Nine to Go

Deirdre

Of course it wasn’t the first time that Rohan and Angus had fought. Neither would it be their last, assuming their friendship proved lucky enough to live that long. Angus, as Ivar had gracefully described, was ‘spirited,’ and Deirdre agreed. But Rohan had a temper that found its kin with the dragon he was meant to have tamed, along with the one he’d summoned from a loch in a fit of his own impatience. And – less metaphorically – he was actually Maeve’s son, as well as half-brother to Lugad, who himself was half-demon.

From how the two spoke, or – rather – how they didn’t, it was hardly their first time with this fight either. Angus’ nervous silence would mirror the timing of Rohan’s boisterous brooding, as though anything the former could say would only serve to set the latter off, and had done so in the past. This was their poor attempt at peace; neither meant to give in if the war began, but they shared a hope of delaying any battles in fear of starting their war at all. They were circling each other.

In a way, it bared the kindness that had kept them so close together for years. They knew what they were like, and they had come up with ways to manage it. Rohan would bristle before sinking into himself, fulfilling a promise to warn Angus of an outburst. Angus, in turn, would quiet himself and freeze, giving Rohan the chance to leave without being removed – by Angus. It was a stiff and relentless dance, but dance it they did – around and around each lull in a greater, unspoken conversation.

As for the other three, sat in their so-called ‘audience’: she, Ivar and Garrett observed. They’d agreed to this rather early, expecting it to be no worse than before. Garrett hadn’t seen their last fight, but she and Ivar described it, and he understood their wisdom in remaining uninvolved. She and Ivar, meanwhile, had heard it from Rohan and Angus directly: back then, everyone else was to mind their business while the two of them settled theirs. They would put their quarrel away to turn on intruders to it, and at the end of the mess that wrought, they’d be back to their original fight again anyway.

Cathbad, when asked, had also told the three of them to leave those two alone to their dance. By weathering the worst of the tension, it would pass without a trace of coming through.

The ease in which he said this had almost felt sincere. What a shame that it’d followed such a long and weary sigh.

To be fair, they might have stayed with this plan if the fight hadn’t started in the yard, and in front of all of them. They’d been training with the castle guards, improving from mistakes they’d made during Maeve’s final assault. Morale was high, joy was felt, and their training had an air of loose formality. The lightness in it made everything else unignorable. If it happened another way, they might have taken longer to intervene. As it was, however, their impetus appeared the moment this man walked through the castle’s gate.

Deirdre had thought him ordinary. Older than them, though not vastly. Too young for grey in his short cut hair, or his dark and similarly short cut beard. Dark eyes as well, set in a pale and sun-hardened face. His wide, flattened nose seemed to point to his stern mouth, and appeared to be bent from a break that had once healed incompletely. Handsome, maybe, if only as one might expect from a wandering soldier, but he was dressed in a worn, wrapped cloak that hid whatever he’d used as arms. She didn’t like that.

This was a man who knew how to kill, and who wasn’t shy in sharing this. The secrecy in how he might accomplish that was disrespectful, and it hinted at him having blessed himself to handle any threat as he so chose; presumably, with a knife to its back – or whatever other weapons he had on him.

But ordinary, nonetheless. She, Garrett and Ivar might not have taken him as more than a mere traveller through dangerous, northern lands. She could have guessed he was here to talk with the guards and attempt to offer his services, timing it badly now that the war was already at an end. What was clear, however, was that the man had a target in mind. His back was straight and his shoulders were forward, leading him to stalk towards them in a straight and strict line.

If his silhouette beneath the bright sky hadn’t attracted their attention, then the iron grip of his gaze on the back of Rohan’s head most certainly had.

She and Garrett, who’d been sparring, stopped to brace for the intersection.

Ivar, who was sparring with Rohan, accordingly eased from his attempts.

Rohan, with a half-glance over his shoulder, huffed through his nose and swung faster, forcing the friendlier prince to quickly parry. “It’s Forge,” he said, for an unusually curt explanation. Then he continued to swing as if it was all he had to say about their guest. After two more loud strikes, and like an answer to something that someone asked out loud, he tacked on a bored, “He’s here for Angus.”

Now he’d said all he’d had to say.

Angus wasn’t here. He’d disappeared to rest minutes into their training. This was a time of cautious peace in Kells, now that Maeve had entered into exile, but the fact remained that a treaty had not yet been signed. Angus slacking off was therefore met with a mix of annoyance among the royals – well, the raised-as-royals – and simple merriment from Rohan, who’d only asked for Angus to bring them back snacks. They could afford the rest to that extent. The truth about a cautious peace was that it was still, after all, peace, and Angus was more than willing to be their reminder until it sunk in for them.

But Rohan’s dismissal of this man was more than any roll of Deirdre’s eyes, or frown set upon Ivar’s face at a little lack of discipline. It spurred a smirk from Garrett, who’d caught the change in the air but not the sense in heeding its warning.

“A friend of yours?”

The man approached before Rohan could reply, or before they could tell if Rohan was ignoring that.

He was tall, this stranger. Perhaps as tall as Ivar, but with an added edge of broadness across his chest. And there were indeed flashes of metal as the breeze caught the cloth he wore, but his hands were visibly open and out at his sides. He seemed more concerned by them than the other way around, but looks had been deceiving in the past. Deirdre’s hold on her sword remained firm, and she checked to see that Garrett’s was the same.

“Rohan.”

The man’s voice was deep and tested. It sounded as battle-worn as anyone from Kells’ battalions. There was poetry in that, with Rohan having been revealed as Maeve’s son. This felt like the cautious peace between their lands, playing out between two people.

Rohan had stopped sparring, but only because Ivar’s manners stepped him back to end it. Evidently, this was a friend, or Rohan would’ve stopped the man at the gate. Then royal courtesy – which all royals were obligated to offer – meant he had to greet that friend with some measure of acknowledgement.

They would wait.

And wait, even as Rohan stayed facing Ivar.

His brown hair looked golden in the sun, and regal with its curls wreathed around his neck. They hadn’t been outside for so long as to work up a sweat, but he glowed in the light all the same, meeting the rays on his skin with a flush from his own inner fire. By looks alone, he was a prince.

And wait.

Royal courtesy now called for Deirdre’s aid, but Rohan deigned to give a response a breath before she prompted him. Then, as if to wallow in his sudden petulance, he turned his head and waited for the rest of his body to follow. All the while, the other man held his gaze, and the other three...

... observed.

“You can wait by the wall,” Rohan said, drawling as he never had. After a moment, he pointed at said wall with a loose flick of his sword. He didn’t even raise his arm to do it; the tip of his nearly scraped the dirt.

“Or,” the man had countered, with a throatier weight behind the word, “you can tell me where he is.”

“He’ll be out,” Rohan said, as if he’d been forced to repeat himself. He finished his grunt, and then he was turned to Ivar again, hefting his sword to spar. “You’re in the way.”

This time, she did intervene. Though not exactly as she’d meant to. Her mouth opened, and at the flicker of movement, the other man switched his gaze to her instead – and bowed.

“Apologies, princess,” he insisted. “I can see I’ve interrupted you.” As though interrupting now to cover the sound of another grunt from other parties that were present, the man picked up with a well-overdue introduction. “My name is Broehaine. I’m a friend of...” He gestured at Rohan, who was waiting to spar. “You’ll know Angus if you know him. I’m a friend.”

“Good morning, Broehaine,” Deirdre said, her voice suggesting Draganta quit his antics. “I’m King Conchobar’s daughter, Princess Deirdre. Yes, we know Angus.”

“And we’ve met his friends,” Ivar added, though not too unkindly. If this man knew Angus, he would have understood the sentiment.

“I assure you, good sir,” Broehaine replied, “I’m not one’f those.”

The sentiment had been understood. Deirdre appreciated this.

“You speak with an accent,” Garrett said, not wasting any time. “Are you from the north?”

“This is Prince Garrett, from the Kingdom of Rheged,” Deirdre announced, voice suggesting the Prince of Rheged mind himself as well. “And this is Prince Ivar, who came to Kells from all the way across the sea.”

There was a strategy for emphasizing details. Garrett’s words risked offence with an accusation. Deirdre, sparring near someone from a land as far as Ivar’s, had anchored it as an invitation instead. Apparently familiar with such dialogue, Broehaine bowed his head again. It was in acknowledgement, and in polite deference to her version of events.

She liked him.

“My greetings to you both, Prince Ivar and Prince Garrett.” That was a strategy too, in how he’d ordered them. She and Ivar shared a look, tickled by this. “Yes, I am from north. The other north. Circin. I’m Pictish. My apologies again, if I’m difficult to understand. The Pict love an R the way the Rheged love a tale.” A quirk played at corner of Broehaine’s lips with that. “Wee joke for you, lad.”

“Yes,” said Garrett.

Rohan looked the happiest he’d been since Broehaine had arrived.

“What business do you have with Angus,” Ivar asked, ever the diplomat, “if you don’t mind my curiosity?”

“No business,” Broehaine said. “Stopping by, passing through. But I’ve known the boy since he was knee-high. Mine was the first pocket he picked – he had to jump for it.”

“He’s not a pickpocket now,” Rohan cut in, dark again. “He’s a Mystic Knight.”

Broehaine paused, waiting expectantly to hear what that was. But Rohan had since returned to looking bored, more so now that he’d accepted Ivar wasn’t going to spar with him. Scratching his beard in either irritation or nervousness – or both, Broehaine moved on to ask, “The wall, is it? That one?”

Rohan clarified with a face as stony as his advice.

“I’m sure Angus won’t be long,” Deirdre stepped back in. “And if -”

“Fooooorge!”

The timing of it had been impeccable. A mad rush of black hair, brown furs, and bright jubilance burst through the four other Knights, launching at Broehaine’s gut and catching itself on whether to hug him, crush him, tackle him, or carry the man away. For his part, blossoming into a brilliantly sudden glee, Broehaine appeared equally stuck on hugging back, picking Angus up, or knocking their friend to the ground. They both stayed upright, though not for a great lack of trying otherwise, and possibly only because one of them had bothered remembering where they were.

Not Angus. Obviously.

This commotion caused some of the soldiers to jump, ready to fight. Deirdre waved them away and back to their training. The cautious peace would take time for everyone.

“– long are you here –” “– a week –” “– a week –” “– business, lad –” “– fuck off –”

So fast were they talking, and in such a tangled mess, they almost slipped that past her. But of anyone expected to scold Angus for it, Rohan was the last person on her list. Yet he’d been first to do so. Which Angus didn’t notice. Broehaine did, and he tried to raise his mostly trapped hand as something of an apology on Angus’ behalf.

They didn’t stop talking.

“– princess –” “– right, sorry –” “– not me –” “– where y’staying –” “– you’ll find out –” “– jail, I bet –” “– I’ll find a bed –” “– with who –” “– got rounds to make –” “– aye, with who –” “– what y’askin’ –” “– mighta made ‘em already –” “– ‘at’s pish –”

“Gentlemen,” Ivar called, bringing a cooler head to their flurry –

“– got to tell Rohan you’re here,” Angus said, suddenly seeming to remember. “Bring a gift? So he hates you less.”

“No, I didn’t bring him a gift.” With that, Broehaine grabbed Angus by the jaw, and pried him around to look at the rest of them. “Why don’t you ask him if I brought him a gift?”

“Oh.”

That thought was plainer on Angus’ face than in the word he spoke to voice it. With one arm wrestled in the air, the other stretched along Broehaine’s waist, and one leg hooked behind the man’s ankle in some mid-abandoned plan to climb, Angus froze, staring at Rohan in the first of many nervous silences to come.

And as for Rohan...

“I’ll give him back tonight,” Broehaine called to the back of Rohan’s head. Then he dropped Angus on the ground and snapped, “That’s why he hates me.”

“‘Cause you didn’t bring him a gift,” Angus said, already eating a fistful of something he’d found before he was sat. “You bring me gifts all the time and I like you fine. He’ll be fine –” Angus had switched to addressing the others, reassuring them instead of Broehaine. Then he pointed up at the other man. “Did he tell you who this was?”

“No,” Broehaine answered for them.

“Aye, ‘cause he hates you –” “– I know –” “– so bring him some –” “– a gift’s not going –” “– you don’t know –”

“Yes,” Deirdre at last interrupted. As infectious as their energy did seem, it made it difficult to talk, and a growing concern had come to her for Rohan. “Broehaine gave us his name.”

“Who?”

“Me,” Broehaine said. And since Angus was down there, Broehaine gave him a kick. “You’re the only one who calls me ‘Forge’.”

“I’m not,” Angus said, finished whatever he’d been eating, and reaching up to Broehaine’s cloak again. “Rohan calls that you that.”

“‘Cause he hates me.”

“Well, why do I call you that –” “– I dunno –” “– why’d you let me call –” “– said it one day –” “– why –” “– don’t know, you were the one –” “– so you’re who?”

“Broehaine,” said Broehaine.

“Already forgot,” Angus said. To the others, he announced, “Forge’s known me longer’n I’ve known Rohan.”

