The lantern chimney had stopped rattling. The palace kept breathing, morning crews trading jokes, courier boots tapping, a far gate chain unspooling, but his room held still like a palm over a bruise. The satchel sat open on the bench with its usual contents, maps softened at the folds, coil of line, flint, the tin of orange-peel tea, and he kept not reaching for it. The space where Tessa had stood in the doorway still felt like a shape cut out of the air
A soft knuckle on wood. Tessa stood in his doorway, not quite inside, not quite out. No staff; hands empty; eyes not.
< Check in> she signs—the phrase they saved for hard things. Her face shows hurt then relaxes as she signs by first pointing to herself
He didn’t get up. “Say it clean.”
She stills and then signs quickly. < Not ready to be anyone’s home> She watches his face and signs slower with affection in her face. < You’re easy to love. That’s the problem>
He breathed once, then again so it wouldn’t be her work to make him do it. “Is this about me,” he asked, “or about staying?” He watched her face as she stood there for a long time.
“Thank you for not charging me interest,” he said; it almost counted as a joke. His fingers found the narrow leather at his wrist and tightened it the way she’d taught him when his thoughts got loud. “We end it clean.”
< Clean still hurts > She signed and watched him working on the strap.
“I’ve had worse clean,” he said after a heartbeat. “And worse dirty.”
Silence held. The lantern ticked itself cooler. Her mouth folded around something like regret and then let it go. She touched the frame twice, valediction, not promise, and left. Her footfalls fading down the hall. He sat very still until the part of him that wanted to follow died the honest way. She wouldn't want him to follow her.
A knuckle touched the jamb. Kylar stepped in without ceremony and leaned a shoulder there like a friend who knows better than to stride. His eyes took in the open satchel, the uncinched straps, the hour past leaving.
“She told me,” he said quietly. Not a report; a courtesy. “And I noticed your door.”
Jayce made his mouth behave. “The door’s fine.”
“I meant that it’s still open,” Kylar said. No rank in it. Just noticing.
They let the lantern tick. Jayce didn’t trust words yet. Kylar didn’t force them.
After a while, Kylar tried a soft angle. “Ending clean is still a cut.”
“Mm,” Jayce said. “Cleaner than wire. Hurts longer than a bruise.” He rolled the leather at his wrist under his thumb because habit needed somewhere to go.
Kylar huffed. “I’m not much for references. My last grand romance is… theoretical.” A skewed grin. “Turns out it’s hard to find someone who sees a person and not a crown.”
Jayce glanced up. “Try hiding the crown.”
“Working on it,” Kylar deadpanned. “Results mixed.”
Some air came back. Banter found a foothold.
“You could always date the crown,” Jayce offered. “Low expectations. Predictable schedule.”
“Terrible kisser,” Kylar returned. “Also heavy. Leaves a mark.” The grin faded to something truer. “I’m being patient, though. Maybe someday.”
“Try people with the same problem,” Jayce said, grateful to feel the ground tilt toward banter. “Pick from the pool of ‘titled and tired of it.’”
Kylar’s frown was immediate and unambiguous. “There’s only one princess left that fits, and Lore is not—” he cut himself off, jaw set. “I’d rather die than entertain that thought.”
“Logged,” Jayce said, palms up. “No Lore.”
Kylar exhaled, some of the iron easing out of his shoulders.
“Then when I get back,” Jayce offered, “we go out. Masks optional. A few drinks. We talk to girls who don’t care how a seal looks on wax.”
Kylar sighed like he’d been assigned latrine duty. “I’d have to wear a mask.”
Jayce’s grin arrived on schedule. “Headline writes itself: Handsome prince mobbed to death by common girls, city mourns, bakers sell out of buns shaped like his dimples.”
Kylar actually laughed, a quick, surprised thing that made the room warmer. “Maybe I need a scar. Solve the ‘handsome’ problem.”
Jayce pointed at his face. “You already have one. Jawline, left side. Frontier gift.”
Kylar’s fingers went there on instinct, feather-light over old work from the southern posts. “Did it help?”
