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Chapter Text

The gardens of the Khaenri’ahn palace were silent in a way that felt deliberate. Not the natural hush of nature in repose, but a curated stillness—hedges so manicured they bristled at the wind, flowerbeds arranged like pages in a forgotten language, and cobbled paths that curved in precise geometry, each step accounted for. Even the sparrows seemed hesitant to sing. Dainsleif, walking alone beneath an arched trellis lined with climbing wisteria, felt like an intruder in a living painting. 

And he resented it.

He was ten, and already old enough to know he did not belong here.

The strap of his scabbard dug into his shoulder with every movement, the ceremonial sword it held far too long for a child of his size. His father insisted he wear it—it was, after all, a symbol of honor, of heritage, of duty. You are to meet the Crown Prince, his father had said that morning, adjusting his collar in the mirror, not looking at him. You will address him with respect. You will not embarrass the family.

As though it were his presence that might insult the prince, and not the other way around.

He had been told the prince was younger than him—seven, perhaps eight—and already Dain had envisioned a sniveling, pampered child in a jewel-toned coat, surrounded by servants who laughed too loudly at jokes he did not understand. He imagined the boy would be waiting in the garden gazebo, perched on silk cushions, surrounded by plates of sweets, growing impatient that his noble playmate was taking so long. The kind of child who had never tied his own shoes. The kind of child who had never been told no.

So when he stepped through the final hedge and found nothing he scowled.

There was no entourage. No greeter. No prince beneath a sunshade.

Just an empty courtyard.

He stopped. The breeze shifted, carrying the faint smell of roses and stone warmed by sun. A leaf skittered across the path.

He was about to turn back—perhaps he’d been misdirected—when he heard it. A soft creak, like old wood swaying on its hinge. The sound was so subtle it might have been mistaken for imagination, except it came again, and this time he caught it—a movement, just at the edge of the garden, half-hidden behind an old flowering tree.

There, hanging from a bough thick with pale blossoms, was a swing. Its ropes were a soft flaxen color, fraying in places, the plank worn smooth by time and use.

And sitting upon it—

A child.

Dainsleif stared.

The boy’s back was to him, legs dangling, robes spilling loosely around him like folds of silk. The swing moved only slightly with the wind, giving the illusion of motion. His hair, long and dark as the sea at night, caught the sun in sheens of midnight blue, a single braid trailing down his back like a ribbon. He wasn’t moving. Not speaking. Not humming or fidgeting or calling for attention the way Dain imagined a prince would. He simply sat there, small and still, staring at something far beyond the walls.

There was something about the image that stilled Dain’s breath in his throat.

He stepped forward, hesitant now, one bootfall crunching against the gravel. The boy didn’t turn. Didn’t flinch. It was as if he already knew he was there.

The boy was pretty in ways Dain’s ten-year-old vocabulary couldn’t name. He didn’t have the words yet for ethereal, for haunting, for the kind of beauty that ached at the edges of your awareness, quiet and dangerous like thin ice over deep water. He just knew that looking at him made something twist in his chest. That his eyes were drawn to the slope of his shoulders, the smallness of his frame, the braid trailing like a bookmark down a story Dain hadn’t been told yet. That he had never, in all his short and disciplined life, seen anyone who looked like that.

Like a painting that had wandered off the wall.

Like a dream pretending to be a boy.

Dain felt suddenly aware of himself—too tall, too rough, too armored for this place. His boots scuffed the gravel like an apology. The sword at his back felt childish now, and he hated it more than ever. He stood there awkwardly, not knowing whether to clear his throat or turn and walk away.

Then the boy spoke, softly, without looking back.

“You’re late.”

Dain stiffened. There was no reprimand in the words, only a quiet observation, as if he had been expected all along and had merely taken his time arriving.

“I’ve been waiting,” the boy added, and the swing creaked once more beneath him, a slow and wistful arc, like he hadn’t quite stopped hoping the wind would carry him elsewhere.

Dain frowned. He hadn’t expected to be scolded. He’d followed the path exactly as the steward instructed. He opened his mouth to snap something back, but the boy was already turning.

He shifted with slow grace, sliding off the swing like water poured from a cup. His shoes made no sound against the garden path. Up close, he was even smaller than he had seemed from a distance—delicate-boned, with a face carved in soft lines and a gaze so unnervingly still it felt ancient. His eyes shimmered like glass held over candlelight—lavender, yes, but flecked with strange silver glints that caught and refracted everything they touched.

He looked up at Dain without flinching.

“You’re the knight?”

Dain flinched, just a little. “No,” he said, the word catching against his throat. “I’m Dainsleif.”

The boy blinked once. Then he smiled—not wide, not mischievous. Just a small, almost knowing curl of the lips.

“Dainsleif,” he repeated, as if testing the sound on his tongue. “That’s a nice name.”

Dain didn’t know what to do with that. No one had ever said his name was nice. He wasn’t sure it was.

“You didn’t bow,” the boy added, though there was no accusation in it. Only interest.

Dain squared his shoulders, defensive now. “You didn’t introduce yourself.”

The boy tilted his head, considering this. For a moment, Dain thought he might laugh, or roll his eyes like other noble children did when he spoke out of turn.

But instead, the boy stepped closer.

“Well then,” he said, with all the gravity of someone accepting a very serious challenge. He extended his hand, slim and pale and open, as though offering him the key to a riddle. “Let’s start again.”

Dainsleif stared at the hand between them, as if it were some strange creature he wasn’t quite sure how to approach—too delicate to grasp, too poised to ignore.

The boy held it there patiently. He wasn’t smiling anymore, but he hadn’t withdrawn either. The stillness around him wasn’t nervous. It wasn’t anything Dain recognized. It was… measured. As though this small, dark-haired prince had already anticipated every possible response and was now waiting to see which path Dain would take.

Let’s start again, he’d said.

As if they were equals.

As if they had all the time in the world.

The garden had gone strangely quiet again. Even the wind, so restless a moment ago, seemed to hesitate in the trees, caught in the branches as though listening in. Somewhere in the distance, a bell chimed the hour—light, silver, far away.

Dain’s hand twitched.

He wasn’t used to touching people. There were formalities in his house, rules of decorum drilled into him from infancy—bow, greet, retreat. But here was no courtly script to follow. No steward to bark out introductions. Just this boy, standing in sunlight and shadow, eyes full of unspoken things, asking nothing of him except a name and a moment.

He reached forward, slowly.

Their fingers met.

Dain had expected softness—childlike fragility, the kind you had to handle with care lest it break beneath your grip. But Kaeya’s hand was firm, small but not timid. His skin was cool despite the warmth of the sun, his palm surprisingly steady in Dain’s unsure grasp.

The contact was brief. Just a press of skin, a quiet agreement.

But it felt like something had shifted beneath the earth.

“Kaeya,” the boy said at last. “That’s my name.”

He said it without flourish. No titles. No fanfare. Not Prince Kaeya Alberich of Khaenri’ah, not even just Kaeya Alberich. Just Kaeya—offered plainly, almost shyly, as though the name itself were a secret and he had chosen, deliberately, to give it away.

Dain’s throat felt tight.

He tried the name silently in his mouth—Kaeya—like a foreign word he wasn’t sure he had permission to pronounce. It sounded lighter than he expected, soft on the vowels, smooth as water. It didn’t suit a prince. Or perhaps it suited him too well.

Kaeya took his hand back and turned, walking without ceremony toward the swing.

“You’re taller than I thought,” he said, as though continuing a conversation Dain had never been a part of. “I thought you’d be small. The kind that brags a lot.”

Dain blinked. “I don’t brag.”

“I know,” Kaeya said, climbing onto the swing again and gathering his robes neatly. “That’s why I said it.”

Dain stood there, unsure if he’d been complimented or mocked. He wasn’t used to conversations with soft edges and crooked shapes. He was good with orders. Instructions. Things he could carry and sharpen and break.

Kaeya, he thought, was none of those things.

Kaeya was trouble wrapped in velvet.

He stepped closer and watched the swing sway gently as Kaeya leaned back, tipping his face toward the canopy above them. A blossom drifted loose from the tree and caught in his hair. He didn’t seem to notice.

Dain hesitated.

“Do you… want to play something?” he asked, awkward now, voice low.

Kaeya didn’t answer right away. His eyes stayed fixed upward, lashes dark against his cheek. Then he said, in that same mild tone—

“I don’t play,” Kaeya said, as if reading the question Dain hadn’t asked aloud. “I come here to be quiet.”

“You talk too much to be quiet.”

That earned him a glance. Just a flicker of blue, sharp and dry. Dain stiffened again, realizing too late that it had come out sounding like a challenge. He braced for that court-bred disdain, that patient condescension nobles liked to wear like perfume.

But Kaeya just blinked once. And then—

He smiled.

And for a moment—just a moment—Dain forgot he was supposed to be unimpressed.

The boy was trying too hard to look older than he was, that much was obvious now. Sitting on swings like he ruled silence itself. Using words like measured adults did, lowering his voice just so, folding his hands in his lap with princely affectation. And yet—

He had a missing tooth.

His cheeks were rounder than Dain’s, too soft to be severe, still dusted with that faint, childlike flush from running or laughing too hard. That one braid in his hair, though meticulously tied, had begun to unravel at the end where the ribbon had slipped loose. And his robe, so carefully draped across his lap, had a grass stain creeping up the hem.

Dain looked at him—and saw the truth.

He was pretending.

Pretending to be quiet. Pretending to be mature. Pretending not to want to be seen or chased or bothered like any child might. And though the pretense was convincing—startlingly so—it made something in Dain’s chest ache with reluctant fondness.

He looks too adorable like this, Dain thought, stunned by the word even as it crossed his mind. Too childish to be intimidating. Too small for a crown.

He turned away, sharply, as if the thought itself were a vulnerability. As if Kaeya might see it etched on his face and scorn him for it.

But Kaeya only went on smiling at the gravel, his foot lazily brushing the ground beneath the swing. 

And that—somehow—that embarrassed Dainsleif more than if he’d been scolded. His ears burned.

He didn’t know what made him do it. Maybe it was the way Kaeya sat there, self-contained and distant, like a candle that refused to be lit. Maybe it was the day itself, soft and golden and edged in birdsong. Or maybe it was simply that Dain, for all his practiced poise, was still ten, and still human, and still prone to the reckless, ridiculous impulses of boys who had never been allowed to act like boys.

So he moved.

Without thinking, without planning, without asking—he lunged forward and grabbed Kaeya by the wrist.

Kaeya yelped, caught off guard, and Dain tugged hard enough that the swing rocked sideways. Kaeya stumbled off it gracelessly, his sandals scraping the gravel. He barely had time to protest before Dain was dragging him by the arm across the garden like a soldier hauling loot.

“Come on,” Dain said, voice tight with effort and mortification, “I’m not letting you just sit here doing nothing.”

“Let go of me—!”

“You said you wanted me to find you. Well, I found you. Now you have to do something.”

“That’s not how it works!” Kaeya dug his heels in, twisting around with both hands trying to pry Dain’s fingers off his wrist. “You can’t kidnap a prince, are you insane—”

Dain stopped short.

They were at the edge of the clearing now, where the grass turned springy and wild, the hedges untamed. Bees hummed lazily through a patch of white clover. Dain dropped Kaeya’s arm.

