Lanterns thinned the farther they walked, festival noise fading into a soft, distant hum. Crickets filled the gaps between footsteps. Somewhere behind them a drunk laughed too loudly; Other festival goers heading home with small talk and laughter.
Kairi walked between them, arms folded loosely, shawl tucked around her elbows more out of habit than cold. The ring at her throat was a small, warm weight against her sternum, hidden beneath her dress, but she felt it with every step. Every so often that weight reminded her that this boy, this man, was everything he’d been in their meadow and more. A brief smile came and went as her thoughts tipped toward the future, toward how her world was about to flip again. I really am like the Phoenix, she thought, rebirthing into another life.
“They’ll be here tomorrow,” she said at last, voice low enough that it barely carried past Kylar and Tessa. “All of them. Damon and Jayce and Darius and Zen. Rush and I will have to… play at being what we already are. And I’ll have to remember how to be Princess Kairi of Tearia in front of people who only just learned the title exists again.”
Kylar made a quiet sound that might have been agreement, might have been encouragement. He didn’t rush to fill the space.
“I thought I’d be excited,” she went on, staring at the line where streetlamp light ended and shadow began. “About finally going to Carlbrin. About not hiding. But there are so many eyes between here and the palace. So many expectations. So many ways to get it wrong.”
“You’re allowed to be scared,” Kylar said. His tone was simple, solid. “It doesn’t cancel out the excited part.”
She huffed. “It feels like it does.”
He shook his head, glancing down at her. “You’ve spent most of your life being one kind of thing. Healer. Hidden. Brindlecross’s strange neighbor.” A small smile tugged at her mouth, and he continued, gentler. “Tomorrow everyone starts asking you to be another. That’s a lot for one festival to prep you for.”
“I’m supposed to be good at changing,” she muttered. “Phoenix and all that.”
“Phoenixes burn to do it,” he said quietly. “You’re allowed a few nerves about the fire.”
That pulled a laugh out of her, small but real. Tessa’s hand flicked a quick sign at the edge of Kairi’s vision:
Kairi rolled her eyes, but the knot in her chest loosened a notch.
“What if I disappoint them?” she asked after a moment. “King Niveus. Ryder. Damon. The nobles Rush has been talking to. What if they look at me and see a girl who ran a town’s apothecary and hid in dreams instead of… someone they can follow?” Heat climbed her face. “And I hope your father doesn’t remember me too keenly. There were… a lot of embarrassing moments the last time I saw him.”
Kylar’s fingers brushed, just briefly, the back of her hand. “You kept a town alive,” he said. “You made a dragon change his mind. You faced down a god-beast and told it no. If someone can’t see that, that’s their failing, not yours.” He squeezed her hand once, steady. “And my father… how old was he when you last saw him?”
Her throat worked. “You’re biased.”
“Extremely,” he said, without shame. “And I’m still right.”
She snorted, then answered, gaze drifting back to the street. “Late twenties, I think. Handsome. I can see where you got your looks.” Her voice dipped, softer, older. “He was courting my sister, Trinity.”
Kylar’s expression shifted, something careful behind his eyes. “Tearian courting?” he asked.
Kairi sighed and started talking with her hands, as if the motion could make the memory less heavy. “Tearian tradition says a princess, or a noble lady with enough standing, can call a courting. It’s… open.”
Kylar’s brows rose. “Open?” he echoed. “As in multiple suitors?”
She gestured wider, a helpless sort of emphasis. “Lots. And lots of suitors. It was like a tournament. The city took bets on who would be sent packing. There were duels and trials and these ridiculous little tests meant to prove devotion or wit or endurance.” She caught him looking at her with dawning horror and pointed a finger at his chest. “No. I absolutely do not want a Tearian courting experience.”
He laughed, a quiet burst of it, and the sound eased something in her ribs. “You sure?” he teased. “There might be someone out there who’s better than me.”
Kairi lifted a brow. “Would you survive me going on dates with other men?”
Kylar opened his mouth, maybe to answer, when Tessa stopped so abruptly they nearly walked into her.
Tessa was the first to feel it.
One moment she was walking half a pace ahead, hands loose, knives sheathed. The next she halted so sharply that Kairi nearly bumped her shoulder, Tessa’s arm snapping out like a bar to shove both her and Kylar back.
Steel flashed into her hands, one blade low, one high. She didn’t sign stop so much as carve the meaning into the air.