“Think it did the opposite,” Jayce said, rueful. “Congratulations on weaponized asymmetry.”
Kylar groaned. “Useless.”
“Devastating,” Jayce corrected. “But we can mitigate. Mask, ordinary coat, my worst hat. We can always flee into the night and over rooftops”
“That sounds like a thrilling time” Kylar said dryly. Then, softer: “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For being the friend version of you,” Kylar said, and didn’t make a joke out of it.
Jayce’s answer was to stand. The ache didn’t buck as hard this time. He shouldered the satchel and checked the buckles, steady now. Kylar straightened away from the jamb.
Jayce reached, gripped Kylar’s forearm—soldier to soldier, the pressure saying something older and simpler. “Seven days, Dato.”
Kylar scowled on reflex. “Don’t call me that.”
Jayce’s mouth tipped. “Right. Masked menace. See you in a week.”
“Bring the good tea,” Kylar said. “Oranges make hard rooms easier.”
“Always.”
Jayce stepped into the corridor. At the stair he looked back once. Kylar lifted two fingers, go, and Jayce did, down through the yawning stone to the stables and out along the orchard road, the hurt sitting clean in his chest.
His gray gelding watched him with the long-suffering intelligence of a partner who knew both of his gaits. One huff.
“I know, I’m late.” Jayce set a palm to the wide forehead, breathed once into the soft, bitter-apple smell. “I’m sorry, Slate. Be gentle with me, my heart was broken.”
Slate bumped him at the shoulder and flicked both ears: mount up, then poetry.
Jayce swung into the saddle and let the palace fall behind in a hush of hooves. The orchard road carried him between black-limbed rows dripping the last of night’s dew. He set the pace he used for thinking, long, ground-eating, steady, and turned the ache into work the way he always did: inventory, routes, breath.
He kept the first hour for Tessa and said nothing out loud. By then it was already late morning, later than he ever let himself leave, and the sun had climbed a finger and a half over the east. He set the ache on a bench in his head and wrapped it in clean cloth: not a wound to poke; a wound to heal around. When it rattled, he gave his body tasks.
Check buckles. Count strides between coppiced willows. Catalog the sky’s promises. Ease the near stirrup a quarter turn. Drink when the wind shifts cooler off the water. Eat when the road turns from dust to packed grain.
Slate approved of the ritual; ears pricked, then easy. They cut south at the millstone as they always did and took the lower track where wagon ruts kept last week’s rain in long gray mirrors. At Tinker’s Bridge, Jayce swung down without thinking, hand settling at the gray’s jaw while they went board by complaining board, two years of this route had taught them both which plank sulked and which behaved. The river talked under them in its old, steady grammar. He let it rinse the loudest part of him and filled the space with something useful: the next turn, the hedge gap after the ash, the shallow ford if the ferryman looked nosy.
He didn’t stop long enough for a fire. No tea yet. Just water tipped from the skin and a heel of bread walked while riding. Be loud where it counts, Kylar had said; arrival was loud enough. The map in his head would do the rest, keeping certain names unspoken and certain doors easy to reach.
By midday a peddler’s cart matched his pace for a short stretch. They traded apples and weather, no questions that wanted answers. Jayce bought nothing he didn’t need and kept moving; he’d learned the difference between generosity and the kind of weight you tie to your own ankle.
He made camp in a stand of alder where the wind spoke in silver. Slate chose the dry hummock and hobbled himself with the patience of an old partner. Jayce leaned his back to warm ribs and sharpened his knife down one song and half of another, stopping before the edge turned mean. He lay down with the rules he trusted: breathe, sleep, wake, forward.
Tessa crossed the first part of the night like distant weather, there and gone, thunder too far off to count. He didn’t chase it. He admitted, in the privacy of his own skull, that she had been half-absent all week, careful at the edges the way people get when they’re measuring a goodbye. He’d felt it coming and pretended he didn’t, as if not naming it could keep it from arriving. Now that it had, he let himself do the simpler thing: turn his face to the dark, count the breath that belonged to today, and make room for morning to find him.
