“Heal him,” he said, pointing at Kylar like he was calling out a spar.
Kairi and Jayce both blinked.
Jayce recovered first. “I would love that,” he said solemnly. “Man took a blast for me. Would be nice if he could see the door he’s about to walk into next time—”
Rush cut him a look. “Tessa was teasing me with hand-nonsense and I couldn’t read a word of it. I want him seeing so he can translate.”
Kairi burst out laughing. Kylar tilted his head toward the sound, grateful and a little lost.
“I take the talk went well,” he said toward her voice.
Rush let his eyes slide to Kylar and then back to his sister. "Please my sweet little sister."
Kairi wiped the tears away from laughing and pulled the chair out next to Kylar and touched his cheek. He flinched.
"Ah. sorry. I'm going to heal you now. I'll need to take the bandages off and if you could Kylar. Can we address your other aches?"
Kylar flushed and Jayce jumps on this. "Please, his chest and back look awful. Strip man."
Kylar flushing more. "Jayce, let's not call it stripping."
Rush got up and went over to Kylar and started undoing his gear.
Kylar blindly trying to stop Jayce and Rush from undressing him and failing.
Soon he was sitting top half of him bare to the world. Jayce nodding. "Still pretty ugly looking."
Rush nodding. " That is some bruising there."
Kylar frowned. "Alright...so healing."
Kairi was flushing looking at his real body and slowly placed her hand in his chest and he flinched again. "Right. Okay. Going to heal you now."
Kylar nodded slowly. "Your hands are cold."
Rush, Jayce and Tessa sat around to watch her heal him as her hands slowly moved around the larger uglier blacks and purples and convinced them to behave and turn into the ending yellow and greens. Tessa watched in fascination at the magic as Jayce and Rush gave commentary.
Kairi's hands gently slid up his back to his neck and then to his cheek and around his eyes. The swelling went down and she worked a little on the fractures there and took a deep breath.
"...are you okay Kairi?" Kylar asked. He was paying close attention to her breathing as it started to get a little bit more labored as she went.
"I'm good" She said cheerfully and gently placed her hands to shield out some of the light. "Try opening your eyes"
Kylar opened his eyes and squinted against the brightness and blinked a handful of times till things came into focus. And there she was, smiling at him, her gorgeous deep blue sapphire eyes looking back at him. She slowly pulled her hands away from his face. " You have beautiful eyes."
Tessa nudged her and signed
Kylar frowned. "Not all the time."
Jayce was smothering a laugh. "You don't deny it, just say its not all the time?"
Kylar turned to Jayce and took in Rush sitting beside him. He had the same color eyes as Kairi. And he looked a little older than the portrait plates. Rush raised an eyebrow at him. Kylar looked back to Kairi who was looking at his face with a quizzical look. "...What?"
She reached up and touched gently by his right eye. "This one is still...a little broken. Here." She worked at healing it as he watched her eyes as he felt more ease come from the aches. Then he saw the moment her eyes went a little unfocused and he grabbed her hand and pulled it away. "..don't over do it." He whispered.\
That drew Rush’s and Jayce’s attention like a snapped wire.
Tessa tapped Kylar’s knuckles where he held Kairi’s wrist. He released her at once.
“Sorry,” Kairi whispered, already stepping back. The room tipped; she swayed.
Jayce and Kylar both moved, Jayce was closer, faster. He caught her clean.
“I just need a minute,” she said, breath light, trying to make it easy.
“Mm,” Jayce said, which meant no. He looked to Rush; Rush gave one short nod. Jayce took the stairs with her like a man who’d carried precious things before.
Downstairs, the quiet rearranged itself.
Tessa’s gaze fixed on Kylar. She signed slow and crisp, then pointed at Rush.
Kylar glanced from her hands to Rush and translated: “She wants to know if healing does this to her often.”
Rush’s mouth tipped, not quite a smile. “When she pushes,” he said, eyes on the stairs. “Small seals and clean knits don’t cost much. But mending what would take weeks pulls from her. She didn’t overdo it today.” He finally looked at Kylar, measuring and, maybe, less guarded. “She’ll need a couple hours’ nap.”
Kylar exhaled, some knot in him loosening now that he could see the room that held them. “Then she can have them,” he said, voice steady. He glanced toward the stairwell again, softening despite himself. “And I’ll try not to give her reason to spend more.”