It was the closest thing to an introduction Angus had ever delivered. He looked proud to say it.

“Aye.” Broehaine looked proud to hear it. “I told them I knew you since you were knee-high.” And he bent to pinch Angus’ cheek. “I still doooo –”

“Aw, fuck o-auuugghhhh,” Angus abruptly said, returning to the rest of the world and the smallest decorum he had to hold around the Princess of a Kingdom. “Sorry, Deirdre.” He didn’t sound sorry; he was grinning up at her, however sheepishly. But to his credit, he’d always managed his language at every other time. There hadn’t been a way to recognize it as a conscious effort until now. And recognize it twice, apparently. “Well, we’re off.”

Not only did they not leave anyone else a chance to speak, covering both halves of the conversation on their own, but the whip-crack speed at which they leapt to change the discussion made it impossible to interject with thoughts anyway.

They eventually concluded this was why Angus never learned to think before he would speak, but then thought nothing else of it.

Ivar

Rohan was graciously known for having the earliest starts to their day. Whether this was a virtue to extol, or a curse meant to punish them occasionally, tended to change with the day that it happened to be.

Today was neither. Rohan’s early start was incidental, but the truest sign of the challenges emerging. He’d entered the throne room from the direction of Cathbad’s chamber, not the entrance he would have used had he come from his hut outside. This may not have been important on its own, but following Rohan, Ivar was usually the second to wake. He took his breakfast in the throne room, and found servants sweeping the floor. There’d been dirt tracked. Footsteps, and the remnants of a path leading across the room.

The picture was incomplete until Rohan joined him, with traces of the dirt clinging to the ridges of his boots. What it meant was that Rohan, coming from his hut, had gone to the castle well before Ivar and any of the servants were awake. Then he’d gone to Cathbad’s chamber, then returned to the throne room to eat. How early would that have been? Dawn, Ivar supposed.

The picture was still incomplete until the others, once they were awake, had asked whether Angus was joining them too. Garrett asked out of politeness; Deirdre, out of her own interest. For both, Rohan shrugged and resumed mutely picking at his food.

Then it made sense.

If Ivar hadn’t answered the question on his own, he needed only wait for the King to arrive and ask about Angus for a third time. Rohan, sullen though he was, understood he had to make an effort here.

“He’s with his friend.”

They – without Rohan – explained who Broehaine was to the King.

“Ah,” said Conchobar, always pleased to hear good news. “Another friend from childhood. Will you be joining them, Rohan?”

“I’d rather not.”

Then he resumed mutely picking at his food.

Deirdre was the first to corner him afterwards, though Ivar wasn’t far behind. She’d wanted to know if it was true that Angus was off with Broehaine. Rohan shrugged again, but she persisted, seeming to tower over him enough to stop from him walking down the rest of the hall. Was there something they didn’t know that would have put Angus in danger?

“No,” Rohan said.

Despite Deirdre’s instincts up to then, she was forced to take this to mean ‘no more than usual.’ She’d been reluctantly satisfied. Ivar saw it differently, and followed Garrett’s lead from the day before to cut to the heart of this matter.

“Why,” Ivar asked, “don’t you like him? And don’t shrug. There must be a reason.”

Rohan began to shrug out of habit, but caught himself in time to relax. He settled for saying instead, “You’re the best tracker in Kells, Ivar. If you find the answer, let me know.”

Interesting.

He would’ve liked to think he knew his friends in Kells as well as his friends at home. The bonds built across a battlefield couldn’t be made anywhere else. So as he listened, he strained to hear what Rohan had left unsaid. “It won’t change anything,” was the best that he could decipher.

A challenge. With Deirdre’s concern bolstering his own, Ivar decided to accept this as Rohan’s permission to investigate.

Angus wasn’t hard to find under these recent conditions. Broehaine’s return was a party to them, and Kells already had much to celebrate with Maeve and her banishment. Meals were feasts, drinks were measured by the barrel, months of planning for their winter was undone to toast having survived their war-torn spring. Ivar hadn’t tracked Angus so as much as he’d stepped outside and followed the sound. But he kept alert as he approached, looking to spy his friend before his friend spied him.

“If he’s from Angus’ past, he’ll be up to something,” Garrett had warned. “They might not want to suffer a witness.”

“It’s Angus,” Deirdre said. “Rohan wouldn’t be this upset about him taking a coin or two. Disappointed, yes, but he’s angry. That’s got to mean there’s something dangerous involved. Angus might not even know.”

Two theories, both of which Ivar dismissed quickly. Angus was a former thief, but was now a Mystic Knight. He had his moments of recklessness, but he wouldn’t throw a hard-earned accomplishment away for a petty crime spree among the villagers. If his life had been in danger too, it wouldn’t be Ivar watching the pair. Not alone, anyway. Not with Angus being Rohan’s best and oldest friend. Not when Aideen could tell Rohan where Angus was faster than Ivar could’ve ‘tracked’ him. And not when she’d apparently asked if Rohan wanted to know, and Rohan had declined.

Although... Ivar’s life might have been ending – from boredom at waiting for Angus and his friend to notice he’d come to observe. It took until the evening, but eventually his patience ran out, and he chose to follow the direct approach again: he walked up and asked if he could join them. Contrary to the others’ concerns, Angus was thrilled.

Ivar, after all, was someone to vouch for Angus’ tales. He was also someone who had tales of his own, and could – in ways, from what he’d either studied or heard – corroborate a few of Broehaine’s. Their trio passed the night with seemingly everyone in Kells howling at the moon, drinking more than he’d thought even their rivers possessed, and proving there was something to be said for quantity over quality after all. They stayed near to the fires dug throughout the field, watching as the red light shimmered during the night, and over the grass and its silver dew. Though they’d started sat on the logs, they eventually slid their way to the dirt, and there they slept, alongside forty other brave men and women, who were equally as crooked on their feet and unable trek back home.

The experience was one he would cherish for a lifetime. Angus was the proper companion to have as his company; carefree, warm-hearted, with his head as close to the earth – in all senses – as anyone could ever ask. Rohan had a shyness that Angus lacked, and Garrett would have brought too much contest into these simple delights. This was also no place for a royal woman, so Deirdre had to miss it. That was the only loss, but such absences were an expected duty to maintain the crown’s reputation.

Still, Ivar had slept with the weight of a dull pang of disappointment. He’d watched Angus and Broehaine for evidence of any of their theories, and none appeared. Broehaine was friendly but not suspiciously so, and had stayed comfortably in Ivar’s view. The few fights Angus was involved in – and started – were ones that he handled by himself. For the last, Broehaine dragged Angus out before any serious harm was dealt. More than that, and most perplexingly, Angus behaved the same with Broehaine as he did with Rohan. This lack of discernible favouritism was enough to end Ivar’s drinking early, in hopes of noting a change to their dynamic as they carried on drinking alone.

When he awoke, he –

“Aye, should’ve warned y’bout that,” Angus slurred. Then, after laughing stupidly at Ivar un-drinking his night over the back of the log, he added, “You’ll be better ‘round midday.”

“It is midday,” Broehaine said.

“And,” Angus argued, flapping a hand at Ivar, leaving Broehaine to sloppily catch it before it dropped on the dying embers, “don’t he look better?”

“I hate you, Angus,” Ivar swore.

“Comin’ again tonight?”

“Yes,” Broehaine correctly answered on Ivar’s behalf.

“See,” Angus slurred louder, trying to gesture with the hand still being held. “All my friends love me. Even when they hate me. I hate y’too, Ivar.”

They set him loose after a second night, but planned to stay for their fourth, fifth, and sixth.

Neither the image of that evidence, nor the taste of that ‘drink,’ left his mind while he feebly returned to await Cathbad’s cure for his ailments. Which the druid did not provide, saying wisdom would be Ivar’s cure for the next party. Many, many things slipped into focus at that, not the least of which was his sympathy for Angus, who wouldn’t have nearly such a comfortable bed from which to curse Cathbad’s name.

On the fifth morning since Broehaine arrived, Ivar was able to be on his feet – as Cathbad had finally shown Ivar the pity that he’d long since run out of for Angus. Such mercy arrived slightly after dawn; Cathbad was now to be counted among their ranks of early risers. This, Cathbad revealed, was owed to Rohan staying in his old, apprentice’s bed. When he was up, the druid was as well. It was one of several things Ivar planned to discuss with his friend, but the first thing would need to come first: un-drinking the rest of his two nights, per Cathbad’s cure of wet charcoal.

Unfortunately, he felt much better.

Rohan’s eyes were on him as Ivar limped into the throne room. ‘Better’ did not mean ‘good,’ but merciful Draganta spoke softly, and not at all as Ivar settled himself for a bland and meagre breakfast. Clearly one of them had lived with Angus for years, and Ivar was grateful that it gave Rohan this relevant practice.

But as a trade, he’d wanted to know.

Rohan had wanted to know badly.

He hadn’t wanted to go to the celebrations himself, not with Broehaine there, and he hadn’t wanted to encourage anyone else to attend and spy for him. Since Ivar had gone to see everything, however, Rohan wanted to know.

None of this was spoken aloud. Ivar simply trusted that he knew his friends. It was enough that his theory had been one he’d pondered even before they’d met Broehaine.

“Your concern is well-founded,” the report began. He was choosing his words for kindness, and to wait for reactions from across the table. Rohan’s eyes had already drifted back to his plate. When they didn’t return, Ivar continued. “... I don’t think it was one Angus shared.”

And that was it: the reaction. The one to define the final days of Broehaine’s visit. Rohan had looked up at Ivar again, confused. He looked as if he hadn’t been thinking what Ivar was thinking at all. He said as much, through a deceptively reserved, “What do you mean?”

Ivar tried rehearsing this in his mind earlier. Perhaps the two days of drink were still in him, as he’d failed to find a kinder way to phrase his...

... observation.

“I suppose,” he said, “Angus thinks everything is what he’s used to –”

“How?”

“Well,” he stumbled, because Rohan had become abruptly combative, “... you’ve held his hand.”

Draganta’s rebuttal to this brought forth a side that Ivar hadn’t given him enough credit for. Deirdre had mentioned her surprise earlier that Angus minded his mouth in any sense; Ivar, in just the same way, was startled to learn Rohan wasn’t shy. But within those notable, unprincely words, which were still miraculously soft in volume, Ivar heard the reason for Rohan’s eruption. And the reason for Rohan’s confusion. And the reason for Angus’ nervous silences.

“Not this again,” Rohan meant to say.

To Ivar. To Cathbad, perhaps. To Angus certainly, over and over and over. Maybe to Broehaine the most.

Positively to Broehaine the most.

“Oh,” Ivar replied. He felt the thought paint itself on his face, more transparent than he could have ever expressed in words: Rohan didn’t know.

Not about Angus and Broehaine.

... But about Angus... and Rohan himself...

And Ivar, suddenly the soberest he’d been since birth, decided he was not going to be the one to explain it to Rohan. He excused himself instead by apologizing for his grievous misassessment, and by blaming an abstract misinterpretation of his homeland’s customs and those of Kells. This seemed to soothe the warrior, who consented to swapping his anger for a more middling exasperation. But over the next two days, Angus attended all their meetings and training, silent even when their regiment returned more harshly than it’d been at the height of Maeve’s dark power.

Garrett

The air had changed again. He felt it now.

Then it truly was too much to ask for consistency from Kells.

Privacy, Garrett once complained about, but he’d been wrong to say there was none. Instead, it was a luxury granted to a privileged few, and he was not among their very illustrious class.

Rohan and Angus were afforded theirs, and with how personal their feud had grown, Garrett agreed. He didn’t know for sure, but he suspected this happened at the time that Deirdre and Ivar began to whisper. Regardless, he blamed the two of them for putting themselves into other’s affairs, then demanding their own space for their own secret exchanges, changing the conversation when he drew near.

He would prefer not having to admit it, but Garrett felt like more of an outsider now than when he’d first arrived, after being tricked and enchanted to betray them. If Deirdre and Ivar wouldn’t talk to him, nor Rohan, nor Angus, nor Cathbad, and with King Conchobar seeming unaware of this, and Aideen flying to Tir Na Nog in outrage at everyone else’s behaviour, then what was he supposed to do? How was he meant to contribute, and to give any lasting purpose to his staying in Kells? Was he simply to wait for his increasingly distant betrothal, in-between uneventful patrols of the land?

With no peaceful remedy, Garrett took the next best approach: he adapted to adopt the local customs of Kells.

He began with Deirdre and Ivar. Though they were intent on excluding him, they were still talking. That meant they could be heard, if one was clever enough to know where to listen. Yes, he lacked Angus’ wall-creeping, but as the Mystic Knight of Forest, he knew how sound could travel through trees.

... Not very well. He’d been thinking of the acoustics in caves. Which would be Angus’ element again. Garrett wasn’t a poet. His point was, he knew castles well enough to find the other side of a gap to catch the careful echoes of a hidden conversation.