He woke before the sun and put miles under the gray’s careful feet. Marsh opened into the broad, flat run of floodplain. At the ferry he didn’t bother hailing—same man on the rope, same eyes that liked the inside of other people’s pockets. He’d learned that lesson last year. Jayce lifted two fingers in a polite wave and took the ford a quarter league down, where the stones looked like old backs and didn’t lie about their depth.
He ate in the saddle, yesterday’s bread, cheese that tried, and let his thoughts shift from the palace to the people at the end of the road. Keep it simple. Keep it useful.
Rush first. Solid. A “what’s the plan” man, not a throne-voice. He’d take information like ledger lines and pay it back in kind if the numbers made sense. Jayce liked the math of that.
Kairi next. Not a girl anymore. In a year she’d steadied, still soft with people, but not fragile. The way she listened made ordinary things feel correctly named, and people relaxed around that. He did, too. He wouldn’t say it out loud, but some trips the orange-peel tea in his satchel felt more like it belonged to her than to him.
Would Kylar ever chase a marriage because the crown wanted it? The thought skimmed him and went. Rush wouldn’t allow any brother of Ryder’s near Kairi on principle, not after how fast he’d shut down the old idea of betrothing her to Ryder, and that was before Serenity. Besides, whatever Kairi had with the dream-companion was its own weather. None of them (Ryder included) knew enough to point a finger at a real boy yet.
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
He remembered the last late talk with Ryder, rubbing at his temples, fatigued and practical. “Bonds form like this when both parties need something the other can give,” Ryder had said. “We need to figure out what Kairi needed, or what she gives here. That might narrow where to look for this boy.” Kairi had been protective, answering only what she had to so Rush and Ryder would stop worrying. Rush had warned Jayce she didn’t like giving details. Fair. She’d notice today that he was a little off. He practiced the lie he’d choose: I’m fine. He’d make it true enough around her not to add weight to her load.
Late afternoon brought the market span: three stone arches, a lacework of booths, toll-keepers pretending not to notice small favors. He watered Slate, bought a spool of waxed linen from a woman who priced like a sane person, and let a boy pitch “miracle horse salve” for far too long. Slate pinned one ear, offended. Jayce bought the tin anyway, one coin to make a child feel like a merchant was a cheap kindness, and kept moving. The waxed linen made him think of Kairi saying she hadn’t seen much of it lately. Maybe he’d finally make that rain cloak she’d mentioned without asking for one.
He camped where the hill wore broom and the stars came close. Slate chose the dry patch, hobbled easy.
He ate, rolled into his blanket, and clocked the day. Tessa hadn’t broken in much, surface thoughts only, less sharp. Maybe he’d be okay. At least until he was back in the halls that echoed with her footsteps.
He slept without dreams he could keep, which, tonight, was a kindness.
The land gathered into low shoulders, then lifted; scrub oak gave way to fields hemmed with stone, and the road narrowed to a quiet argument between wheel and ditch. Jayce made the last leg lean and simple. He counted crows because counting something that didn’t matter helped everything that did.
Near the rise where the river bent out of sight and sky came down to shake hands with the road, he gave Slate his head. The gray took the last mile like the destination was already in his nose. Jayce let him, busy turning the palace out of himself one thought at a time, Tessa’s doorway and the almost-sorry that never landed; Kylar’s idiotic headline about bun-shaped dimples that had somehow helped.
He snorted once, thinking of the city. Kylar did have trouble going out, nobles staging daughters like chess pieces in doorways, tavern corners, balcony railings. With Ryder promised to Serenity and Damon happily courting half of Naberia by mistake and on purpose, that left the youngest Lyon as the last unclaimed rung on a very public ladder. Jayce was privately grateful he didn’t have to play that game. Noble’s son, already exactly where his family bragged he’d be, Ryder’s personal guard and Shadowguard captain, no one tried to sell him a future at the bottom of a winecup.