Tessa caught Kylar’s eye and signed, slow and deliberate so he couldn’t miss it:
He nodded, turned to Rush. “She wants to run me through the house—guards’ notes.”
Rush flicked two fingers in permission without looking up from the papers.
Tessa hooked two fingers in Kylar’s bracer and towed him into the small side room. She framed his face in her hands, studied the healing, then gave a single, satisfied nod.
“I feel better,” he said, grinning despite himself. “She did a good job.”
Tessa’s mouth tipped.
Kylar shifted into the rhythm, answering with his own.
She leaned to the wall, wry.
A small stone of dread moved under Kylar’s ribs.
Eye-roll, fond and merciless.
Kylar huffed a laugh.
That rasp of laughter that was only Tessa. She tapped his chin.
He let a little relief out on a breath and gestured around them.
She pushed off the wall, gaze narrowing.
Kylar’s hands paused, then answered with care.
She weighed that, then nodded, filing it. The grin returned, wicked and bright.
Heat climbed his neck; he suddenly remembered he was still shirtless. He glanced toward the main room—his shirt, his harness.
Snap.
Tessa’s grin widened.
He sighed, defeated, and stepped back into the doorway. Rush’s head lifted at once, tracking him with that cool, measuring blue. Kylar crossed to the chair, found his shirt, and began working it on. Kylar eased the shirt over his shoulders, careful where the ribs still complained, and worked the buttons by touch and habit. No fresh wrap on his eyes—just the clean brightness of the room coming back to him in gentle pieces: the table’s scuffs, the nick in the chair rail, the thin sun across the floorboards.
Tessa drifted back in, collapsed sideways into a chair with a cat’s grin, and threw one ankle over a knee. Kylar took the seat opposite Rush. The prince—no crown, only that unblinking blue—closed the folder he’d been pretending to read.
“Humor me,” Rush said, voice even. “You as third prince. You as Shadowguard. What does an ordinary day look like—if you’re allowed one?”
Kylar met it straight. “Palace mornings start with steel. If I’m on the yard: drills, then spar blocks. If I’m on court: uniform, posture, patience. I prefer the yard,” he admitted. “Afternoons—rotations, barracks business, riders in and out. Nights… letters lately.” The corner of his mouth tipped. “Bad ones, if Tessa’s editorial standards are law.”
Tessa’s brows climbed, pleased.
Rush nodded once, a simple ‘go on.’
“The parts that matter?” Kylar added, choosing careful truths. “I like being where doors are hard for other people. I like making them easier. I like keeping noise off the men who do their jobs well so they can keep doing them.” A beat. “I like earning the right to wear the kit, not having it handed to me.”
Rush’s chin dipped, conceding the shape of an answer. “In Tearia,” he said, “everyone serves five years. No one is exempt—men, women, nobles, commoners, royals. You learn the country by carrying it.” A small, wry breath. “I recommend it.”
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
Kylar—though he already knew—asked, “You? Kairi?”
“I served,” Rush said. “Friends worth keeping. Lessons I didn’t know I needed, learned with my boots in mud.” His mouth softened on the memory. “Kairi would have, if history hadn’t rewritten the rulebook for her.”
Tessa’s fingers lifted. Kylar’s eyes flicked to her, and he translated as she signed. “When does magic usually show?” he asked.
Rush folded one hand over the other. “Young, most times. Five, six. Sometimes later. Sometimes never.” He glanced to Tessa, and her hands shaped another question. Kylar caught it and passed it along without thinking.
“She asks what you can do.”
Rush’s palm turned up. A flame the size of a coin stood there, quiet and blue at its heart. Tessa sat up, rapt. The fire leaned, vanished; the air gathered to a bead of water that trembled, then skinned to ice with a soft crack. Rush rolled the tiny sphere into her hand. She turned it, smiling in a way that didn’t happen often enough; when she offered it back, he closed his fingers and let melt and mist finish the trick.
Kylar watched the ease of it and, for a blink, did the arithmetic of danger: distance, speed, how fast this man could end him if he chose. He let the thought go.
Snap. Tessa, amused. Another sign.
Kylar translated, “What all can Kairi do?”
