Chapter 11
Archer
The confetti was going to be in his hair for a week.
Archer had no real hope of getting it all out.
Even after Eden had picked through his curls with more focus than Archer thought him capable of, and even after the shower he'd taken that involved more scrubbing than his scalp had ever experienced, he could still feel the phantom crinkle of it.
He shook his head experimentally as he made his way down the hall.
Nothing fell out. The feeling was there, nonetheless.
He supposed that was what he got for listening to Eden Saint. Troublemaker. Archer scoffed internally at the thought. He’d surmised Eden’s personality, yet he’d succumbed to his plotting anyway.
He didn't regret it, exactly. The whole thing had been funny for about three seconds, right up until Hadrian had sent it all flying back in their faces. After that it had been chaos and a damn near heart attack’s worth of shock to his system.
Worth it… probably. He'd decide later.
What he hadn't decided was what to do with himself now that he’d basically been dismissed and Romilly had run off to do some business or other.
The castle felt different. He didn’t know how he could sense it. The energy was all off. Like there was a tension seeping through the halls coating everything it came into contact with.
Something had happened while he and Eden were busy committing acts of confetti-based mischief. He didn't know what though. But he really, really wanted to find out.
Eden, for his part, had gone very quiet after walking Archer back to his room. The boy — man, he was a man, Archer reminded himself, though every instinct said otherwise — had hugged him briefly, crafting an excuse about needing to check on things, and disappeared.
If Archer hadn’t been curious before, the dishonesty sent up red flags. While he couldn’t prove the younger Saint was lying, Archer believed strongly his reason for leaving to be false.
Eden didn't check on things. Eden caused things. Eden instigated chaos and bounced around like that tiger character in the show he loved about the bear with no pants. He’d been obsessed with that entire animated series as a kid.
It was easy to get lost in the tales of adventure while also learning some life lessons along the way.
Granted, he didn’t know it was a double whammy when he was a kid. It took growing up to see the truth.
And truth was what Archer wanted. He hated being in the dark.
Romilly was unavailable to answer any questions he had.
His office door had been closed when Archer drifted past it, and the muffled sound of voices inside had stopped Archer before he could knock.
He wasn't going to interrupt something he didn't understand. What if Romilly’s work was life or death type of stuff?
Could him knocking cause someone else harm?
He wasn't going to risk it. Instead, he left without a sound.
It took him two wrong turns and one very long hallway that he was nearly certain he'd never been in before he found his way to the part of the castle he was looking for.
He almost missed the door because it didn’t stand out like he expected.
What gave it away was the faint earthy aroma seeping beneath the gap at the bottom.
Clay. He'd have recognized the scent anywhere, from the handful of art classes he'd taken in school and immediately loved despite being terrible at creating anything worthy of praise.
He knocked before he could talk himself out of it.
"Come in," Mira's voice called out.
Archer did as instructed, pushing the door open. He immediately froze to take in the space.
The room wasn’t as big as Archer feared it might be. So much of the castle existed at a scale that made him feel like a very small creature who had wandered to a place he shouldn’t have. Like maybe he needed to pack it up and leave before others realized he didn’t belong.
This room was human-sized, or close enough to it.
There were shelves along one wall lined with finished pieces.
Some were glazed and painted, some raw and pale, some fired into deep earth tones and blues.
A long table sat in the center with clay and tools arranged neatly at one end, and Mira herself stood at the other, her hands already working something.
She wore a long apron over her clothes and had her dark hair pulled back.
She looked up and smiled when she saw him.
"Archer," she said, like she'd been expecting him. "Come in. Shut the door behind you."
He did, then stood there for a moment not entirely sure what to do with himself.
"Have you worked with clay before?" she asked, already turning back to what was in her hands.
"A little. In school. I wasn’t good at it."
"Good at it is subjective.” Her eyes bored into him, making the words pack more of a punch than they would have otherwise. “There is an apron on the hook there. Put it on. The clay will get everywhere regardless. From the looks of it, you have already made a mess of yourself once today.”