He slipped into the quarter that gossiped less by the back lanes, the kitchen-garden path that traded feet for favors and the narrow turn that didn’t invite attention. He walked the final stretch to rinse the road out of his posture. How you arrived mattered. Not like a storm. Like a promise kept. It also gave him a breath to put the right face on.
Slate sighed and started browsing the hedge as if this were part of the ritual, which, by now, it was. Jayce straightened his coat, tucked the tin of orange-peel tea where it would be seen, and stood one heartbeat with a hand on the latch of his own mouth. Say little. Notice much. Carry the weight that’s yours, not the kind that makes other people shorter.
He knocked the way the hinges liked, three even beats. The hinges he’d set months ago answered true; wood met wood without complaint. A faint rhythm inside, metal set down, fabric moved, a chair leg easing back.
The back door opened, and the house did what it always did now: measured him, remembered him, let him in.
Kairi stood in the doorway, braid loose over one shoulder. The quick, bright check of her eyes ran head to heel and back to his face. Then, no ceremony at all, she caught his forearm, tugged him the last half-step, and folded him into a hug.
He didn’t pretend to be braver than he was. Arms around her, chin to her crown, he let the bones of his back admit the truth. “I needed that,” he said into the quiet above her shoulder.
She answered by tightening her hold, a small nod against his collarbone that meant I know.
Behind her, the room had been tidied for company without trying too hard, bench cleared, stool set right, the good tin in easy reach. The hurt in his chest didn’t vanish. It just… found space where it didn’t have to shout.
“Welcome back, Jayce,” she said, stepping aside to let him pass, one hand still looped in his sleeve the way people keep a friend from getting lost in a crowd. “You’re late.”
“I am,” he huffed. “I brought proof I’m sorry.”
“Orange,” she guessed, already smiling.
“Borderline bribery,” he admitted.
From the far corner, a familiar pause, Rush hearing, placing, deciding to let the welcome happen first. Jayce glanced that way and then back to Kairi. The look she gave him did the rest of the healing his three-day road had started.
“Come in,” she said. “Tell me the parts you can say out loud.”
“Deal.”
He stepped over the threshold, left the weather outside, set his satchel by the couch where it always lived, and slid the packet of letters for Rush onto the table. Kairi took the chair across from him and folded into it the way she did when she meant to listen with her whole attention. It still disarmed him, that steadiness, like being seen by a window that didn’t lie.
He started clean. “My girlfriend ended things. Right before I left.” A breath, honest all the way through. “I’ll be fine. Eventually.”
She didn’t rush the silence. When it finished being useful, she reached and took his hand. “Do you want advice? Or… distractions?”
He looked down where her fingers wrapped his and found a grin he hadn’t planned. “You’re the second person in a week with absolutely no relationship experience offering to counsel me.”
She blinked. “Who was the first?”
“Prince Dato,” he said, thumb idly tracing the bridge of her knuckles.
Kairi's face scrunched like she had just taken a bite of lemon, then surrendered to the moment anyway. “As someone who has never been in a relationship ever,” she said, dry, “my advice is: take care of yourself and be kind about the timing. What did he say?”
Jayce let the memory settle in. “That leaving right after someone rips out a piece of you is either cruel or kind. That I’d know soon enough. And to bring the good tea.”
“Practical,” she said. “And a little wise.”
“He has his moments,” Jayce allowed. The corner of his mouth tipped. “He also suggested we go out and talk to girls when I get back.”
Kairi’s eyes went bright with mischief. “And will you?”
“Probably not,” he said. “But I might let him try to talk me into it so he has someone to hide behind when nobles start staging daughters like storefront displays.”
That earned a quiet laugh, approval without judgment. She squeezed his hand once, a pulse of warmth. “For what it’s worth,” she said, softer now, “I’m sorry it hurts. I can make tea, or I can make you help with the hem that’s fighting me. Both are excellent distractions.”
He exhaled, tension leaving by honest increments. “Tea, and then conscription.”