Kylar moved without thinking. He stepped in front of Kairi, weight settling, hand finding the hilt of his knife. His body became a wall; she could feel the tension in his back through her fingers when she caught his shirt.
The lane ahead was mostly dark. A handful of festival lanterns didn’t quite reach the mouth of it, leaving a thick band of shadow swallowing the cobbles.
The shadow shifted.
A figure detached itself from the deep dark by the corner, as if the night had decided to stand up. Head to toe in black: hood up, lower face masked, cloth wrapped high over his nose. Knives sat in neat rows across his chest, hilts catching specks of lamplight; more rode at his thighs, and from the way he moved, those weren’t the only weapons he had.
He stopped a few paces away. Not close enough to strike. Close enough that if he decided to, Tessa would have a blink and half a breath to answer.
He tilted his head, considering them. Then, lazily, he drew a dagger from his bandolier and flipped it, silver arc flashing through the dark.
Tessa’s hand moved in the same heartbeat. Her knife left her fingers and met his mid-air with a metallic crack. His dagger spun off course and skidded across the cobblestones, ringing.
“How many more do you have, shadow?” he asked, blade already reset in his other hand.
Amber eyes glinted over the mask, sliding from her stance to Kylar’s, to the way Kairi was half behind him and half peering around his shoulder.
Kylar’s knuckles tightened on his hilt. He shifted just enough to widen his stance between Kairi and the stranger.
The man laughed. It wasn’t loud, but it had edges. “Just one more it looks like” he said.
He took another step forward. Deliberately slow.
Kairi’s pulse thudded in her ears. The ring at her throat felt suddenly, absurdly obvious, even hidden under cloth. Kylar’s shoulder was solid under her hand; Tessa’s weight was coiled like a drawn bow.
“Stop there,” Kylar snapped. Kairi tensed as memory came to her. Those eyes, that voice. But he was dead, wasn't he?
He didn’t. He kept coming, measured, testing, until he was close enough that Kairi could make out the exact shade of gold in his eyes. She stared into those eyes as her recognition came and he saw it.
“Interesting company you keep, little bird,” he said, gaze skating over Kylar’s ready stance, Tessa’s forward blade. " I do have to say, impressive she saw me."
Kairi moved beside Kylar which he tensed more and put his arm up to stop her. She said plainly. "Does Rush know you're alive?"
“What if”—his tone stayed almost conversational—“I already killed your brother on my way here?”
The world narrowed. For an instant, it was just those words and every night-terror they could summon. Blood on marble. A courtyard in Mylain. Rush’s hand slipping from hers.
Kylar tensed like a bowstring about to snap. She felt his body go from ready to about to move.
She didn’t let him.
Kairi slid her hand down from his sleeve to his wrist, fingers closing over his. He didn’t look back, but his weight checked, balanced on that choice.
She thought of Draggoons: the Dragon’s knights. First into a breach. First between a mad dragon and the world. First to behead their own god-beast if it turned on those it was sworn to guard.
She heard Rush’s voice, younger and less careful, in the courtyard at Mylain: Shade will stand with me. If I go wrong, he’ll be the one to end me.
Her heart steadied a fraction.
“You are his Draggoon,” she said, voice low but clear. “Shade.”
The man in black went very still. Then his eyes crinkled faintly at the corners. Pleased.
“You remember my name,” he said. “That helps.”
He looked past her again, reassessing: the way Kylar stood ready even unarmed, the way Tessa hadn’t relaxed an inch. Somewhere behind the mask, she could almost feel the calculation: how fast each of them would move, how much noise it would make, how Rush would react if his street stayed quiet or lit up with lightning.
Don’t make a scene, Rush had said.
Shade’s mouth twitched under the cloth. He turned away first, ambling over to where the two knives lay tangled in shadow. He picked up his own and slid it back into its sheath with easy familiarity. Tessa’s he turned once in his gloved fingers, then walked back and offered it to her hilt-first.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
“I’m officially taking back my title,” he said lightly, “to stand at his side and vet your Ash Guard, little bird.”
Kairi’s hand tightened on Kylar’s arm. The phrase scraped across old scars.
“I don’t have any Ash Guard,” she said. “They’re all dead.”
Shade didn’t flinch. Still holding the blade out to Tessa, he tilted his head. “Your brother says tomorrow,” he replied, “you might.”
