Arabar's ears turn pink almost instantly. "I carried your message exactly as you gave it."
"I know," Colsar says.
Behind him the Sovereign of Shalvar stands waiting. The man who found Colsar half dead in the mountains, young and abandoned, and made him his son. The man Colsar calls father.
Colsar turns and helps me down from the transport, his hand at my waist as my feet meet the ground. The pain comes slower now, deeper, something I brace against rather than something that overtakes me. The air here is warmer and contained in a way that feels intentional.
The Sovereign does not look at Colsar first. He looks at the children, entirely, and steps forward without hesitation.
"Let me see them."
Colsar allows it carefully. The Sovereign leans in, his attention moving over Fiorakis first, taking in her small form and the alertness already present even in stillness.
"Extraordinary," he murmurs.
Then his focus shifts to Ari and remains there, longer. He reaches out and brushes his hand lightly through the boy's hair as though confirming something he already knows. Ari does not stir. He remains exactly as he is, calm in the particular way that already feels like something more than temperament.
"He will be better at this than you or I," the Sovereign says quietly, his fingers moving along the length of Ari's leg beneath the blanket. "Look at him. The shape. The length already there." His gaze sharpens. "He will be fast. As a siakar should be."
Approval sits plainly in his voice alongside something that sounds like expectation. He lingers, then steps back and lifts his attention to me, something warmer entering his expression.
"And you," he says. "You have done something very few survive. And brought them here."
I incline my head. "Thank you."
He turns back to Colsar. “You return with heirs,” he says. “And still you refuse the seat I have asked you to take for years.”
A pause. “The Sovereign’s seat still stands open. It will not wait forever. It is time, Colsar.”
Colsar does not answer.
The Sovereign reaches into the folds of his coat and produces three circlets, each one small and precisely made, the insignia of Shalvar worked into the metal with a delicacy that suggests they were not made in haste. He places the first on my head with a care that acknowledges without being asked that I cannot bend to receive it properly.
"For you," he says. Then he holds up the other two, smaller, sized for heads that will not be ready for them for some time. "And for them. When they are old enough."
I take them carefully and look at them for a moment, the Shalvar insignia glinting faintly, and something about the gesture moves through me before I can stop it.
"Thank you," I say. "I would curtsy but I am afraid the pain will not allow it at present."
His smile is genuine. “I would not ask it of you.”
He reaches into his coat again and produces two small vials, handing one to me and one to Colsar. “From our apothecary.” He pauses, something in his expression shifting into the particular gravity of someone passing along knowledge that matters.
“We are creatures. We thrive on scent above almost everything else.”
“If they smell either of you on the other, they’ll have no trouble detecting your children. These will mask your scent so no one will detect Colsar on you, or you on Colsar.”
He lifts his chin slightly. “Drink it now, before you go further inside.”
I uncork mine and drink it without hesitation. Whatever it is moves through me differently than the healer’s vial had, less warmth and more of a fading, as though something that had been quietly broadcasting goes suddenly and completely silent.
Colsar drinks his and says nothing, but something in the way he exhales suggests he had not realized until now how much he had been carrying.
“This is simply a precaution,” the Sovereign says. “To protect the children while you rest and plan. But make no mistake, you are not limited to the hidden kingdom. You may roam wherever you wish in Shalvar.”
Colsar nods in quiet agreement.
“I am pleased to have you here.” The Sovereign’s smile remains. “Come. You need rest.”
