Darius paced a tight half-circle in the dirt, boots grinding small stones into powder, trying to burn the panic off his skin by turning it into motion. The clearing they’d chosen wasn’t much. A scoop of space where the trees gave way to rock and scrub, the road narrowing again just beyond it like a throat closing. Dusk bled between branches, turning everything a bruised blue.

  Kairi lay bundled in his cloak for the moment, Kurt’s hands still hovering like he didn’t know what to do with them if he wasn’t holding something steady.

  Kylar sat slumped against the base of a tree, bandaged and wrong-looking in that way soldiers learned to recognize. Not dead. Not fine. The kind of alive that could change its mind if you blinked at the wrong time.

  Darius exhaled through his nose and forced his voice into something firm. “Okay,” he said. “We mount up. We go as far as we can with this light, then we camp. No fires. No noise. We don’t give them a beacon to chase.”

  Zen and Kurt looked at him, waiting for the next part, because apparently this was his job now. Lead. Decide. Be the wall when the wall was already cracked. Darius glanced at Kairi, at the pallor of her face, the dampness at her temples, the way her breath came shallow under the cloak.

  “I’ll take the Princess,” he said.

  Kurt nodded immediately, as if grateful someone had said it out loud, as if the choice had been lodged in his throat.

  Darius turned his head toward Kylar and Onyx.

  “Who rides Onyx with Ky?”

  Zen’s hand shot up so fast it might have sprained something. “I got him, Dare.”

  Of course you do, Darius thought, because Zen’s fear always came out wearing a grin and a volunteer’s enthusiasm. Darius gave him a look anyway. Not a glare. Not a reprimand. The look guards gave each other before they did something dangerous and agreed not to die in a stupid way.

  “Stay strapped to him,” Darius said. “If he slumps, you keep him upright. If he starts shaking, you tell me. If he stops answering, you shout.”

  Zen’s smile softened. “Yes, sir.”

  Kurt swallowed hard, eyes flicking between both royals. “And if they… if the poison gets worse?”

  Darius didn’t let himself hesitate. Hesitation was a luxury for men with antidotes. “Then we move faster,” he said simply. “And we pray the next town has a healer who doesn’t faint at the sight of royal blood.”

  Kurt huffed a humorless laugh and nodded like that made sense, because sometimes “sense” was just the closest thing to a handle you could grip.

  They moved quickly. Zen and Kurt got Kylar positioned first, because Kylar couldn’t help them. He was dead weight with a heartbeat.

  Onyx stood like a statue cut from night, ears pinned, nostrils flaring as if he could scent the bandits in the wind and wanted permission to go end the problem with teeth and hooves. He shifted once, a low, agitated stomp, and Zen pressed a palm to his neck.

  “Easy, big guy,” Zen murmured. “He’s still here.”

  Kylar’s head lolled forward, chin nearly to chest, and Zen swore under his breath. He looped a strap across Kylar’s torso and his own, cinching them together, making himself a human harness. Kurt tightened it with practiced hands, fingers rough and efficient.

  “Don’t make me regret trusting you,” Kurt muttered at Zen, but it lacked heat. It was fear trying to sound like anger.

  Zen shot him a quick look. “Not planning to.”

  Darius lifted Kairi next. Even unconscious she startled him with how light she felt. Not frail, exactly. Just… worn thin. Like she’d burned too hard and too long and now her body was paying the bill.

  He cradled her against his chest and swung into the saddle, settling her in front of him, one arm tight around her middle, the other holding the reins. Her head lolled against his shoulder, hair sliding across his throat. “Stay with me,” he muttered, though she couldn’t hear. “Just stay.”

  Kurt mounted, checked the road, then glanced back once, eyes sharp in the fading light. “Which way?” he asked.

  Darius pointed. “Forward. We can’t backtrack in the dark with them on our heels. We put distance between us and the bridge, then we choose.”

  Kurt’s jaw tightened. “And the others?”

  A flash of Damon’s finery, Rush’s flame, Jayce’s steady eyes. A separate half of the world split off by stone and smoke.

  “They’ll get to town,” Darius said. “We follow protocol. We all go to the next town on the route and stay there. We will get there before them. They have to back track and take another route across. That will put them a day or two behind us."

  Zen was quiet taking it in. "Hopefully, they were only hunting for her, and not her brother as well." Zen leaned his head back a little and listened to Kylar's breathing and relaxed a little. No one commented on the fate of the other half of the escort.

  They rode.

  The first stretch was silence, broken only by the sound of hooves and the faint creak of leather. The gorge fell away to their left in a dark, yawning absence. The road hugged the rock face, narrow enough that Darius kept his gaze on the strip of stone ahead and refused to think about what lay below.

