. He nodded. “I’ll try not to disgrace your training and your perfect delivery record.”
Jayce rolled his eyes. “Disgrace my training and I’ll have to come back and steal her out from under you. Then you can ride escort.” He straightened in the saddle, gave Rush a small salute and Tessa a quick signed farewell.
Kairi lifted a hand. “Come back in one piece,” she called.
“Planning on it,” Jayce said. He clicked his tongue, turned the horse toward the lane, and let the morning swallow him up, dust rising soft behind the hooves. Kylar watched him go for a long heartbeat, Jayce’s last words and Kairi’s earlier joke both sitting warm and unnervingly bright under his ribs.
Kidnapping, he thought, glancing sideways at her on the step. There were worse fates.
When the last of Jayce’s hoofbeats faded down the lane, Brindlecross seemed to exhale. Rush clapped Kylar once on the shoulder, a solid, approving weight. “All right,” he said. “We’ve got work even if he doesn’t. Tessa, you’re with me. Apparently I can’t be trusted with my own hands anymore.”
Tessa snorted and signed, sharp and bright,
Kairi stood at the top of the step for a moment longer, watching the lane where Jayce had vanished. The morning light turned her hair to warm copper at the edges. When she finally turned back, her shoulders did that small, setting motion he recognized from the meadow. Right, then.
“I should get my soaps stirred before the day gets away from me,” she said. “There’s a few people expecting them before the festival.”
Rush nodded without looking up from where Tessa was folding his fingers into the right shape for thank you. “Take your guard,” he said. “Might as well make himself useful.”
Kairi’s mouth tilted. “If you’re sure you can be trusted alone with Tessa.”
Tessa patted Rush’s cheek once, patronizing and fond, then flicked her fingers:
Kylar’s lips twitched. “I’ve been reassigned,” he murmured, dipping his head toward Kairi. “Lead on, Kairi”
She rolled her eyes at him and went anyway.
Her “workroom” wasn’t a separate building; it was a little supply room just off the main shop. The front room held the counter, shelves of neatly stacked soaps and jars, and a bell on the door for customers. Through a half-open doorway behind the counter, the space narrowed into Kairi’s domain: shelves and jars and a battered table pushed under a window that looked out over the side yard. Sun slid in there first, filling the space with gold and the smell of dried things. Bunches of herbs hung from the rafters—lavender, yarrow, strings of small drying peppers. The shelves held bottles and tins, crockery bowls, neat stacks of folded cloth, bars of soap in various stages of curing.
Kairi slipped behind the table like water finding its channel. Kylar stopped just inside the invisible line of her space, unsure where to put his hands.
“Here,” she said, without looking, and pointed to the other side of the table. “You can be the extra pair of hands I always need and never have.”
That, at least, he could understand. He stepped in, taking up position opposite her. Close enough to reach what she passed, far enough not to crowd. His shirt sleeves were buttoned down against the chill of the season; after a moment of hovering, he undid the cuffs and rolled them to his forearms, more for ease than show. The window light cut across the fabric and the faint map of old scars beneath as he braced his hands on the edge, watching her assess the mess.
She had three big clay bowls going already. One held grated soap ends, the kind you kept after washing until they weren’t pretty enough for guests but too much to throw away. Another held melted fat and oil; a third, a cloudy herbal infusion that smelled like rosemary and chamomile.
“We're making three kinds today,” Kairi said, more to the table than to him. “Plain for everyday, pine because apparently someone likes it—” her mouth quirked, “—and mint for the festival. People like feeling awake when they’re washing off spilled cider.”
“You speak from experience,” Kylar said.
“Maybe.” She picked up a spoon and handed him another. “Stir that one slow. If you go too fast it sulks and won’t set properly.”
He took the bowl, surprised by its heft. “Sulking soap,” he said. “This is advanced alchemy.”
“You’d be amazed what soap can ruin if you don’t respect it,” she said dryly.