Unluckily, Kells had been built with rare and prestigious modesty, leaving few of the angles and buffers he’d grown accustomed to within his properly-sized castle at home. What spaces there were tended to lead to servants’ areas, and there was little to be gained from listening. Disconcert at the King’s finest warriors in distress, like the war itself had been what was keeping them together. Malaise over Rohan’s sourness, when he used to be “such a sweet boy.” Chatter for whether the Princess would accept her original betrothal, now that a Prince of Temra had appeared with a marriage-worthy means of lasting peace.

Nothing helpful. Nothing new.

He wondered how long he would stay.

As honoured as he was to be a Mystic Knight, he never shook the dread of having been their last. An afterthought. A joke. Expendable. Now with the war done and Rohan’s status improving, the context behind Garrett’s and Deirdre’s arrangement may have no longer existed – along with their urgency for having a fifth Knight.

He could visit Lynette. It seemed his greatest contribution to the legend of Draganta was leaving with her and returning with her father’s gifts anyway.

It’d been mere weeks since Maeve was banished, and almost a week exactly for Rohan’s foul mood. When was Angus’ friend expected to leave? Today, wasn’t it? And they’d been forced to have a break; Rohan wanted them back at war-ready training, which meant he had to give them war-ready rest as well. So Angus would be saying his goodbyes to Broehaine, Garrett was sure.

And since Angus wasn’t in the castle...

... he would have had to have been in the forest.

Where, like it would for a cave, there would be sound.

Angus catching him wasn’t a real concern. His friend – assuming he was welcome to still call them that – had a selective talent for perceptiveness, and he very much doubted that Angus had selected that talent for Garrett.

The problem was Angus’ friend. Broehaine. Garrett already shared his concerns on the threat Broehaine could pose. Rohan had almost seemed interested, until he’d heard what they were and decided that Garrett was attacking Angus’ character. Deirdre was more receptive, until she was in her own thoughts about Broehaine striking at Angus directly. Ivar had a separate theory that he hadn’t seen fit to grace them with, and left to investigate alone. The whispering started at Ivar’s return. Whatever was discovered, then, could be re-discovered with more surveillance.

But Angus and Ivar were closer. They’d been acquainted from the beginning. Garrett couldn’t expect to drink his way along a friendly path to innocence if caught. With this supposedly being Broehaine’s last day, after two miserable ones with Rohan, Garrett imagined that further restraint for new intrusions would be in short supply.

He simply had to hope there was truth to him being the Mystic Knight of Forest, and that Broehaine was a regular sword for hire, not the assassin he dressed as.

The day was late in the afternoon by the time he found their clearing. The canopy of trees left only a patch of unbroken light at its centre. The rest of the sun was dressed in an emerald brilliance as it filtered through. Per his approach, he only saw the sides of them, sat on the ground and leaned against an emerald-lit, mossy log. Rather Broehaine was leaned against the log. Angus was on it as he would lay upon a bed, with Broehaine’s head tilted back on his stomach to use Angus as a rest.

This was a dangerous angle. Angus’ feet provided an obstruction to look past, and Broehaine’s head was turned away from Garrett to face Angus. But a short glance in the other direction would point them towards his hiding place. If he wanted to listen in, he would need to remain behind a tree, and hope again that it wasn’t along their paths to part.

“I don’t want to be on a boat all day,” Garrett heard from Angus. “What’s the point of sailing if you’re not sailing to somewhere?”

“You’ll sail to places. They load the boat, you look around, then you set off again. Sail to somewhere else.”

“And that’s why you need men. To sit on a boat all day after looking around on land.”

“Sometimes there are other boats with other men. Those boats come to your boat, attack it, burn it, take what you had, and that’s why you need your own men to sit on your own boat.”

“Tell me more about these ‘boats’. I heard legends saying they’re made of... ‘trees’?”

“All right, ass. You know how it works. Is it that different from your patrols? Less walking, you’ll note.”

“I do hate walking.”

The lingering pause following this said more than Garrett could’ve asked them for. As he settled in, fitting behind his cover, the silence echoed with a question Broehaine must have posed before Garrett arrived. It would appear he wasn’t the only one who’d noticed the dwindling urgency in having five Knights.

He pinned it to Rohan’s earliest reaction at Broehaine joining them in Kells. The annoyance and familiarity implied such offers – such questions – had been made to Angus prior. Angus, still obviously being in Kells, must have refused the offer to leave. Or perhaps Broehaine had declined. The sea was as deadly as a battlefield, and Angus hadn’t been raised on it. There’d be a lot to teach. Either way, Garrett could trace a line from the first day to the fifth, where Rohan had been content to leave his resentment simmering quietly under his skin.

The line to explain the fifth to the seventh day, when even the King of Kells had hesitated to press Rohan on his newfound love of wartime readiness, still eluded Garrett. The air shifted, as he’d observed, and with Deirdre and Ivar having reason to think the situation would soon spiral. It was why all three of them had consulted Cathbad, who told them to endure it. Unhappy with that, the two had shut themselves away to endlessly whisper.

But what prompted the consultation with Cathbad was the second change in Rohan’s behaviour. It wasn’t the meetings and training and patrols themselves; it was how involved and dedicated he wanted them to be with those.

Exhaustingly.

Garrett heard about the last great quarrel. Outbursts before the King, squabbling in front of Chieftains, snapping as they sparred in a duel of sorts. A graceless one. Rohan, for this, had evidently inverted his tactics. Now they were all being duelled, and with reasons they couldn’t parry. As if he’d studied for it, Rohan explained why it made sense to patrol Kells’ most distant territory, to move groups along the far ends of their border, to watch the edges of the coast, and to operate as though a rebel group had seized Temra’s throne in Maeve’s forced absence. Nemain, Rohan said. She’d had interest in ruling, hadn’t she? And Ivar’s chalice hadn’t been recovered. Who knew what Mider had planned?

“Perhaps,” King Conchobar confessed.

‘Perhaps’ was all that Rohan needed. It was enough to shackle Deirdre to his cause, as Kells’ Princess. Ivar too, through his chalice. Garrett joined as the one who would not be left to the side, though he hurried past that particular thought.

As for Angus...

“We’re all tired,” Rohan snapped. “Ivar was off with you as well, and he’s not complained.”

And, “You can’t treat every meal as a feast. If the worst should happen, you’ll need to fight on rations.”

And, “You’d have more to report if you hadn’t been sitting through half your patrol. The least you could do is plan for the next from what everyone else is saying.”

And, “You don’t think the Princess would like to rest? But she’s here to defend her Kingdom, and you’re a Mystic Knight. You have a duty to defend Kells as well.”

Another duel, and in plain, uninterruptible sight. Angus would start to slow and the room would feel Draganta’s eyes turn to cut into his direction. It was cleverer than Garrett thought Rohan could manage; in that way, there was promise for him as a ruler. But it missed the resolve Rohan needed to truly sell himself as this tyrant.

Over a dozen times throughout those two days, Angus made a mistake – dropped his sword, tripped on his feet, took too many seconds to answer a precious question – and Draganta would close in to chide him. But the air would shift at those dozen moments. Instead of giving protests Rohan could crush, Angus would freeze in a purposeful silence. Sometimes he even closed his eyes. Then he would wait. Rohan would wait as well, through all of it, suddenly willing to give Angus every second he might need. He had, in fact, gnashed at others who drew too near, now guarding his friend’s right to be motionless.

Once, but only once, and after a concerning set of minutes in Angus’ pause between manoeuvres with Ivar, Rohan himself drew nearer to check. He moved the same as he would when one of them pricked their finger: a flash of concern, a focused scan of the wound, hands out to stop the bleeding and carefully guide them off to the side. Garrett hadn’t been close enough to know for sure what Angus did then. Maybe it’d been imperceptible, but perceive it, Rohan had. In a mixture of panic and embarrassment, he reversed his step. He’d smoothed it under a face of grim concentration afterwards, but Garrett recognized his crossing arms and sharpness in the next order at a guard as recovering from a slash to his pride. After a final minute of this, Angus opened his eyes and was ready again, and Rohan walked off from him. Neither looked at the other, and the day’s training ended early. They moved on to patrols instead, and the air shifted back to Rohan barking at Angus for dragging his heels.

Bravado. Angus knew this, and Rohan clearly knew that Angus knew. It seemed the advice to endure that catastrophe might not have only gone to three of them. It seemed it wasn’t advice at all, in truth, with how instantaneously the power exchanged between those two.

It was a kindness. But a kindness for what?

“You could stay another day,” Garrett heard. “You’re only here every two years, and normally you stay for ten.”

“In ten days, Rohan’ll have you patrolling your grave,” Broehaine replied. “Nay, lad. This is long enough for what I’ve come to do.”

“What – now?” Sure enough, there came the sounds of someone gathering their things. “So you’re not even staying for this day.”

“You’ll have three months to think. That’s the most I can give. I’m headed west for the last leg, and to gather the men I need to sit on a boat all day. Afterwards, I’ll come back,” Broehaine was explaining, “and then I’ll be gone.”

“‘Gone’.” Angus didn’t utter this as a question, and it was saddled with some disgust. “Gone for how long?”

The wind along the trees carried away Broehaine’s sigh, but Garrett heard it laced in the rest of his voice: “Ten years.” As if too much to leave unaccompanied, Broehaine leashed it to a tranquil, “That’s why I’m giving you three months to think. Ten years is a long time.”

“Do...” Angus sounded either stunned or confused. “Do you know it’ll be ten –”

“If I’d said five, what difference would it make? Five years is a long time as well. So’s two, unless you’ve never noticed when I’m away from you.”

Without seeing his expression, Garrett wasn’t sure if that was a scoff or laugh. Regardless, Angus followed it by saying, “You’ve got a hundred ports you land at in a year. I’m supposed to think you wait on the boat, paintin’ sad, little portraits of me?”

‘Portraits’?

“I don’t paint, but –”

“Nah – fuck off with whatever else it is. I don’t believe that for a moment. Why’re you suddenly in a rush for me to ‘think’?”

“Your friend’s a prince now. He isn’t going to need you.”

Garrett heard the leaves shiver as the air changed again, as it had those rare, dozen times to halt Rohan’s wrath. It didn’t last as long, but it still dragged new scars across the ground.

“I left him alone for four days, and he’s spent the last two punishing the whole court for it.”

“He’s a prince. They have their whims. For now, it’s you, but when he needs to turn his mind towards a marriage and an heir...” There was a click of Broehaine’s tongue. “Unless you’ve been hiding a gem from me, I doubt you’ll be much use for that.”

... Oh.

Then it meant the line between the fifth day –

“That’s the problem with you, Forge,” Angus was busy firing back. “Me and him are friends. Practically brothers –”

“You said he has a brother.”

“Yeah – I mean, that’s –” Angus sounded as he did the second time he’d crashed the Defender. “‘Practically’. My point’s you’re always fightin’ with him by taking it somewhere it’s not – somewhere I’ve no interest, and somewhere he’s never even thought about –”

“Then come.”

“– that doesn’t mean I want to go, or that he’d be fine without me.” A pause. “Why wait? You gave me three months. I can give you an answer today.”

“I wouldn’t take your answer even if it was ‘yes’,” Broehaine said. “You forget that I know you, and how quickly your mind will change once your fire is gone. Three months. If it’s a ‘no’ then, it’s ‘no’.”

“And then – what, you’re gone forever?”

“Only if you notice it.” The thread of tenderness in that broke quickly. “If you think he’ll keep you busy in his new world – with a throne seized, war over, new friends to make – then stay. A hundred ports in a year is a thousand ports.”

“That’s a lot of portraits,” Angus spat.

There was no immediate response, save for the shuffle of things being gathered softly resuming. It was followed by the hushed noise of somebody standing. Broehaine, Garrett presumed.

“I wouldn’t need them if you were there,” the man said, small and contrite within their clearing. It put the memory of Rohan stepping back in panic into Garrett’s mind. “I want you to come. You’d enjoy it. And he’s had you with him long enough.”

There was no response to that either. But the shadows moved. The sound of steps over the ground brushed past Garrett’s ears, then stopped. Broehaine was waiting, giving Angus all the seconds he needed. It was the longest silence of that kind to happen yet. Garrett swore the sun had moved by the time Angus remembered speech.

“If the war wasn’t over and he wasn’t a prince, would you be saying all this?”

Metal clanked. Clasps or daggers hitting against each other. Broehaine must have shrugged, according to the movement in the shadows again.

“I don’t know,” the man confessed. “But I have. Do with it what you will. Talk it over with your friend, if you must.”

“What friend?”

“Your fancy one behind the tree.” And before anyone said a word – “Three months. Have an answer for me, Angus.”

Then the steps left. The shadows as well. Peace returned to the forest, if not its Mystic Knight.

But...

Perhaps Angus hadn’t heard –

“Ivar?”

“No,” Garrett snapped, the word out from his mouth before he’d fully understood his admission. Had anyone bothered recalling that he was here?

