“Kaelen,” he murmured, not looking at her, “I know you can hear me. Perhaps, this way, it’s better, because then you can’t interrupt. There’s . . . something I need to say. Something I should’ve told you years ago. ”
She stilled. Her hands curled in her lap. “Would you like me to give you privacy?”
He shook his head slowly, gaze still locked on Kaelen. “No. You should hear it, too.” He paused. “So you know what kind of a man I really am.”
Reiya pulled up a small chair beside the cot and sat down, her hands folding tightly in her lap. The quiet creak of the wood beneath her barely cut through the hush. Alarik lowered himself onto a cushion nearby, just within arm’s reach of his brother, yet his posture remained taut. The flickering lantern cast shifting shadows over his face, throwing his jaw into sharper relief. His fingers laced together, knuckles whitening, as though bracing himself against something long buried and finally rising.
“Do you remember,” Alarik began, his throat bobbing, “when we were boys—just after the Sunborn Trial—Father took us to Tremore? It was supposed to be diplomatic, but for me, it was an escape. The forests there . . . they were wild. Untamed. I loved them.”
Reiya listened closely, sensing this wasn’t idle memory. It was aconfession.
“You were too young to hunt, but that never stopped you,” he went on, the corner of his mouth twitching in a faint echo of a smile. “You followed me everywhere, no matter how many times I told you not to.”
She could picture it—a younger Kaelen, all reckless eagerness, trailing after his older brother like a shadow. A memory so simple, so harmless—and yet . . .
“That day, I tracked a doe. Lean, quick-footed, with a coat the colour of dry grass. I was hidden in the brush, my bow drawn, arrow notched.” He inhaled slowly. “And then you stepped into my line of sight.”
Reiya tensed. Her stomach turned. She already knew where this was going, could feel the weight of it closing in.
“I froze.” His voice dropped. “And in that instant—a single heartbeat—I had a thought. So quick, so fleeting . . . but it was there.” He clenched his fists on his thighs, knuckles whitening. “If I let the arrow fly, it would’ve been an accident. No one would’ve questioned it. And if you were gone . . .”
His shoulders stiffened, the shame crackling off him like static. “If you were gone, I would’ve been Tazahrin again. Maybe then, she would’ve . . . loved me.”
Silence swallowed the room. Reiya barely moved, her pulse thrumming hard in her ears.
“I came so close to firing, Kaelen,” he rasped. “So close.” His voice broke. “It haunts me every day.”
The lantern hissed as oil licked the flame. Shadows rippled against the walls.
At ten years old, Alarik had believed—if only for a second—that killing his younger brother would’ve made his mother love him.
It should have horrified her.
Instead, itached.
She thought of the way he always let Kaelen shine. How he stepped back, not because he lacked the light, but because he had been made to believe he didn’t deserve to stand in it.
Tazahriv—Lesser Prince.
Not just a title, but a sentence. A shaping blade.
And he had borne it, out of love for his brother.
Her fingers curled into her skirts, grief welling for the boy who had nearly been broken—and the man who still carried him inside.
Alarik let out a ragged breath, gaze drifting back to Kaelen. “But I didn’t. I lowered the bow.” He dragged a hand over his face. “And when you turned around and smiled at me . . . you just reached for my hand. Like you always did. Trusted me. Like I was the best damn brother in the world.”
Silence stretched again—long, taut, and heavy—until a sharp inhale cut through the hush.
“What are you . . . going on about?”
Kaelen’s voice was hoarse, frayed at the edges, but it was allhim. Reiya’s heart stopped. His eyes barely opened, lashes flickering weakly against his pallid skin, yet his words landed with quiet certainty.
“I knew you were there,” he murmured. “That day . . . in the woods.”
Beside the cot, Alarik froze. His eyes widened, as if the floor had tilted beneath him. “Youknew?”
The words scraped out of him, brittle and uneven, like something long buried was finally tearing free.