He found the apron exactly where she’d said it was. It fit him perfectly. He rolled up his sleeves, then took a stool at the end of the table where the spare clay sat waiting.
"What are we making?" he asked.
"Whatever you like," Mira said. "I am finishing a bowl. You do not need a plan. Just touch it. You will figure out what it wants to be."
Archer looked at the lump of clay in front of him. How could clay tell him what it wanted to be? Was that just an artsy way of expressing herself?
He pressed his thumb into it experimentally and felt it give way. The soft, cool texture immediately satisfied him. Archer sighed as a wave of calm settled over his entire body.
Oh. That was why people did this.
He didn't say anything. He just started pressing his hands into the clay.
Mira worked beside him without making conversation. She had a gift for quiet, Archer was discovering. He found himself enjoying the silence with her. In the space he could exist without anyone else questioning him or reminding him of his faults.
It was just the clay and Mira with him. Nothing else mattered.
He wasn't trying to go for a specific design. He was making a lumpy and vaguely oval thing that might, generously, be called a dish if you squinted just right. In a past life he’d have worried what others’ opinions on the project would be.
He’d have fought to fit whatever mold they wanted him to be in, metaphorically and physically.
Now though, Archer understood he didn’t need to change. He could be himself and that was plenty good.
"How are you feeling?” Mira asked after a while.
"Better," Archer answered. "Arm's mostly fine. Leg's been good for a few days."
"I do not mean your injuries, sweetheart."
He kept his eyes on the clay. “Oh.”
She waited, hands still working the piece she had as if the damn thing wasn’t already perfect. Archer watched for a long moment before answering.
"I'm okay. I'm — Being here is different. In a good way. I just constantly feel like it’s all going to disappear. Could this be some elaborate dream that I wake up from in the morning?”
Mira made a soft sound but didn’t give her opinion.
"I've been thinking about what comes next," Archer continued. "Which is sort of dumb because I don't even know what today is, let alone next month. But I keep thinking about it. Like my brain can't stop trying to plan for the part where this is over."
"What do you mean, over?"
Archer shrugged one shoulder. "This. Being here. Eventually I'll have to go somewhere else. Figure out a life. You won’t want to keep me. No one ever does.”
"Why would you say that?”
The anger in her tone stopped him. “Because… Because I can't just stay. People like me don’t get to stay.”
"Why not? Who are people like you? What does that even mean?”
He looked up at her then. Mira’s gaze was hard, her eyes glowing golden the way Romilly’s had before. Was that a hereditary thing then? That would be a relief if it were.
"It's not important. I don't have a reason to be here," he said slowly. "Not a real one. I showed up. I got hurt. Everyone was very kind. But that's not the same as belonging somewhere."
Mira tilted her head. "And yet you said San Noctis felt like it was calling to you."
He had said that. He'd felt a bit embarrassed about it after, actually. The way it sounded, mystical and strange, like he might be making stuff up to give reason to his delusion. He'd half expected someone to laugh.
“It still feels true, but there is no logical reason for my feelings. I can’t make sense of it.”
"Most important things do not make a lot of sense at first,” Mira said mildly as she adjusted her bowl more.
Archer watched his hands shape the clay until it had walls. Low and uneven, it didn’t much improve what he’d built. "I don't want to leave," he admitted.
Mira was quiet for a moment before saying, “Then you will stay.”
Archer’s entire body drooped in relief. It was only one person’s opinion, yet it felt like the most important. Mira Saint might not have had whatever title Romilly did. She was still a formidable force in this family. The matriarch in a sea of testosterone.
They worked in quiet for a while after that.
He asked her about the pieces on the shelves — what each one was for, how long they took, which ones were her favorites.
She told him about the glaze she'd been trying to perfect for three years, a particular shade of blue that kept coming out slightly wrong despite her focus.
She said the inconsistency frustrated her and that she loved it at the same time because it kept her on her toes.
He learned that she'd started making pottery before she met Silas. She’d kept doing it because it was one of the few things in her life that had always been purely hers. Mira shared with him that none of her children had ever shown any interest, which she found both baffling and amusing.