  Kairi shifted suddenly, a weak twist, and Darius stiffened, tightening his hold.

  She shivered. Not from cold. From something inside her body trying to fight a war it didn’t understand. The poison, of course it was in her as well. Darius leaned his mouth close to her ear. “Easy,” he whispered. “You’re safe. You’re safe.” He didn’t believe it. But his voice had to. After several minutes, when the rhythm of the ride steadied, Darius glanced sideways toward Zen.

  “Zen,” he called softly, careful not to startle the horses. “Is Ky running hot?”

  Zen leaned his head down, pressing the back of his fingers to Kylar’s cheek, then to his neck. He frowned, the grin gone for once.

  “Maybe a little,” Zen said. “Not like her though.”

  Darius’s eyes flicked down to Kairi. Her skin was damp. Too damp. Her breath hitched faintly every few seconds.

  “Damn it,” Darius muttered under his breath.

  Kurt rode close on the other side, voice low. “She fried those men,” he said, half awe, half disbelief. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  Zen’s tone warmed again, because Zen could not help himself. “Right? I’m just saying, if the Princess ever asks me to step aside so she can handle something, I’m stepping. Respectfully.”

  Darius shot him a look. “She also nearly burned herself out doing it.”

  Zen’s mouth shut. He nodded once, chastened, and tightened his hold on Kylar.

  Kurt looked ahead. “You think the rest of them catch up at the next town?”

  “They will,” Darius said. “Or they’ll pass it and come back for us. Jayce doesn’t abandon people.”

  Kurt’s brows drew together. “Unless they’re being chased too.”

  Darius didn’t answer immediately, because that thought sat like a stone at the base of his throat. Instead he said, “We assume we’re still being hunted. We assume they want her. We assume the next town isn’t safe just because it’s a town.”

  Kurt’s shoulders tightened. “Kylar said it was Saebrian poison. If it's not lethal, they should both regain some mobility here in a couple hours."

  Darius’s grip around Kairi adjusted, protective and guilty at the same time. His efforts in being her personal guard, even a potential Ash Guard, were poor.

  They rode another stretch. The light bled out faster than Darius liked. Shadows thickened. The air cooled. Every time the wind shifted, Darius listened for hoofbeats that didn’t belong to them. Every time an owl called, his nerves jumped like it was an alarm. Kairi’s fever worsened. It wasn’t a dramatic change. It was gradual. Subtle. The kind of escalation that killed people quietly while you were focused on the road. She started sweating through his cloak. Then she shuddered again, teeth chattering faintly. Darius swore under his breath and wrapped the cloak tighter, even though he knew it wasn’t cold doing this to her. He pressed the inside of his wrist to her forehead.

  Hot.

  “Saints,” he muttered.

  Zen’s voice came softer from behind. “Dare?”

  “What?”

  Zen swallowed. “She… she looks bad.”

  “I know,” Darius snapped, then immediately hated himself for it. Zen was just saying what they were all thinking. He forced his tone flatter. “I know.”

  Kurt rode closer. “We can backtrack,” he offered, voice tight. “Take the other route. The one that skirts the gorge. Less exposed.”

  Darius considered the map in his head. The old roads. The turnoffs. The places bandits liked to ambush because travelers had to slow. Backtracking risked running into the bandits they’d just burned. Forward risked pushing Kairi too far. But stopping here, exposed on the road, was suicide.

  “We push until full dark,” Darius decided. “Then we find cover. We camp. We keep her warm, keep her breathing steady. We rotate watch. At first light, we move again.”

  Kurt nodded. Zen nodded. No one argued, because none of them had a better idea.

  Darius stared down at Kairi’s face, pale under the hood of his cloak, lashes dark against her cheeks. Ash Guard, he thought grimly. He’d heard the title and tried to treat it like a vow. Now it felt like a joke the world was telling at his expense. He adjusted her again, careful not to jostle her wound, careful not to let her weight shift wrong. The memory of her grabbing Kurt’s wrist at the gorge, ice forming, her putting herself in danger without thinking, stabbed through him.

  You are supposed to be the one who stops her from doing that. He swallowed and leaned his mouth close to her ear again. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, not sure if he meant for failing at the bridge, failing to stop the bolt, failing to keep her safe, or for everything he still didn’t know how to do.

  A faint sound left her throat, not words. A small, broken breath. Darius’s grip tightened, fear flaring sharp.

  “Stay,” he ordered softly. “Princess, you stay.”