Kaeya, thrown off-balance by the sudden release, stumbled again.

And then—

Then he turned, indignant and flushed, hair slipping from his braid in disarray. He looked ridiculous. Windswept. Wrong. Gloriously out of place. His robe was caught on a branch. His sandal had twisted sideways. And his glare could have slain a lesser boy.

Dain grinned.

The expression took him by surprise—it didn’t feel like his own. Not the careful, hard-angled smirk he used when winning at sword drills or hearing his father praises. No. This grin was crooked and bare and honest. Childish, even. It showed his teeth.

“You look like a crow that fell out of a tree,” he said.

Kaeya stared.

And then he laughed.

It burst out of him like a bell cracking open. Bright, high, real. Uncontrolled in a way Dain hadn’t expected. Kaeya clutched his stomach and doubled over, eyes squeezed shut, breath wheezing between giggles like he couldn’t believe it was happening either.

Dain blinked, stunned.

He had never made anyone laugh like that before.

Certainly not a prince.

Especially not this prince.

Kaeya straightened, wiping at his eyes with the edge of his sleeve, still hiccuping with the last tremors of laughter. His braid had come entirely undone, hair falling in curling waves around his shoulders.

“You’re stupid,” he said, not unkindly.

Dain folded his arms. “You’re the one who said you didn’t want to play.”

Kaeya looked around at the clover field, the sunlit fringe of wildflowers, the swing still creaking in the distance. Then he looked back at Dain—eyes thoughtful, almost curious now.

“I still don’t,” he said.

And then, softly, like a secret—

“But maybe I’ll watch you.”

_____________

A twitch of Kaeya’s fingers against the hem of his sleeve. 

“What were you even planning to do out here?”

Dain shrugged, turning his back to the prince and scanning the clearing as if he’d only just noticed how big it was. The hedges looped in half-circles and narrow gates. Clematis vines curled up the trellises. There were old marble benches and hollow trees and statues so worn by rain their faces were almost gone.

“You’ve never played hide-and-seek?” Dain asked, casually, as if it weren’t the most obvious bait.

Kaeya sniffed. “That’s for babies.”

“You are a baby.”

“I’m not. I’m seven.”

“You’re missing a tooth.”

Kaeya clutched his mouth reflexively, then dropped his hand when he realized Dain was laughing. The swing creaked behind him as he stood, slow and cautious, like he was approaching a wild animal. Dain didn’t turn to look, but he could hear it—soft slippered footsteps crunching gravel, the rustle of robes gathering slightly off the grass.

Dain moved first. “Fine. Then watch a non-baby play.”

He ducked behind a hedge, quick and light, vanishing from sight with the instinct of someone who had done this before—who had run from chores or sword drills or tutors with long mustaches and longer tempers. He made it to a second alcove near the sundial, crouched behind a lattice of ivy, heart pounding for no reason at all.

There was no one counting. No one seeking.

And still, he waited.

A minute passed.

Then—

A pause in the wind. A rustle. The softest scrape of sandals.

He turned his head and saw it.

Kaeya, standing not far from the swing, squinting into the hedges, brow furrowed in the pale intensity of children learning something for the first time. He turned his head this way and that, narrowed his eyes, walked a few steps forward—and then backward again, uncertain. Dain could see him mouthing something. Probably “This is stupid,” or maybe “I’m not playing.”

But he was.

And that changed everything.

Dain let out a sound—half chirp, half whistle. Not loud. Just enough to be caught.

Kaeya’s head snapped toward it.

Their eyes met.

Then Kaeya lunged.

He gave chase with more enthusiasm than coordination, nearly tripping over a loose stone as he scrambled around the fountain base. Dain darted away, laughing breathlessly now, not caring how childish it was, not caring that he was meant to behave like a future knight.

They sprinted through the garden—dodging branches, slipping past tree roots, weaving between marble ruins and summer-sweet vines. For a long, bright moment there were no duties, no rules, no titles. Just two boys. Two flashes of color against the gold of the day. Laughter sharp as sunlight. Breath catching in lungs not yet weighed down by the world.

At one point, Dain leapt clean over a bench, landing with a thud. At another, Kaeya disappeared completely behind the clematis trellis and emerged from the other side with petals tangled in his braid and an expression of wild delight he didn’t bother hiding.

“You’re really fast,” Kaeya puffed, feet slapping unevenly over the path. “But you run like a wounded bird.”

“I do not,” Dain called back, turning a sharp corner. “Birds don’t even run.”

“They do when they’re dumb!” Kaeya shouted triumphantly, nearly crashing into a hedge.

Dain laughed. “That doesn’t even make sense!”

They collapsed behind the old sundial when they couldn’t breathe anymore, side by side in the grass, arms stretched overhead like fallen kings. Kaeya’s braid was crooked now, a whole flower stuck in it. Dain’s shirt had a tear near the collar. Their knees were covered in dust.

Kaeya let out a long, dramatic sigh. “I almost got you that time.”

“You didn’t,” Dain said. “You tripped.”

“I let you win,” Kaeya said, without missing a beat. “Because I’m a prince. I don’t need to always win.”

Dain rolled his eyes, but he was still smiling. “That’s not how it works.”

Kaeya turned his head toward him. “You’re not bad. For a boy.”

“You’re a boy too.”

“Not really,” Kaeya said loftily. “I’m gonna be king someday.”

Dain turned to look at him properly. Kaeya’s cheeks were flushed and freckled with sunlight, his eyes bright with that same wild delight from before.

“…You were fun,” Kaeya said, a little quieter now. “You didn’t just say yes to everything.”

“Why would I say yes to everything?” Dain asked.

“I don’t know,” Kaeya said, fidgeting with the grass. “People do.”

There was a pause. Dain picked a petal from Kaeya’s hair and flicked it into the air. Then he grinned, very slightly, the way he’d been taught not to smile.

“You’re not too bad either,” he said. “For a prince.”

Kaeya beamed.

“I’ve never played with anyone who wasn’t made to play with me.”

Dain didn’t answer right away. He picked a petal from Kaeya’s hair and flicked it into the wind.

“Maybe I was made to play with you,” he said.

Kaeya glanced at him. A strange look flickered behind his lashes. Not surprise. Not confusion.

Something that would, one day, become the ache of remembering.

The morning Dain was summoned to the palace schoolroom, the clouds hung low enough to make the halls feel like part of the sea. A fine mist clung to the windows—softening the world into smudged gray-blue, the way a dream might look if remembered poorly. He followed a servant with silver cuffs down the corridor, leather shoes silent against polished stone. The doors opened ahead of him, tall and carved with crestwork.

And there he was.

The prince.

Sprawled across a settee like he had grown there. One hand draped over the edge, fingers curled in loose thought, the other holding up a book far too large for his lap. His head turned as Dain entered, braid shifting down one shoulder. There was chalk dust on his sleeve, a bit of ink on his cheek, and a look—something between expectation and boredom—that flickered out the moment their eyes met.

“You’re late,” Kaeya said, not unkindly. “Lesson already started.”

Dain glanced at the tutor, who offered a bow so shallow it might as well have been a shrug. He took a seat at the long table. His chair was too ornate for his taste—cushioned in velvet, with a back carved into spirals—and yet he sat straight, legs neatly crossed, hands folded in his lap like he belonged.

Truthfully, he wasn’t bothered by the material itself. He’d studied most of this already—geometry, genealogy, and diplomacy. But the king had asked for him. Specifically. Something about wanting Kaeya to “enjoy the classroom more,” which Dain’s father had repeated three times with great satisfaction, as if it were the highest honor a noble-born boy could be given: not a commission, not a court rank—no. To be the prince’s entertainment.

The prince did not seem especially entertained.

He yawned during the tutor’s lecture on pre-collapse Khaenri’ahn trade routes, his cheek squashed against his palm, foot swinging lazily beneath the table. Every so often he would glance at Dain with a kind of sly, measuring look—like he expected him to fall asleep or answer wrong or yawn back, so they could both be scolded.

Dain did none of these things. He listened, took notes in an unhurried hand, and raised his eyes precisely once to catch Kaeya’s just before he looked away.

During the break, Kaeya sprawled across the windowsill, knees pulled up, back against the frame. He hadn’t spoken again, not even when the servant brought tea and a silver tray of sugared fruit. Dain picked a fig and sat near the hearth, watching the fire crackle.

“You didn’t have to come, you know,” Kaeya said finally. “I didn’t ask for you.”

Dain peeled the fig slowly. “Your father did.”

“I know.”

“He thinks you’re bored.”

“I am bored.”

“You could try listening.”

“I am listening.”

Dain didn’t reply. He broke the fig in half and popped one piece into his mouth, chewing with irritating serenity.

Kaeya huffed. “You’re not even learning anything.”

“I’m reviewing.”

“But you already know all of this. You studied with the palace scholars two years ago.”

Dain shrugged. “It’s easier now.”

“That’s dumb,” Kaeya muttered. “Why would anyone want to be behind?”

“I don’t care about being ahead,” Dain said. “I care about being done.”

That made Kaeya pause.

“…That’s even dumber,” he said, but his tone had lost its heat. He shifted on the sill, cheek now pressed against his knees, gaze softening into something murky. “Everyone’s always making me do more. Even if I finish, there’s something else. Another scroll. Another test.”

“You’re the prince.”

“I know.”

The way he said it made Dain look up.

Kaeya wasn’t pouting. He wasn’t throwing a fit, the way Dain had half-expected children to behave when given palaces and embroidered coats. He was just sitting there. Small, still. Ink-smudged and quiet.

Trying not to look like a child, and failing in the smallest, saddest ways—his socks rumpled, a button undone at his collar, the faintest scrape on his elbow that no one had told him to clean.

Dain took another bite of fig.

“Do you want to play a game after?” he asked, as casually as if it weren’t a mercy.

Kaeya lifted his head. “Now?”

“No. After. If you finish your essays.”

“I already did one.”

“Do the other.”

Kaeya squinted at him, as if suspecting a trick. “What kind of game?”

“I haven’t decided yet.”

Kaeya’s nose wrinkled. “You can’t just say that and not know.”

“You can pick, then.”

“…Even tag?”

“No tag.”

Kaeya groaned and flopped dramatically back onto the sill. “You’re no fun.”

“Still better than being alone.”

A long pause.

Then—

“I wasn’t alone. I had books.”

Dain didn’t look at him, but he heard the sound of Kaeya pulling himself down from the window, shoes hitting the floor with a soft slap. A rustle of robes. A clatter of a pen being picked up again.

“I’ll do it,” Kaeya muttered. “Only ‘cause you’d probably just sit there like a statue and stare at the wall.”

“That’s what statues are for.”

“You’re what statues are for.”

It didn’t even make sense.

Dain laughed anyway.

_____________

Kaeya did not say it aloud.

Of course not. He was a prince, and princes did not admit such things—especially not the softer, more ridiculous ones, like I like when you’re here or I think better when someone’s sitting next to me, breathing like it matters whether I fail or not.

Still, the truth crept in at the edges. 

It was not like having another tutor—Dain never corrected him, never made a sound when Kaeya fumbled a line or forgot which war came before another war. He simply waited. And if Kaeya turned to him, frown gathering between his brows like storm clouds over the lowlands, Dain would blink slowly and recite the answer as if he were saying the weather. As if it were the most boring thing in the world.

