Chapter 14 #2
Bryn thinks it with everything he has. Yes.
You are enough without the scales and without the crown and without the centuries.
You are enough because you kneel on this floor and ask to be loved and the asking is the bravest thing I have ever seen.
You are enough because you walked through my wreckage without flinching.
You are enough because you chose patience when you could have chosen power and kindness when you could have chosen command and you chose me, and I am choosing you back.
The dream hears it. In this space, stripped of every barrier, his thoughts are as loud as shouting.
The prince's eyes widen and his breath catches and the tears fall, two of them, sliding down his cheeks and over Bryn's thumbs, and the expression on his face is the specific, shattering wonder of a man who has just been answered after centuries of silence.
The chamber dissolves. The figures vanish. The walls recede. The crystal veins go dark. And then it is just them, kneeling on warm stone in the dark, face to face, Bryn's hands on the prince's cheeks, tears on his skin.
The dream lets go.
***
Bryn wakes with the prince's arms around him.
The real world returns in fragments. The warmth of the bed. The weight of the blankets. The bond between them, louder now, fuller, thrumming with something new and raw. Cedar and smoke and the salt of tears.
Ithyris's arms are locked around him, not the loose drape of sleep but the grip of a man holding something he is afraid to lose. His face is pressed against the back of Bryn's neck and his breathing is ragged and the wetness on Bryn's skin tells him the tears followed them out of the dream.
They don't move. They don't speak. They lie in the dark, breathing hard, tangled together, shattered.
The bond pulses between them and it feels different, heavier, weighted with the mutual knowledge of each other's worst fears.
Ithyris knows now that Bryn has spent his life in an empty hall.
Bryn knows that the prince has spent his life asking a question that no one answers.
The same fear. Different shapes. Different halls. But the same wound at the center: that they are not enough. That the people around them stay for what they provide, not for who they are.
They have been afraid of the same thing and they have been afraid of it alone, and now they are afraid of it together, and Bryn doesn't know if that makes it better or worse. He thinks it makes it both.
The prince's voice, when it comes, is barely audible. Rough. Broken in places that Bryn didn't know the prince's voice could break.
"The hall."
Bryn's throat tightens. He doesn't turn around. He's not sure he can look at Ithyris right now without falling apart, and he has done enough falling apart in dreams tonight.
"You were so small," Ithyris says. The words come out uneven, scraped raw, pressed into the skin at the back of Bryn's neck. "In the dream. You were a child. And the glass was in your hands and you just kept cleaning. You didn't even stop to look at the cuts."
"I never did."
The prince's breathing hitches against him. His arm tightens across Bryn's stomach.
"How long?" Ithyris asks. "How long were you alone in that hall?"
Bryn is quiet for a moment. The answer is simple and the simplicity of it is the worst part. "Since I was twelve. Since Alder died. Maybe before that, if I'm honest. Alder just made it less obvious."
Ithyris doesn't respond immediately. When he does, his voice is thick and careful in the way it gets when he's choosing words to carry something too heavy for language. "I wanted to burn it down. The hall. I wanted to take it apart stone by stone until there was nothing left for you to clean."
"I know. I felt it."
Silence. The bond pulses between them, raw and open.
"The silence," Bryn says. Quieter now. "In your chamber. You were kneeling and no one answered. How long have you been asking that question?"
The prince doesn't answer for a long time. Long enough that Bryn thinks he might not, that the vulnerability of the dream might not survive the waking world, that the doors they opened in the dark might be closing now that the dark is starting to thin.
"Since before your kingdom existed," Ithyris says. "Since I was old enough to understand that people kneel to me because of what I am and not because they want to be near me. Since the first time I realized that every person in the room would still bow if there was nothing behind the crown."
Bryn turns in his arms. He turns and faces the prince in the dark and Ithyris's face is close and wrecked and the tear tracks are still visible on his cheeks and his eyes are the dull, exhausted amethyst of someone who has been stripped to the foundation and hasn't started rebuilding yet.
Bryn puts his hand on the prince's chest. Over his heart. He can feel it beating, fast and unsteady, and the scales beneath his palm are warm and real.
"There is something behind the crown," Bryn says.
"I've met him. He brings me tea and sits in chairs that are too small for him and takes his shoes off when he comes to find me.
He's insufferable and he won't stop staring and he told me I didn't have to earn my safety and he was the first person who ever meant it. "
Ithyris's hand comes up and covers Bryn's where it rests on his chest. His fingers close around Bryn's and hold, tight, and something in the prince's expression cracks open in a way that is different from the dream, quieter, more real, because this is not the architecture of fear.
This is a bed in a dark room and two people who have seen each other's worst and are still here.
"I would have come," Ithyris says. "To the hall. If I had existed in your life then. I would have come and I would have helped you clean and I would have stayed."
"I know," Bryn says, and he means it. "That's why I let you in."
The prince makes a sound against him. Not a word.
Something deeper, a vibration that Bryn feels through his whole body, and his hand spreads wide across Bryn's stomach and presses flat, and Bryn lets himself be held because they are both shaking and the only solid thing is the place where their bodies meet.
They stay. The dark holds them. The mountain breathes around them. The bond pulses, steady and certain, the rhythm of something that was tested tonight and did not break.
Bryn doesn't sleep again. Neither does the prince. But they stay, tangled together in the dark, and the silence between them is not empty.
That is enough.