“Garrett?” The surprise in Angus’ voice was a further insult, but it was buried by loud, trudging steps and the sound of their heels dragging. Angus popped his head around the tree like he was trying to ‘catch’ Garrett behind it, then looked absolutely baffled to learn it had worked. “Oh. Sorry. You’re just not really the ‘tree hiding’ type.”

“I’m the Mystic Knight of Forest,” Garrett chewed out. He didn’t want to talk about it. He stood up instead. “You’re leaving.”

“No, I said I wouldn’t,” Angus quickly replied. “You heard all that? ‘Cause I told him –”

“What will you be telling Rohan?”

That’s what this was about, wasn’t it? This whole thing. Broehaine wanted Angus to leave, and Rohan didn’t. They were fighting over him. Those two days of training were a facade, but now he knew it’d been specifically to keep Angus hidden. With the talk of ‘portraits’ and ‘marriage,’ Garrett could go on to deduce exactly the motivations behind it as well. Amazing. This must have been what Deirdre and Ivar had learned and were off privately discussing. Perhaps it fed into Aideen’s departure. Certainly, this would impact betrothals – the real one he had with Deirdre, and the ones the servants had imagined for her.

“... I don’t suppose...” Angus’ eyes had always had a seemingly immortal spark of impertinence – or ‘cheek,’ as he liked to get away with calling it. For the first time in the short while Garrett had known him, that spark dimmed. “... you’d want to help me talk it over.” Him? “I can’t go to the others. Ivar’s made it worse somehow, and Deirdre’s a girl.”

Garrett narrowed his eyes, and it had nothing to do with the sun peering down from overhead.

“You caught me listening to a private conversation between you and your friend,” he said. “Requesting I help review that conversation in detail isn’t the reaction I would’ve had.”

Angus considered this, bobbing his head as if rattling the rocks in there awake.

“You’re in Kells,” was the eventual answer. “I listen to everyone’s conversations. Plus, helping me means saves time on telling everyone else about it later.” Angus must’ve seen the dumbfoundedness that Garrett couldn’t suppress from his face. “‘Cause you’ll tell ‘em.” What? “When you go to tell Deirdre and Ivar about this.” Garrett was expected to what?!

“I don’t shout every secret I’m privy to blindly into the world,” he hissed. “Is this truly how the people of Kells converse? Spying on each other, then whispering endlessly about it to everybody else?”

Angus’ ridiculous, wide-eyed expression read ‘yes’. What he said out loud, however, was, “It is rude to guess it before they tell ya. That’s why I wasn’t bothering the other two, even when I know they’ve been talking every hour. What that’s about isn’t my business ‘til it is.”

“Unless you spy on them,” Garrett sharply tacked on, “while assuming it’ll be your business eventually.”

“Why say the words if you didn’t want anyone to know? Just write it down,” Angus said. “And why have friends if you didn’t want your business shared with them?”

The worst part wasn’t that this was the logic of a common thief. The worst was that everyone else in this land seemed to think the same.

“Let’s talk,” Garrett said, exhausted at last.

Rohan

He had gone too far this time.

He knew it. They knew it too. It was why the four of them were hiding in the castle now.

They’d been reciting what he’d said, building their judgment, sealing his fate no matter what the Ancient Scroll had prophesied about him, while he’d been here in the hut. Whenever they arrived, he wanted to be ready and simple enough to find. But that could take a while, and he meant to keep himself quiet until then.

So Rohan went to sleep, and he didn’t dream.

When he awoke, the light was gone and Angus had not returned. Rohan had missed his meals for the day, though he felt no hunger to eat.

He slept.

Waking at dawn felt no different to him. The only thought he’d had to struggle with was whether to look to his side. He didn’t need to, he remembered. He didn’t have to, just in case. Perhaps it was better to believe the answer was whatever he’d wanted it to be. But his heart started to pound before he could try to listen for breathing, and now any that might have been there would be drowned by that noise instead.

Fin Varra had tested him for courage in Tir Na Nog. He’d passed it then. What a fool that was going to make one of them, if he couldn’t pass this moment in his own hut.

“Angus,” he called.

His throat was dry. He barely recognized his voice. But he heard an answer. It was a noisy grunt of acknowledgement, which might’ve been a clearer ‘what’ had his best friend been awake enough.

“Nothing,” Rohan said, his eyes still staring at the ceiling.

The relief finally allowed him to torture himself in peace. He turned his mind to yesterday, when he’d learned that Forge had gone. He’d expected it to feel like a victory. Rohan won, as he’d always, only it’d never been this easy.

Last time, he’d had a stack of powders he’d built carefully over the years. Very little came from any of them, but he’d revealed one each day. Forge wasn’t allowed in the castle; neither was Angus, but they’d given up on enforcing that, so it was Rohan and Angus alone in Cathbad’s chamber, wishing anything would appear before Cathbad returned. What it meant was Angus had to come back to the hut each night, so Rohan could sneak him in as soon as the room was theirs.

Food was harder to use. Angus had a habit of finding it early, and some years were harder than others to feed themselves as normal. Rohan didn’t often want Angus out alone with his belly full anyway. If he drank himself sick in the night, with no food to cushion it, there’d be one less morning to spend with Forge – even if it meant Angus couldn’t make it home until the late afternoon.

Jail, he’d learned, was better than anything else. It happened once that Angus cornered himself in the castle’s pantry, and the guards threw him in a cell on the very day Forge arrived. When Forge asked, Rohan didn’t know where to say Angus was. It was true, since he hadn’t realized what had happened yet. But he would have said the same as a lie. He’d meant to. He knew it; they knew it. With how young he’d been, it was the only thing he could think of. Eleven for him, twelve for Angus, sixteen or so for Forge, long before Angus stopped calling Forge ‘practically a brother.’ But that’s what he’d been back then, and Angus said as much when he was out: as someone who so desperately wanted to know who his own family was, why would Rohan hide him from Forge, his ‘almost family’?

Forge wasn’t family – practically, almost, or otherwise. But Rohan understood. Angus was in jail again four years later when Forge arrived, and dutifully, Rohan relayed that. This became their routine, given how much easier it was to find someone who wasn’t always in hiding from a guard.

Jail was the only line Angus had drawn, which left plenty of space to manoeuvre before Rohan was too close to crossing it. But to be honest, a trick couldn’t count as a trick if no one was being fooled. For two weeks, beginning whenever Forge tracked them from the last village the Temrans had burned, Angus could enjoyed the most he’d ever been treated like royalty. Perhaps it was why they’d let it go on: it was harmless. ‘Rohan’s funny way’ of making sure Forge brought Angus back home. So they tolerated the arrangement. Mostly. Forge didn’t always bring Angus back, so Rohan would have to occasionally do more to correct it.

He regretted the position this put Angus in.

He never regretted hiding Angus in that cell.

Forge knew. Angus suspected. But it hadn’t happened again, so there was nothing to be said about it until now.

Rohan blinked, watching the sunlight rise up along the walls. Its warmth was weak but growing, and it guided his eye across the hut, to where Angus was home and asleep upon his cot.

He didn’t regret this either, and that was the problem. Being suddenly a Mystic Knight, then Draganta, then a prince, he’d forgotten Forge. But by being all that, and having Angus grow into his own role rather nobly, Rohan had decided to let the past be the past this time. They weren’t children, and Angus had met Forge years before he running into Rohan later. He had no right to make it a contest. So Rohan tried. He left them alone. Even better, Forge was only here for a week. He could endure that.

Then the morning of the fifth day struck, and he...

Rohan lost himself. Somehow. He didn’t know. The fear that Maeve had plans they hadn’t discovered, or celebrating too soon and being left unprepared for an attack, became the only swirling thoughts he could manage in his head. They’d had truth to them. Even Conchobar had agreed. And he’d made sure to check with everyone else, multiple times, well before he ever turned to drag Angus in. And everyone had listened to him. He was Draganta – he’d won them this war in the first place! He wouldn’t turn on them now. By having them train? Patrol? Watch for threats? Everything he’d done had been in Kells’ best interest, and he would do it again. He could do it again.

It stopped as soon as Forge was gone. He’d had no answer to give for it. Ivar was the one to say their armies had proved they could quickly re-mobilize, as Rohan – clearly – had set out to test. They’d all passed. Now the celebrations were safe to resume. The soldiers cheered; the others were quiet, and King Conchobar asked them to stay for his questions. Then Angus had said there was more to discuss, and told Rohan to wait somewhere else. Outside. Tir Na Nog, if he couldn’t help from listening in. Without realizing he’d moved, Rohan found himself in the hut.

And here he still was.

At home.

“You’re off to breakfast? It’s early,” Rohan said, from where he sat at the edge of his cot. “Usually I drag you there.”

“It’d be easier if you did,” Angus mumbled, on his feet but nearly back to sleep. Out he went, off splashing his face, returning slightly more awake, or at least with his eyes open. “You can come.” Could he? “So long as you go again after.”

His heart sank. Rohan shouldn’t have let it lift in the first place.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

It felt like the last of the air in his lungs.

And still he knew he regretted nothing in what he’d done.

“I’m used to it,” Angus said, towelling the water from his hair. He was tired, so that might have been why his words sounded resigned to their fate. “You’ve been worse before.”

“Well, which is it?” At Angus’ ‘hm,’ Rohan clarified. “Are you used to it, or have I been worse?”

Angus shrugged and spread the wet cloth flat over the table.

“Both –”

“It can’t be both –”

“Then it’s whatever you don’t want it to be,” Angus told him, “since ‘pick the one you want’ doesn’t work with you. Are you coming?”

“No.”

“I don’t hate you,” Angus said, in abrupt exasperation. “There’s another problem, and I want to work it out with them. I’m not leaving you out for long, I promise.”

Rohan forced himself to stay with that answer. He lowered his head, hoping if stared at the floor for long enough, it would let him focus on it. But the wood of his cot started to strain from his grip, and try as he might, it was failing to anchor him to the ground.

“Hey.” He felt Angus at his side, prying one of his hands off the bed to move it. Then Angus sat that the spot himself, pressing his shoulder into Rohan’s. “You lasted longer than I thought you would, and you didn’t do anything the first few nights. That’s something.”

“I didn’t stab him.”

“See?” Angus clapped him on the back. “Even with a great, big, mystic sword that could’ve burnt him to a crisp, you didn’t stab him, and I’m proud of you for that.”

Rohan lowered his head farther, half the way to folding himself in two. He felt dizzy and sick, like he always did once Forge left, and from there, muttered, “I wasn’t being funny.”

“Well.” Angus was patting his back now. “It was a funny thing for you to say.”

He meant it: he always felt dizzy and sick after Forge left. He used to think it was some type of poison, but Cathbad had said it was nerves. Another test failed, Rohan supposed. It was why he wasn’t surprised that as his throat filled, there was already a bucket between his knees.

Angus continued patting his back. It anchored him.

“I’m –” He retched. “I am sorry –”

“You weren’t sorry when you were eight. No reason for starting now, Draganta.”

There wasn’t anger in it. Angus was only stating a fact. But it stung as much as the bile dripping from Rohan’s nose.

“I didn’t want –” That felt like the last one. “I don’t know why it’s –” Nope. “– it’s always him.”

“Well,” Angus said again. For a moment, it seemed as if he wasn’t going to say anything else, and the hand on Rohan’s back and weight against Rohan’s side would be the only signs to say he hadn’t left. But cautiously, like Rohan would be sick again if he rushed it, came the slow effort to add, “The others have their theories.”

‘Theories.’

Rohan spat, and while still hanging his head above the bucket, asked, “Who? Ivar?”

“Especially Ivar –”

“Ah, don’t start with that –”

“Explains a lot –”

“It doesn’t explain –” He was sick again. “It doesn’t.” Better to speak in bursts, around the rising mess. “Because what about –” Bursts. “It doesn’t.”

“All right. For your sake, I hope it doesn’t.” Rohan couldn’t answer through the vomit, but Angus didn’t seem to need one. He was back on his feet. “Finish up, mate. I’m hungry.”

Only he could sit beside that and still have his mind on breakfast. Rohan might’ve laughed, if it wouldn’t have choked his stomach out of his mouth.

Ivar’s theory was a misunderstanding between their two lands. They’d already cleared that up. As unfortunate as it was matching Angus’ pet joke for this, it didn’t lend it any credence. After all, he’d been nine. He remembered the day exactly. The only thing he’d felt was annoyed Forge kept swapping the food on Angus’ plate when Angus wasn’t looking. Stabbing him was aggressive, but Rohan was small. What was he supposed to do? He didn’t know Forge was ‘allowed.’

That Angus was making jokes had heartened him, enough to let it fade away as noise. Breakfast also came and went; true to Angus’ word, the others were relieved to see him join. Deirdre hugged him, which felt wonderful, but when she had pulled away, he saw a wisp of pity in her expression. Angus hadn’t caught it, but he saw Rohan’s face, and reminded him of the ‘problem’ they had yet to share. It wasn’t hard guessing that whatever it was, it concerned Rohan directly.