And then he’d go back to whatever he was doing—twisting his pen between two fingers, watching the fire, or scribbling something at the margin of his page that looked far too neat for a child who claimed not to care about grades.

Kaeya didn’t know why that helped.

But it did.

In the beginning, it was small. A cough, a sigh, a pencil tapped a little too loudly to catch his attention. He would slide his worksheet across the table with all the princely disdain he could muster, and Dain, without speaking, would read it over, circle a line, push it back. No praise. No mockery.

Just that tiny nod when Kaeya got it right the second time.

Eventually, Kaeya grew bolder.

He started asking questions.

“Why is this word different?” he’d murmur, half-pretending to read from his notes.

“Because it’s not a letter. It’s a suffix marker,” Dain would reply without looking up. “Changes the meaning a bit.”

“Oh,” Kaeya would say, with all the lightness of someone who’d known that already. “Right. I was just checking.”

Then came the questions that had sat longer in the back of his mind—the ones he had not dared voice to the adults.

"Why did they say it was a 'neutral war'? That doesn't make sense! If they were fighting, it wasn't neutral at all."

"Well," Dain replied, still focused on his drawing, "they said no one was trying to take over. They said they were fighting for what they thought the future should be like. People will fight really hard about things like that."

"...So, nobody wanted to be in charge?"

"That's what they said," Dain confirmed. "But they still fought a big war, and one side won in the end."

Kaeya was quiet after that. For nearly ten minutes, which was a record.

And then: “Would you fight? If your father told you to?”

Dain didn’t answer right away.

He finished the figure he was drawing—a star inside a circle, shaded at the corners—and only then did he say, very slowly, “If my father told me to protect something important. Then yes.”

“What if he was wrong?”

“I would ask why he believed it.”

Kaeya blinked at that. “You sound like a grown-up.”

“I am grown-up.”

“You’re eleven.”

Dain looked at him flatly. “And you’re eight.”

“That’s different,” Kaeya huffed, folding his arms across his desk. “I’m going to be king.”

“Then act like it.”

Kaeya glared. “Maybe I will tell the king you’ve been rude.”

“You can try.”

“I will.”

“I’ll deny it.”

“You can’t! You just said it!”

Dain raised one brow, excruciatingly slow. “Who do you think they’ll believe?”

Kaeya stared at him. He hated how cool he sounded when he said things like that. Like he had never panicked once in his life. Like the world had always made sense to him.

But then Dain gave him that slight, tilted look again—the kind he always wore when Kaeya’s ears turned red.

“I mean,” Dain added lightly, “you could also just win the argument.”

Kaeya stared harder. “What do you mean?”

“Try learning more than me.”

Kaeya turned pink. “I could,” he snapped. “I just don’t feel like it right now.”

“Right.”

“I could!”

And Dain—unforgivable, maddening Dain—only smiled and leaned back in his chair, as if he were perfectly content to wait until Kaeya proved it.

Which Kaeya would. Of course he would. He was already memorizing twice the lines he was asked. He had begun reading ahead in the scrolls. He scribbled questions in the margins of his notebooks in the middle of the night. He was going to wipe that smug look off Dain’s face with the full force of righteous, princely genius.

…Eventually.

Probably.

For now, it was just good to have someone sitting next to him. Someone not afraid to look him in the eye when he didn’t know something. Someone who didn’t flinch when Kaeya got angry, or go gentle when he asked hard things.

Kaeya never said thank you.

But every time he slid a paper across the desk with too many mistakes, he watched—carefully, fiercely—as Dain picked up his pen and began to correct.

This was rather nice. 

Chapter Text

It was too bright.

The courtyard had always felt large before, but today it looked even larger, even whiter, the pale limestone blinding in the afternoon sun. The summer heat rippled off the stones like a mirage, and Kaeya squinted through it, shading his eyes with the back of his wrist.

Dainsleif was training.

Not the childish play-sparring they used to do with wooden sticks in the garden, this was real. Or real enough to Kaeya’s eyes. The captain of the royal guard stood across from him, sweat darkening the chest of his uniform, arms glinting gold beneath his cuffs, and Dainsleif—Dain was moving like he had done this a thousand times before.

He was twelve now. Which wasn’t that old. Not really. But somehow, it looked like something more today.

The sword in his hands gleamed silver-white as he turned his body and blocked another blow, the force sending a shiver through the courtyard air. There was no hesitation in him. No fear, no faltering. Dain moved like he had already decided he would not lose. As if the idea had never occurred to him at all.

Kaeya, almost nine years old—it wasn’t his birthday, yet—and standing on the edge of the marble, stared with open awe.

He knew it was rude to gape. He knew. But the sight was strange and stunning—Dain, who only yesterday had been curled beside him under a silk canopy, pencil tucked behind one ear, snoring with his mouth open like a sheep, now wielded a sword like it belonged to him by birthright.

“Your footing, again,” the captain barked, not unkindly, and Dain adjusted. Fluid. Serious. Jaw set like a man grown. The blade whirled once, twice, and came down in a perfect arc that rang when it met the steel of the other.

Kaeya gripped the stone balustrade tighter.

It should have been dull. He had seen sword practice before. Knights came and went from the palace yard all the time, and Kaeya rarely paid them much attention. But this was Dain. His Dain. Dain who always sat next to him in class and copied his spelling mistakes for the fun of it. Dain who called him ridiculous when he pouted, and still offered him half his strawberry cake when the prince got sulky over losing a game of chess.

Now look at him.

Tall, at least by comparison. His legs were longer. His arms, leaner. His shoulders—Kaeya scowled at them—looked like they might actually hold armor someday.

A strange, low feeling stirred in his chest. Like when the nursemaid brought cake but gave the bigger slice to someone else.

That someone else being the king.

Because the king was watching too.

Not from the shadows like Kaeya, no—his father stood proudly beneath the archway, arms crossed, smiling that rare, warm smile Kaeya hadn’t seen in weeks. Smiling the way he did when things fell into place. When agreements were signed. When harvests returned golden and heavy with wheat.

And Kaeya knew that smile wasn’t for him.

It was for Dainsleif.

Kaeya squinted harder.

The swordplay ended a minute later—just a simple bout, nothing fancy—but the captain clapped Dain on the shoulder, told him he was improving fast, and Dainsleif… Dain didn’t even look proud. He only nodded once, that calm, quiet nod he always gave when someone praised him. As if he already knew.

The king turned to go, footsteps echoing. The captain followed.

Dainsleif stayed behind to clean the blade.

Kaeya hesitated. Then tiptoed out.

The stone was warm under his feet, but he hardly noticed it.

“You looked stupid,” he announced loudly, arms crossed over his loose white shirt, standing just far enough away to feign indifference.

Dain didn’t even glance at him. “Thanks.”

“I’m serious. You’re too skinny. The sword’s bigger than you.”

“It’s regulation size.”

“Still. You looked like a stick with a sword.”

“Mm.”

Kaeya scowled. “You’re not supposed to say mm. You’re supposed to get annoyed.”

“I’m too tired to be annoyed.”

“Liar.”

Dain straightened, wiping the sword down carefully with a cloth that looked far too nice for that purpose. It shimmered faintly in the sun—likely silk, Kaeya thought—and Kaeya had half a mind to tell him to stop using his study sash as a rag.

But he didn’t.

Instead, he stared again, and something in his stomach twisted.

“You didn’t even say hi to me,” Kaeya said quietly. “I was watching the whole time.” Dain paused. Then, finally, turned.

There was a sheen of sweat on his forehead, his hair damp and sticking slightly to his neck. But his eyes, when they found Kaeya’s, were the same as always—steady, faintly amused, blue as the mountain skies in early spring.

“I knew you were there,” he said. Kaeya’s lips pressed together.

He looked away. Kicked at a crack in the stone. “My father smiles at you more than me.”

Dain tilted his head.

Kaeya didn’t meet his gaze. “Maybe you’re his son.”

“That would make us brothers,” Dain said, “and I don’t think I could stand that.”

Kaeya’s head whipped around. But Dain was smiling faintly now. That private smile, barely a thing. The one Kaeya always caught glimpses of from the corner of his eye, never meant to see in full.

Kaeya flushed.

“Idiot,” he muttered. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“It does to me.”

And then Dain turned again, resheathing the sword with one smooth motion and slinging it across his back like it weighed nothing at all.

Kaeya stayed where he was. The courtyard was warm and too quiet now, and he didn’t like how strange his own thoughts were beginning to feel.

______________

It was one of those evenings when the palace felt like it was holding its breath.

The corridors had emptied—just quiet footsteps of nurses in the distance, the hush of maids drawing the long curtains closed, dusk settling like dust between the marble tiles. Kaeya sat on the velvet couch in his father’s study, small hands folded in his lap, spine straight without being told.

The candlelight shimmered over books and papers and fine lacquered boxes whose locks glinted gold. The room always smelled faintly of ink and leather and something darker, sandalwood, maybe. Or old promises. His father sat at the desk, long-fingered hands moving through parchment and quills with a kind of deliberate grace, speaking without looking up.

“I heard from your tutor this morning.” Kaeya didn’t answer. He knew he didn’t need to.

“He said you’ve been improving. Reading faster. Thinking deeper.”

A pause.

Kaeya kept still.

His father turned at last, just slightly—half a glance over the shoulder—and his eyes caught the candlelight the same way steel did: sharp, bright, unyielding.

“That’s good,” he said, softer now. “That’s very good.”

He stood then, not in a rush, and walked toward the boy on the couch. His shadow moved with him, tall and long, swallowing the gold threads in the carpet. Kaeya tilted his chin up.

His father knelt before him.

Kaeya was not used to looking down at the king, even if it was only for a moment.

But his father’s hand came up, cupping his cheek gently—so gently—and his thumb brushed a stray strand of hair away from Kaeya’s temple. The gesture should have been reassuring. It almost was.

“You’re growing fast,” the king said. “Do you know how proud I am?”

Kaeya nodded. Or tried to. It came out more like a breath.

His father smiled then, something rare and real. Something that softened the angles of his face, that made him look less like a portrait and more like someone Kaeya almost remembered from his younger days—before lessons, before expectations, before he knew what the word heir meant.

“Soon,” the king whispered. “Soon, I’ll begin preparing you in earnest. You won’t just be learning to read and write and argue. You’ll learn what it means to rule.”

Kaeya’s heart twisted strangely. A part of him wanted to beam. Another part felt very small.

The king’s hand remained on his cheek, steady as ever.

“You’ll be magnificent,” he said. “One day, you’ll be perfect. And the world will kneel.”

Kaeya blinked.

“I already have so much waiting for you,” his father murmured. “Lands. Names. Alliances. A blade of your own. All yours, once you prove yourself.”

The words dropped one by one. 

Kaeya swallowed.

“I will,” he said. His voice didn’t tremble, though it wanted to. “I’ll make you proud.”

“You already do,” the king said warmly, and drew him into an embrace.

His robes smelled like cedar and parchment and the faintest trace of wine. Kaeya leaned into it, just enough. Let himself be held, as he so rarely was these days. Let himself feel like a son, even if just for a moment.

Kaeya clung tighter to the silk.

He wasn’t afraid of the throne. Not really. Not of the crown, nor the laws, nor the weight of diplomacy that he’d been bred to carry.