Rush’s answer was immediate and fond. “Healing. Always gifted. Fire, when she was young—but she’s afraid of it now; it’s hard for her to touch. Lightning she’s managed.” His gaze flicked to Kylar at the surprise there. “Rare, yes. I always thought it braided with her brother’s gift—her twin. He handled wind and lightning like breathing. Some talents… leak across the seam.”
Silence held a beat for the ghost in the room. Rush’s eyes went to the stairs, then back. Footsteps above, a door soft, then Jayce came down with that careful way of men who’ve just set something precious to sleep.
“She’s down,” he reported, half exasperation, half pride. “Stubborn girl.” He crossed to them, and Rush slid a small stack of sealed envelopes across.
“Still riding today,” Rush asked, “or at first light?”
Jayce weighed the bag’s strap in his palm, then let it fall to the chair-back. “First light,” he decided. He hooked a thumb toward the table, easing himself into an empty chair. “What’d I miss?”
Tessa lifted a hand and fluttered her fingers: only everything.
Kylar leaned back, ribs not loving it, and offered the short version. “Five years’ service for everyone in Tearia. Magic by six if it’s coming. Rush cheats at parlor tricks.” A half-smile. “And your editor-in-chief thinks my letters need work.”
Jayce brightened as if he’d just remembered a joke. “Ah—your highness. Here.” He slid a folded envelope from his inner pocket and offered it across. “I am a great postman,” he announced gravely.
Tessa’s hands flew, excited staccato.
Jayce watched her, then shrugged. “…Oh. Yeah, I know.”
Kylar paused halfway to tucking the letter away. “You know she can use lightning?”
Jayce nodded, unabashed, as Kylar slipped the envelope into his inner pocket. “She zapped me really good once.”
Kylar and Tessa stared.
“You say that like that’s a normal thing to have happen to you,” Kylar said flatly.
Rush lifted a shoulder, unhelpfully serene. “He was teaching her to get out of holds. She…got out. Effectively. Jayce took a very restful nap.”
Jayce looked down at his hands—at the memory, at the ghost of a tremor that had been fear and then pride. “She needs more practice,” he said, looking up to Tessa and Kylar both. “Men get brave in crowds. She should be able to end that bravery fast.” He closed his hands slowly. “Practice with her?”
Tessa nodded immediately. Kylar thought about it, grimaced. “I am going to be electrocuted doing this.”
Rush laughed. “We’ll set a rule. No lightning unless she truly can’t break a hold.”
Tessa snapped to get their attention:
Jayce ticked them off, tapping the table like a diagram only he could see. “Wrist turns, elbow levers, hip shifts, heel hooks. Street pins—wall and ground. Alley shoulder press. Cloak grabs. She hasn’t loved the ground ones.” Honesty pushed in. “She’s stronger now. We should revisit.”
He faltered on a memory. Kairi pinned face-down, her breath spiking, his careful voice counting the steps she couldn’t yet trust. Then cleared his throat.
Rush stretched, attention sliding to Kylar with intent. “You should test her unexpectedly. We’ll warn her it’s coming sometime, but not when. Make instinct do the work.”
Kylar went still. “I’m… not fond of ambushes.” He picked the word with care. “Teach first. Drills. Then surprises.”
Rush weighed that, nodded once. “Fair.”
Tessa cocked her head at Kylar and signed, curious:
Kylar translated, then frowned at Tessa “I’d rather you didn’t ambush me. It’ll drive my anxiety higher than it already is.”
Rush’s eyes sharpened. “Anxiety?”
Jayce answered without drama. “Shadowguard training helped. He used to get panic attacks. Not much now.”
Kylar’s mouth twitched. And Kairi All the nights she’d talked him back to shore. He nodded once, enough.
Rush folded into explanation: “Tearia trains reality. Injuries mimicked, senses dulled, ambushes common. Two taps to stop—failure if you need them.” His mouth flattened. “Better failure on wood floors than in alleys.”
Jayce tipped his chin toward them. “You two are good teachers. Tessa, you and Kairi are close in build; you show escapes. Kylar’s bigger—he sets the weight, teaches leverage.”
Kylar made a face. “I wouldn’t say I’m stronger than Tessa.”
Tessa lit with delighted pride.
Rush stood, rolling his shoulders like a man who remembered a yard. He pointed between Jayce and Kylar. “Let’s spar. I haven’t had a decent partner since you were here last.”
