Chapter 11 #2
"You put on my dress to save me from a dragon prince," she manages between breaths, "and instead of killing you he decided you're his soulmate and now you're sleeping with him."
"That is a reductive summary of a very complex situation."
"Is it wrong?"
"...No."
She laughs until she cries and Bryn sits in the chair and feels the back of his neck heat and he is mortified and relieved in equal measure because she's laughing, not screaming, not crying in fear, not looking at him with the horror he'd been bracing for.
The laughter means she isn't afraid. The laughter means she sees the absurdity of it, the cosmic joke of Bryn putting on a dress to die and instead finding the one person in the world who wants him, and the absurdity is easier to hold than the gravity.
When she recovers, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand, her expression settles into something more serious.
"Why did you come back?" he asks. "I told you to stay with Aunt Elowen."
"Because I couldn't sleep," she says simply.
"Because every night I lay in that guest bed and stared at the ceiling and thought about you here, alone, in a court full of creatures that could kill you without effort, and I couldn't stand it.
I tried. I tried for days. Aunt Elowen tried to stop me and she's persuasive and she made excellent arguments and I agreed with all of them and then I climbed out a window. "
"You climbed out a window."
"It was a low window."
"Mithri."
"You don't get to lecture me about reckless decisions, Bryn. You wore my dress to a dragon court."
Fair point. It is, in fact, an unanswerable point, and he files it away in the growing category of arguments he has lost to his sister.
She reaches over and takes his hand. Her fingers are warm and familiar and the shape of them in his is the most grounding thing he's felt since he left Everen, more grounding even than the prince's hand on his neck, because Mithri's hand in his is the oldest constant in his life.
It predates everything. The ledger, the kingdom, the grief, the prince.
Her hand was the first hand he ever held and it still fits the same way.
"I need to meet him," she says.
His stomach drops. "Mithri."
"The man who's been leaving marks on my brother. I'd like to look him in the eye."
Bryn cannot think of a single thing he wants less than standing in a room while his twin sister evaluates the dragon prince who has been fucking him.
But Mithri's jaw is set and her grip on his hand is firm and he knows this expression.
It's the expression that precedes her getting exactly what she wants through sheer, immovable stubbornness, and resistance is not only futile but counterproductive because it will only make her more determined.
Fine.
***
Ithyris meets them in the main hall.
Bryn sent word ahead through Lira, who seemed entirely too delighted by the prospect of this introduction, practically vibrating with her green scales bright as she carried the message, and the prince is waiting when Bryn and Mithri arrive.
He's dressed formally, dark tunic and polished boots, his hair ordered and his posture straight, and he looks every inch the crown heir, composed and authoritative and devastatingly handsome in a way that Bryn finds deeply inconvenient given that his sister is standing beside him and about to form opinions.
Mithri stops walking.
Bryn can't blame her. Seeing Ithyris for the first time is an experience.
The prince is tall and broad and the violet scales at his throat catch the amber light and his amethyst eyes are striking from across the room and the sheer physical presence of him, the density and the warmth and the contained power, fills the hall in a way that makes every other person in it feel as though they've been drawn slightly smaller.
He is, objectively and by any standard of measurement available, the most beautiful man either of them has ever seen.
"Oh," Mithri says quietly.
"Don't," Bryn mutters.
"I'm just saying. Oh."
Ithyris approaches. His gaze moves to Mithri first, a brief assessment, polite and warm, and he bows with a formality that surprises Bryn because the prince's usual mode of interaction with the world is considerably less ceremonial, usually involving bare feet.
"Princess Mithri. Welcome to the Sovereignty. I hope your journey was not too arduous."
"It was terrible, actually," Mithri says, because she is Bryn's twin and incapable of dishonesty when directness is available and there's no reason to choose diplomacy over accuracy. "The roads are dreadful and I was saddle-sore for three days and the last inn smelled of goats."
Ithyris blinks. Then, to his credit, he smiles, and it's a genuine smile, not the polished diplomatic version. "I'll have the steward arrange more comfortable quarters for you. And I'll see about the roads."
"Thank you." Mithri studies him with the same clinical attention she applies to her embroidery, the careful, assessing gaze of someone who is evaluating quality and craftsmanship and will not be satisfied with anything less than excellent. "So you're the one who's been biting my brother."
Bryn closes his eyes. He considers the feasibility of the volcanic floor opening and swallowing him whole. He calculates the odds and finds them disappointingly low.
Ithyris, to his infinite credit, does not falter. "I am," he says. No apology. No embarrassment. Just a simple, steady acknowledgment delivered with the same calm certainty he brings to everything, and then his gaze slides from Mithri to Bryn.
And there it is.
The difference. The thing Bryn has been afraid of since the moment he heard Mithri was in the entrance hall, the thing he has been bracing himself for with the same grim determination he brings to every potential catastrophe.
He was afraid that Ithyris would see Mithri and see what the treaty intended.
See the princess. See the golden hair at full length and the curves and the grace and the version of Bryn that was supposed to be here, the version that fits, the version that makes sense, and realize what he got instead.
But the prince looked at Mithri with warmth and courtesy and the appropriate respect owed to a princess of a neighboring kingdom.
He looks at Bryn with a heat and focus that hasn't dimmed one degree, that dark, consuming attention that makes Bryn's skin tighten and his breath come short and his body lean toward the prince before his brain can intervene.
Ithyris doesn't look at Mithri the way he looks at Bryn.
He doesn't look at anyone the way he looks at Bryn.
And Bryn knows this because he's been watching, cataloging, preparing himself for the moment the prince sees his twin standing beside him and realizes what he's been missing.
What he got instead of what was promised.
What showed up in a dress when a princess was expected.
But Ithyris looks at Mithri and sees a princess. He looks at Bryn and sees everything.