What frightened him—what burrowed somewhere deeper—was the idea that love might be conditional. That the warmth in his father’s eyes, the strength of his arms, the gentleness of his voice, might always be tangled with gold and excellence and achievement. That if he stumbled—if—he might lose some part of that love without even realizing it.

And so Kaeya said nothing.

Only nodded again, his small hand clutching the hem of royal silk like it could anchor him.

Somewhere, a bell struck the hour.

The night went on.

Father shifted then, his arms moving in a single practiced motion, and before Kaeya had time to flinch or object, he was lifted easily off the couch and into his father’s arms. It startled something deep in him—not the action itself, which he was not entirely unfamiliar with, but the ease of it. The way he still fit there, against the breadth of his father’s chest, as if he were still small enough to be cradled without effort. His legs dangled a little awkwardly, but the scent of the familiar silk robes, the steady heartbeat behind the armor, and the weightless feeling of being held—it disarmed him utterly.

“You’re still my boy,” the king murmured, almost to himself, as if reminding himself more than Kaeya. “Still so little. Look at you.”

But does he know that?

Kaeya didn’t speak. His face pressed against the firm line of his father’s shoulder, eyes half-lidded and dry, too tired to blink, too proud to let anything fall. And yet, some part of him yearned for this. For the warmth and authority of his father’s embrace, the security of being held not as a symbol, not as an heir, not as a future king, but as a son. Just a son.

His father’s voice dropped lower, a murmur in the golden dimness. “I forget, sometimes. With how quick you learn. How sharp your questions are. How you carry yourself already like royalty… But you’re still so small, Kaeya.”

He paused, and Kaeya could hear it in the shift of his breath—the hesitation, the soft fray in the king’s composure that surfaced only when they were alone.

“You don’t have to be perfect all the time,” he said. “You’re allowed to fall short. To stumble. I only push you because I know what you’re capable of.”

I don’t think he knows that, Kaeya thought silently. 

Kaeya exhaled, slow and silent. The words were kind. Too kind. Kind in that way that almost hurt more, because they cracked open the shell he’d built to carry the weight of expectation without protest. They pressed against his chest with a strange ache—not from doubt, but from a love that felt too heavy to carry at times, too big to parse cleanly. If his father had been cold, or cruel, or blind to him, it would’ve been easier. But no, his father loved him. He loved him deeply. Fiercely. Possessively. Just… not always softly.

The king’s hand moved over his back, smoothing down Kaeya’s tunic like he might soothe a fever. “You hate it, don’t you?” he said with a smile Kaeya couldn’t see. “All the studying. The court dinners. The posture. The names and laws and etiquette. You think I don’t see it—but I do.”

Kaeya’s fingers, small against the king’s embroidered collar, curled slightly.

“I don’t hate it,” he said quietly. “I just… want to be good at it already.”

“And you will,” the king said, without hesitation. “You will be better than I ever was. I’ll see to that.”

Kaeya didn’t answer. But he didn’t pull away either.

Because how could he hate him?

This was his father. The man who carried him on his shoulders when he was four, who gave him his first dagger wrapped in silk, the same man who watched over his sleep the night he was sick with fever and never once left the room. The man who taught him how to say his title, how to smile without giving anything away. The man who wanted the world for him—but also wanted him to rule it. Not for the kingdom. Not even for legacy. But for Kaeya.

The king wasn’t perfect. Kaeya knew that. He was ambitious—terrifyingly so. He valued brilliance over innocence. Precision over play. And sometimes, Kaeya saw something in his eyes that scared him—not cruelty, but hunger, that same hunger that made generals kneel and noblemen lower their gazes. But even then, even in those moments, he knew. Knew in his bones, in his breath, in the core of his small, overburdened chest.

His father loved him.

Maybe not always gently. Maybe not in the ways Kaeya needed. But truly.

And so Kaeya stayed there, curled in royal arms, letting himself be reminded of his smallness, his softness, how it feels to be his father’s son. He said nothing as the room darkened further, the fire guttering low. He just let himself be held.

He could be strong again tomorrow.

_____________

Kaeya had never once wondered why he didn’t look like his father. The palace mirrors gave him all the answers: skin too golden, hair too blue, eyes containing the purple hue of moonlight reflecting on the ocean, nothing like the pale, glinting steel of his father’s. No, Kaeya looked like his mother. Unmistakably so. The same warm bronze that bloomed under sunlight, the same long lashes that curled toward his cheeks like shadows of wings, the same full mouth and the same impish tilt to the eyes when smiling. The nurses often said he had her nose. His father used to say he had everything of hers, and not a scrap left of him.

“Chandra must’ve fashioned you from her own ribs,” Dieterich once said, half-laughing as he hoisted Kaeya up in one arm and pressed a kiss to the child’s brow. “I gave her everything and the crown, and still she outdid me.”

Kaeya remembered that—those words spoken against his forehead, where the breath of them lingered warm—and the weightless pride in his mother’s eyes when she turned her face away to hide the way her mouth pulled at the corners.

His mother was pretty. Unspeakably so. Especially when his father came home from long council meetings and held out flowers from the hothouses in offering, still dewed from the greenhouse mist. She would let him braid them into her hair as Kaeya watched from the bed, his chin cupped in his hands, eyes shining with something he could not yet name. He thought, then, that he might like to be just like her—no, not like her. Her. Pretty in the same way. If he already looked like her, maybe it wasn’t such a distant dream.

But dreams have childlike joys, and the castle had walls. Thick ones. And voices passed through them all the same.

The sound of his parents arguing was not frequent—but when it happened, it came like thunder trapped in a bottle, all pressure and no release. That night, the voices were sharp again, carrying through the marble corridors like lightning drawn down a blade.

“Chandra, you need to understand, this is for the sake of the kingdom!”

“And what about the sake of our son, Dieterich? This isn’t how we raise our children back at home! You’re—you’re ruining his childhood!”

“This is Khaenri’ah!” his father snapped, and something banged—Kaeya flinched even from his room. “You’re not raising a child, you’re raising a prince!”

Kaeya didn’t remember climbing out of bed. Just that the voices had dragged him toward the door like a tide, soft bare feet padding over the rug as he pushed the heavy panel ajar and peered into the hallway. Their room stood opposite his, barely a few paces between. His mother had insisted on it. In case anything happened to her baby boy, she’d said. So she’d be the first to hear him stir.

He didn’t see the whole scene at first. Just her—shoulders bowed, face buried in her palms, as if she were praying and sobbing all at once. And behind her, his father, tall and wrecked in the silence that followed his own words, looking not angry but emptied—like someone who had won a war and forgotten why they fought it.

Mother was the first to see him.

“Oh—Kaeya…”

She moved before his father could speak, crossing the corridor in five quick strides and opening his door the rest of the way. Her arms wrapped around him immediately—no scolding, no breath of rebuke. Just warmth. Desperation. Her hands sliding up his back and under his nightshirt as if to check that he was still there, still warm and solid and breathing.

“My baby,” she whispered, and again, “Oh, my baby…” As if to assure herself he was still hers. 

She held him with the urgency of a mother afraid she’d missed something—time, years, entire pieces of him she might never get back. As if the lessons and tutors and training had stolen something from him that she couldn’t name.

Kaeya didn’t say anything. His face was pressed into her shoulder, and her perfume smelled like honeyed cardamom, the kind she used to make in tea when he couldn’t sleep. He felt her heart beating too fast against his cheek, and he didn’t understand it—but some part of him, too small yet to articulate sorrow, knew this was the kind of love that feared itself powerless.

Across the hall, his father stood still. And in the gold-tinged darkness of the corridor, Dieterich’s face broke into something unreadable. Not regret. Not anger. But a gaze that held the full, terrible knowledge that even love—true love—could be at odds with itself.

His mother slept in his bed that night.

Kaeya didn’t mind at all, of course. He had always been scared to take his mother away from Father, that was why he didn’t ask, but he missed her arms like crazy.

She laid him down gently, as if he were something fragile, a glass sculpture she was afraid might crack under her touch. Then, wordlessly, she crawled in after him, pulling the covers over them both and cocooning him in the warm curve of her body. Her arms wrapped around him so firmly he almost wriggled, not in protest but in confusion, unsure if he was in trouble or being shielded from it.

It was dark. The stars blinked outside the window in their slow, ancient language, and the wind outside whispered against the marble balcony in long, tired sighs.

Kaeya lay still for a while. His little hands were clutched in the space between their chests, fists resting against her collarbone. He could feel her breath brushing the top of his head, could feel the rise and fall of her chest—irregular now, and uneven.

“Mother?” he asked softly, more out of habit than need.

The word seemed to crack something in her.

She gasped. One of those silent, heartbreaking gasps that came with a throat full of tears. Her fingers clutched the back of his tunic like she was afraid someone might try to take him from her. For a moment, her face was buried in his hair, and when she pulled back just enough to see him, her cheeks were already streaked with tears, lashes wet and clumped.

But she smiled at him. That same smile she always gave him after nightmares or when he scraped his knees. The one that trembled at the corners but never faded.

“Oh, my sweet baby,” she whispered. “My darling boy…”

Kaeya blinked up at her, a little sleepy. His small hands tugged gently at her sleeve. “Mother… why’re you crying?”

She laughed, but it came out all wobbly. “I’m just silly, that’s all. Don’t worry, Kae. Mama’s just a little… silly tonight.”

He frowned. “Did I do something bad?”

“No, no, no—never.” She kissed his forehead three times, too fast, too desperate. “You did nothing wrong, my heart. Never.”

Kaeya was quiet again. Then, very softly, he said, “You’re squishing me…”

Her arms loosened, just a bit, and she kissed the tip of his nose. “Sorry. Mama just needed to hug you extra tight.”

“‘Cause I’m little?”

“Because you’re mine.”

That seemed to satisfy him. His face softened, little fingers finding the end of her braid and playing with the beads woven through it.

After a long pause, she said quietly, “You called me ‘Mother’ just now… Why?”

Kaeya didn’t answer at first. His voice was muffled when it came. “Father says I should.”

The bed creaked as she sat up a little, brushing the hair from his face. “No, baby. You call me Mama. That’s what you always call me, remember?”

He looked up at her. Blinked. Then blinked again, very slowly.

“… Mama.” He tasted the word on his tongue, the word he had so desperately wanted to call her as, but couldn’t. He didn’t want to disappoint Father. 

That broke her all over again. Her lips crumpled, her hands flew to her mouth as if she could catch the sob before it escaped, and then she was crying again, for real this time—crying the way mothers cry when they’ve been scared for too long, when they’ve been holding something in so tightly it starts to leak through their seams.

Kaeya reached up, small palms patting her cheeks. “Don’t cry…”

“I’m okay, baby,” she sniffled, catching his little hands and kissing each one. “I’m just happy. So, so happy.”

“‘Cause I said Mama?”

She nodded quickly, eyes still blurry with tears. “That’s right. So good, so good, my baby…”

Kaeya smiled then, sleepy and warm, the kind of smile only a child could manage. He curled against her chest and yawned like a kitten, blinking at the shadows on the ceiling.

“I like you better than Father,” he mumbled suddenly, drowsy.

She startled. “Oh?”

“You smell nice,” he said, definitively.

She laughed again—this time a real laugh—and kissed his hair. “That’s all it takes, huh?”

He nodded, already drifting.