But... he didn’t seem to be hated. His guilt would ebb and flow as they ate, and Angus was there to keep him steady. It helped while he apologized to them for his behaviour, and for letting his fear get the best of him at what was supposed to be a celebration. He was forgiven, and then he was dismissed.

The walk from the throne room wasn’t as cold as he had dreaded, but its comfort still failed to outweigh the isolation it left him with. He’d still been in the yard when Deirdre found him hours afterwards. She’d been wearing her pink dress – or gown. Whatever a princess wore. It rippled in the wind as she strode closer, flowing in time with her hair. He reminded himself how much he enjoyed this look of her, as proof.

“Rohan,” she said, cutting to the point, but leading with no small compassion. “I’m here to ask you something. In private, if we can.”

Garrett liked to complain about how small Kells’ castle was, but Rohan had lived here for years and often forgot how many rooms and stairways it had to spare. The one they went to was known for its echoes. Ironically, it gave the most privacy of all, since everyone seemed to shy from the place where their words would be haunting them. Even so, he and Deirdre would speak softly or whisper altogether.

They shared a step for their seat. He enjoyed sitting with her.

“Are the others...?”

“They’re discussing possibilities,” Deirdre said, too quiet for any echoes to catch. “Rohan, I wanted to be the one to ask you this. It’s important, and I need you to be honest – as your friend and your princess.” Rohan nodded. She nodded back, allowing her brow to unfurrow at his assurance. “You and Ivar spoke with this week, and... Ivar said something that upset you.”

He could’ve laughed. He did laugh, with a small puff of air through his nose at the thought.

“He didn’t upset me,” Rohan explained.

“What did he say?”

Her brow had already re-furrowed. Rohan’s mouth felt dry, but it was better when he forced himself to swallow. He trusted it to let him answer her, and proceeded with what he needed to say.

“He –” Made a mistake? Made Angus’ joke? Got confused by unspecific customs? “He told me Angus and Forge had been drinking themselves blind.”

“And?”

“And,” Rohan tried to continue, “that’s when I thought we’d be open to an attack.” This wasn’t the answer she seemed to want to hear. “... Was there something else?”

Deirdre’s hands were set in her lap. From the angle of her head, she looked torn between staring at them or keeping her gaze fixed on Rohan. Eventually, her hands won out. She dropped her eyes.

“Would it bother you,” she asked, “if they were close?”

“They’re already close, princess,” Rohan said. “They’ve known each other for years.”

“That isn’t what I meant.”

“That’s –” He laughed a bit. “Yes, that’s –” A similar laugh, almost like a quiet bark. “I’m – ah –” He knew. Of course he knew. He could say that, of course. Say he knew. “I don’t know if that’s –” He laughed. The stairwell laughed back. “Maybe Angus should be –”

“What if Angus loved him?”

The laughter died. It felt as though he’d woken up to what she’d said, though he’d been listening to her intently all along. It wasn’t pain, exactly. He was simply aware of his weight. It felt like new armour was strapped across his waist, pressing back as he tried to breathe the same he’d been breathing this whole while.

“I –” They’d known each other for years. Of course he expected this. “I –” Rohan closed his eyes for a moment, clearing his head to try again. “That’s fine.” Then he opened his eyes to see Deirdre watching him. “That’s fine, I said.”

“What did Ivar say to upset you?”

If she’d fought like this with a sword, Kells wouldn’t have needed Draganta. The thought formed in his mind, urging him to laugh. Instead his throat had tightened, gaining armour of its own. Some unbidden instinct had him look away from her then. He stared at the rock steps leading down and away in their spiral, as an almost conscious attempt to avoid mirroring her choice of staring at hands. It seemed wrong to copy her. This distracted him to a point of nearly forgetting what she’d asked.

Truthfully, he didn’t care. He had a question of his own to ask first.

“What do you want, Deirdre?”

“He doesn’t,” she said. “He doesn’t love Forge. Angus told me to tell you that.” Rohan’s throat seized completely. The princess continued, unabated. “What did Ivar say to upset you?”

He wasn’t sure if he should bother fighting. Clearly whatever she was doing, she’d planned it out with the rest of them. But they wouldn’t do this just to start laughing about – he snatched his hand from her.

“Sorry,” he muttered. But he didn’t undo it.

She nodded, wearing that wisp of pity.

“I can’t imagine how much worse this was when Forge was here.” She could. She’d been out patrolling with everyone else. That wasn’t why she brought herself up short, however. She quickly asked, “Can I call him that?”

“Call him whatever you want.” There was venom in the words, and he hated it. He tried to fix it by haphazardly explaining, “It’s Angus’ name for him.”

“Oh.”

“‘Oh’?” He hadn’t meant to mock her. “Why’s that interesting?”

“Because you must hate it,” she said.

He did. He hated it.

“It’s only a name,” Rohan said. “Angus doesn’t know why he calls him that. I don’t know if it has a meaning.”

Angus had taught them how to steal a sword and pick an enemy’s pocket. If Rohan had to guess, that was how Deirdre had his hand in hers at last. She squeezed, trying to comfort him. The gesture was small, but it granted him a line to cling to.

“He doesn’t love him.” She squeezed Rohan’s hand again. “He didn’t say to insist, but I thought it might be important.”

Rohan wanted to answer, but stuck with nodding ahead in silence. Anything else he meant to say, she could guess from how he’d put his other hand over hers as well.

It took some time before he trusted himself to speak. When he dared to test it, breaking their silence, he kept it brief with just, “He told me about them.” ‘He’ being ‘Ivar’ and ‘them’ being ‘Angus and Forge’. “That’s it. Nothing else.” And it’d been a misunderstanding. “What’s the good in knowing that?”

“There’s quite a lot of good, if it’s useful to you,” Deirdre said. “Angus mentioned a ‘joke’ you have –”

“It’s his joke,” Rohan cut in. “I’ve never liked it.”

“If it’s only a joke,” Deirdre continued, “there may be nothing I can do.”

That was a strange offer. He wasn’t sure he could call it one. Rohan looked back to her eyes to see if this was sincere, and was even more confused to find that it was.

“Did he tell it to you?” She didn’t react to Rohan asking this, which apparently meant yes. But to be sure, Rohan said it anyway. “He thinks I’m fighting with Forge to prove I’d make a better wife.”

Deirdre blinked, considered this, and turned a healthy red in return.

“He – didn’t... quite... phrase it that way.” Shit. “It’s all right. He – um...” She squeezed his hand to comfort both of them. “He said you were jealous.” And paused. “He really does mind his words, doesn’t he?”

“Angus is worse than you’ll ever know.” For some reason, Rohan felt a touch of pride in that. “Yes. I’m jealous. That’s his joke.”

“Is it true?”

“No,” Rohan said. “I don’t like Forge. There’s something bad that happens any time he’s here, and it’s Angus who’s left to deal with it.” Since Forge was able to leave when he was finished his ‘wifely duties’. “All I want is to keep my friend safe. That doesn’t mean I’m ‘jealous’.”

“You’ve stabbed someone over him,” she asked, “haven’t you?”

One time.

“Forge was swapping –”

“Not Forge.” The pity was gone from her face. Now there was a wisp of smug and pointed curiosity. “A different boy.”

“Princess,” he began, cycling through a rough list of memories that might have been the one she meant, “growing up was dangerous. Temra –”

She stopped him, having heard all she’d needed to hear. Rohan began to protest, but her crown caught the light in that instant. So he let her lift their hands in front of them, and gently pat that link to one another.

“I’m not here to convince you.” There was nothing to convince! “I’m only here to offer advice and give a warning.” He sobered at the final word. She did as well, observing him with a rare intensity. “For my advice, when you’re ready – if you’re ready – I’ll be here.”

He didn’t enjoy her hesitation.

“And the warning?”

“The warning,” she echoed thoughtfully, still too soft for the stairwell. “The warning is... that if you think you might still stab someone for him today, you need to be devoted to these next three months.”

From her tone, Rohan assumed he’d have a sharper spike of panic in his gut. Perhaps it’d been driven so cleanly through that it’d pierced somewhere where he couldn’t feel quite yet.

“Princess,” he asked, frightened by how calmly the walls echoed this, “what ‘options’ are the others discussing?”

Deirdre was satisfied. Somehow, this had been the right answer to her warning.

“He’ll explain that to you himself,” she said.

But her pity returned, and no longer was it a wisp. She kept him company until the end, turning them to lighter ideas that eased their wait. He hadn’t realized they’d been waiting until Ivar stepped in to see them. By his stance, the prince had expected a certain result by now. By her wincing smile, Deirdre was telling him they had it.

“Angus said it was better for you not to eat,” Ivar revealed. “Apparently –”

“He’s right.” Rohan’s stomach was fine, but it was always fine before it wasn’t. He’d pulled one of his hands away from Deirdre a while ago, and now he felt it gripping the stair he was sat upon. “What’s the plan? Does he come in here next?” Or would there be a hand-off across them all? “I’m not going to fight with him, if that’s why you’re concerned. Whatever Angus wants to say, I’ll –” Strange time for him to lose his breath, but he persisted. “We’ll talk. Or he can talk, and I’ll listen.”

He hadn’t managed to make a prediction of what Angus wanted. That was by Deirdre’s design. Like magic, at that thought, she squeezed the hand of his she’d still been holding, bringing Rohan out of his faint attempt to try to predict it now.

“We trust you,” she promised.

“But we’ll be near enough to hear you shout.” Ivar said it apologetically, but his lips were pressed firmly together. This wasn’t an offer being made by a friend. “The King asked.”

So this would be very bad, then.

Rohan squeezed Deirdre’s hand before she could squeeze his, but it didn’t seem to work in that direction. His head felt light.

“You should get him now,” he said.

Ivar left. Deirdre stayed. Rohan remained gently panting.

Leave it to Angus to join them while still being ages away. His voice kicked up from the bottom of the spiralled stairs, and Rohan could tell was chatting with Garrett. He’d had that cadence he only used on Garrett. Not worried. Not angry. His usual self. But before the relief of that could seize him, Rohan wondered whether it should be its own sign of concern.

“We’ll leave the two of you to talk,” the princess murmured.

At last, she let him go, and took her leave down the stairwell.

Leaving.

Angus had to be leaving. The shushed words from the others below were quiet enough to give his thoughts room to breathe, and they decided, “The only trouble this is worth is if Angus had met the end of his patience.”

Why else. What else. How would he fix this. And yet he regretted nothing.

“It’s not that bad,” Angus’ voice called up after a moment, accompanied by footsteps. “You’d better still be sitting there, or I’ll be furious.”

He was. As Angus rounded the pillar at the centre of the stairs, Rohan came into his view, and his friend had to rear back and skip to keep his balance.

“Hi,” Rohan told him.

“Hi,” Angus chirped. A bit more sombrely, he said, “You look rough.” Then he went up to the step above Rohan’s seat, claiming it by settling in lengthwise. He propped up his higher leg on it, which set his foot by Rohan’s shoulder. His other leg was sprawled down to the steps below, stretching his stance to a wide angle. “Nobody’s dying.”

Rohan had been sitting upright. Now he sat jailed between two legs.

“I’ll be the judge, thanks,” he muttered under his breath. He left enough for the walls to echo it back to them, then turned himself to mirror how Angus was sat – Angus, who looked rather relaxed, by the way, with his elbow resting on his propped knee and his other foot tapping to play with the echoes. Like a cat twitching its tail on a tree branch. “Ah.” That was how he sat in jail. “No wonder you’re comfortable.”

“This is gonna be a long chat,” Angus said, pleased with himself. He leaned back for good measure, purposely lounging. “Not too long, though. We’ll go until it’s lunch.”

... All right, this hurt. He could only get half of himself on a stair like this. Ignoring the screaming smirk bearing down on him, Rohan sat forward again, and simply twisted his torso to lean his arm on the closest step, facing Angus.

“You don’t need to comment –”

“Tender there, princess?” Angus tapped both of his feet on the stone, which echoed from both directions. “Trick’s to put the weight on your toes. Little things you learn with practice.”

“As a princess, I thank you,” Rohan said. He couldn’t help a smile. But feeling it on his face was enough to remind him what this was. “In the meantime...”

Angus started chewing on the thumb of his propped arm. Half the time, it meant he was thinking, and the other half, it meant he had busted his nail. To Rohan, this looked like a thoughtful chew. A nibble. And he smiled again, despite himself.

“Don’t panic,” Angus said, with a different smirk. That one meant he’d cracked the riddle on how to get Rohan to start this. “I’m not leaving, even though Forge asked again.”

“Nothing new.”

Forge always asked Angus to come. He’d pushed for it the hardest when Rohan was taken in by Cathbad, saying that thanks to the druid, Angus’ duty was finished in Kells. To think that would have doomed the entire kingdom...

“Bit new,” Angus went on. “He says if I don’t go, he’s not coming back for ten years. And he’s given me three months to decide, or he’s leaving me here with you.” Angus glanced down at him. “Aye, I thought you’d like that.”

