28. Alar
ALAR
"The true worth of a friend is revealed not when standing beside you is easy, but when remaining beside you comes at a cost."
—Elurian Proverb
"He lives," Aric announced as he and Aden entered my sitting room without knocking.
I put my caff cup down and rose to my feet. "Are you ever going to learn that it's not polite to enter without knocking or being announced?"
"Who cares?" Aden pulled me into a brotherly embrace.
"Oh, wow, Alar. You are all muscle." He leaned away and started patting my arms. "What have you been doing during all these months, working in a quarry and hauling boulders?
" Still holding on to me, he turned to Aric.
"Come check this out. Baby brother got ripped. "
I rolled my eyes as I endured another pat-down by Aric.
They were almost identical, but not quite.
I could always tell them apart. It was as if one were the slightly altered reflection of the other.
Same light brown hair that was chin-length but brushed back, and the same broad jaws with equally broad smiles.
Even their clothes were variations on a theme, not because they were trying to look alike but because they had the same taste and used the same tailor.
Or at least that was what they told everyone.
They enjoyed playing tricks on people, and especially the ladies, so the clothing choices might be deliberate.
"It's good to see you two," I said.
"We've been desolate without you." Aric helped himself to the bread on my breakfast tray.
"The court has been a wasteland of tedium.
Do you know there hasn't been a single decent scandal since midwinter?
Lady Verrish's affair with the Heldorin envoy collapsed before it produced anything interesting, and the Atherian trade delegation turned out to be exactly as dull as we expected it to be. "
"A barren season," Aden agreed mournfully. "No new ladies-in-waiting, not even new sexy maids."
I sat down across from them and let them do their thing, because there was no stopping the twins mid-flow, and I'd learned a long time ago that there was no point trying.
They were my brothers, and I loved them, but I could only tolerate them for a short period of time.
They were loud and performative, staying away from anything of substance as if it were the plague.
A quarter hour in their company was enough to understand why our father had concluded that neither was fit to rule.
They were clever in their own way, and they were charming, but they were entertainers above all else.
If they hadn't been born princes, they would have no doubt found a home in the theater.
"How is Arlen doing?" I asked, when there was a gap.
Their performance faltered, and they exchanged one of those glances that communicated whole conversations between them.
"Ah," Aric said. "Yes. Poor Arlen. Not too good."
"They've got him tucked away in Grandmother's old wing." Aden sat down. "He has a guard on the door, and he doesn't want visitors. He agreed to see us once, about a week after the incident, and it wasn't good."
"He's in pain," Aric said. "He tries to hide it, but he can barely hold a conversation."
"It might be the pain medication," Aden said. "The healer is pumping him with it, and maybe it's affecting his ability to talk."
"It's the hearing loss," Aric picked up where Aden had left off. "I think he can't hear well, so he prefers not to converse with anyone, so he won't have to keep asking them to repeat what was said. It's embarrassing."
"Why would it be?" I asked. "He did a heroic thing, got hurt, and he's recuperating. It's perfectly honorable."
"He's too proud for his own good." Aden lifted his booted legs onto the table. "I think he can't deal with not being who he used to be. It's tough. I get it."
"He's depressed," Aric added. "Which, well…" He spread his hands. "Wouldn't you be? He might never walk again."
A ray of hope ignited in my chest. "Might never walk again? Does it mean he might walk?"
Aden gave me a sad smile. "The healers are not optimistic. He most likely will not walk again."
"The worst part is the look in his eyes," Aric said quietly.
"His eyes are haunted, and he's jumpy, which is the part that really rattled me.
A maid dropped a tray in the corridor outside, just a clatter, nothing broke, and Arlen came halfway out of his chair with his arms up over his head.
Then he was furious that we'd seen it and ordered us to leave.
He's been refusing to see us ever since. "
I arched a brow. "All because you saw him flinching at a dropped tray? Are you sure you didn't say something offensive? Sometimes you don't know where to stop."
"He looked like he was being shelled," Aden said. "For half a second. Then he turned white as a sheet." He shook his head. "We didn't know what to do or what to say, so we just sat there and looked at him, and he turned from white to red and screamed for us to leave."
For a long moment, none of us spoke, which wasn't unusual for me but rare for the twins.
Then Aric, who could never bear silence for long, slapped his knees.
"Enough about Arlen. We want to hear all about where you've been.
You vanished for five months, Father won't say a word about where you were, and now you turn up suntanned, packed with muscle, and not a gram of fat on you.
" He leaned forward, eyes bright with the hunger for a secret. "Where were you, little brother?"
"Elucia," I said, because that part seemed to have been sanctioned by our parents.
Their mouths fell open in an identical way.
"Elucia?" Aden repeated. "How did you get in? You need a special permit to enter, and you are a prince, so you need to coordinate it through official channels. How in the seven hells did you do that without the papers being all over it?"
"It was arranged in secret," I said, and that was true. "The Federation needs a Dragon Force, and someone had to open the conversation quietly."
I was rather proud of my ability to adhere to the Precepts of Truth and still twist my words to fit the version my father had sanctioned.
"It's slow work. Diplomacy with Elucians always is."
"But how did you even get in?" Aric demanded.
"They don't let outsiders in without thorough vetting, and if they approved you, they would have a cadre of guards on your ass twenty-four-seven.
The Elucians are super paranoid. Not that I blame them, they have a perfectly good reason to be like that, but I still don't understand how a prince of Catonia gains access and does it in secret. "
"That part is confidential," I said. "I can't discuss the details of how it was arranged."
They both leaned forward in identical moves, their eyes alight with curiosity. To them, a secret I couldn't share made me more interesting than any scandal.
"What about Codric?" Aden said. "We assumed you two were off whoring on the coast together."
"Codric stayed in Elucia. I was called home because of Arlen, but there is a lot of work still to be done there." None of my words were lies, but the way I shaped my response was.
Dancing around the Precepts of Truth was an art that I had perfected in Elucia. I'd never cared much for them, but being with Kailin, who did care a lot, I had to do better.
"So, you actually saw dragons," Aric breathed. "Up close."
And there it was, the one subject that could blow my cover, because the moment anyone said the word dragon something in my chest pulled toward the northeast and the cold and the bright vast presence that had gone thin as a thread inside me.
"I did," I said, and heard the timbre of my voice change. "They're enormous, terrifying, and magnificent. Seeing them on the television screen or in pictures doesn't really convey their grandeur."
I stopped myself before I said too much, and what triggered the halt was the twin looks on their faces, rapt and oblivious. My brothers believed to their very bones that they were pure Elurian stock, never suspecting that our line carried the blood that made my bond to Veynathei possible.
They couldn't know how much I really knew about dragons, because the drop of Elucian blood that had allowed Codric and me to become dragon riders was the oldest and most carefully kept secret in our house, and if it ever came out, it could mean the end of the Tekumuton monarchy.
"They are remarkable, but I can't really say more than that."
Aden chuckled. "You sounded like a boy describing his first love."
"They're impressive beasts. You would say the same if you saw one up close."
"I would have shat my pants," Aric said. "I'm perfectly happy admiring the magnificent beasts from afar."