Chapter 7 #2
"Your mother was very hospitable."
"She's always hospitable. That's how she gets you. She feeds you treats and asks you personal questions and before you know it you've told her your deepest secrets and she's adopted you into the family."
Evran considers this. "The strawberries were very good."
Tria groans. Arin, on his other side, smiles quietly at the ground.
They head to the square, where the afternoon's entertainment has already begun. The open space at the center of the stronghold town is alive with color and sound, market stalls draped in bright fabrics, the smell of roasting nuts and spiced cider, and in the central clearing, performers.
Four fire dancers move in the clearing, three women and a man, dressed in close-fitting black, their bodies arcing and twisting in patterns that are half dance and half martial art.
They spin flaming batons and trailing ribbons of fire, tossing them high and catching them without looking, and the flames leave trails of light in the air, bright arcs that linger on Evran's vision even after they have faded.
"They come every year for the Gathering," Tria says, pressing in beside him. "They're from beyond the eastern mountains. No one knows exactly where."
"They're amazing," Evran breathes.
After the fire dancers come the sword twirlers, a troupe of young men and women who fling blunted blades into the air and catch them in combinations that make Evran's stomach clench with secondhand anxiety.
The crowd cheers, children press to the front for a better view, and Evran finds himself clapping along, caught up in the energy of it.
They buy sticky sweets from a market vendor, honey-glazed nuts wrapped in thin pastry, still warm, coated in sugar that gets on Evran's fingers and the front of his tunic.
Tria buys three and eats them all. Arin buys one and eats it in small, deliberate bites, savoring each one.
Evran buys two and gets sugar in his hair and spends a full minute trying to get it out while Tria laughs at him.
They find a bench near the fountain, the same fountain where Torsten sat beside him, though Evran pushes that thought away with a firmness that is becoming practiced, and settle in to watch the crowd. Tria kicks off her shoes and dips her toes in the fountain water, then pulls them out with a yelp.
"Cold!"
"It's spring," Arin says. "The water is snowmelt."
"I know it's snowmelt, Arin, I live here."
"Then why did you put your feet in it?"
"Because I wanted to!" She puts them back in, stubbornly, and winces. "It's actually not that bad once you get used to it."
"You are turning blue."
"I am not turning blue."
Evran laughs and leans back on the bench and lets the afternoon sun warm his face.
The square bustles around them, and he feels good, genuinely good, the sort that comes from simple pleasures and easy company and sugar on your fingers.
The weight of last night's feast and Torsten's pointed looks recedes, still present but quieter, pushed to the margins by the brightness of the day and the company of two sixteen-year-olds who want nothing from him but his presence.
Tria excuses herself to dance with a group of friends who call her over from the square, and she goes barefoot and laughing, her wet feet leaving prints on the stone.
Evran watches her go and then turns to find Arin sitting very still beside him, his hands clasped in his lap and his eyes fixed on some middle distance that only he can see.
"Can I ask you something?" Arin says.
"Of course."
Arin is quiet for a moment. He does that, takes time with his words, shapes them carefully before releasing them, turning each one over until he is satisfied it is right. Evran waits, because he has learned that the things people take the longest to say are usually the things that matter most.
"What is it like," Arin says slowly, "to be an outsider coming in?"
The question is so direct, and so earnest, that it catches Evran off guard.
He looks at Arin, this quiet, careful boy with his greenhouse and his weaving and his habit of observing the world from just behind his sister's shoulder, and sees something in his face that reaches deeper than idle curiosity.
There is a purpose behind the question, a specific need, and whatever it is has been sitting in Arin's chest for long enough that the asking of it costs him something.
"Difficult," Evran says honestly. "And wonderful.
And confusing, sometimes, because you don't always know the rules.
But the people around you teach you the rules if you let them, and after a while you stop feeling like a guest and start feeling like you were always supposed to be there, as though the place had been waiting for you all along and just hadn't told you yet. "
Arin absorbs this. His hands are still clasped in his lap, his thumbs pressing together in a nervous rhythm.
"Why do you ask?"
The nervous rhythm intensifies. Arin opens his mouth, closes it, opens it again. The tips of his ears have gone pink.
"A woman came to Heldrin's End two months ago," he says. "From beyond the mountains. She was seeking refuge, she and her son. They were fleeing something, I don't know exactly what. Father took them in."
He pauses, and the pink has spread from his ears to his cheeks.
"Her son. His name is Caelen. He's my age.
" Another pause, and the color in his face deepens further, and Evran can see the effort it is taking for Arin to keep talking, to push through the vulnerability of saying aloud the thing he has been carrying privately for what must be weeks. "I've been teaching him to weave."
Evran keeps his expression carefully neutral, though something bright is blooming in his chest, the quiet joy of watching a boy on the verge of understanding something about himself that will change everything.