“Sorry.” He wasn’t. But he shifted in his place, aiming to bury his grin within the movements. “Go ahead.”

“There’s a problem.” As Angus had said there would be. “He’s made good points for why I should go –”

“What points?”

“Calm down,” came the answer. “I’m not leaving, remember? Settle yourself.” Fine. Rohan settled. When Angus was satisfied with that, he continued. “The timing was a bad touch. I’m not saying I wasn’t happy to see him, but you can’t show up a week after Maeve’s been banished and only want to know if I can leave.”

“You think he was planning this?”

“Or he was hired.” Angus wouldn’t even need to glance to know if Rohan had shock across his face. “It’s a war, mate. Temra has spies everywhere. And as you made a point of shouting a hundred times, I’m a Mystic Knight.” Angus didn’t pause long enough to let Rohan interrupt. “I don’t know – maybe it was a coincidence, but you made a lot of good points as well.”

“I did?”

“There’s been no treaty signed,” Angus told him, sounding scandalized. “There might be another group wanting the throne. Maeve might not be in exile forever. All the things you were saying ‘cause –” The sentence stopped. “Well.” Rohan felt a familiar burn of annoyance rising in his limbs. Angus stared him down for a while, silent. Then he moved on to the rest of it. “The others like to hang themselves on what everything means, but there’s enough you can get from what somebody says without having to dig. So I don’t care why you said it. I care what you said, and you made good points.” But his eyes flashed. “That’s why your sword’s still shoved up its sheathe, you prick.”

He deserved that. And to quote someone here, Angus lasted longer than Rohan had thought he would before bringing any of that up.

“Thanks,” he mumbled.

It’d always meant more than a sorry did.

“Mm.” Angus chewed his thumb. “So you see where my head is at with staying.”

“It makes sense,” Rohan said carefully.

“That’s the problem.” Angus had lost him. He stopped chewing on his thumb and just sighed. “Forget Forge showing up, all right? Forget your spat with him. If someone asks me to pick between the future of Kells and going off on my own, I have to pick Kells. Over and over. Forever.” Angus was looking at his hand, as if he’d chewed too much of it. “At least until Maeve dies, or we get a crown on you. But then what? Is Kells safe then? Or is it Mider? Nemain? Something from out of the sea –”

“You aren’t trapped here, Angus,” Rohan broke in. “If you wanted to leave, you could.”

“With Forge? Or with anyone?”

“With anyone,” Rohan assured him, but feeling uncertain as he said it. “If you wanted to go with Forge, I wouldn’t stop you.”

“Fine, I’ll go with Forge.” The only reason Rohan didn’t vomit was that Angus watching him too closely for a reaction. But he tasted bile, and he remembered his breakfast. After he was satisfied with this as well, Angus drew his legs up and moved to sit as they had at the hut: side by side. “Ten years is a long time. Right now, I don’t have a say in where I’ll be at the end of it.”

Rohan’s hands were warming with sweat. He wiped them briskly on his legs, and tried to think of something better.

“I can go with you if –”

“Kells.” Angus shook his head. “You’re stuck here too. But at least you get to be a prince out of it. Now that the war’s over, for as long as that lasts, you’ve got to seize yourself a throne, make new friends, get married...” Out of the corner of his eye, Rohan could see his friend tense. “It’s good news. But I won’t have much to do with that. And in three months, someone I could be doing something with’ll be gone forever.”

Rohan wasn’t hearing him clearly. He was barely seeing clearly.

“I’ll still need you,” he tried. But as if to prove its own point, his hand had lifted in the air, reaching for nothing and finding nothing, until at last, he’d put it back down on his leg. “... You said you weren’t leaving.”

Angus wasn’t pressed against Rohan’s shoulder as he usually was. He could have left during this, and Rohan wouldn’t have known.

“It felt different after I said it.” And Rohan could relate, though Angus didn’t seem to have the same metal clamping around his throat to stop him from elaborating. “I’m not leaving, Rohan. I can’t leave, but...” His breath had sounded so sad, and the defeated noise of air from his nose rang darkly around them. “... what am I staying here for?”

Everything from when they were children flickered in front of his eyes and dissolved. He had no answer to this question. He couldn’t even bring himself to listen to what his best friend was saying, who was apparently ready to let the whole thing go and pretend none of this had mattered.

Rohan won. He’d finally won. He felt dizzy and sick for it.

When he reached his hand out now, he caught something. Angus’ leg. Good enough. He held onto it.

“Would you,” Rohan choked out from his throat, “stay for me?”

“I am staying for you.”

“No.” That wasn’t true. “You said you were staying for Kells.”

“You, Kells...” Angus’ leg moved, and his hand moved Rohan’s off of it. Rohan shook his head, grabbing at Angus once more. What followed was the deepest sigh he had ever heard, let alone from his closest friend, and let alone from the stairs adding it to its ghostly harmony. “I wasn’t trying to get you to cry.”

That would explain why he couldn’t see. He didn’t even think of blinking to clear it away.

It’d been ages, but Angus’ method for this hadn’t changed. Rohan felt the first fist under his chin, pushing his head up, and then the heel of Angus’ other palm swiping his face. Quick and efficient, though still rough enough to sting. They hadn’t had a lot of chances for comfort growing up, and it was better to look scuffed in front of other boys than to admit he’d been red-eyed from tears.

So Rohan sat with his head in Angus’ hand, well-trained in simply enduring this, until the palm stretching his cheek froze.

“What?”

No answer.

Rohan opened his eyes, freed from the blindness he’d struck himself with. There was Angus, standing before him, wearing a quietly embarrassed wince.

“You could’ve done that,” his best friend explained.

Ah. Sure.

“You like doing it. And it’s not as if you ask,” Rohan said. “You didn’t ask me when I was eight.”

“‘Cause you’d take all day, dabbing at yourself.” On that note, Angus returned to wiping Rohan’s face. The sudden effort not to scrape the skin from his bones was appreciated. “It’s a miracle I never guessed you were a prince.”

The beauty of patterns meant they could be learned. Rohan, likely red but no longer stained with tears, had both of Angus’ hands caught under his own before they were pulled away.

“I’m not trapped.” He was aware he looked ridiculous while saying it, but Angus seemed willing to listen, even with his hands stuck awkwardly over Rohan’s head. “I’m here because I want to be, not because I don’t have a choice. And if –” Breathless. Dizzy again. “If Forge is that choice for you, I can’t – stop you from taking it.” Won’t. “I won’t.”

Angus made a face.

“I told you –”

“I know what you told me. But I’m hanging myself on what you meant,” Rohan replied. “So for three months...” Three months. “... let’s try to find you something you’d want to stay for. Not just Kells. Unless...” It could be Kells. “Whatever you want. So as long as it’s somewhere you’d want to be in ten years.” Angus was still making his face. “All right? Three months? Can you give me that?”

“Going to find that reason for me, are you?”

“If I have to,” Rohan said. “If you can’t find it.”

His heart was pounding. He felt it in his throat and lungs and chest. His eyes must have been wide as well. Some prince. Some legendary warrior. Some knight, mystic or not. All with Angus’ hands crushed stiffly on his skin.

“And if we don’t?”

“You’ll go with Forge.” Angus was taken aback by this, clearly. Rohan too, though he refused to make himself look worse than he was by showing he’d surprised himself. He meant it. Beyond his wildest dreams and fears, he never imagined one day he would say this and mean it, but he needed Angus to understand this point. He swept his thumbs over the back of his friend’s hands as emphasis. “I can’t have you staying if you’re trapped. It’d be the only thing I’d regret in all of this.”

“What about the part where you cracked me with a stick for not countering fast enough?” Angus stared at him. Rohan stared back. This went until Angus rolled his eyes and snapped, “Fine. Your ‘one’ regret will be not letting me run off with Forge.”

Rohan squeezed, suddenly filled with a wild delight and inner warmth.

“Tell yourself that’s what it is, mate.” He was beaming like a child, he knew. A red-eyed, scuffed-face child that wanted his best friend to stay with him. And he would have to think as fast as one, if they truly only had three months. “For now, let’s have lunch.”

Angus

So – this was...

... him being courted, was it?

Not that Angus was complaining. Not on the surface, anyway. Rohan being everything he was now meant he’d had more to court Angus with than when... well – than when Angus’d been nine. Rohan was proud of himself for it too, pointing out exactly who’d given him what, and when such-and-such came from a trade that was expensive, but had been bartered with stuff that Rohan acquired from other trades. And re-acquired, unknowingly, since a trade didn’t guarantee keeping it, and if Finn wanted to walk around the village with his pockets flappin’ loose, then of course Angus was sticking his hand in there and retrieving what got robbed in that shit trade Rohan’d been a part of. Then he’d have to hide it from Rohan, since the bastard’d give it back to Finn out of honour.

It was fun, in a ‘little brother’ sort of way. Angus imagined Forge thinking the same of all of Rohan’s happy favours through the years. The stabbing was a bit harder to wave as innocent, especially now, when Angus constantly took things from Rohan’s plate, and the most he’d ever been was kicked for it. Not even sharply. And it wasn’t that Rohan had grown into having more sense over time, what with him smacking a guard during their ‘training’ – torture – and then daring that guard to fight him over it. He was simply quicker to do more for Angus than he’d do for the others. But let it be known that he went out of his way for Deirdre as well. Angus was simply smart enough to accept the offerings. That truly had been the glue in their friendship.

To be fair, it wasn’t only things. Angus counted the favours and apologies when their friendship was on testier ground. But he hated apologies, since Rohan always sounded sad, so if he could call it even with a trade of annoyances that Rohan’d had with him, they were fine. Angus even did the trade in his head, saving his best friend the trouble of forgiving Angus for various mistakes, as well as knowing they’d happened. This, obviously, was because Angus was a kind and generous fellow, and it was the only reason they’d survived Rohan’s ‘mobilization test.’

Utter horseshit, he would add. How Ivar came up with that on the spot was what Angus truly wanted to learn, since walking quietly didn’t take.

But – anyway. The courting.

Angus had to think on that.

As if proving what he’d been saying for years, Rohan was making an excellent wife. The hut was tidy, the food was made, his clothes were clean and there’d been attempts at mending them, and it was in-between the list of excursions Rohan was dragging him to around the island. Lunches on cliffs at the coast, tours of caves Rohan swore weren’t going to kill them this time, ponds with different fish than the ones closer to Kells... All sorts of things. The best two weeks they’d had, stretched across two months of not fretting over Temra. The training was normal and lighter as the kingdoms’ peace marched on, and Angus got to go on the good patrols to see to that. He wasn’t complaining about this either.

Now, certainly, this would end once his three months were up. Rohan only gave this much when he was panicked and thought Angus was leaving with somebody else. Forge wasn’t wrong about princely ‘whims’. This was a whim. Angus was banished from helping with anything; he found himself sneaking chores – which went against every moral he’d ever had – seeing he wasn’t keen on spending his next ten years in guilt from watching his friend work his life away for a prize he didn’t understand he’d been trying to win.

And that was his complaint. Rohan wanted friendship; Forge wanted to fuck. Both of them thought the other wanted what they already had, and couldn’t convince themselves that anyone would fight this hard for something else. It was fine and harmless and disappointing for the winner if they magically figured it out, but now Angus had to let it shape ten years of one of them thinking they’d unjustly lost, or wondering why they’d bothered working so hard to win.

‘Cause Rohan didn’t know. That’d been the first thing Ivar had asked: did Rohan ‘know’? ‘Cause he didn’t seem to know.

And the answer was, “No.” He didn’t. As Angus had tried to explain many times, doing what others were doing – what Forge was doing – meant other things. There were ‘friends’ in this world, sure enough, but then there were also ‘friends’. When Rohan was older, and things changed with Forge, Angus threw in the part about there being ‘wives’. What he got back, whether he was crude or gentle or painfully honest about it – didn’t matter, was, “It isn’t funny,” and “Stop making jokes,” and “Anyone can see I’m protecting you.” From what, Rohan would never decide. There’d been as many as answers as there were ports.

Ivar’s curiosity hadn’t been slaked. Neither had Deirdre’s. Garrett – a good man – was convinced, but the other two inquired as to whether...

“Perhaps he does know,” Ivar had said, “but thinks you don’t.”

The worst part of royals was he couldn’t say half his usual words. They’d get offended by ‘cock,’ and that was food. It made this a lot harder to explain in simple terms.

“I’ve known Rohan my entire life.” Practically. “He’s lots of things, but he isn’t that clever.”

“He’s had plenty of time to make his intentions known,” Garrett had also observed.

“You’re the best one here,” Angus said, then realized who he’d said that to. Garrett was already off preening. Angus had ignored him and turned back to the others. “Rohan’s shy. You’ve all seen it. Put a sword in his hand and he’ll win you a castle.” Put a different sword in his hand – “But he doesn’t go that long under pressure without exploding eventually. He blurts it out, he tells someone else, he makes everything about that for years...” By Dagda, he wished he could use Deirdre as his example here. Rohan would kill him, though. Speaking of which: “He’ll be the only man in the world to die with nothing to take to his grave. So if he knew, I would know.”