Tessa’s eyes narrowed. After a beat, she took the dagger back, fingers brushing his glove only briefly. Her gaze said she could put it through his eye at a moment’s notice.
Shade seemed perfectly content with that arrangement.
His attention slid back to Kylar then, weighing him more openly. The quiet young man between Kairi and the world, hand finally easing away from his own knife.
“Prince,” Shade said, not as a greeting so much as a label. Cutting, a little. Testing.
Kylar met his gaze without dropping his eyes or lifting his chin. “Draggoon,” he said back, careful, neutral.
Something like respect flickered through Shade’s expression, gone before it fully formed. He didn’t apologize for the threat. He didn’t explain it away. He just stood there in the lane with knives and history hanging off him like extra bones, as if he belonged in any shadow he chose.
Kairi drew a breath that tried to shake and didn’t quite. She glanced past Shade, to the dim outline of their house down the lane, then back.
“Inside?” she said, the single word carrying a dozen others: Talk where no one’s watching. Tell me why you’re here. Show me you’re real.
Shade dipped his head. “After you,” he said. “I’ll walk behind.”
Kairi bristled. "No, you walk in front." Her voice didn’t rise, but it sharpened. "That's an order, if you plan to come back into my service."
Shade laughed at that. "Glad you still have a spine Princess." He held his hands out open to each side and turned and walked as they followed him at a distance back to the home.
Inside Rush was sitting and resting with his eyes closed. The door opened. Footsteps came in and then the door closed. Rush opened his eyes and looked at them. Shade standing in the middle of the small room. Hands up in surrender it looked like. Tessa and Kylar being a wall between him and Kairi. It went well he guessed. "Welcome home, I see Shade didn't cause a scene. It's fine, it's late and we can talk about it more later." He muttered.
Kairi moved around Kylar and in front of her brother and waited. He finally met her gaze. "Why do you act like this isn't a big deal?"
Shade and Rush let the word hang between them for a heartbeat, then another.
“Why?” Kairi repeated, quieter, but it had more weight that way.
Rush gestured to the chair next to him. "Shade, sit please." Shade moved and sank into the chair, bracing boots apart like he wanted to look relaxed and somehow failed at it. Up close, with the mask down, he looked older than her memory of him: more lines at the eyes, a new scar along his jaw, something lean and hungry in the way he watched all of them at once.
Rush started. "Because we have been talking for years. I'm sorry I never told you he was alive."
Kairi's hands fisted, the knuckles turning white. "Why?"
“Because I asked him to,” Shade said, slower. “Because I wasn’t sure what you’d be seeing, if you saw me. The boy who stole pastries with your brother, or the man who…” He flicked a glance at Rush. “Did what had to be done afterward.”
Rush’s jaw tightened. “Shade.”
“No,” Kairi said, not looking away from Shade. “Let him talk.”
Shade huffed, almost a laugh, but it never got there. “You always did pick the harder questions, little coal.”
She flinched and waited. He noted how the nickname landed, then scrubbed a hand over his face, half-covering his mouth for a moment, then let it drop. “When Mylain fell, I wasn’t there,” he said. “You know that much.”
“I know you were supposed to be,” she said.
The flicker of pain that crossed his face answered more honestly than words. “I was on assignment,” he said. “Your brother wanted the border scouted. I wanted Saebrian blood on my knives. Helpful coincidence, at the time.” His mouth twisted. “By the time the news caught up with us, there wasn’t a kingdom to report back to. No royal family. Just… smoke and rumors.”
Kairi’s fingers tightened more and then fingers gently covered her hand. Kylar. He stayed steady behind her, a warm line at her back. Tessa hadn’t moved from her post by the door; she was watching Shade the way a hunter watched a wolf deciding whether it was hungry.
“I spent years chasing whispers,” Shade went on. “Every tavern tale that mentioned a prince who could vanish. Every merchant who thought they saw a Tearian crest where it shouldn’t be. Most of them were lies.” His eyes went briefly distant. “Some weren’t. Less of us, every year.”
“What does that have to do with not telling me you were alive?” Kairi asked. There was no anger in her voice. That made it worse.
He met her gaze again. “Because by the time I found him,” Shade tipped his head toward Rush, “I didn’t know if there was anything left of me you’d recognize. I knew what I’d become good at. None of it was… kind.” He rolled one shoulder, as if trying to dislodge the memory. “I didn’t want you looking at me and seeing one more proof that Tearia had turned into knives and ash.”