  Ahead, the road bent, and the trees thickened into a darker stretch that might hide them or might hide their hunters. Darius lifted his chin, eyes narrowing. His voice came out low and steady, the voice he used when he needed others to believe he had this.

  “Keep close,” he told Zen and Kurt. “No gaps. If we hear anything behind us, we don’t stop. We don’t turn to look. We run.”

  Zen’s laugh was thin. “We’re already doing that.”

  Darius didn’t smile. He just kept riding, cloak wrapped around a fevered princess, reins tight, listening to the night breathe around them. They rode in silence for a while. Sometimes Zen would say something to Kylar and he would respond with something. Just enough to let Zen know he was still there. Eventually though, Zen didn't get an answer and Kylar had finally passed out or fallen asleep. He needed to the rest to work through the poison in him.

  When it began to get too dark, Darius found a shallow cut of rock a short ride off the road, the kind of place that looked unremarkable unless you were trained to see shelter in shadows. A natural overhang, scrub thick enough to break silhouettes, and just enough open ground to keep the horses from spooking themselves into the brush.

  Onyx stamped and snorted the moment they stopped, sides heaving. His coat was dark with sweat and road dust, eyes rolling white at the edges. Zen slid down first, boots hitting the dirt hard, and immediately put both hands on the stallion’s neck.

  “Easy,” Zen murmured. “Easy. We’re alive. That’s the goal.”

  Kurt was already moving with the frantic competence of someone who’d been terrified all day and refused to fall apart until everyone else was breathing. He checked the treeline, then the ridge, then the line of road they’d left behind, and only after that did he crouch and start pulling bedrolls from saddlebags.

  Darius dismounted last, because he had to, because his arms were shaking from holding Kairi upright for hours and pretending that was normal. When he handed her down to Zen, she sagged against him like her bones had turned to water.

  Her hair clung damp to her cheeks. Fever-sweat. Her lips were pale. Every breath was a small, careful thing. Darius swallowed hard and Zen shifted her in his arms so her head rested against his shoulder, then carried her toward the overhang.

  “Bedrolls first,” Darius ordered, voice clipped so he wouldn’t sound like he was begging the world not to take her from him.

  Kurt moved fast. He laid two bedrolls side by side, then another across their feet, a tight cluster. Warmth, shelter, bodies close enough that if someone stopped breathing they’d be noticed immediately.

  Kylar was a problem all his own.

  They’d gotten him off Onyx like you got a wounded man off a battlefield, with hands under arms, curses under breath, and a careful kind of force. His bandage was stained again. His face was gray with exhaustion, lashes stuck together with sweat. He was conscious only in the loosest sense of the word. Zen got him settled on the bedroll closest to the rock, half propped, Onyx’s bulk blocking one side like a living wall.

  “Still with us, Your Highness?” Zen asked softly, trying to make it sound like a joke.

  Kylar’s mouth moved. Something like a sound came out. Not words.

  “Good enough,” Zen decided, then glanced at Darius. “Bandages?”

  Darius nodded. “Check both.”

  Kurt knelt immediately by Kairi’s side, untying the wrap at her waist with fingers that had started to tremble. Zen moved to her shoulder, holding the cloak in place, shielding her from the night air as best he could.

  The moment the cloth loosened, Zen sucked in a sharp breath.

  “Darius,” he said, voice pitching high. “Darius, am I hallucinating?”

  Darius was already crouching, already leaning in, already bracing for blood.

  There wasn’t any. No torn flesh. No puncture. No angry, split wound. Just skin. Pink and tender like it had been bruised, but whole. The faintest shadow of where the bolt had gone through, as if the body remembered pain even when the skin didn’t.

  Kurt stared so hard he forgot to blink. Zen’s hands hovered in the air like he was afraid touching her would change reality back.

  “What… what is this? We all saw the wound. Zen you wrapped it.” Kurt whispered.

  Darius didn’t answer because his mind refused to accept it. Healing did not do this. Not that fast. Not without light, not without a healer actively working, not without consequences.

  And yet Kairi still looked awful. Her fever was worse, not better. Her breathing was still too shallow. Her lashes fluttered once, then stilled. She looked like she was burning from the inside out.

  Darius turned on his knees and lunged toward Kylar.

  “Kylar.” His voice cracked on the name. “Kylar, wake up.”

  Kylar groaned, head lolling as if the sound hurt him. Darius grabbed his shoulder gently, then less gently.

  “Kylar, please,” Darius insisted. “Focus with me.”

  Kylar’s eyes slit open, unfocused, then drifted toward Darius’s face like Darius was a distant landmark he was trying to remember.

  “Dare,” Kylar rasped.