“Mama smells nice…”

She held him long after he fell asleep, brushing the hair from his forehead, humming a tune from her own childhood under her breath. Somewhere in the middle of the night, when the halls had gone still and the moonlight had moved to the other end of the room, she whispered, as if to herself:

“No matter what kingdom you rule, no matter how perfect he wants you to be… you’ll always be my boy.”

And Kaeya, already deep in dreams, didn’t hear it.

But perhaps, in some soft part of himself, he already knew.

Somewhere in the deep of night, long after the shadows had stretched and yawned across the ceiling and Kaeya had slipped past the edge of dreams, his lashes fluttered.

Not quite open, not quite closed.

Just enough to let the soft gold spill in—thin and low through the crack in the door. It wasn’t moonlight this time. It was firelight, warm and flickering from the hallway lanterns. And with it came footsteps, slow and careful, brushing against the floor with the hesitation of someone who knew he shouldn’t be there.

Kaeya didn’t move. His cheek was pressed into his mother’s collarbone, the fabric of her nightclothes warm against his skin, and her arm still curled around him like a ribbon of safety. But his eyes cracked just barely open, just enough to see through his lashes and the slight haze of sleep.

It was his father.

He knew the outline by heart—the tall, narrow-shouldered frame, the hair like black ink, untied and slightly mussed, the way his steps always slowed when he reached the edge of Kaeya’s room, like the gravity here was heavier than anywhere else in the palace.

Mama was already sitting up. Her voice came out in a hush, sharper than usual, the kind of sound adults made when they were angry but didn’t want to wake the baby.

“Dieterich,” she said quietly, tightly. “Don’t—he’s sleeping.”

But the king only raised a hand in gentle surrender. His face, half-lit by the hallway lamp, looked soft in a way Kaeya rarely saw during the day. Tired, maybe. His mouth curved in a rueful smile as he stepped closer, and then—without a word—he leaned down and kissed her cheek.

Kaeya’s mother turned her face away at first, but she didn’t resist. She let him. And when he whispered something Kaeya couldn’t hear into her ear, her shoulders dropped just a little. Her arms didn’t let go of Kaeya, but her head tilted down, resting lightly atop his. She was still angry, Kaeya could feel it—but now she sounded like she did when she pouted at her embroidery needles for tangling too much thread.

“You always do this,” she murmured.

“You always forgive me,” he murmured back.

Kaeya wanted to giggle, or maybe make a sound, just to let them know he was half-awake and very nosy. But he was so warm. His mother was so warm. The sheets were heavy in the nicest way, and the palace outside was so quiet, not even the wind daring to breathe.

He thought that was the end of it.

But then—

He felt the bed shift behind him.

Softly. Slowly. As if someone had sat on the edge and then laid down with great care. There was a rustle of robes, the faintest exhale, and then—

Another arm.

Not his mother’s. This one came from behind, draping gently across his torso. He felt the shape of it around him. Larger than his own, not as warm as Mama’s, but real. Solid. Familiar.

His lashes fluttered again, confused.

He thought, very faintly: Who…?

But he was too tired to ask. Too warm to care. The sound of his mother’s breathing. The smell of jasmine. The way the new arm didn’t shift or move, just rested like a lullaby across his little belly.

Kaeya closed his eyes again.

Chapter Text

The morning arrived not like a bell but like a whisper—soft light leaking into the folds of the curtains, pale gold brushing the edges of the bed canopy. Somewhere in the courtyard, the doves had begun to coo. A soft rustle of footsteps padded outside the door, and with it, a voice—hushed, but not low enough.

Kaeya stirred. Only just.

He didn’t open his eyes yet, but the sun’s warmth on his cheeks told him it was late enough for lessons to have begun. That should have made him sit up straight, throw off the covers, and rush to the washbasin—but something was different. No one was waking him. The bed was still warm all around him. The air still smelled of his mother’s perfume, and that other, quieter scent—that dry, clean smell of his father’s robes.

He kept his eyes shut.

“Cancel his lessons today,” came his mother’s voice, low and purposeful from across the room, the kind of voice that held finality in it, no room for argument. “And tell the kitchen to pack something light, something he likes. We’ll be out most of the day.”

A pause. The soft, obedient murmur of the maid agreeing.

Then—

“Chandrika—must we really do this today?”

His father’s voice, less sharp, but sighing. He sounded like he was adjusting his sash—Kaeya could picture it, his hand rubbing at his forehead like it always did when he was caught between paperwork and his wife’s temper.

“If you’re not going,” his mother said coolly, “I’m going alone with my son.”

There was no room for misunderstanding the emphasis on that.

Kaeya’s lips twitched into the smallest smile against the pillow.

“Fine, I’m going…”

“Nope,” she said crisply, and he could hear the smile in her voice now, the deliberate, goading sweetness. “I don’t like your attitude.”

He heard his father groan. Not the heavy kind of palace groan when the Council presented another bill or an ambassador made another impossible request—no, this one was lighter. A groan from a man who had already given in but wanted to complain about it just a little longer.

Kaeya peeked open one eye.

His mother stood near the armoire in a loose morning robe, her hair still in its sleep-plaits, her hands gesturing with a ribbon she hadn’t yet tied. 

“Darling, I said I’ll go,” the king tried again. “What more do you want?”

“A smile,” she said, lifting her chin. “Maybe even a thank-you.”

“Chandra…”

“Say it.”

Kaeya let out the tiniest snort, burying it into the sheets. The bed dipped behind him as someone shifted again. He had nearly forgotten—not only had his mother stayed, but his father must’ve fallen asleep beside them too. Or come in during the night and never left.

The hand that had been curled around him was still there, barely touching him now, but it had remained all night. He wriggled his fingers slightly against it. It felt bigger than his mother’s, rougher than his own. He didn’t know what it meant yet, just that it made something warm unfurl in his stomach.

“Kaeya,” his mother said suddenly, softening her voice, glancing back. “Are you awake, sweetheart?”

He didn’t answer yet. He cracked both eyes open this time, blinking against the light, and slowly sat up between them.

“I am,” he said, and added, in the quietest little voice, “I heard you. Mama.”

She beamed.

“Good,” she said, coming over to smooth his hair with both hands and drop a kiss to his forehead. “Because your mama and papa are kidnapping you today.”

Kaeya looked between them, bleary, blinking like a kitten pulled out of sleep. “What about lessons?”

“No lessons,” his mother said firmly.

“What about the kingdom?” he asked, a little cheeky now.

His father sighed, long-suffering. “The kingdom can wait.”

Kaeya blinked up at them both, eyes wide and still caught in the haze of waking. His hair, always a little too long, flopped over his face in soft waves, one side sticking up in a small defiant curl from where it had pressed against his mother’s shoulder all night.

He sat upright slowly, then—swinging his legs over the side of the bed like it was a throne. As if some royal announcement was on the tip of his tongue.

His parents waited, visibly amused, and his mother began smoothing down the front of his rumpled nightshirt while humming under her breath.

“Can Dainsleif come?”

The question came out in a breathless tumble, quicker than the rest of his words, as if it had been waiting all along, curled up somewhere in the back of his throat just for the right moment.

There was a pause.

His mother’s hands stilled. His father blinked once.

Then they turned—almost perfectly synchronized—to look at one another. A small, silent conversation passed between them in that glance: amused, curious, then fond.

Dieterich’s lips twitched. “It’s supposed to be a family outing.”

“I know,” Chandra said, sighing as if her entire plan had just been upended by one puppy-eyed request.

Kaeya looked between them, his brows knit, that quick flicker of childish worry crossing his face like a cloud—had he said something wrong?

“I just…” he started, the words turning a little smaller, a little more fragile now. “I thought it would be more fun if Dain came too…”

“Oh, sweet boy,” his mother murmured, already brushing her fingers over his hair again, this time more gently. “Don’t pout.”

“I’m not,” Kaeya muttered, definitely pouting.

Dieterich, who was not known for softness in court, was soft enough with his son now. He reached out, ruffling the boy’s hair, something fond and dry in his smile. “You really like him, huh?”

Kaeya didn’t hesitate. “He’s my best friend.”

That seemed to silence both parents for a second longer than necessary.

Chandra groaned faintly under her breath and looked heavenward, though her mouth was tugging at the corners as she did it. “And here I was thinking I’d get to spend a whole day with my baby, just me and him.” She dropped onto the bed with dramatic flair, one hand flung over her brow. “But nooo, he’s already got someone else.”

Kaeya giggled.

“Can he come?” he asked again, clambering a little closer to her side and tugging lightly at her sleeve. “Please, mama? I promise we’ll be good.”

She peeked one eye open from under her theatrical pose and finally gave in with a long-suffering sigh. “Alright, alright, I suppose I can share you for a day.”

Kaeya’s grin bloomed immediately—big enough to show all his teeth, even the tiny gap where his front one was still missing. He flung his arms around her with a quickness that nearly knocked her back against the pillows.

“Thank you!! I’ll go get dressed now!”

He was already scrambling off the bed, bare feet pattering against the cold stone floor before she could pull him back with a half-laugh and call for the servants to help.

As the boy disappeared behind the privacy screen, shouting something excitedly, Chandra leaned into her husband’s side and sighed again—this time quieter, heavier, but not unhappy.

“You know,” she murmured, half to herself, “if that boy doesn’t end up marrying our son, I’ll be very surprised.”

Dieterich chuckled. “You think so?”

“I think,” she said dryly, “that my son just asked to bring another child on what was supposed to be a private family affair. That’s love.”

He huffed. “They’re children.”

She hummed again. “So were we.”

_____________

Even without the cascading silks of her court gowns, without the veil, the circlet, the strings of pearls laced in her hair like dew-drops caught on moonlight—his mama was glowing. Not in the same way the palace chandeliers glowed, or the ceremonial orbs in the throne room; no, this was a gentler sort of brilliance. Like sunlight poured through gauze. She wore a light dress of sea-green linen that day, soft and plain by queenly standards, the sort his nursemaids would call “Sumerian weave,” but to Kaeya, it was the most elegant thing in the meadow. The braid she usually wore to court had loosened from the wind and curved around her shoulder like a vine, and the flowers they’d picked earlier still peeked from behind her ear.

She looked like she belonged in storybooks. Or dreams.

Kaeya, who had not yet learned what it meant to long for things he could not have, only stared at her from across the blanket they’d spread on the grass, quietly wondering—again—how he had come from that. She was beautiful, like something carved from the petals of a lotus. He was just… Kaeya. Pointy knees and knobby ankles, dirt under his nails and a stain on his sleeve where he’d tried to pick berries before anyone could stop him.

He glanced sidelong at his father.

And there was the king. Dieterich Alberich, ruler of Khaenri’ah, mind you—and at present, a black glorp of glumness, brooding in the shade like a thundercloud trapped in human shape. He hadn’t so much as smiled since they left the gates of the palace. Kaeya wasn’t sure he’d even blinked.

What did his mama see in him? Was it his sword? His big glowy titles? The way he sat there sulking like someone had stolen his best chess piece?

Kaeya pursed his lips thoughtfully and reached a conclusion with the decisiveness of a boy who still saw the world in binaries.

Thank the stars I don’t look like him.

Dain tugged at his sleeve.

He turned, nearly forgetting the other boy was sitting next to him—one leg folded under him like a cat, the other kicked out straight. Dain’s pale hair was beginning to curl at the ends from the humidity. His face, as usual, was unreadable, like he was always thinking about three things Kaeya didn’t know. But he wasn’t looking at Kaeya now. He was pointing past the wildflowers, the little rise of the hill, toward the glint of water beyond the trees.