Rush exhaled sharply, setting his cup down a little too hard. “You’re not a monster,” he muttered. “You’re a man who did what I asked you to.”
“Yes, well,” Shade said, “I also chose to be very good at it.”
Kairi’s eyes moved to her brother. “How many?"
Rush lifted his gaze then, finally meeting hers. There was a stubbornness there she knew too well, layered over bone-deep fatigue.
“Too many." He responded simply.
The silence was loud after that as Kylar cleared his throat. " Can you relay what you know so we can better protect both of you in Carlbrin?"
Shade was about to speak when Rush's hand shot out and flames ignited there. "Later Dato. We will tell you later, with Ryder, with Niveus"
Shade stared intently at the flames close to his face. " Message is clear Majesty... I am not fire proof."
Rush's hand extinguished and he rubbed his temples. "Are you staying here tonight Shade."
Shade glanced between Tessa and Kylar, they were tense. "...No. I'll stay at my usual place. I'll see you in the morning." He got to his feet and did a low bow to Kairi and Kylar. "Highnesses" Then he left closing the door softly behind him.
Rush waited, counted the seconds before it came. It always came.
She took one long breath, the kind she used before lightning, and turned away.
She went up the stairs without a word, leaving all of them in the lamplight and the quiet.
Tessa crossed to Kylar, tapped his shoulder, and signed tight and sharp:
Kylar nodded once. Tessa went after Kairi.
Kylar stayed where he was, staring at the door Shade had used like he could still see the outline of him in the air. He didn’t say anything to Rush. Rush already looked like a man balancing too many blades. Kylar turned, half on instinct, to make sure his own kit was in order. That was when Rush spoke again, voice low and cracked in a place he probably hated letting anyone hear.
“How do you tell someone,” Rush asked, “that her friends plotted to kill her… and that her brother is covered in more blood than he can explain?”
Kylar stood very still. He didn’t have a clean answer. He wished he did.
He thought of Kairi’s face when she chose calm over fury, and how that kind of control usually came from having had to survive without any other option.
Finally, Kylar said, “You don’t dump it on her like a sentence,” quiet and careful. “You give her the truth in pieces she can hold. You tell her what keeps her alive first. You tell her what keeps her choices hers. And you… you let her be angry when she’s ready to be angry.”
Rush’s throat bobbed. Kylar swallowed, then added the part that mattered most, even if it wasn’t comforting. “It was betrayal from the inside. That means it’s not just grief. It’s strategy. So we make a plan. We put names to the danger. We don’t let her walk into it blind.”
He paused, voice roughening. “And when you tell her about the blood… you don’t make her carry it alone. Ryder needs to be there. Niveus, too. Not for ceremony. For weight. For witnesses.”
Rush stared at the floorboards like they’d personally offended him.
Kylar exhaled, then finished with the only honest thing he had left. “I don’t know how you make it easier,” he admitted. “But I do know how you make it survivable.”
The quiet that followed wasn’t empty. It was full of the house settling, the last embers shifting in the hearth, and the distant festival dying a slow death outside.
Rush’s fingers tightened around his cup. “Survivable,” he repeated, like the word tasted wrong.
Kylar didn’t let the silence win. “You said her friends,” he said carefully. “Not enemies. Not strangers. Friends.”
Rush didn’t look up.
Kylar took a breath, steadying himself the way he did before stepping into an unknown room. “Why?” he asked. “Why would they sell her life? For what?”
Rush’s jaw worked. For a moment Kylar thought he’d get another wall, another Later, another fire in a palm meant to end the conversation. Instead, Rush’s shoulders slumped by a fraction, like he’d finally accepted there was no clean way to set this down.
“Because people bargain when they’re afraid,” Rush said, voice low. “Because Saebria always has coin, and promises, and someone willing to whisper you’ll be spared if you just point.” A bitter huff. “Because some of them thought the phoenix was worth more dead than alive. Because some of them thought they could keep a piece of Tearia by handing Tearia over.”
Kylar’s grip on the edge of the table tightened until the wood protested under his fingers. “So they traded her for safety.”
“For the illusion of it,” Rush corrected. “For a story they could tell themselves while they slept.”
Kylar stared at the hearth, seeing something else entirely in the orange glow. He forced himself back to the practical questions, because that was the only way to keep his hands from turning into fists.