They fell into a rhythm: she measured and poured, he stirred, held and fetched. When she needed the big pot lifted back to the side of the stove, he did it with the ease of someone who’d been hauling steel since he was old enough to stand without swaying. When she reached for a jar on a higher shelf, he simply stepped in, plucked it down, and set it by her elbow.
“Thank you,” she said each time, quick and automatic, like breathing.
He watched the way her hands moved: precise, confident, gentle even with things that weren’t alive. This was a different kind of training than the yard, but it had its own discipline. Ratios and timing instead of footwork and angles. A mistake here burned in slow ways.
Someone knocked on the open shop door and leaned around the frame toward the back.
“Willow? You in?” a woman’s voice called.
“In here!” she answered, not looking up from the way she was folding her herbs into the hot fat.
A woman stepped in a heartbeat later, mid-thirties, sleeves rolled, hair wrapped up in a scarf. A little boy peered around her skirts, clutching a wooden horse with one ear missing.
“Vivian,” Kairi said, finally glancing up. “What did you do to him?”
Vivian huffed. “He did it to himself. Fell off the wall near the well. Again. I don’t think it’s broken, but I’d like to be sure.”
She nudged the boy forward. He scowled at the floor and presented a scraped knee and a tender ankle like they ought to be blamed for the accident.
Kylar shifted back half a step out of the way as Kairi came around the table. She crouched in front of the boy, gentle without being fussy.
“Let me see,” she said. “Hm. The wall lose the fight?”
The corner of the boy’s mouth twitched despite himself. “No.”
“Thought not.” She ran careful fingers down either side of his shin, watching his face. “Not broken. Hurts?”
“Yes,” he muttered.
“That’s allowed.” She stood. “Sit there.” She pointed him to a stool near the door, then glanced over her shoulder. “Kylar, could you get the blue jar from the second shelf? The small one.”
He found it easily. The label was in her neat hand: comfrey & calendula.
She cleaned the scrape, smoothing the boy’s hair back when he flinched, then dabbed on salve and wrapped the ankle with a strip of cloth. Her hands were steady, efficient, kind. Vivian’s shoulders loosened with each step.
“You’ll be limping for a day,” Kairi told the boy, tying off the bandage. “After that, no more hopping along fences until the festival is over. Deal?”
“Yes, Willow,” he sighed.
She tapped his toe lightly. “Go on then.”
Vivian caught Kylar’s eye as she herded her son back through the shop. “Thank you,” she said, the gratitude aimed at both of them. He nodded, surprised to feel a little of that thanks stick to him. “Does that sort of thing happen every day?” he asked when they were alone again.
“Some version of it,” she said, returning to the table. “Less wall, more knives and stubbornness.”
He let his gaze roam the space again: the hanging herbs, the neat rows of jars, the little cracks in the windowsill where someone had once carved initials. It was a small world, compared to the palace and its endless corridors, but it fit her. Brindlecross knew her hands and trusted them. She was happy here, he realized. Not in the way you told yourself to be because duty said so. In the way that came from knowing your place in a pattern and liking the shape of it. The thought lodged under his sternum like a stone.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
If he did his job right, he was going to tear her out of this. Not alone, not by choice, she was a princess whether she wanted the title or not. But he was the one walking her back toward it. Toward courts and expectations and a life where soap was bought, not bartered and stirred by hand in the back room of a little shop.
If she knew who he was, who he really was. Would she look at him the same way? Or would he become the man who ruined Brindlecross.
“Kylar?” Kairi said.
He realized he’d been staring at the same spot on the table for too long.
“Sorry,” he said. “Got lost.”
“In my stirring lecture?” she teased. “Tragic.”
“In your competence,” he said, before he could soften it. “You could run half the capital with this kind of organization.”
She snorted and shook her head, reaching for another bundle of herbs. “No thank you. I like my half of Brindlecross.”