Deirdre had been shifting with her arms crossed like she’d been trying to squeeze a question in or out of herself. Since it came out, and she looked disappointed, Angus supposed she’d been trying for ‘in’.

“What we saw was what he was like when you were away with Broehaine,” she’d said, meaning Forge. “Staying with Cathbad, because he didn’t want to be alone in the hut? The training and your fights with one another? What would you call that?”

A pissing match.

But ‘pissing’ was another word too good to use in the throne room, so Angus had to carefully – and victoriously – reply, “Not his usual behaviour.”

So that was that.

This wasn’t a contest; he’d known Rohan the longest and knew him the best. Whatever Angus had to say about him was fact. Maybe the others didn’t like their fun being spoiled that perfectly, but he’d needed them to hurry and focus on the damage of being only four Mystic Knights again. The choice in three months didn’t feel like a choice, but it wouldn’t have felt like anything if he didn’t even see a way he could make it.

And.

No. He couldn’t.

Things were fine so far, but if any of what Rohan’d been pretending to care about was true, they’d be lucky to manage it with their five. Temra liked to hit back at threats by laying waste to them, and Conchobar was sure they’d include even Lugad in what there was to overcome at Kells. Nothing could also be what happened, but it was still too soon to say. Three months wouldn’t be much improvement on that, either.

He tried explaining this to Rohan at the hut.

“We’ll manage,” Rohan had promised.

“Nobody else thinks we will,” Angus muttered from his cot. “Conchobar doesn’t.”

“Conchobar,” Rohan shot back, jiggling the rabbit he’d had for their supper, “was ready to surrender before I spoke with him. He’s a wise king, and we should be so lucky to have him to lead us in times of peace, but it was me who had to bring us that peace in the first place.” Crack. There went a leg. “I’m telling you, we’ll manage. It’s more important to worry about the months ahead. This shouldn’t be on your mind.”

If nothing else, all this proved Rohan could look after himself. Angus didn’t need to stay to keep him alive anymore. Here was a man who could wipe his own tears, as few as they were, trying to get the meat off some skinny bones to bribe a friend with stew. When he eventually became a ‘real’ prince, he’d have servants wiping everything, wouldn’t he?

“Hey Rohan,” Angus mused, “if being Maeve’s son makes you evil, and you take the throne to go to war with Kells again –” Rohan was stuck in his place like a statue. “– can I still visit?”

He’d whipped the rabbit’s guts at Angus for that, who got some of it in his mouth. But Rohan had laughed, and he’d said yes. That was something, then.

It was all he had to keep going in month four.

“Forge’d better be dead,” was the last of what he would speak of it.

Rohan thought he might be, but was holding back from comforting Angus too early. Ivar and Garrett had said a few weeks’ delay wasn’t unusual. Deirdre asked if they’d missed each other, as though Angus hadn’t run from village to village as a boy, only for Forge to follow the wreckage until he’d caught up again.

The fifth month was when he’d been convinced that Forge wasn’t dead. He was given three months to pretend he was ‘stuck’ with Rohan; now Forge wanted him to fear it as though it was real. Good way to remind someone they’d loved their gruel: starve them completely. As if that hadn’t been how he’d grown up. Angus was used to it.

The sixth month was different. The anger had settled in to form a bedrock of certainty. He’d found the trick, and now he only had to endure the wait. He was good at that. It was what he was known for. Rohan even let him sleep through most of it, being a great friend.

By the eighth month, he’d stopped caring. Forge would show up or he wouldn’t. Either way, Angus’d forced Rohan to go back to normality. He tried it the month before, but Rohan insisted against it – maybe thinking it was a test. But the joke was well over now, and it was getting embarrassing. So Angus made him stop, and then he spent a couple of nights alone to get his head on right and think.

All right – ‘alone’. It was cold.

Rohan gave him a few more of those afterwards, since Angus didn’t know he suddenly needed permission to be ‘alone,’ and that was revealed by Rohan going off to have a fit among the others. And then, after two days of being normal again at last, Rohan started doing as many meals and chores as he could, just out of spite. And why not? They had nothing else to torment each other with. Temra had the sense to leave any of their new schemes off and to the spring, leaving Angus stuck in other huts, in a barn, in the castle walls, or whatever other tiny space he could go to get from everyone and think.

And about that.

Temra.

He didn’t know what was happening with Rohan being their prince. He’d figured there’d be talks of crowns and rings and thrones already.

At the tenth month, the answer came out: there was more war after all. Not with Kells, but within Temra itself. Uprisings among the splintered forces that Maeve had been keeping together. They were terrorizing themselves, too crazed to suffer a Kells-raised prince coming to claim their throne and rule. What’d been brewing under snow had thawed out enraged, and it was all they could do to secure the borders and keep the chaos from spilling over onto their side.

Rohan was quiet, so Angus had to keep reminding him of this. And it needed to be Angus, since Rohan wouldn’t hear it from the others. Nobody but them had ever survived through winters like that, where everything was ablaze and steaming with blood, and yet the villagers still froze to death. What a bad way to go.

Conchobar had had to break news that they couldn’t assist the survivors. The people of Temra were taking a look at the finest warriors of Kells on their way, and fleeing deeper into the searing debris, convinced the fire they knew would give a more merciful end. In short, they were making it worse. Angus said it himself, ending the argument he’d let Rohan have for a while. This was Rohan’s first time, after all, at abandoning villages to their fate. When they’d done it as boys, it’d been Angus making the choice, tricking his new friend into following along before the Temrans arrived. They’d made it to Kells before Rohan was grown enough to ask what happened with those who’d stayed to fight.

Well. Rohan was grown now. Angus’d had a good run.

He cried that month. Night after night. Rohan cried more than Angus had ever expected. He’d said he could smell the ashes and hear the screams that Angus made sure they had never heard, and Angus held him through it. Night after night. In the morning, Angus would cook something that smelled better than charred straw. In the evening, he’d twist himself on the sliver of space Rohan chased him into, checking if his friend was asleep enough to stop having to hum to him. Three weeks was enough to go from thinking to knowing a bigger bed would be more practical. Somewhere during the fourth, as Rohan slept pressed against his neck, exhausted enough from the tears to finally manage some rest, Angus was off in his own mind and picking out a tree.

“If you killed Forge,” he asked, when a year had passed, “you’d tell me, right?”

“I didn’t kill Forge,” Rohan said, hacking at a chicken.

That wasn’t the question.

But it was the month that Forge came back.

The big, dumb prick, appearing in the middle of the forest, looming out from the treeline as Angus came back from scouting their border. There was barely a moment to seethe before Forge had set himself to work, proving how he’d won that ‘war of the wives’ in Angus’ heart unchallenged. It’d been a long while since the son of some Pictish sailor threw his scraps at a boy on the coast of Kells. But not that long, if Angus thought about it. Which he did – while they were in their glow, and laid out across the silken grass. They weren’t the type to ‘cuddle,’ as he’d taught Forge years ago, but they were side-by-side on their backs, warmed by each other and the afternoon sun, staring them both in the face.

It was too long for him to be laying there. It’d been too many months spent thinking. Because now, without a bar of wood digging into his ribs, or an awkward kink in his back from bending his side around another’s, all he could appreciate was how damn nice it felt to have this space. He wasn’t crushed or crammed into anyone or anything.

“Hey, Forge,” he asked, surrounded by perfectly good trees, “do you know to how build a bed?”

There was his answer. Some half-formed lump in his head, while the sweat was still drying on him and Forge, decided the only thing Angus needed to think right now was that he wanted a bigger bed for him and Rohan. That could’ve meant nothing. It was a bed; he landed in more of those than Forge did ports. Plus, for the nearly ten weeks Rohan’d been in bed with Angus, his friend spent it crying and mourning every person they’d failed to save, past and present. But the presence of his answer had felt... shaped. And chiselled. Sanded to a form he hadn’t meant it to take, and wasn’t able to take in yet, but that was serving a purpose.

Even so...

... then what?

“Tie a hammock –” Oh fuck. Forge was still here. “It’ll swing you with the waves. Takes you to sleep.” The sea-scarred hand that’d been running up Angus’ waist began to slide down towards him again. “Unless,” Forge whispered, “you weren’t asking for sleep.”

He didn’t make it back to the hut until a few hours before dawn. Rohan was in his cot, where he was supposed to be. Angus didn’t want to wake him just to be asked the obvious question, but when the sun rose and he woke up on his own side, he felt Rohan’s chin tucked into the back of his shoulder. He couldn’t truly deny it was supposed to be there, too.

“What did you say?”

That was a fine way to start their breakfast.

There was no malice in the words, but they both knew what Rohan had meant, and why he’d asked the question so gently.

Angus finished chewing his mouthful – not trying to rush, not putting it off. As he picked his bread for his next bite, he answered honestly, “I didn’t.”

There was no malice in Rohan’s smile either. It was fond, like that was the answer he’d been expecting. A tie meant no one had lost yet, even if it was true nobody had won. But a quick spark of cheekiness lit up in his eyes a moment after, and he slid Angus half of his apple. When Angus asked if that was meant to win this, Rohan slid him the other half.

He wasn’t complaining. Angus liked apples.

It was the next part that won it. The stupid contest they’d been having around him meant Rohan had to eventually take a step. This could’ve been the plan for a month, a day, from the start of the year, or since they’d met, but it was something Rohan had had planned. Angus could feel that pinch of tension Rohan gave off when he was about to do something that everyone was going to yell at him for.

It was different when Rohan had full intentions of yelling back; that was Draganta, commanding his challengers to face him. This was Rohan, the boy he’d grown up with, who knew he couldn’t hide the fight he’d had with other kids but was embarrassed to ask Angus for help, and who knew he’d been cheated in a trade with a guard but was shy to ask Angus to get his half back, and who knew he’d had just as much of a hand in whatever got Angus hauled off to jail but was terrified his confession would be what ended their friendship forever. Not Draganta. Not a prince. Honestly, not even a Mystic Knight.

Just Rohan, who turned around to stop them before they headed out of the hut.

And Rohan, who looked like he’d taken a breath ten minutes ago, and forgot that breaths were supposed to come back out eventually.

“I’m going to kiss you now,” he announced, somehow still not exhaling. Then he scratched the side of his mouth, as if he’d only just wondered how to do it. For all Angus knew, he had. “All right. Don’t move.”

“You want me to close my eyes?”

“No. Well...” Angus felt guilty right away, and could feel his grin over it. Rohan saw that at least, and used it to steady himself. “Quiet.” Ostensibly a royal command now. And as if Rohan could hear the thought in Angus’ head, he deliberately moved forward, ignoring everything. And missed.

Or – not missed. Went past. When Rohan stopped them, they’d stood face-to-face, with his shoulders square and aimed at his friend. So Angus assumed Rohan would lean in, not start to lean in and twist to the side. But he felt it all the same: that lightning in his chest, flashing as he felt Rohan’s lips meet the side of his cheek, and surprising him as if he wasn’t told a moment ago that this would be it.

The kiss was dry and silent, and he bet Rohan hadn’t even felt it himself. His pupils gave it away, in fact, being down to terrified dots as Rohan returned to where he’d started. And somehow, despite still not exhaling yet, Rohan took another breath in and stared at Angus for comment.

So Angus asked, “What’d you think?”

Rohan nodded a bit quick, and said, “That was fine.” His voice was up more than normal. “It was different. Nice.” Rohan hadn’t felt a fuckin’ thing. Angus could hit him with a rock right now and he wouldn’t feel it either. “It was good, though?”

“I dunno. Was it?”

“Aye,” he squeaked. “It was good.” If there was anything in this world meant to prove how long they’d been in each other’s lives, it was Angus narrowing his eyes and starting to grin again, and Rohan instantly snapping, “It wasn’t my first. It was just you.”

“Oh, all right.” Whoever she was, she must’ve ‘lived in a different village,’ ‘cause Angus never fuckin’ heard of her. “Well, was I good?”

The squeak was back. Rohan nodded too quick.

“You – were good. You stood there – which... was... that was the point.”

“Are you that scared?” Rohan opened his mouth to answer, then shut it. That left Angus to say pretty much whatever he wanted, which was a lot of power Rohan knew Angus shouldn’t’ve been trusted with. “Fair enough. You’ll get it with time.” Angus nodded at the flap for the hut. “Out you go.” Rohan turned as soon as he’d heard the word ‘out’ – “Stop. Come back.” And Rohan was back. By Dagda, he could play with this all day. “Don’t move.” It didn’t seem like it needed to be said, but Angus meant it in a ‘no fainting’ sense. “And close your eyes.”

That last one was only because Angus smiling like a shark probably wasn’t helping. Funny, though. Anyway, Rohan did as he was told.