“Do you know who?” he asked.
Rush’s eyes finally lifted. In them was a warning, and exhaustion, and something guarded that looked a lot like fear of what the truth would do to his sister.
“Yes,” Rush said. “And no, you don’t get it tonight.”
Kylar held his ground anyway. “I’m not asking so I can play judge,” he said. “I’m asking because we’re taking her into Carlbrin. Into marble halls and smiling mouths and politics dressed like kindness. If this happened once, it can happen again in a new shape.”
Rush’s gaze sharpened, the dragon in him baring teeth. “I know.”
“Then tell me what shape it took,” Kylar said, voice steady despite the pulse in his throat. “Was it jealousy. Money. Blackmail. A promise of rank. Was it someone she trusted because they were always there?”
A long beat.
Rush dragged a hand down his face. “It was all of it,” he said finally. “And it was close enough to her that it still makes me sick.”
Kylar nodded once, sharp as a vow. He didn’t push for names. Not yet. But he filed the answer away like a blade in a sheath.
“And when,” he asked quietly, “are you going to tell her?”
Rush’s mouth tightened. “When Ryder can sit across from her and take some of the weight. When Niveus can hear it and not pretend it’s a soldier’s report. When Shade is in the room to say what he knows without turning it into a ghost story.” His eyes flicked toward the stairs where Kairi had disappeared. “Not when she’s already raw.”
Kylar’s chest pinched. “She’s always raw,” he said, not accusing. Just truthful.
Rush didn’t argue. His fingers tapped once on the cup, a small crack in his control.
Kylar leaned forward slightly, lowering his voice the way he had earlier in the lane, the way you did when you meant something and didn’t want it overheard by the walls. “Then I’m in the room,” he said.
Rush’s gaze snapped to him. “Dato—”
“I’m in the room,” Kylar repeated, gentler but immovable. “Because when she hears it, she’s going to need somewhere to put it. It’s going to land like a blade, and she’ll either swallow it or throw it. I’d rather she throws it.”
Rush watched him, expression unreadable.
Kylar didn’t flinch. “If she needs to cry into someone,” he said. “I can be that. If she needs to yell. If she needs to break something that won’t break back.” His throat tightened, but he forced the words through anyway. “If she needs someone to hit, because it’s easier than admitting she’s hurting… I can take that too. I want to be that for her. Not because I think I deserve it. Because I won’t let her carry it alone.”
For a moment, Rush looked like he might laugh, and it would have been ugly if it came out. Instead, he exhaled, slow and shaky in a way that admitted more than he probably intended.
“She doesn’t do well with cages,” Rush murmured, staring at the floor again. “Even when they’re made of love.”
Kylar’s voice softened. “Then don’t cage her with secrets,” he said. “Tell her with people around her who won’t let her drown.”
The quiet returned, but it had changed. Less battlefield-edge. More… planning table before a siege.
Rush lifted his eyes at last, and there was something grudging there. Not trust, exactly. But a recognition of the same kind of stubborn devotion, just wearing a different crest.
“Fine,” Rush said, rough. “You’ll be there. And you’ll keep your mouth shut unless she asks you something.”
Kylar’s answer was immediate. “Yes.”
Rush sat back, staring at the embers like they might spell out a better future if he watched long enough. “Saints,” he muttered, mostly to himself. “She finally gets friends again and the first thing I have to do is tell her friends can be knives.”
Kylar’s fingers loosened from the table edge. “Not her Brindlecross girls,” he said quietly, catching the direction of Rush’s fear. “Those two would die before they sold her.”
Rush’s gaze flicked up, sharp, as if assessing whether Kylar meant it.
“I heard them,” Kylar added, voice low. “How they talked about her. Like she’s a person before she’s anything else.” He paused. “If we’re going to give her this truth… we should also give her something to hold onto.”
Rush’s stare held for a beat, then he looked away again, the smallest concession in the motion.
Outside, somewhere in the dark, a lantern guttered. The house settled. The stairs above stayed quiet.
Kylar kept his eyes on the fire and made himself one more promise, silent as a knife sliding home.
When it’s time, I’ll be there. And she won’t have to wait for someone to catch her.
I have created playlists on spotify for:
Kairi
Dato
Jayce
Damon
and a overall Naberia
Comment below which playlist you would like the link to in the next chapter!