  Darius had never been so grateful for a simple word in his life.

  “Good,” Darius said quickly. “Good. Kylar, Kairi. What do you know about her, about what she can do?”

  Kylar blinked slowly. “Kairi…” he echoed, like the name carried weight all its own.

  “Yes,” Darius said, close to pleading. “Yes, Kairi. Kylar, her wound is gone. Completely. But she has a fever. She looks bad. Can she heal herself? Naturally? Does she do that?”

  Kylar’s brow furrowed, confusion bleeding into focus. “Healed… herself?”

  Darius pointed, hands shaking. “There’s no hole. No wound. Nothing. But she’s burning up.”

  Kylar tried to sit and swayed, dizzy. His gaze tracked to Kairi and fixed there, and for a moment his face did something strange. Not relief. Not shock. Something deeper, like recognition that made his throat work.

  He whispered, half to himself, “Am I having a nightmare… or… well. Yeah. Nightmare. Not meadow. It’s not… our meadow.”

  Darius froze. “Meadow?” he repeated, carefully, like he was trying not to spook a wounded animal.

  Zen leaned back on his heels and looked between them. “I think he’s delusional.”

  But Darius’s mind had latched onto that word like a hook.

  Meadow. Dreams.

  The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  Jayce’s tired eyes in an inn room, months ago. Ryder’s careful questions. The way everyone had danced around a truth too big to say out loud. The report Jayce gave him before the escort about Kairi. Things he should know. Things he needed to be aware of.

  Darius stared at Kylar, and the pieces clicked into place with a sickening smoothness.

  “She has a dream bond,” Darius said, voice low.

  Zen and Kurt both turned to him at once.

  “A what,” Zen demanded.

  Darius ignored him, eyes still on Kylar. “The meadow,” he pressed. “You’re talking about the dreamscape.”

  Kylar’s jaw tightened, as if even acknowledging it was dangerous. He slumped down beside Kairi and reached for her hand by instinct, fingers finding hers and holding like a promise.

  Zen threw both hands up, then caught himself, remembering they were trying to be quiet. “What is going on, Darius?”

  Darius dragged a breath in and tried to shove his own panic into a box.

  “Jayce mentioned… years of dreams,” Darius said, trying to keep it simple. “They didn’t know who the man was. They thought the dream boy might be on this escort.”

  Zen stared. Kurt stared. Darius’s gaze dropped to Kylar’s hand on Kairi’s, the way his thumb brushed once over her knuckles like he’d done it a thousand times. Darius thought about how easy they were with each other. It wasn't being there a week before them. It was because he has done this song and dance a thousand times already with her.

  “That’s why you gave her your ring,” Darius muttered, more to himself than anyone else.

  Zen blinked hard. “What ring.”

  Kurt’s eyes widened. “Kylar.”

  Kylar didn’t look up. He looked wrecked, sweat slick on his temple, eyes glassy, voice barely holding together. “Darius,” he rasped, “has she… woken up?”

  Darius shook his head once. “No.”

  Kylar’s breath hitched, and something like fear slid under his exhaustion. “It’s healed,” he whispered. “She can heal herself...I've never seen her heal unconsciously. The poison though…”

  Darius leaned closer. “What about it.”

  Kylar swallowed. “Phoenixes burn,” he said, as if it explained everything and nothing. “She… might be burning it out. Burning it out of her blood. I don’t know if she knows how. She didn’t finish her training. She didn’t know what she could do.”

  Darius cursed under his breath. Because that matched what Kairi had told him, when she’d spoken of temples and texts and all the gaps in her knowledge. Because it made too much sense that her body would do what the phoenix did, burn and burn until the wrong thing was ash. Even if that burning hurt herself.

  Zen dragged a hand down his face. “Alright,” he said, forcing steadiness into his voice. “We control her temperature and hope she makes it through the night.”

  Kylar lay back, eyes shutting like the effort of staying awake had cost him something. Darius reached automatically and pressed the back of his fingers to Kylar’s forehead.

  Hot.

  Too hot.

  “Ky,” Darius said softly, alarm rising again, “you’re burning up.”

  Kylar gave a half laugh that turned into a grimace. “Great,” he breathed. “I’m sorry, guys.”

  “No apologies,” Darius snapped, then gentled his tone. “Not tonight. Save that for when you can stand without swaying. The good news is, if you also have a fever. Then it's the poison and not her burning herself alive to kill poison”

  Kylar opened an eye and looked at Darius, unfocused but trying. "Observant..." He closed his eye and relaxed holding her hand.