“I want to see the river.”

His voice was as serious as if he’d just declared his intention to map the stars.

Kaeya frowned. “You’re so booorrriiing,” he groaned, flopping backward onto the grass and covering his face with his arm. “We’re outside the palace for once, and you want to look at some boring water?”

Dain didn’t even blink. “I want to see if it’s clean.”

Kaeya peeked out from under his arm. “Why?”

“To know if there are fish.”

Kaeya blinked. Then sat up. “…Can you catch them with your hands?”

Dain gave him a look—just a flicker, really—but the corners of his mouth curved upward like he was trying very hard not to smile. “Can you?”

“Duh,” Kaeya said. “You’re talking to the prince.”

“I didn’t know that made you good at fishing.”

“It makes me good at everything.”

Dain just stood up and dusted off his knees like he’d heard a particularly interesting joke. “Come on.”

Kaeya watched him walk a few paces toward the trees, then looked over his shoulder. His mother was reclined against a mound of flowers, eyes closed, smile playing at her lips like she was listening to birds. His father was… still sulking. Somehow more than before. Neither of them were watching.

“Wait up!” Kaeya scrambled after Dain, nearly tripping on his own tunic.

The sun shimmered through the trees, dappling their path with light. Somewhere nearby, a bird chirped a single, sharp note like a whistle—then flitted away. Grass brushed against their calves, and the scent of river water drifted closer.

“Do you really think there’s fish?” Kaeya asked, not bothering to whisper.

“I think you’re going to fall in,” Dain muttered.

Kaeya grinned. “Then you’ll have to save me.”

The wind off the river sang gently through the reeds. A little ways down the slope, the two boys had vanished into the shimmer of green, their laughter floating back in bursts—clear, unguarded. Chandra could just barely hear the high, silvery bark of Kaeya’s voice rising above Dain’s quieter remarks, each new exclamation a reminder of how little time she had left before her son outgrew this softness altogether.

She leaned against the base of an elm, one foot idly tracing patterns in the grass. Her braid was coming undone again, but she didn’t bother fixing it. Not when Dieterich stood behind her, arms folded across his chest like a monument someone had left in the wrong century, glowering at nothing in particular.

“Dieterich,” she began softly, not even looking at him, “we need to talk about Kaeya.”

He sighed.

“Not now.”

“Not now?” she repeated, tilting her head toward him. “You can’t just shut me up with a kiss forever, you know.”

“That usually works.”

“Yes,” she said coolly, “well. Usually. But this is about my son, and I’d like to remind you I have a say in how he’s raised.”

There was a pause. He didn’t answer right away. He was watching Kaeya’s shadow flicker through the trees with Dainsleif’s, their voices echoing over the water like birds. Even he couldn’t pretend not to be listening.

“You say that,” he muttered, “as though I’m not raising him for you. For both of us. For Khaenri’ah.”

She scoffed. “You’re raising a crown. I’m raising a child.”

“I told you, Chandra,” he said, turning to look at her properly now, and the edge in his voice sharpened like frost catching the light, “he’s going to be king.”

“And I told you,” she shot back, standing up now too, not quite as tall but infinitely more radiant in her indignation, “he’s my son, my baby. Just because he’s the heir doesn’t mean he should be robbed of a childhood. He’s still eight, Dieterich—he still cries when he falls, he still runs to me when he gets nightmares, he still thinks spiders are tiny beasts sent from the abyss—”

“He needs to grow out of that.”

Chandra’s eyes narrowed. “And what if he doesn’t? What if he’s not ready to stop being a child just because you decided it’s time?”

“He doesn’t have time to be anything else,” Dieterich said. It wasn’t cruel. Not exactly. It was worse—resigned. Like a truth he’d accepted long ago and carried in silence. “He’s not like other children. He can’t be. He’s going to rule this nation. He needs to know the laws. The ancient tongues. The structure of the courts, the territories, the resources, the treaties—”

“He needs to know someone will love him even if he fails.”

That silenced him.

She said it quietly. Almost too quietly. Like the words were meant only for the river to hear. But he did. Of course he did. And for a long moment, neither of them said anything else.

Chandra sat back down, brushing grass from her skirts. Her voice softened.

“He’s still so small, Dieterich. Do you even notice that anymore? The way his tunic hangs loose if we don’t tuck it in just right. The way he curls into me at night when he’s half asleep. His hair still smells like flowers after a bath, and he has that one chipped tooth he’s too proud to let anyone pull. I look at him and I don’t see a king. I see Kaeya. My Kaeya. The baby you put in my arms nine years ago and promised you’d protect.”

She looked up again, and this time, her gaze was heavier.

“You’re going to protect him by turning him into you?”

He didn’t answer.

She smiled, bitter and lovely. “Do you know what he said to me last night?”

He looked at her, wary. “What?”

“He asked me if you loved Dainsleif more than him.”

The words landed like a pebble tossed into deep water—rippling out slowly, endlessly.

“I told him not to be silly,” she went on, still watching the trees. “But it broke my heart, Dieterich. He said it like he really wondered.”

He exhaled, hands going slack at his sides. “…I do love him.”

“I know. But do you?”

He didn’t answer right away. Then finally, as though it hurt him to admit:

“…I don’t know how to love him the way you do.”

She reached over without looking, brushing her fingers against his wrist. Just once. Just a touch.

“Then let me teach you.”

Dieterich didn’t move at first. The wind ran a long hand through the trees, stirring the leaves into breathless murmurs. From the distance came the faint sound of Kaeya’s voice, jubilant and small, muffled by river stones and rushes. The boys were probably daring each other across slick rocks by now, Chandra thought—Kaeya always slipping somewhere he shouldn’t, and Dainsleif always acting like he wasn’t worried, even when he was.

She kept her hand against her husband’s wrist a moment longer. There was an old warmth between them, one that didn’t burn so much as smolder, worn thin by years of shared silence and the strain of rule, but not yet extinguished. He let her touch him. That was something.

“I’m not trying to make you the villain,” she said after a long pause, her voice softer now. “I know you love him. You look at him and see the next sovereign, the pride of your line. I look at him and I see the little baby who used to bite his blankets because he thought they were too soft to be real. We both love him. Just… in different directions.”

She looked down, hands folded in her lap. A tiny daisy had gotten stuck in the hem of her skirt. She plucked it out gently.

Dieterich’s voice was quiet when he spoke again. “He has your eyes.”

Chandra blinked.

“That night,” he went on, still watching the path down to the river where the boys had vanished, “when the nurses brought him to me and said it was a boy, I looked at his face and thought—he has your eyes. Exactly. That sharp curve at the corners, like he’s always on the verge of laughing at something. And his skin. His mother’s color. Not a hint of me in him.”

He gave a short, almost embarrassed huff of laughter.

“And I was… I was glad for it.”

She turned her head, surprised. He didn’t often speak this way. Not anymore.

“Why?”

He hesitated. “Because I knew then he’d have a chance at being beautiful.”

Chandra let out a quiet breath. Not a laugh. Something softer. She touched his shoulder, fingers trailing lightly down the sleeve of his coat.

“He’s more than beautiful,” she murmured. “He’s kind. He cares what people think. He wants to be brave. And he’s still so young, Dieterich. We have time. If we push too hard now, he might break.”

“He can’t afford to break.”

“No,” she agreed, “but we can afford to be gentler.”

He finally looked at her. Really looked. His eyes were the color of moonlight clinging to the ocean—cool, restrained, not unkind. He had once been called the most promising heir Khaenri’ah had produced in three generations. He had known no childhood. He had never asked for one.

And maybe, in the secret corners of his soul, he thought Kaeya would be better off for the same.

“You’ll stay with us tonight?” she asked.

He nodded, slowly. “I’ll try.”

“Try harder,” she said with a smile, brushing back the dark fall of hair from his brow. “He still asks if you’ll read to him. He says he’s too old for it but—he always brings the book out anyway.”

Dieterich looked away, something flickering at the edge of his expression. Guilt, maybe. Shame.

“I’ll read to him tonight,” he said.

Chandra’s face softened.

“And tomorrow?”

He didn’t answer, but he didn’t walk away either.

Just then, a delighted shriek came from the riverbank. Chandra stood up, dusting the grass from her skirt.

“Oh gods,” she muttered with mock despair. “That’s Kaeya. I just know he fell in.”

Another cry, followed by Dainsleif’s voice—flat and scolding, muffled by distance.

“You said you could jump!”

Dieterich closed his eyes and let out a long, exhausted breath.

Chandra laughed, shaking her head.

“That’s our son.”

“Your son,” he corrected.

She winked at him, and for a moment—just a moment—they were young again, standing in the hall of the Temple after their engagement, before court life and treaties, before bloodlines and burdens, before Kaeya Alberich was even a name they’d considered.

“My son, your heir,” she said cheerfully. “Come on. Let’s fish him out before he drowns.” 

He had launched himself.

There was a rock, slick with moss and sun-dappled shadows, just far enough from the riverbank to demand a leap. He’d stood on one side, arms thrown out like a circus performer on a tightrope, eyes lit with mischief. Dainsleif had warned him, of course. Dainsleif always warned him.

“You’ll slip,” he had said, from his safely dry perch beside the reeds.

“No I won’t.”

“You will.”

“I won’t.”

But Kaeya had already backed up a step, legs bracing, the wind catching in his hair like a flag at full mast. And before Dain could finish his sigh—he jumped.

The splash was tremendous. The shriek of triumph, louder.

Kaeya emerged sputtering from the river like a newly baptized saint, face beaming with delight and water dripping down the sharp line of his chin. The spring current wasn’t strong, but it tugged at his robes, and for a moment he flailed, more from shock than danger. His braid clung to his cheek, plastered across one eye.

Dain was already in motion, boots skidding, arms outstretched as if by instinct. He didn’t jump in—not yet—but he crouched at the edge and reached a hand out with reluctant urgency.

“You idiot,” he said. “What were you thinking?”

Kaeya, still spitting water, grinned up at him like the sun had taken root in his mouth.

“I didn’t slip,” he pointed out, grabbing Dain’s wrist.

“You missed.”

“I was aiming for the water.”

“You’re not supposed to aim for the—!”

“Boys,” came Chandra’s voice, sharp and silvery, as she appeared around the bend with Dieterich in tow. “What on earth is going on?”

Kaeya turned with the sluggish grace of one resigned to doom.

“Hi, Mama,” he said, blinking water from his lashes.

“Oh, look at you,” she groaned, kneeling at the bank, inspecting him as if he were a toad she was too fond of to scold properly. “You’re soaked.”

“It’s just water…”

“You’re eight.”

Kaeya looked at Dain for support. Dain didn’t move. His hand was still wrapped around Kaeya’s wrist, steady as an anchor.

“He jumped,” Dain said helpfully.

“I saw.” He didn’t mind her seeing him like this, shivering and soaked and reckless. Mama never truly scolded—not really. Not in the way that stung. She would click her tongue and fuss over him like he was still five, but somewhere in the comfort of her lap or the warmth of her laugh, Kaeya knew she’d eventually murmur something like “That was quite a leap, wasn’t it? Such courage, my little fish.” Something sweet, something secret, just for him, when Father was no longer looking.

