Chapter 7 #3
"He's very quiet," Arin continues, the words coming faster now, tumbling over each other as though he has been holding them back for weeks and cannot keep them contained any longer.
"He doesn't know anyone yet. He eats alone in the kitchens because he doesn't know where to sit in the hall.
He's never seen a greenhouse before, he said where he's from things don't grow well, the soil is too rocky.
But he learns fast, and he listens when I show him things, and he.
" Arin catches himself and stops, and his whole face is pink now, a deep, vivid flush that extends down his neck.
"I just wish I could make him feel more at home. "
Evran bites the inside of his cheek very hard to keep from smiling.
It is, he thinks, the most beautiful and earnest thing anyone has said to him in a very long time.
The careful, specific questions about being an outsider coming in had purpose and weight behind them that he understands now with perfect clarity.
This boy has been carrying someone in his heart and trying to understand what that person needs, and the thoughtfulness of it, the sheer, aching care of it, makes Evran want to reach out and hug him.
He does not, because that would embarrass Arin into a state from which recovery might not be possible. Instead, he leans back on the bench and considers, as though the question requires serious deliberation.
"You could invite him to dinner," Evran says.
"Not in the hall, somewhere quieter. Your rooms, or the greenhouse, somewhere he's already comfortable.
Share a meal with him. Let him talk, or not talk.
Sometimes the most welcoming thing you can do is give someone a space where they don't have to perform. "
Arin is listening intently, absorbing every word, committing them to memory.
"Arrange a walk through the valley," Evran continues. "Show him the things you love about this place. The orchards, the fields, the stone gardens. Make it a conversation, tell him what things mean to you and ask him what things meant to him where he came from."
Arin nods, once, tightly.
"And show him what you've been growing." Evran smiles. "Include him in what's special to you and he'll never forget it."
Arin is so pink he is nearly crimson. His hands are still clasped in his lap, but the nervous rhythm has stopped, and he is sitting very still, the way he sat in the greenhouse when he was showing Evran the southern seedlings, focused, intent, holding something precious and fragile and knowing it.
"Thank you," he says, and his voice is quiet but steady. "That's, that helps. That really helps."
"Can I give you one more piece of advice?"
Arin nods.
"Don't rush it. You don't need to fix everything at once.
Just be there. Be consistent. Let him see that you're someone who shows up.
" Evran pauses, and thinks of Vaike, and the steady, patient way Vaike showed up for him, day after day, not demanding or pushing or asking for more than Evran could give, just being there, present and reliable, until the walls Evran had spent his whole life building came down not because they were broken but because they were no longer needed. "The rest takes care of itself."
Arin swallows and nods again, and something in his posture eases, a loosening, a settling, as though he has set down something he has been carrying for a long time and can finally feel the relief of its absence. He turns to Evran and offers a small, genuine smile that transforms his whole face.
"Thank you, Evran."
"Anytime."
They sit in companionable silence for a while, watching the crowd and the performers and the light shifting on the fountain water. Tria returns eventually, breathless and bright-eyed from dancing, and Evran stands and stretches and offers his arms.
"Shall I walk you both back to the Keep?"
Tria takes one arm. Arin, after a hesitation that lasts only a moment, takes the other. They walk back through the square and through the gates and into the corridors of the stronghold, and Evran delivers them to the stairwell that leads to the family wing.
"Same time tomorrow?" Tria asks, already halfway up the stairs.
"If I survive your mother and her strawberries."
Tria grins. Arin lifts a hand in farewell. They disappear up the stairs, their voices fading into the stone, Tria's loud and Arin's quiet, the two of them filling the stairwell the way they fill every space they enter, together and inseparable and perfectly balanced.
Evran stands in the corridor and feels the silence settle around him. The afternoon light is fading, going golden and long through the windows, and the stronghold is quieting as people drift toward dinner and rest.
He thinks about the life he is building, piece by piece, in a world he never expected to belong to.
He thinks about Delia's words, hold on to what you have, and Arin's pink face and Tria's laughter and the brightness of the afternoon and the beads at his temple and the man waiting for him in the eastern wing.
He thinks about how far he has come from the boy who arrived at the stronghold gates with nothing but his father's contempt and a desperate plea not to be sent home.
Then he turns and heads for the eastern wing, where his husband is waiting.