Something in Bryn's chest releases. A knot he didn't know he was carrying, wound tight since the moment Lira told him to come to the main hall, loosens and comes undone and the relief is so profound it makes his knees unsteady.
The prince doesn't want his sister. The prince wants him.
Not because Mithri wasn't available, not because Bryn was a convenient substitute, not because the bond is indiscriminate and landed on whoever walked through the door first. The prince wants him, specifically, with Mithri standing right there, and the difference in how he looks at them is so vast it's visible from across the room.
Mithri notices. She is his twin and she notices everything and she sees exactly where Ithyris's gaze goes when it leaves her and she sees the way it changes when it finds Bryn, the way it warms and focuses and deepens, and Bryn watches her clock it, file it, and tuck it away with the quiet efficiency of a woman who has just gathered all the intelligence she needs.
Ithyris asks about her journey. He makes sure her rooms are adequate.
He arranges for a meal to be sent and inquires about any supplies she needs.
He is gracious and attentive and exactly as courteous as a prince should be to his intended's sister, and Bryn is grateful for the prince's manners and for the fact that Ithyris is treating Mithri with the kind of thoughtful hospitality that Bryn's own kingdom was never able to provide her.
And through all of it, the prince's hand finds the small of Bryn's back and rests there, warm and sure, a point of contact that says I'm here and you're mine and nothing about your sister's presence changes that, and he doesn't move it. Not once.
***
That evening, Mithri comes to his chambers.
She sits cross-legged on his bed, which he has changed since the last catastrophe, fresh sheets that don't smell of sex and cedar, and he sits in the chair across from her and they look at each other the way they have looked at each other their whole lives: with the particular, uncomplicated certainty of two people who grew up sharing everything, including the fundamental understanding that the world is difficult and the only safe place in it is each other.
"He's in love with you," she says.
"He thinks I'm his mate. It's a biological..."
"Bryn. I watched his face when he looked at you.
That isn't biology. I don't care what the Drekian elder council says about mate bonds and involuntary responses and biological compulsions.
That man is in love with you. The biological component might have pointed him in your direction, but the way he looks at you is not a compulsion.
That's a choice. He is choosing to look at you that way and he is choosing to keep looking and he could not have been more obvious about it if he'd hired a herald. "
Bryn looks at his hands. They're twisted in the fabric of his shirt. The prince's shirt. He's still wearing Ithyris's shirts because they're the most comfortable thing he owns in this palace and they smell of cedar and he has stopped pretending that isn't the reason.
"What do you want, Bryn?"
The question hits him in the center of his chest. No one asks him what he wants.
People ask him what he can do, what he'll sacrifice, what he'll manage, what he'll hold together for them while they break it apart from the other side.
No one asks what he wants because no one has ever considered the possibility that his wants might matter, including Bryn himself.
"I want you to be safe," he says.
"That's not an answer."
"I know."
She waits. Patient. Immovable. His twin, who knows every deflection he's ever used because she's watched him build them all and has been taking notes the entire time.
He opens his mouth to say something strategic. Something safe. Something that sounds like an answer without actually being one, the kind of careful non-response he's been giving to people for six years. What comes out is neither.
"I don't know what I want. I've never been in a position to want anything.
I've been in a position to need things and manage things and survive things and I'm good at that.
I'm very good at that. But wanting? I don't know what that feels like without the fear underneath.
I don't know what it feels like to want something and not immediately start calculating what it will cost me to lose it. "
Mithri's eyes go bright. She doesn't cry.
She climbs off the bed and crosses to him and wraps her arms around his neck from behind, her chin on his shoulder, her cheek pressed against his, and the warmth of her and the familiarity of her and the smell of lavender soap and the feel of her arms around him is so overwhelmingly, simply good that his throat closes and he has to breathe through his nose for a moment.
"You are a self-sacrificing idiot," she says, soft and fierce, her mouth near his ear. "And I love you more than anything in this world. And you deserve to want something, Bryn. You deserve to want something that isn't just keeping everyone else alive."
He reaches up and holds her arm where it crosses his chest and he closes his eyes and leans into his sister and lets her hold him the way he's been holding her their entire lives. The role reversal is disorienting and necessary and he didn't know how much he needed it until it was happening.
"He's very handsome," she says after a moment.
"Shut up."
"The scales are quite something. Do they go all the way..."
"Mithri."
"I'm just asking."
"You are not just asking. You are fishing for information that you absolutely do not need."
She grins against his shoulder. He feels it, the curve of her mouth against his shirt, and something in him cracks open and fills with warmth that has nothing to do with the volcanic stone or the bond or the prince.
His sister is here. She's safe and she's here and she's teasing him about the dragon prince whose marks are still fading on his neck and for one moment, just one, the world feels manageable.
Not small. Not safe. But manageable, which is a lower bar and one he can actually clear.
"Stay," he tells her. "Please. Stay for a while."
"Wild dragons couldn't drag me away," she says. Then she pauses and considers what she's said. "Poor choice of words."
Bryn laughs.
It's small and rusty and surprises them both.
It sounds as though it hasn't been used in a long time, which it hasn't, and it catches in his throat on the way out and comes out rough around the edges.
But it's real, and Mithri tightens her arms around him and presses her face into his hair and he sits in the chair in his borrowed shirt in a palace carved from a volcano and he laughs, and outside in the corridor he feels the bond pulse warm and certain, which means Ithyris felt it too.
Felt the laugh. Felt whatever the laugh did to Bryn's chest. Felt the warmth of it through the door and the stone and whatever distance lies between them.
Good.
Let the prince feel it. Let him know what Mithri's presence does to Bryn, how it fills the hollow places, how it makes him braver and softer and more himself. Let him feel Bryn laugh and know that this is who he is when he's not afraid.
This is who he is when he's loved.