It was at least his second kiss, so Angus took it easy. Mouth shut, or his friend would explode. He didn’t even use both hands. Instead, he cupped the side of Rohan’s neck, and glided his palm along until his thumb had settled behind the corner of Rohan’s jaw. As rigid it was, the only convincing he needed for Rohan to relax and come down to him was a stroke of his thumb against this ear. Or, fine – a little more than that, since his friend was frozen, pushing Angus to bring his other hand up after all and mirror his first.

That did it. With a sweep against both of his lobes, Rohan bent enough for Angus to reach him. His lips were still dry, but Angus had wet his own. And this was better; the sharpness of the lightning had its time to build into a steady, stronger heat. They didn’t need to move. He’d picked his spot, intending to feel the one kiss completely, and leave before he’d fully thought about who this was with.

Before he broke away, he felt a touch at both sides of his waist.

‘Not his type.’

Angus couldn’t help it – Rohan’s old joke had jumped into his head. With a touch on him that was growing carefully into a grip, Angus wanted it known that he was, and had always been, everyone’s type forever.

Not that ‘everyone’ mattered so much. But let it be known.

All right, time to stop. He was starting to think, and his heart was picking up from that. Not in a good way. He pulled back, letting his hands move from cradling –

“Wait.” Rohan’s hands were already over his, pressing them back into place. As soon as Angus had started to step away, Rohan followed, close enough for their foreheads to bump. He hadn’t opened his eyes yet. “I need you to wait.”

It sounded like an apology.

Which it had to be, because Angus’ stomach dropped like he’d eaten a brick. He obliged, since of course he would, and cradled Rohan in his hands again. But the tension in his friend had returned, until Rohan finally bowed his head and pushed himself forward into a hug. Angus allowed it, though it left him hovering in a moment before horror. What did he miss? Yes, he’d been trying to distract himself, but he thought he’d been careful not to get carried away.

“Rohan,” he said, “that’s funny, if you’re trying to be. But you can stop it now, please.”

The hug around him tightened, as if Rohan was etching it to memory. And then it was over, and they were stepping back, and Rohan was turned around as if Angus hadn’t seen the tears again.

Lots of those lately.

“That was nice,” Rohan decided, wiping his face. “I hope it means you’ll stay.”

He left before getting an answer he knew Angus didn’t have.

... Though Rohan wasn’t the only one who needed it, was he?

Deirdre

“I thought you said the bed was working now.”

“Bed’s fine.” Though as Angus spoke, his head lolled to the side. The circles under his eyes weren’t terribly dark, but they certainly drew comparisons between his sleep and Rohan’s. “It’s his fault. He’s been chasing me all over it.”

Rohan offered nothing to counter this. His arms had been slung around Angus’ shoulders every morning they’d joined the others for breakfast. He only switched between staring at his friend or burying his face in the crook of Angus’ neck, lost under a curtain of dark hair. At the accusation, he did both: beaming to himself over his memories, then leaning in again to hide his smile. Whatever else Rohan did, he had the cover of their privacy to shelter it. Angus, tired as he was, reached up a hand to pat Rohan’s neck in return. It seemed he approved of this placement. His other hand stayed focused on his meal, and the rest of his body stayed upright thanks to Rohan’s hold.

Deirdre hadn’t realized how seamlessly everything would fit. Their change should been more dramatic, marking a revelation in how they would share their world – or at least in how they’d struggled to shape it around each other before this. Rohan draping himself over Angus like a cape had – at first – caught such attention... but then Angus would roll his eyes and wave them away as though they were meant to ignore it. For his part, when Rohan had Angus pulled back against his chest, he would contentedly meet their gaze in a mute recognition of what they were seeing. Otherwise, he’d been as silent as Angus about the matter, and the fact that any time they weren’t walking, they were attached. It became an ancient part of their scenery within a week.

She felt almost disappointed. She’d wanted them to be happy – and they... well, part of their silence meant they didn’t take any heed of it themselves, so she would say they seemed happy by how they looked so enduringly comfortable – but with the year they’d had, the fights over Forge, the bitterness and overwhelming jealousy, going from that to this felt... honestly, incomplete. Perhaps inappropriate.

And what of Forge?

“What about Forge,” Angus had uttered.

Their conversation had been fine. The delay in Forge’s return was fine. The war in Temra had blocked the only port Forge could’ve used to return and it was fine.

There were two weeks before this where Angus had been even quieter. He rarely left the hut, and her father had asked if he’d taken ill. Rohan didn’t directly answer the questions they’d posed, but from his subtle hesitations and meandering, the rest of them understood that ‘fine’ held a deeper meaning. Maybe Rohan didn’t truly know, which said all it needed.

So then Forge was gone and vanished, away to foreign lands for nine more years. Having that horizon so far from now had clearly brought peace to Rohan’s heart again. Cathbad said that was always the case; in nine years, they would see what ‘peace’ this horizon truly held. If they were especially lucky, it would be unbroken by any early visits.

“Perhaps you should have kept one of your old beds,” Ivar suggested.

“And let him chase me around something smaller? That’s the reason we made the big one.” Rohan was red. He hid farther under Angus’ hair, glowing brilliantly. “Anyway, the hut wouldn’t have the room, and I didn’t know how to stack them on each other.”

“At least you haven’t broken this one,” Ivar said.

“It broke. The bed broke. We didn’t break it,” Angus snapped. Or he would have, if he hadn’t yawned his way through the last part. “See? Look how tired I am of you three, besmirching Draganta’s good name.”

“Only yours,” Ivar corrected. “What happened to the second bed?”

“A dragon,” Angus sang. “A silly dragon wearing a hat. Came in, split the beams, and taught us a valuable lesson on craftsmanship.” He pointed his spoon at Ivar’s face. “Does not have a name to besmirch.”

“He was testing it,” came Rohan’s voice from Angus’ shoulder.

“I’m sure he was,” Ivar said, drawing his banter to a close. The crinkle of his eyes, however, implied he had far more to say than that. Before the moment disappeared, he snuck in a last, “I wish you great success in your future inspections.”

Angus put his spoon down to laugh at that. Rohan almost slipped off his shoulder from the shaking. Even Garrett, who’d been above this talk, proved he’d been listening enough to smile. Deirdre, on the other hand, was positively convinced she didn’t understand their implications, which was only way such that ‘talk’ – whether or not she was above it herself – could be shared around a royal table among her royal, sensible company.

“How many backs did that dragon have?”

For the rest of her life, Deirdre would remember the look of utter terror and blinding delight on Angus’ face. And it would be the only time, because she had her own name to protect, and she would not have Ivar’s generous tutelage of foreign phrases used so inelegantly.

Though apparently, from how fast Angus understood, Deirdre wasn’t the only one receiving that tutelage from Ivar.

“I’m proud of you, dear princess,” Ivar said.

She’d always been a fast learner.

The merriment continued – politely – until her father arrived as well. He’d been taking longer and longer to join, so burdened by his negotiations into the night with the various forces splintered over Temra. While he seemed pleased with how close Rohan and Angus were, though it showed as tactical relief in having five Mystic Knights again, his presence unfortunately meant that the two would have to detach.

They mostly did. Rohan had already found a loophole in setting himself behind Angus, enough to hide from her father when a finger or two was still hooked on the back of Angus’ clothes. If her father had noticed, he’d chosen to tacitly allow the indiscretion. Rohan was only barely beginning to receive a royal education from them, and Angus was Angus. This was quite mild, and her father had better battles to pick.

Their training had returned in full force. The threat was that some part of Kells or village would find itself caught among the Temran splinters, but Rohan and Angus were putting their new bed to use. They’d made plans over the nights to start building bridges into Temran land. Draganta was the warrior of Kells, but Rohan didn’t plan to rule through conquest. If they could bolster the villages near the border, and offer them as sanctuary to the Temrans, perhaps word would spread that Kells was an ally, and a Kells-raised prince wasn’t so awful. Though her father liked the idea, he wasn’t convinced their efforts would be seen as friendly. It was limited as well, to only those desperate enough to believe it was less of a risk than their chances at home.

It was Rohan’s first test as a future King, regardless if he knew it was. Her father thought diplomacy was best to end these tragedies at their source, and Rohan was convinced that diplomacy meant little to those being tormented by war right now. Kells had an army, but Rohan had the Mystic Knights. Her father had decades of strategy, yet Rohan had lived through its results. This wouldn’t be a conversation that ended with one side submitting; as Rohan spoke and listened, she, Ivar, and Garrett would translate her father’s words to him. Garrett did well at the same with Rohan’s words to her father, taking the tangles in Rohan’s thoughts and fitting them to structures that were better understood.

Most impressive was Angus, who’d taken a new role: pacing the discussion. Deirdre never caught their signals, which made Angus seem like he was planning his moves based on Rohan’s voice alone. He would suddenly speak to turn the focus towards someone else for their thoughts, and as he did, Rohan would dip his head to breathe in the short respite. Or Angus would call to one of them to explain what something meant – the term, the tone, and its context – while Rohan’s shoulders relaxed, their bristling fading away. At one sharp point, when Rohan had been about to agree to a plan, Angus turned and said something. There came another hour of deliberation, and Rohan agreed to the plan in the end, but he did so with a confidence he hadn’t had the first time.

It made sense to Deirdre. If Rohan agreed to something he didn’t accept, Angus was the one who’d be hearing about it in their big, new bed.

They’d known the decision would be a mix between her father’s and Rohan’s plans, but the mix they finally settled on was a well-fought victory for everyone. They would revisit their progress on a frequent basis, and change what with whatever they learned from bringing their plans to reality.

“I’m surprised Angus didn’t interrupt more often,” she’d said to her father afterwards. “Normally, he has a hundred thoughts to share, but he left it to Rohan.”

Her father was less surprised, but no less impressed by it.

“Your mother would share her thoughts with me before we met with other dignitaries. It gave a united front,” he explained, “and let her track the nuances I couldn’t as I spoke.”

The parallel startled her. It, too, fit seamlessly. And a fearsome, vicious curiosity crept upon her to ask if Angus shouldn’t – in that case – join Rohan in his early education.

“It would save time,” she said.

Her father, terrifyingly, agreed. But they also agreed that perhaps it’d be getting ahead of themselves, averting the crisis before any notions took too strong of a hold of them.

Cathbad, then, was alone in his concern, to Deirdre’s great astonishment. She’d thought he would be the happiest, given that he’d raised Rohan.

“I am, admittedly,” their druid confessed, since she’d taken the time to visit his chamber. “But you must remember, princess, that I have known Angus for as long as I have known Rohan. I’ve told you Forge wasn’t the only boy Rohan had accidentally –” Was there any truth to that word? “– stabbed that Angus was newly friends with.”

Garret had been with her, and had been the one to ask, “You think Rohan would turn on Angus’ other friends? Us?”

“Nothing of the sort,” Cathbad said, crossly. Then, clearing a curl of smoke from the mixture he’d boiled, he went on to say, “Angus simply has a tendency to wander.”

Garrett smirked. Deirdre tittered and clarified their reaction.

“Rohan said as much. He isn’t worried. So long as Angus is with him, he’s willing to ‘let the tide ebb and flow’.”

It was one way of putting it.

“I am aware,” Cathbad said.

There was a cold shrewdness in Cathbad’s voice belying how calmly he worked to pour his potions into bottles. Deirdre exchanged a look with Garrett, who spoke up to say, “If you’re aware, why are you worried?”

“Because Rohan’s patience relies on Angus being with him.” Yes, and – “And Angus has a tendency to wander.”

He’d poured the words into their minds the same as he poured his potions. They stood with these ideas for a while, turning each one over. There seemed to be... a problem separating the points. And, Deirdre realized, considering what she had seen...

“Rohan does cling to Angus now,” she said.

“Yes,” Cathbad replied, as though she’d only just caught on that the sky was often blue.

“It’s because they’re in love,” Garrett spelled out for them. It marked the first time anyone had said it. Not even Rohan and Angus said it yet. “That’s all it is.” Less confident. “He isn’t going to cling to Angus forever.”

“I suggest,” Cathbad said, forgetting to add a hint of a suggestion, “we mind our own matters.”

“Well, it can’t be worse than Forge,” Deirdre blurted.

Cathbad sighed, defeated again. He put down the powders he’d been measuring, then turned to them to speak plainly.

“Forge was always a week or three of discomfort, and then a banished memory. A single threat, contained,” he said. “Likewise, Maeve was a single threat from Temra. Destructive and cruel, but contained.” And as if they were the type to quibble over the shade of blue the sky might be, he connected the points for them. “We don’t know why Forge left, or if he’ll return to Kells. But we cannot assume that their silence is equivalent to peace.” He switched to his work again. “Though as you’ve seen, their fights are not known for silence.”

Was it... hope, she felt? At those words? It meant Rohan and Angus weren’t fighting now.

Yet.

‘Yet’ was more appropriate.

She’d known from the beginning it wouldn’t be the last time, and Cathbad wasn’t prophesying doom. But the storm he’d told them to weather, the dance he’d said to leave them to, she and Ivar and Garrett hadn’t.

“So what do we do?”

The answer was instantaneous: “Endure.”

Right.

For nine more years.

After just surviving one.