“Perfect.” She rose, then paused, steadying her palm over his where it rested on the table. “And if you don’t feel like talking later, don’t. You can sit there and scowl at thread and I’ll call it company.”
“That,” he said, “sounds like a plan I can carry.”
From the forge corner came the distinct, deliberate clink of tools being put away, Rush’s way of saying the room was theirs until they wanted otherwise. Kairi moved toward the shelf; Jayce watched the surety in her small motions and found, to his surprise, that between a prince’s dry wisdom and a princess’s simple kindness, the raw edge inside him had already dulled.
When she set the tin on the table and the orange peel rose like a better kind of weather, he reached for the kettle out of habit. "Tell me about what is new" He poured for both of them and then glanced to the third cup and Rush coming over and poured his as well. “Then I’ll stitch where you point and pretend I knew how all along.”
“You’ll do fine,” she said. “You usually do.”
Rush didn’t say anything when Jayce set the packet down; he just took the top seal, thumbed it open, and read with that unmoving, ledger-straight focus he used for work that mattered. Jayce and Kairi stitched in a companionable scrape of thread and small clinks of scissors.
Jayce pricked his finger, hissed, and popped it into his mouth without drama. “Occupational hazard,” he said around his knuckle, then bent back to the hem.
Rush turned the first letter face-down, houses in the upper quarter, a handful of safe doors, Ryder’s thanks for the last round of edits, and broke the second. Bullet points. Dream bond notes. Needs meet needs. Try to learn what he does, what he wears. Descriptions help. No promises made to a stranger.
He folded that one and set it level with the table’s edge, lifted his eyes to his sister. She was dutifully pretending the hem had become the most interesting thing ever woven. Her glance kept tripping back to Jayce anyway.
“You look like you want to ask him something,” Rush said, flat as a statement of weather.
Color rose in Kairi’s face. Her needle stilled. Jayce glanced up and gave her an easy door. “Ask away. It’s fine.”
She put the sewing down, two palms flat to settle them. “I… wanted to know more about available bachelors.” A breath. “If we move to the capital soon and”, a quick look to Rush—“you take your title, I won’t have much time before I have to take mine.” Back to Jayce. “So—are there… good men among the nobles? Or—Prince Dato? And is Prince Damon really as bad as the gossip says?”
Jayce’s eyes flicked to Rush, habit, and back to Kairi. He kept it clean.
“Damon first,” he said. “He enjoys the things people say he enjoys, wine, cards, company. The gossip isn’t wrong about his pastimes. It leaves out two important pieces: he doesn’t skip duty when the bell rings, and he isn’t cruel. Charming and thoughtless sometimes? Yes. But not mean. And lately he’s been making an effort to be more blade than breeze.”
Kairi absorbed that, a little crease easing at her brow.
“Dato,” Jayce went on, tone shifting a notch toward respect, “is quieter. Third in line buys him room to be underestimated, and he uses it to get work done while the room looks at someone louder. He sees more than he says. He’s training with the Shadowguard and does well because he’s steady and doesn’t mind the part where no one claps.” A small, wry tilt of his mouth. “If you want parades, he’s a poor choice. If you want someone who shows up when it’s dark and doesn’t leave until the thing is finished… he’s strong there.”
Rush’s face didn’t move much; approval lives small on him. “And nobles?” he prompted.
“There are decent ones,” Jayce said. “Fewer than I’d like, more than the rumors admit. You’ll find two kinds worth your time: the quiet stewards who’ve been running their households since their fathers learned to be ornamental, and the ones with work under their nails—river engineers, physicians from minor houses, the sort who are proud of competence more than crest. The Bell Quarter has a few who remember their name isn’t the most important thing about them. Riverside hides good men in ordinary coats.”
Kairi listened through Damon and Dato, through nobles with work under their nails and stewards with quiet spines. Then she tipped the question a degree.
Kairi glanced up, then, as if she’d finally circled to the question that had been pacing her ribs. “What about you?” she asked, light but not careless. “You’re a noble’s son. Sensible. Steady.” A tiny shrug. “Would you be… a good match? In theory.”