He had to look away, afraid she’d see too much on his face. After a moment he cleared his throat, trying for lighter and almost managing it.
“It’s… nice,” he said quietly. “Seeing you do this. Your life here. The meadow could never show me this part.”
She blinked at him, something warm and complicated moving behind her eyes, then smiled down at the herbs in her hands.
“Dreams only get you so far,” she said. “The rest you have to come see.”
He already knew that. He just wasn’t sure, yet, how to carry both worlds forward without breaking one of them.
Late morning brought more visitors.
An older man with stiff hands stopped by for a salve she made him every winter. A young woman came for soap that didn’t sting her baby’s skin. Kylar fetched, lifted, and carried. Kairi listened, recommended, refused coin from people who needed it more and took payment in eggs or flour or the promise of help later. By the time the sun had climbed past the roofline, the little shop and back room smelled like pine, mint, and the faint sharp tang of lye fading.
“Break,” she declared, stepping back from the table. “If I stir any more today my arm will fall off.”
“As your guard,” Kylar said, “I must advise against that.”
“Then as my guard, come with me to sit down,” she said, already wiping her hands on a rag.
They were halfway to the door when two familiar figures filled it. Mena and Raelin swept in on a breeze of outside air and festival talk, skirts swishing, cheeks pink from the walk. Mena had a basket on her arm; Raelin had a look in her eye that usually preceded chaos.
“There you are,” Mena said. “We’ve been hunting you since the market.”
“We thought you’d run away with your mysterious guard already,” Raelin added, eyes flicking with undisguised interest to Kylar.
Kairi made a strangled noise. “I live here,” she said. “Where exactly do you think I’d run?”
“With him,” Raelin said promptly.
Kylar had trained for years not to flinch under scrutiny. Raelin’s once-over nearly broke that record. He inclined his head anyway, fighting the urge to adjust his mask or his stance.
“Kylar,” Kairi said, a little too quick. “You remember Mena and Raelin from yesterday.”
“I do,” he said. “We survived the dressmaker together. A rare bond.”
Mena hid a smile behind her hand. Raelin did not bother.
“We’re here to make sure she doesn’t hide behind her work and miss all the festival,” Mena said. “If we leave it to Rush, he’ll chain her to the forge.”
“Rush doesn’t chain me anywhere,” Kairi said. “And I like my work.”
“You can like your work and have fun,” Raelin said. She leaned against the doorframe, crossing her arms. “Tell me you’re taking him to the dance.”
Kairi’s mouth opened, then closed. “It’s… the festival is not for a while yet,” she said weakly.
“Soon enough,” Raelin said. “You should reserve him now. Before someone else does. Did you see Lina at the bakery this morning? She was asking if he’d be there.”
“I am in the room,” Kylar pointed out, more amused than offended.
“Yes,” Raelin said, studying him like he was a particularly puzzling piece of furniture. “That’s the problem.”
Mena rolled her eyes at her friend and turned to Kairi instead. “We brought you bread,” she said, lifting the basket. “And to remind you we’re coming over tonight after closing to try those hair pins with the dress again.”
Kairi’s eyes lit. “You found them?”
“Found, bribed, and stole,” Raelin said. “Not in that order.”
“Thank you,” Kairi said, the gratitude unguarded.
Raelin’s gaze slid back to the table, the bowls, then to Kylar’s rolled sleeves and the way he was still standing dutifully at his post.
“Unless you want to be locked in this room with him for hours,” Raelin said, entirely too pleased with herself. “I’d understand. If you teach me your soap-making ways, I’ll borrow him for a bit. Fair trade.”
Kairi went pink so fast it was almost audible. “Raelin,” she hissed.
Kylar cleared his throat. “Still in the room,” he said, dry. It only made Raelin grin wider.
“We’ll leave you to your… soap,” Mena cut in mercifully, taking in the spread on the table. “We just wanted to be sure you remembered you’re not allowed to vanish into this room until the festival is over.”