But his father—ah.

Kaeya’s eyes flicked toward him, then away. That too-composed silhouette, arms crossed and jaw set, the sharp edges of disappointment gleaming behind his silence like the flash of a hidden blade. Dieterich did not raise his voice. He never needed to. Kaeya had learned that early: his father didn’t have to say he was displeased for it to settle into the room like smoke. The look was enough.

Chandra, noticing her son’s retreat inward, stepped between them with the subtlety of a queen and the ferocity of a lioness.

“Don’t say it,” she warned again, gaze sharp.

“I wasn’t going to,” Dieterich said, with a sigh so theatrical Kaeya would have laughed if he wasn’t still worrying that he’d ruined the day. “He’s just soaked, that’s all.”

“He’s eight.”

“He’s supposed to be learning restraint.”

“He’s supposed to be learning joy.”

Kaeya, sensing that his chances of survival were slightly improved, scrambled up the riverbank with Dain’s help and stood there dripping, teeth beginning to chatter. His mother’s hands were on him in an instant—tutting, smoothing back his wet hair, pressing a kiss to his forehead even as she fussed.

Kaeya inhaled deeply and decided, in a rush of courage, “Mama, I jumped really far.”

“You did,” she said, eyes twinkling. “Like a little frog with too much confidence.”

“Don’t go catching a cold,” she muttered. “If I lose you to the river, I’m sending your father in after you.”

Dieterich raised an eyebrow. “I’m not the one jumping into rivers for fun.”

“You used to,” Chandra shot back.

“…You pushed me.”

“Exactly.”

Kaeya sneezed, cutting the banter short. Chandra sighed and wrapped her shawl around him.

Dainsleif stood a respectful step back, arms now crossed in a futile attempt to preserve whatever dry patch of sleeve he had left. The water had reached his elbows, soaking into his tunic, clinging to his narrow frame with the stubbornness of spring weeds. His fingers still smelled faintly of silt and river moss, and Kaeya’s wrist, which he hadn’t let go of until moments ago. His hair was beginning to curl where the droplets clung to the tips, and his boots squelched slightly when he shifted his weight from one leg to the other. He hadn’t said a word. He never complained.

Chandra looked up from Kaeya, who was now wrapped like a particularly dramatic drowned cat in her shawl, and clicked her tongue in a way that only ever meant affection disguised as exasperation.

“Come here, sweetie,” she called, beckoning Dain with a crook of her fingers. “You should dry off too.”

Dain hesitated—perhaps because the king stood nearby, watching in that distant way of his—or perhaps because Dain, even at twelve, wasn’t entirely used to being called sweetie by a queen. But he obeyed. He always obeyed when she used that voice.

Before he could ask what she meant to do, she turned toward her husband and, with the efficiency of a woman used to making things happen, unfastened the heavy black coat slung over his shoulders. Dieterich made a faint noise of protest, but it died a quiet death at her raised eyebrow. She turned and draped it over Dain’s thin shoulders, brushing his hair back from his damp forehead as she did so.

“There,” she said, voice gentling. “Both of you boys. I can’t afford either of you catching a cold.”

The coat hung almost to Dain’s knees, heavy with the scent of spice and iron and faint notes of parchment and ink. He looked down at it, then up at her, confused, maybe a little stunned, like a commoner who had been unexpectedly handed a crown. Chandra, unfazed, pulled both boys closer and kissed them each on the forehead—Kaeya first, then Dain, who went stiff with surprise, then relaxed without knowing why.

It was so effortless, the way she did it. As if she had been born to mother things.

Kaeya, of course, was not yet finished. He blinked up at her from beneath the shawl, his cheeks round and pink from all the attention, and poked himself gently in the chest with one finger. “Mama,” he said, with exaggerated seriousness. “Again?”

Chandra turned slowly toward him, and her expression—composed, regal, luminous—crumpled into something incandescent.

“Oh,” she breathed, pressing a hand to her chest as though she’d been wounded. “Look at that little face, trying to charm me. You’re so adorable—”

Kaeya squeaked something delighted as she descended on him in a flurry of kisses, catching his nose, his cheeks, his forehead, even the tip of one ear for good measure. “My baby, my sunshine, my very silly river frog! You could charm the moons out of the sky with that look, what am I going to do with you?”

“More kisses?” he offered hopefully, voice muffled beneath her hair.

“Endless,” she promised, between peals of laughter.

Behind them, Dieterich exhaled long and low, rubbing a hand over his brow as if he were very tired, or pretending to be. But when Chandra glanced over her shoulder at him, he didn’t look away. He was watching the three of them now, all tangled together like sun-drenched weeds on the bank of a lazy river.

“Come,” she said, brushing a stray curl from Kaeya’s forehead. “Let’s find a spot to sit. I brought sweet plums and that tarts you like.”

“Really?!” Kaeya lit up. He turned to Dain, tugging on his sleeve. “Did you hear that?! She brought the tarts!”

“I heard.”

“Race you—!”

“You’ll fall again—”

But Kaeya was already running, and Dain had no choice but to follow.

Behind them, Chandra looped her arm through her husband’s with a pleased hum. The sun broke through the trees just enough to dapple the trail in flecks of gold.

“See?” she murmured. “He’s smiling.”

“Because he nearly drowned.”

“No. Because he’s happy.”

Chapter Text

It was history this time. The lesson dragged on in the high-ceilinged chamber that smelled of parchment, polished wood, and lemon oil, the ticking of the brass clock on the wall somehow louder than Madam Everett’s voice. She was elderly, with a braided crown of silver hair and reading glasses always perched on the very tip of her nose, her tone a droning metronome of names and dates that filled the room like soft dust.

Kaeya sat up straighter than usual, hands folded, his notes laid out neatly. He was quiet, attentive, giving every impression of a model student, and for once, it wasn’t entirely an act. Because today he had done something worth being proud of. For the first time, he had caught up to Dainsleif.

Not just caught up. Equaled him.

Dain, who had already studied these scrolls and timelines once before. Who had started over, two years ago, because the king had asked him to be a companion, because Kaeya had needed someone to follow along with—someone who could explain things he didn’t understand, someone he didn’t have to be afraid to ask. Dain, who had made it look so easy, always answering calmly, always watching Kaeya out of the corner of his eye with that quiet, secret smile when he got something right.

Today, Kaeya got every answer right.

Even Madam Everett had paused more than once to murmur something like, “Very impressive, your highness,” and “It’s rare for boys your age to retain such detail.” She had even smiled, the sort of smile she saved for exceptional students, the kind that crinkled the corners of her eyes.

Kaeya finally glanced at him, sideways through his lashes, in the way he’d learned made people pause. It didn’t work on Dain, of course. Dain never flinched. His expression remained unreadable, half-amused.

He was taller now, broader too. His hair had grown past his collar, usually tied back in a lazy knot when he was sparring. And he was quiet in that way older boys always were, like there were things they knew that Kaeya wasn’t meant to understand yet. Mama had told Kaeya not to worry—“Puberty, darling. It makes boys grow all silly and broody. You’ll get there.” But Kaeya had pouted for a full hour after realizing Dain now had to duck slightly when passing under the lower archways.

Kaeya still didn’t.

He wasn’t even thirteen yet. His birthday was late in the season, and the tutors had only just started allowing him more advanced texts. He still wasn’t allowed to hold a sword. Not really. Just a wooden practice rod during form lessons, which felt more like dancing than battle. Even when he trained with the instructors in secret—which Dain knew about, of course—he still lacked a lot. The grace he had, maybe. But grace wasn’t enough to lift steel.

And Dain? Dain made steel look like silk.

Kaeya let out a sharp breath and tipped his head back toward the sky. “You’re better at everything,” he said, not entirely meaning to say it aloud.

Dain blinked. “What?”

“You heard me.” Kaeya crossed his arms and leaned back against the opposite wall, fixing his gaze somewhere past Dain’s shoulder. “You’re better at history. You’re better at swordsmanship. You’re better at talking to adults. Even the captain of the guard listens to you. You’re basically a grown-up now. So what am I even supposed to be for?”

There was a pause. Not a long one, but enough.

Then Dain’s voice, low and even. “You’re the prince.”

Kaeya hated how it sounded. Like it was a fact, not a reason.

“So?” he muttered, voice barely above a whisper. “That doesn’t mean I’m good at anything.”

“You’re good at a lot of things,” Dain said, almost too quickly. “You’re better at talking to people your age. You’re good with languages. You remember every story anyone’s ever told you, even the ones that aren’t in the books. You think about things in a way no one else does.” He shrugged, then added with a hint of amusement, “You’re good at being annoying. Exceptionally so.”

Kaeya didn’t laugh, but he did smirk. Just faintly. “That’s not a real skill.”

“It is if it gets people to do what you want.”

The corner of Kaeya’s mouth twitched. “I don’t get you to do what I want.”

“You do,” Dain said, and this time, there was no trace of teasing. “You just don’t notice it.”

Kaeya turned his head to look at him fully now. Dain stood in the golden afternoon light, arms crossed, hair a bit windswept, eyes like the edge of dusk. He looked older than ever. Older than Kaeya could catch up to.

“Do you wish you weren’t stuck with me?” Kaeya asked quietly. “That you could go train with the others, and not…start over all the time for my sake?”

Dain didn’t answer right away. He stepped forward instead, closing the space between them until they were nearly shoulder to shoulder. When he spoke, it was soft enough that Kaeya could almost pretend it was a secret.

“I never had to start over for your sake. I chose to.”

Kaeya stared up at him, throat tight, unsure what to say to that.

Then Dain ruffled his hair. Roughly. Like Kaeya was still a kid, which he was, but it made him yelp anyway.

“Besides,” Dain added, smirking now. “I only look taller because you’re slouching.”

“I am not !”

“You are.”

Kaeya shoved him, half-hearted, and Dain let himself be shoved.

_____________

The dining hall was a muted gold, cast in the light of wall sconces and high chandeliers that gave the illusion of warmth. Outside, night had already settled across the mountains, the windows blackened with its hush. The long table, draped in deep indigo velvet, was set for far more guests than it held. It always was.

Kaeya entered first, shoes barely making a sound on the polished floor, his steps careful, graceful in the way a child only becomes when he’s learned people are always watching. Behind him came Dainsleif, his shadow but not lesser, quiet but firm in step, taller now by several inches, the sword at his back traded for civility this evening.

The queen was already seated, half turned toward one of her ladies as she laughed, her voice light and silver like the bangles clinking on her wrist. Her gown tonight was soft and unstructured, peach-colored silk flowing down her arms like water. Even without a crown, she still looked untouchable. Regal in the way that made Kaeya want to crawl into her lap like when he was small, when she used to let him press his face to her chest and twist her necklace around his fingers.

As soon as she spotted him, Kaeya brightened and made a beeline for the seat beside her, hands already reaching for the back of the chair.

But her hand lifted, gently.

“No, sweetheart,” she said, still smiling but not meeting his eyes. “Sit by your father tonight. He’s been waiting to hear from you.”

Kaeya blinked. His fingers curled on the chair’s edge. “But—”

“No buts,” she said with that lilting tone that made disobedience feel like betrayal. She finally looked at him then, her smile a little tighter. “Go on, darling. It’s important.”

There was no anger in her voice, just something worse: expectation.

