Arin does not throw his arms around him. He stands in front of Evran with his hands clasped and his eyes lowered, still, feeling too much and not knowing how to shape it into something he can release. He is quiet for a long moment.
Then he looks up, and his eyes are wet, and he says, "Thank you. For everything."
Evran's throat closes. He reaches out and puts his hand on Arin's shoulder, gently, and squeezes.
"Take care of your greenhouse," Evran says. "And take care of Caelen."
The flush that spreads across Arin's face is instantaneous and total, and despite the emotion of the moment, Evran bites his lip against a smile. Arin ducks his head, nods rapidly, and steps back. Tria grabs his arm and pulls him to her side, and they stand together in the courtyard, twins, counterweights, two halves of a whole, and watch Evran with the gravity of young people only beginning to understand how someone has changed them.
Evran watches them back and thinks about green things growing in glass houses and shy boys finding their courage and the steady, patient work of tending the people you love.
Delia is next.
She comes from the Keep's main entrance, walking with unhurried authority, having been saying farewells to delegations all morning and saving the hardest one for last. The baby is not on her hip today, handed off to a nurse for the duration of the departure, and her hands are free, and she uses them to take both of Evran's in hers.
They stand for a moment, hands clasped, faces close, the morning light on both of them. Delia's dark eyes move over his face with quiet thoroughness, committing something to memory.
"You are the most extraordinary young man I've ever met," she says. "I think your husband agrees with me."
"I have very good friends that make me better than I am." He squeezes her hands. "Thank you for everything, Delia."
"Don't thank me." She shakes her head. "You did the hard parts yourself and then I swooped in and pretended to be of use."
Evran laughs, a wet sound, thick at the edges, and Delia pulls him into an embrace. She holds him the way she held him in the alcove the day after the assassination attempt, tight, brief, fierce,and when she pulls back, her eyes are bright but dry. Delia does not cry in public. Evran suspects she saves it for later, in private, when the doors are closed and the mask of the Warlord's wife can be set aside.
"Take care of him," Delia says, tilting her head toward where Vaike is mounted and waiting. "And take care of yourself."
"I will."
"And write to me. I want to hear everything."
"Everything? The exciting life of a gardener and a weaver?"
"Yes, everything, my dear. Every pulled weave and unwound thread."
She squeezes his hands one last time, releases them, and steps back. She puts one arm around each of her twins, pulling them to her sides, and the three of them stand in the courtyard as Evran walks to his horse and mounts and the Drakkari column forms and the gates of Heldrin's End open before them.
Evran looks back once. Delia lifts her hand. Tria waves wildly. Arin raises his hand, palm out, steady and sure.
Evran raises his in return.
Then the column moves, and the stronghold falls away behind them, and the road opens up, and Evran breathes.
The valley gives way to the mountains by midday. The trail rises through the same forests and passes they crossed on the way in, but the landscape has changed in two weeks, the wildflowers thicker now, carpeting the south-facing slopes in dense, vivid color, and the rivers running higher with the advancing melt. The air is warm when the sun finds them and cool in the shade, and the sky is enormous, and Evran rides beside Vaike and lets the rhythm of the horse and the mountain carry him.
He breathes easier with every mile.
It is a physical thing, the easing of tension he did not fully know he was carrying, the gradual release of the hypervigilancethat has been his constant companion since the first night at Heldrin's End. Each hoofbeat puts distance between them and the stronghold, between them and the Windfar delegation, between them and the room with the fire and the vial and the locked door. The mountains rise around them, familiar and massive and indifferent to the ambitions of men, and their indifference is a comfort.
The column moves at a steady pace. Bran and Leona at the lead, as before. The elite warriors flanking.
The first day passes without incident. They make camp in the same cave as before, the outcropping with the deep dark back that Bran warned him about, and the routine of it is grounding. The same fire ring. The same picketed horses. The same circle of bedrolls around the flames.
Evran helps with the fire. He helps with the horses. He sits beside Naela and eats trail rations and listens to her recount the highlights of the tournament with animated enthusiasm, having won everything she entered and not remotely sorry about it.
Night falls. The fire burns. The mountains hold the stars.
Evran waits until the camp has settled, until the warriors on watch have taken their positions and the others have retreated to their bedrolls and the noise has faded to the low crackle of the fire and the breathing of sleeping people.