“I’ll see what my guard permits,” Kairi said, trying for dry and almost succeeding.
Raelin clicked her tongue. “If he doesn’t, we’ll kidnap you both,” she said, and then they were gone in a flurry of steps and laughter.
The room felt quieter without them, but not emptier. The echo of their teasing hung in the air.
Kylar leaned his hip against the table. “Do they always arrive like that?” he asked.
“Like storms?” Kairi said. “Yes.” She smiled down at the basket of bread, fingers smoothing the cloth over the loaf. “I’ve missed them.”
He watched her a moment, that easy warmth she had for them. “You have a good life here,” he said before he could stop himself.
She looked up, startled. Whatever answer she might have given was interrupted by Rush calling from the front.
“Willow! Do you have anything for a headache that doesn’t taste like death?”
“Depends who it’s for,” she called back, already stepping toward the doorway.
“Me,” Rush said.
She paused at the threshold, amusement tugging at her mouth. “Was it Raelin,” she asked, “or the new language Tessa’s beating into your skull?”
“Both,” Rush groaned.
Kairi laughed under her breath and went to see anyway. Kylar followed her and debated asking her about Rush. "Does he get headaches often?"
She shrugged as she searched for a jar. "He isn't fond of Raelin and her constant talking. He likes quiet." Pausing she grabbed a jar labeled simply 'R' and smiled to him. "Just another day."
The rest of the afternoon stretched itself into small, ordinary work.
Rush and Tessa took over the table for a while, Tessa drilling him on shapes and movements. Kylar watched in passing as he carried jars back to their shelves: Rush’s big hands clumsy at first, then slowly, stubbornly finding the right angles. Tessa’s patience held, but she did not let him get away with half-measures. When he signed something almost right, she corrected him; when he finally got one perfect, her eyes lit, and Rush straightened like he’d just won a bout.
Kairi moved between them and her own tasks, translating only when Rush’s confusion outpaced his pride. Most of the time she just watched, mouth curving at jokes Kylar already understood before she voiced them.
By the time the sun slid lower, the house smelled like stew and fresh bread and the lingering ghost of pine. In a rare lull, they even started a list on a scrap of paper, things to pack eventually, things that could be sent ahead, things that absolutely could not be forgotten. It was half practical, half ward against the future: blankets and books and salves and the good pan, do not let Rush “accidentally” leave it behind.
Dinner was simple and loud in the way of people who trusted the walls. Rush complained about his hands; Tessa signed
He caught himself, at one point, looking around the table and thinking, I could get used to this.
The thought scared him enough that he dropped his gaze to his bowl.
Afterward, there were dishes and small tasks and the soft fatigue of a day well-used. Mena and Raelin did indeed return, as promised, and the front room became a flurry of pins and fabric and opinions while Rush hid in the kitchen and Kylar pretended to be very focused on oiling a strap that did not need it.
Every so often, he’d glance up to see Kairi in the midst of her friends, her hair half-up, half-down, laughing at something Mena said, and the ache for what this might cost her pressed in again. He didn’t have an answer for it. Only the promise he’d made in a bathroom mirror: not to let anyone weaponize the truth before he could lay it down himself. To give her as much choice as the world allowed. The thoughts about the bathroom must of been loud enough that he felt that odd sensation.
Good, Rush’s voice slid through the back of his mind, quieter now, edges dulled by the long day. I’m glad you see it too. The cost.
More points in Dato’s favor, the thought implied, even if he didn’t say it outright.
As night finally crept in and Raelin and Mena took their leave with promises to return and adjust things again, the house settled. Bedding was unrolled, lamps were turned down. Rush disappeared into his room, Tessa claimed her pallet with a pointed glance that said
Kairi caught Kylar’s eye once more as she gathered up the last stray pin.
“Thank you for today,” she said.
“For stirring?” he asked.
“For being here,” she said simply.