Jayce’s grin arrived on time. “As you wish, Your Royal Highness.”
A slow, smug smile found Rush’s mouth like a crown setting itself. “You’ll have to start using that title more soon.”
Tragic,” Jayce said, and they drifted out to the little back courtyard where the flagstones held last night’s sun.
While Jayce and Rush rolled shoulders and wrists, Tessa nudged Kylar and signed with crisp intent
Kylar weighed it; his hands hesitated, then answered
Tessa’s grin went fox-bright.
Kylar’s eyes widened. “Tessa… please.”
Jayce couldn’t help himself. “Tessa is one who likes to be pinned.”
Tessa flushed and shot him a look that could have blunted steel.
Rush glanced between them. “…care to explain the conversation I missed?”
Jayce took the scenic route. “Tess asked if he’d be okay pinning your sister for training. Kylar is hesitant, good impression and all that, acknowledges it will help her in the capital. Pinning is not, historically, step one in courtship.”
Rush coughed, half-amused. “Right. Forgot. I see the kit and forget you’re not entirely just a guard.”
“Tess,” Jayce added, “ever helpful, volunteered her preferences.”
Tessa’s glare deepened. Rush nodded gravely. “Noted. I’ll keep it in mind that you like to be pinned, Tessa.” He slid into stance with a practice blade. “All right, Jayce.”
Jayce loosened, weight light over the balls of his feet. “Ready.”
They closed.
The first exchanges were polite: tap-tap to test measure, shoulders settling, the dry clack of wood on wood. Then the tempo lifted. Jayce feinted shoulder-high; Rush ignored the lie, dropped an inch, and shouldered him off line with a compact hip. Jayce let the energy roll through his core, replanted, answered with a low cut to shin-range that Rush caught and turned, the sound a hard, satisfying crack that made the little courtyard ring.
Tessa perched on a low step, eyes bright, hands already framing fouls that didn’t come. Kylar stood where the wall threw a cool line of shade, watching form and breath instead of faces: Jayce’s easy guard that hid a tendency to overcommit on the second beat. Rush’s economy—no extra story in the swing, just enough to tell the truth and win.
“See his elbow?” Kylar murmured to Tessa, keeping his voice low so it didn’t tug Rush’s attention. “Jayce telegraphs when he means to bind."
Tessa nodded, quick.
A flurry: Jayce went high-high-low; Rush took the first on the strong, parried the second short, then stepped across the third and made the ground his ally, heel catching Jayce’s forward foot. Jayce stumbled half a pace, laughed, and slashed a diagonal that would’ve taken a shoulder if it had been steel. Rush ghosted back and let it miss by an honest inch.
“Footwork first,” Rush said—not to Jayce, to the air, to apprentices present and future. “Hands lie. Feet don’t.”
“Mm,” Jayce answered, breath even, “my hands resent that.”
They reset. Jayce shifted tactics, pressured with close binds and quick, mean little taps on the knuckles—street fighting dressed in practice wood. Rush allowed the bind, rolled his wrist, and the pressure inverted like a hinge reversed; Jayce’s blade went useless past his ear and Rush’s stopped neatly at his ribs.
Tessa made quick movement with a smile.
They broke, smiling despite themselves, and went again, shorter this time, hotter. Jayce found Rush’s shoulder with a flick that would be a bruise later; Rush paid him back with a clean touch under the guard that said liver, thanks, please tighten there.
Kylar let the rhythm soak into him. He cataloged how the sounds would translate when a street was shouting, and how to teach Kairi to feel the shift instead of watch it. Holds, pins and ambushes last. Ask first. He could do that. His lost his focus for a moment. Could he?
Rush ended it when the heat got to the edge of foolishness: a bind, a turn, an elegant trip that put Jayce on one knee, blade to stone.
“Two taps,” Rush reminded, blade hovering.
Jayce tapped the ground twice and grinned up, unbothered. “You’re insufferable.”
“Practiced,” Rush said, offering a hand up. He took the step back that made the gesture safe. Jayce rose, dusted stone from his knee, and saluted lazy with the practice blade.
Tessa slapped her palm twice on her thigh: Good bout.
Rush’s gaze slid to Kylar. “Your turn?”
Kylar rolled his shoulders, testing how the morning's healing held. “Okay" he said dryly, setting his stance. “Two taps. And I'll stop if it's too much for my ribs."