Jayce’s needle paused a breath, barely long enough to count. He set it moving again. “In theory,” he said, wry, “Prince Dato is the better bet. Princess and prince makes more sense on paper than princess and captain.” He kept his eyes on the hem. “And he’s a good man.”
Kairi studied him, long enough to register that he’d stepped to the side, not through the door. “All right,” she said, accepting the deflection for now. “Dato, then.”
Rush made no sound, but the look he slid across the table said he’d seen the dodge land and where.
Jayce cleared his throat gently and found something useful to hand her. “You could write to him,” he said. “Start a correspondence. You’d learn a lot about a person from letters, what they notice, what they return to, whether they answer the question you asked or the one they wish you had.”
Kairi’s mouth tipped. “A letter,” she said, testing the shape. “I could do that.”
They finished the seam. Kairi tidied the room for sleep, bent to squeeze Jayce’s shoulder, a quiet thank you, and went up the narrow stair.
For a while, only the settling of the house spoke. Rush flipped Ryder’s first letter back over, squared it with the second, and let the table feel his forearms.
“Why avoid the question?” he asked at last, even as Jayce shook out a blanket on the couch.
Jayce didn’t pretend not to know which one. He set the pillow, sat on the edge of the cushions. “Because Tessa ended it three days ago,” he said, simple and true, “and I don’t want to try any shapes on while the old one’s still warm.” He took a steading breath “And because if I thought about whether I’d suit her, I might start thinking about it on purpose. That feels… unkind. To all of us.”
Rush accepted that in the way he did, by not arguing with what was already decided. One of the many reasons he respected Jayce and trusted him around them. He was careful and thoughtful.
He tapped the second letter, the bullet points. “She’s told me more about the dream boy,” he said, giving Jayce work instead of ache. “Knows how to fight. Sword. Teaches her. Says her guard is too high; she drops her left shoulder when she’s tired.”
Jayce’s grin showed up, quick and clean. “I’ll have to spar with her.” He leaned back, laced fingers behind his head, let his eyes half-close. “What else?”
“He tells her about the capital. Food stalls. Lantern routes. Where to stand so the crowd breathes around you. The baker with the red awning who burns the first tray and sells the second.”
“Romantic,” Jayce said, not mocking. Thinking. “And specific. If she writes down exact phrases, we can map them, stalls, lanes, sightlines. See which quarter matches the way he speaks about it.”
Rush nodded once. “Tomorrow before you leave. We’ll put ink to it. I’ll have answers for Ryder for you to take. Maybe spar with her in the morning and see if the techniques are familiar. They aren't for me, but they remind me of you.”
“Good, Ryder will be pleased. Sparring sounds entertaining as well, reminds you of me huh.” Jayce said, turning onto his side, blanket up to his ribs. A yawn threatened; he caught it, lost anyway. “And I’ll… I’ll convince your sister to draft a letter to Dato.” A slow, wicked little smile. “It’ll be fun watching him try to write back to a girl he doesn’t know.”
Rush’s mouth almost found a smile. “Will you tell Ryder you have having her write to Dato?"
Jayce shifted and looked over at him. "Of course. The letters can go back and forth faster if you lived in the capital though Rush..not a three days ride."
Rush nodded and held up the first letter. "I'm letting him know I am ready to move forward."
Jayce sat up. "truly? I can stay another day and we can plan things out. The next time I come we can be moving you there."
Rush stared at Jayce. Jayce calmed a little. Rush sighed and began. "If we were ready to go next month, would you be ready?"
Jayce laid back down and grinned. "I'll start requesting the right people for the escort then. We will have you in the capital by end of month next month. Right before the cold comes."
Rush huffed and gathered the letters to reply to in his room. "Three months and you will probably live in the extra bedroom."
Jayce’s laugh was a breath against the pillow. “Don't tempt me with a good time. Goodnight, Rush.”
“Goodnight.” Rush dimmed the lamp, and let the house hold what it had earned: one plan, one promise, and enough quiet for the night to finish its work.