He swallowed past the lump that rose at that. “Nowhere else I’d rather be,” he said, and for once, didn’t try to soften it.
She flushed a little, ducked her head, and headed for the stairs, pin clutched in her hand like a small, bright secret.
Tessa watched her go, then rolled onto one elbow on her pallet and caught Kylar’s attention with a sharp whistle through her teeth. When he looked over, she signed, quick and amused,
Kylar huffed a quiet laugh and signed back,
She snorted, signed
Later, when sleep finally took them, the meadow met them halfway, quieter than it had been in weeks. The willow’s long hair trailed a little lower; the pond was glass. The air held a faint, familiar hint of pine and mint, like it had stolen scents from the waking day.
They met under the tree as if it were the most natural thing, no storm dragging them there this time. Kairi’s dress hem was still damp from some remembered bucket in the shop; his sleeves were rolled like they had been at her worktable.
“Raelin threatened to kidnap us both again,” Kairi said, leaning back against the willow. “In case you forgot.”
“I remember,” he said. “She also volunteered to trade soap lessons for borrowing me. I’m still not sure who got the worse part of that bargain.”
“She’d work you to death,” Kairi said, amused. “Mena would at least feed you while she did it.”
He told her about watching Rush’s hands trying to learn Tessa’s language, the way he straightened when he got a sign right. She told him how it felt to have Mena and Raelin in the house again, how the noise of their teasing filled gaps she hadn’t noticed until now.
For once, they were talking about a day they had both lived fully on the same side of the world. No translating between palace and Brindlecross, no “you were there” and “I wasn’t.” Just shared ground.
“It’s different,” she said quietly, after a while. “Having you here for it. Not just telling you after.”
He watched her breathe easier under the willow’s long curtain, the way the memory of the house and the shop and their small, ordinary tasks softened her shoulders.
“Yeah,” he said. “It is.”
She turned so her shoulders faced him and took a moment before she finally asked. "Tessa and Jayce. They dated. and then things ended. Inform me?"
He stared off into the meadow and the trees beyond it and wondered where to begin with that mess. "Dated is a loose term for that. She sleeps with everyone. She isn't a big believer in commitment in that sense. So I'm not sure if they were truly ever dating. It was more...Jayce asked and she tried?" He thought back on that night he saw her leaving his room and then talking and trying to distract him. "But, he is working through it. He is probably happy she is here for the week and he doesn't have to travel with her for half of the escort if I'm honest."
Kairi nodded slowly taking that in. "Should I fear for my brother's heart?" Kylar rolled that thought around and thought back with how she was acting with Rush. "I don't know. She told me once that royalty was off the table. So probably not. She is excited someone wants to learn to talk to her." Her eyes narrowed. "Okay...but what about you? Have you slept with her?" Kylar flushed. "No. I.." He looked away and sighed. " I am hopelessly in love with someone and turned down all invitations presented to me."
She laughed.
He glared.
She laughed harder. "Good to know Kylar." He huffed and turned the tables on her. " What about you? Anyone in all your years?" A heartbeat after he said it he wished he hadn't. He didn't want to know.
"Nope" she simply stated. "Rush would have murdered anyone who attempted to get in my bed."
The relief he felt for her overprotective monster of a brother was sad. He would have to thank him next time he decided they needed to 'talk'.
He fell back into the grass and just smiled. She laid down beside him and let the silence be what it needed to be.
The words he almost said rose to the back of his tongue: Are you ready to leave this behind? Will you hate me when it’s gone? He swallowed them.
Not yet. Not tonight. They had a little more time before the road turned back toward crowns and courts and things that couldn’t be stirred right with patience and a wooden spoon.
He thought, not for the first time, that his job was going to be harder than any front he’d ever served on. Because he was going to have to find a way to carry this with them, or live with being the one who left it behind. She scooted over and curled against him as he absently wrapped an arm around her and let her get comfortable. Comfortable he let sink in letting his eyes closed. You're taking comfortable away.