Chapter 12
The council is furious about Mithri.
Bryn learns this from Lira, who has developed an uncanny talent for gathering information from every corner of the palace and delivering it to him with the cheerful efficiency of a particularly well-informed spy.
It's possible she's always had this talent and merely lacked a recipient who appreciated it.
It's also possible she's cultivating it specifically for Bryn's benefit, which he finds both touching and slightly alarming given the breadth of her sources.
The elders are livid, she tells him over breakfast in the kitchens, because the real princess is now within the Sovereignty, within their reach, and the prince will not choose her.
"Syreth petitioned the king this morning," Lira says, tearing a piece of bread in half and handing Bryn the larger portion without comment, which is a gesture so casually caring that he doesn't know what to do with it and so he just takes the bread.
"She wants to present Mithri as an alternative candidate. Formally. Before the court."
His hand tightens on his cup. "And?"
"The prince shut it down. Publicly. In front of the full advisory council.
He said, and I'm quoting because I was polishing silver in the next room and the walls in that part of the palace are thinner than the elders think, 'I have already chosen.
The matter is closed.'" She pauses, her expression shifting into something between awe and amusement.
"Then he put his hand on your chair. The empty chair, I mean.
You weren't there. He put his hand on the back of the chair where you usually sit and just rested it there.
While staring at Syreth. He didn't say anything else.
He just rested his hand on the back of your chair and looked at her. "
"That's not especially threatening."
"It was the most threatening thing I've ever seen in my life."
Bryn drinks his tea and thinks about Ithyris resting his hand on an empty chair and making an elder who has lived for centuries flinch, and he feels something warm and complicated spread through his chest that he does not examine because examining it would require admitting that the image of the prince claiming his chair in his absence does things to him that are not strategically useful.
Ithyris touches him at every opportunity now.
Not aggressively, not possessively in the way the word usually implies, not with the grabbing, claiming physicality that the word possession suggests.
But with a steady, deliberate frequency that communicates something to the court without ever saying it aloud.
His hand on the small of Bryn's back when they walk together through the corridors.
His fingers brushing Bryn's elbow when he passes a dish at dinner.
His palm settling on Bryn's shoulder when Bryn is seated and the prince is standing behind him, the weight of it warm and grounding and visible to anyone watching, which is everyone. Everyone is always watching.
Bryn likes it and he hates it in equal measure.
He likes it because his body has developed a Pavlovian response to the prince's touch that he cannot control, a full-body flush and a loosening of every muscle he holds tight, as though Ithyris's hand on his skin tells his body it's safe to stop bracing for impact.
He has been bracing for impact for six years.
His muscles have been locked and ready for the next blow since he was twelve, and the prince's hand on his back is the only thing that makes them stand down, and that is terrifying.
He hates the touch because he likes it, and liking it makes him vulnerable, and vulnerability in a court that is still deciding whether to keep him or discard him is a luxury he can't afford.
But he doesn't pull away. He has stopped pulling away, and the court notices that too.
***
Mithri settles into the palace with an ease that makes Bryn jealous and proud in equal measure.
She is better at this than he is. She always has been.
Where Bryn is sharp and prickly and unable to resist the urge to throw bread at people who insult him, Mithri is warm and direct and disarming in a way that makes people want to help her before she's finished asking.
She charms the kitchen staff within a day, Theryn included, which is an achievement that Bryn considers genuinely impressive given that it took him a full morning of sitting quietly and eating broth to earn the cook's approval.
She has Lira laughing within an hour. She learns three phrases in Drekian by the second morning and uses them on every courtier she passes, mangling the pronunciation so badly that they're too busy correcting her to be hostile, and Bryn watches this strategy unfold and recognizes it for what it is: deliberate, calculated charm deployed as a form of disarmament.
His sister is not naive. She is warm and she is kind and she is also the same girl who climbed out a window to get here, and she knows exactly what she's doing.
She does not charm the elder council, but then, neither did Bryn. Some battles are structural.
Ithyris is gracious with her. He asks about Everen, about her journey, about her interests. He treats her with the same courtesy he extends to any guest of the court, attentive and warm and appropriately formal. And he does not, not once, look at her the way he looks at Bryn.
Bryn watches the prince with Mithri the way he watches everything: carefully, strategically, braced for the shift that will confirm his worst expectations.
She is beautiful. She is golden-haired and grey-eyed and she carries herself with a grace that Bryn has never managed and will never manage, all soft curves and easy smiles and the natural warmth that makes people gravitate toward her without being asked.
She is the princess the Sovereignty was promised.
She is everything Bryn is not, everything the treaty intended, everything the elder council has been saying he should have been.
And Ithyris treats her with the polite attention of a gracious host and then turns to Bryn and his eyes go dark and his hand finds Bryn's waist and the heat of him presses in and Mithri might as well be on another continent.
She might as well be in another kingdom.
She might as well not be there at all, because when the prince looks at Bryn the rest of the room ceases to register for either of them and the intensity of it is visible and total and Bryn is starting to understand that this is what the bond looks like from the outside: not a compulsion but a gravity, two bodies pulled toward each other with a force that has nothing to do with choice and everything to do with recognition.
It doesn't stop the ice in his gut. The cold, leaden certainty that standing side by side, the contrast between what was promised and what was delivered will eventually make the prince see what everyone else sees.
But the ice gets thinner every day, and the warmth of Ithyris's hand at his back melts it faster than his fear can rebuild it.
***
Bryn finds the pools by accident.
He's exploring the lower levels of the palace, a habit he's developed in the evenings when the court retires and the corridors go quiet.
Mapping. Always mapping. Adding to the mental architecture he's been building since his first day, cataloging every staircase and corridor and exit because old habits are survival habits and because the alternative to mapping is sitting in his room thinking about the prince and the bond and the council and the fact that his sister is sleeping in the next room over and his life has become something he could not have predicted and cannot fully control.
He takes a staircase he hasn't used before and follows a corridor that slopes downward and grows warmer with every step, the volcanic heat intensifying as he descends deeper into the mountain's core, and then the corridor opens into a cavern and he stops.
The heated pools are carved into the volcanic rock beneath the palace.
Natural formations, expanded and shaped over centuries, fed by thermal springs that bubble up from somewhere deep in the mountain.
The water is clear and faintly blue, tinted by the minerals dissolved in it, and steam rises from the surface in lazy curls that catch the amber glow of the crystal-studded ceiling.
The cavern is high and rough overhead, the crystals scattered across the rock catching the light and scattering it in soft fragments, and the whole space is warm and damp and private, enclosed by dark stone on all sides and silent except for the quiet drip of condensation and the gentle bubbling of the springs.
He should go back to his chambers. He should find Mithri, who will want to talk, or the library, which always wants him.
Instead he strips off his shirt and his trousers and his smallclothes and lowers himself into the nearest pool and the heat of the water closes over him and he makes a sound that he would die before making in public, a low, involuntary groan of relief that comes from somewhere deep in his body and has nothing to do with arousal and everything to do with the simple, overwhelming pleasure of being warm and held by something that asks nothing of him.
The water is perfect. Hot enough to ache against his sore muscles, silky with minerals, and deep enough that he can sit on the carved ledge with the water reaching his collarbones.
He leans his head back against the smooth stone rim and closes his eyes and for a few minutes he is just a body in warm water, thoughtless and unguarded, and the absence of vigilance is so unfamiliar that it takes him a moment to recognize what it is.
Peace. This is what peace feels like. He'd nearly forgotten.
He feels Ithyris before he hears him.