Kaeya felt his face fall, not enough for anyone to scold him, but enough that he noticed the change in the air around him. He turned obediently, smoothing his tunic and walking the length of the table with his back straighter than necessary. Dainsleif followed, like he always did, with the ease of someone who had never once questioned where he should be.

The king did not stand. He never did. Dieterich was already seated at the head of the table, back straight, dressed still in dark layers of court attire, silver embroidery catching the firelight. He did not smile when his son approached. He didn’t frown either. He simply placed his hand on Kaeya’s shoulder and pressed down lightly, indicating the chair to his right.

Kaeya sat.

Dainsleif took the seat beside him without needing to be told.

Dinner was served by the quiet rustle of servants moving like ghosts. Roasted meats, seasoned vegetables, rich sauces and buttered breads—the kind of meal that made Kaeya’s stomach ache with the sheer expectation of etiquette. He picked up his fork only after his father had begun to eat.

“Tell me about your studies lately,” Dieterich said after a few moments, his tone not unkind but measured. Like reading from a list.

Kaeya swallowed, his voice soft but trying.

“I, um… I did well today. Madam Everett said I got a perfect score on the political history exam, and I finished the logic sequence ahead of schedule. She said… she said I’ve improved a lot.”

He allowed himself a glance upward, hope flickering beneath his lashes.

His father cut a neat square of steak, eyes still on his plate, and with the same hand placed the cut piece onto Kaeya’s own plate. There was a low, noncommittal hum in his throat—barely praise, not quite acknowledgment. The kind of sound someone makes when they hear a bird chirping in the distance. Not disapproval—but not pride either. Acknowledging. 

Kaeya smiled, small and unsure, then reached for his goblet. He hadn’t taken a sip yet when Dieterich turned, almost seamlessly, toward Dainsleif.

“And you?”

Kaeya’s hand froze mid-air.

“I—” Dainsleif started, but the weight of Kaeya’s stillness beside him was suddenly a presence of its own. The air felt tighter. Kaeya’s fingers were still curled around the base of the goblet, unmoving. His eyes stayed locked on his plate.

The king looked toward Dain, eyes sharp with curiosity and something like challenge. “Have you continued your review of the Abyss texts?”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” Dain answered, ever steady. “I’ve started cross-referencing the records with the philosophical treaties from the southern archives. I thought it might help me understand.”

Dieterich gave a faint nod. “Good. That’s a worthwhile pursuit. You have the clarity for it. Continue.”

Kaeya still hadn’t taken a sip.

His father’s hand brushed the top of his head briefly, just once, like one might ruffle the fur of a favored hound. Not harsh. But impersonal. It lingered for less than a heartbeat.

Kaeya forced his goblet to his lips. The cider tasted too sweet, like syrup. It burned a little on the way down.

He did not speak again.

Dain answered another question about tactical history. The queen laughed lightly at something a steward said. Someone passed the bread basket, which Kaeya waved off with a polite shake of his head.

He chewed each bite of food without tasting it, blinking slowly, face still composed.

He had gotten everything right. He had done his best.

He just chewed quietly, his father’s brief touch lingering on his scalp, weightless and heavy all at once.

_____________

The candle had begun to lean. Its flame, tall and golden at first, had shrunk to a flickering blue teardrop, clinging to the wick as though reluctant to surrender the room to darkness. Its wax had formed a pale river, cooled now into delicate ridges along the polished wood of Kaeya’s desk. The scent was faintly sweet, like pressed flowers forgotten in a book. The kind his mother used to collect, carefully, lovingly, tucking them between parchment pages so they might live just a little longer.

He hadn’t moved for some time. The pen—no, not a pen, it was one of those old-fashioned feathered things, gifted by someone who had thought it poetic—trembled in his grip, its tip hovering uselessly above the same corner of parchment he had been staring at since the bells chimed the ninth hour. His fingers ached in that vague, hollow way that comes from too much pressure held for too long. Still, he would not release it. Not yet.

He didn’t quite know what time it was now. The candle was his only companion, and time passed differently in its company.

His eyes burned.

Not in the dramatic, storybook way where tears fall like rain. These were dry, obstinate things, clinging to the rims of his vision, refusing the dignity of actual descent. It would have been a relief, he thought, to cry. An honest one. But he sat there, all corners and tension and unspent grief, every breath shallow and even, as if any break in rhythm might allow the sobs to slip through.

The paper beneath his hand was a graveyard of rewritten lines, each one struck through with a heavier hand than the last. He had begun this with an intention: to summarize the council reforms, as dictated by Madam Everett’s notes. But the words had stopped making sense three drafts ago. Now it was all just noise—loops of ink, spidery and angry, too much pressure in his strokes. The parchment had begun to tear.

It didn’t matter. He had more.

Kaeya leaned forward, elbow on desk, chin balanced delicately on the heel of his hand. He blinked. Once. Twice. The words blurred. He wasn’t even sure what he was reading anymore. Or writing.

But that wasn’t the point.

The point was to do . To try. To try again. Because clearly what he had done so far was not enough.

Not enough to make his father stop mid-meal and say, “Well done, Kaeya.” Not just a pat on the head. Not a vague hum. Not a glance sideways to Dain.

Dain. It was never Dain’s fault. Kaeya knew that. Dain didn’t ask to be brilliant. He simply was. Like rain in spring or leaves in autumn—effortless. Noble without nobility. Regal without trying. Beloved , even when he wasn’t being measured.

Kaeya knew he wasn’t supposed to compare.

He also knew it was impossible not to.

Because Dain had been trained for none of this. Had stumbled into it—into him—with little more than a blade and a smile. And somehow, he still seemed more princely than Kaeya ever had, sitting beside the actual queen and king with mud on his boots and soft praise falling around him like petals.

Kaeya’s hand clenched. The quill scraped uselessly against the parchment.

He was not Dain.

He was not his father, either.

He was… Kaeya.

An Alberich. A son of Khaenri’ah. 

He was the heir.

And that felt like a punishment more than an honorable title.

His lips parted, slightly, to breathe. A shallow breath. The kind that doesn’t reach the chest.

He looked down at the paper again.

Try harder.

That’s what he always heard. Not aloud, not in words. But in the silences. In the hands that weighed a touch too heavy on his shoulders when his marks were not perfect. In the way his father’s eyes didn’t shine quite the same way for him as they did when Dain parried a training blow with effortless grace.

The candle flickered. A breeze crawled in through the cracked balcony door.

Kaeya didn’t shiver.

He only sat there, very still, the pen still poised between his fingers like a weapon he hadn’t yet been taught to use. His back was straight. His shoulders stiff. 

The door creaked open behind him, quietly at first—like it wasn’t sure it should intrude.

“Baby, why are you still awake? It’s past your bed—” A pause. “Kaeya?”

He did not stir. Not at the sound of his name, not at the thread of worry stitched into her tone. He remained hunched over the desk, his elbow planted, one small fist cradling the curve of his cheek, the other still clinging to the pen that had bled dry hours ago. The candle had melted past its waist. Shadows quivered on the wall like the ghosts of disappointment.

But Chandra did not scold. She rarely did, even when she did, she would kiss his forehead after, so he wasn’t afraid.  She crossed the room with soft, firm steps and saw—through the golden spill of candlelight and the trembling of his lashes—that he was not writing anymore. That the paper beneath him was a battlefield of half-scrawled words and wet blotches where tears had threatened to fall, and hadn’t. He would not let them.

“Oh, my baby…”

She said it like a spell, a lullaby from when he was smaller than small, when he still fit in the crook of her arm like a doll made of dusk and milk and hiccups. And though he was older now—nearly too long in the limb, nearly too proud in the chin—he did not protest when her arms gathered him up anyway, with all the practiced ease of someone who had carried him through fever and tantrum and nightmares.

“I’m too big,” he murmured, the lie muffled against the hollow of her neck, but his arms wound around her anyway, knotted tight like ivy around the branches of home.

“You’ll never be too big,” she whispered into his hair, combing her fingers through the knots of blue-black silk, warm from the flame. “Not for me.”

And oh—how his small body folded into hers. He was trying really, really hard to be a prince, a future king. But perhaps, tonight, he could still be his Mama’s baby.

“What happened, my love?” she asked quietly. “You’re trembling.”

Kaeya didn’t answer. Not right away. His breath hitched a little as he tried to swallow the knot that had been stuck in his throat since dinner. Since his father’s eyes passed over him like cloud-shadow.

“I was just studying,” he whispered into her shoulder.

She let out a soft, knowing sound—equal parts sadness and pride. She kissed the top of his head, her fingers gently brushing through the strands of his hair, smoothing it like one might calm a startled bird.

“You’ve always worked so hard,” she said, voice low and warm. “Too hard.”

“I have to,” he mumbled.

“No, you don’t,” she replied. “Not like this. Not until you cry without me knowing.”

She pulled back enough to cup his face in her hand. Her thumbs brushed the damp crescents under his eyes, her gaze sweeping over him like moonlight.

“You’re already everything,” she said. “I don’t care what your father thinks. You’re already everything.”

He blinked up at her, lashes wet, lips parted like he didn’t believe her. But she didn’t let him look away.

“My beautiful, brilliant boy,” she said, forehead resting against his now. “Even if you weren’t a prince, even if you weren’t mine, I would choose you. Every time.”

Kaeya sniffled, his arms tightening around her.

“…You didn’t even see my exam scores,” he muttered.

“I don’t need to,” she replied. “You’re still my proudest thing.”

He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. His breath came a little easier now, the tension in his shoulders unspooling slowly like thread let go.

“Mama?”

“Yes, baby?”

“…Will you stay?”

She smiled, and this time it reached all the way into her voice.

“Always.”

It was not a cry, not at first. But then he broke. Not loud, not theatrical. The sort of heartbreak reserved only for one’s mother, the one person in the world before whom pride could be set aside like a too-heavy crown.

Kaeya sobbed.

He buried his face in the hollow between her neck and shoulder, clung to her with the kind of fervent desperation one usually only reads about in wars and love poems. His shoulders shook, delicate things under the thin silk of his nightshirt, and the tears came at last. They wet the skin of her collarbone, trailed down to her chest like ink on parchment, seeping.

Chandra held him as if he were still five, still fresh from a scraped knee and the discovery of thunder. Her hands moved along his back in slow, reverent circles, the way one might stroke the petals of a night-blooming flower too delicate for sunlight. She kissed his temple, the shell of his ear, the crown of his bowed head. She did not hush him, did not tell him to be brave. She let the sobs come.

Because an heir to the Khaenri’ah throne is never allowed to cry.

But Chandra Alberich’s son could.

“You don’t have to be perfect,” she breathed into his hair. “You don’t have to be anyone’s idea of you but your own. You are enough, my monsoon. You are more than enough.”

The candle flickered low, its wax pooling like a sigh. Outside, the wind tapped against the windowpane like a curious spirit, trying to peer in on the soft-lit sanctuary of mother and child.

Kaeya’s sobs grew quieter, gentler, like a storm winding down into drizzle. He hiccuped once, shoulders lifting. His hands unclenched from her robes, only to resettle again, looser now, but still so very much needing.

And when she carried him back to bed, when she tucked him under silken blankets the color of dusk, when she curled around him like the first and last warmth of the world—he believed her.

He fell asleep with her thumb brushing slow circles against the back of his hand.

The candle guttered. The room fell into shadows.