“Agreed,” Rush said, the corner of his mouth tilting.
Jayce circled out, happy to spectate. “I’ll call, Tessa will foul, and if either of you breaks a rib I’m telling Kairi it was a dance.”
Tessa raised a judging hand
“Not lying,” Jayce said, backing into the shade, eyes bright. “Interpretive sparring.”
Kylar let himself breathe once, twice, found the ground under his feet, and met Rush’s blade in the center with a clean, uncomplicated crack. The sound lifted to the eaves, quick and bright.
They squared again. Wood kissed wood, clean, centered, and the next pass ran hotter.
Kylar kept his guard narrow, let Rush set tempo, and borrowed what he’d just watched: Jayce’s loose hips, Rush’s economy, the half-beat Jayce used to steal distance. Rush’s eyes noted all of it and then stopped being generous.
“Better,” Rush said, a shade more weight on the word. “Point in the man’s favor.”
“Saints,” Jayce muttered from the wall. “He’s handing out compliments before noon. Mark the calendar.”
Tessa rapped her knuckles twice on her knee, amused.
Kylar didn’t answer with his mouth. He answered with his feet, angle, step, bind, and slipped past Rush’s guard to touch the prince’s ribs, neat as a signature.
“Point,” Jayce called, cheerfully biased.
Rush’s mouth tilted. “Taken.”
They reset. Breath in; weight low. Rush changed the story, shorter guard, blade centerline, shoulders square, and the whole fight tilted under Kylar’s boots. Pressure came in steady pulses: test, test, punish. Kylar let the first two land on his blade and got the third to slide, but the fourth arrived early with a heel-hooked foot placement Kairi favored. He recognized the step the way you recognize handwriting.
“You said dream boy taught your sister,” Kylar managed between beats, defending rather than striking. “Does she spar with you often?”
“Frequently,” Rush said, driving him back another pace. “He taught her useful things.”
The next sequence was all elbow and heel. Not Shadowguard clean, Tearian practical. Kylar shifted to the solutions Kairi had drilled into him in the meadow: yield an inch, take the angle, punish wrists not shoulders. Rush’s brow climbed, just a hair, at the shape of the defense.
Don’t panic.
The words were flat and inside Kylar’s head. His body flinched before his face could learn better. Rush didn’t miss it; he flowed through, and the practice blade came to a balanced stop at Kylar’s neck. The courtyard went very quiet, Jayce’s exhale, Tessa’s soft intake, the far clink of a loose latch.
Don’t say anything about hearing me. We will talk later, dream boy.
Rush’s eyes held his, steady and unreadable. Kylar made himself look bored and breathed once through the lightning in his hands. Two light taps of his blade on Rush’s, yield acknowledged, lesson accepted, then he let a grin find his mouth.
“That was fun,” Kylar said, stand-down casual, and stepped off the line. “We’ll have to spar more over time.”
Rush drew the blade away, neutral again by inches. “We will.”
“Kylar’s learning your tricks faster than I did,” Jayce said, sauntering in to ruin the moment. “I’m offended on behalf of my past self.”
Tessa signed, fast and bright:
Kylar rolled his shoulder, testing the mend. “He telegraphs less than you,” he told Jayce, dry. “Feet lie less.”
“Blasphemy,” Jayce said, wounded. “My feet are honest citizens.”
Rush angled his blade toward the ground. “Again?” he asked, offer, not order.
Kylar nodded, grateful for the work to run the tremor out of his fingers. “Again.”
They went back in: bind, turn, break. Rush pressed lines that forced Kylar to choose between Shadowguard doctrine and the Tearian shortcuts Kairi had smuggled into him. Kylar chose both, when he could, and ate the cost when he couldn’t. He won a small victory on a wrist parry that made Tessa clap once, sharp; he lost ground on a body-check that would have been a wall in an alley and felt like one even here.
Between exchanges Jayce offered a running sermon: “If this were steel, that’s a bruise you’d brag about… No, not that hinge, he’ll eat that… there you go.” Tessa translated her own wicked color commentary for no one, laughing silently when Rush stole Kylar’s balance with a Tearian sweep.
They ended when Kairi came out of the house and sat next to Tessa. Rush pulling back first and checking on his sister. "Good afternoon sis."