  They worked like men who’d done crisis too many times to waste words. Zen dampened a cloth and pressed it to Kairi’s forehead, then to the back of her neck. Kurt moistened her lips with a few drops of water, careful not to choke her. Darius kept her wrapped tight enough to hold her steady but not so tight she couldn’t sweat.

  It felt wrong, stripping layers off someone shivering, then wrapping them again when they shook harder, trying to find the line between fever and cold.

  Kairi’s body fought them the whole time. Heat, then tremors. Sweat, then chills. Her breathing hitching as if she was swallowing fire.

  Kylar drifted in and out beside her, mumbling once, “Wildflower,” like it was prayer and curse both. He was fighting his own fever, with better success.

  Zen tried to pretend he didn’t hear it. Kurt did not succeed. They took turns on watch.

  Darius insisted on first, because he didn’t trust himself to sleep. Zen fought him and lost. Kurt kept waking every few minutes anyway, eyes darting to the treeline as if bandits might walk out of the dark and politely wait their turn. At some point deep in the night, Kairi’s fever peaked.

  Darius felt it like a hand around his throat. Her skin was so hot he thought it would burn him through the cloth. Her lips parted on a sound that wasn’t quite a word.

  Then she went very still. Still enough that Darius’s heart seized. He pressed his ear near her mouth, listening for breath. One. Another. Shallow, but there. Kylar shifted beside her, restless, then reached blindly until his fingers found her wrist. He held it with an odd gentleness, as if he knew exactly how fragile she felt from the inside.

  And then, slowly, as if the night itself decided to loosen its grip, Kairi’s fever began to break. It wasn’t dramatic. It didn’t vanish. It just… eased. Sweat cooled. Her breathing deepened. The shivering slowed, then stopped.

  Darius sagged against the rock, exhaustion hitting him like a delayed blow.

  Zen’s watch ended with dawn-gray light seeping through the trees.

  By morning, Kairi looked different. Still pale, still drained, but no longer burning. Her face had some color again. Her breathing was steadier. Her lashes didn’t flutter with panic, they just rested.

  Kylar, on the other hand, sat up like a man crawling out of a nightmare and immediately looked ashamed to be seen.

  “Ky,” Darius said quietly, voice gentler now that panic wasn’t chewing on his spine.

  Kylar tilted his head toward him, eyes heavy. “Hey.” His throat bobbed. “I’m a mess. Sorry.”

  Darius couldn’t help it, a small smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “You’re still breathing,” he said. “And she’s breathing. That’s all I need from you right now.”

  Kylar’s gaze flicked to Kairi and lingered there like he was counting the rise and fall of her chest. Then he looked back at Darius. “So… I’m being demoted from prince to breathing.”

  “Correct,” Darius said. “Temporary rank. Earn your title back later.”

  Kylar huffed something that might have been a laugh if he’d had more strength. Darius picked up a small stone from the ground and rubbed it between his fingers, grounding himself in something simple. “I do have a question,” he said.

  Kylar’s mouth twitched. “Shoot.”

  Darius kept his voice level, but it took effort. “In the past six years,” he said slowly, “how many assignments we went on all over Naberia was actually you looking for her.”

  Kylar stared at the stone in Darius’s hand, then at Darius’s face, as if deciding whether honesty would get him killed. Then he exhaled.

  “Most of them,” he said simply.

  The words landed like a punch. Darius went very still. Zen, who had been half-asleep on his bedroll, sat up so fast his spine popped. “What.”

  Kurt’s eyes widened. “Looking for her? Since we became Shadowguards?”

  Kylar didn’t look at either of them. He looked at his hands first, then his gaze drifted over to her. He took a slow breath before speaking. "Not at first, not intentionally."

  “Most of them,” Darius repeated, quieter. “You’re telling me every outpost, every patrol route, every ‘assignment’ was you…”

  “Trying to be where the world might fold into her,” Kylar said, voice hoarse. “Yes.”

  Zen blinked like he was waiting for the punchline. “That’s… insane.”

  Kylar finally dragged his gaze up, meeting Zen’s eyes for one brief moment. There was no bravado in it. No prince. Just a tired young man who looked like he’d been bleeding for six years straight.

  “I know,” Kylar said. "And the best part. I didn't know if she was real for more than half those years."

  Darius let out a slow breath and forced himself back into captain-mode, because if he let himself feel all of it right now, he’d either laugh or hit someone.

  “We’re moving,” Darius decided. “First light. We find a healer. We find a way to get word to Jayce. We leave sign, subtle.”

  Zen’s mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. “Do I get an explanation in the meantime?”

  Darius gave him a look that promised: yes, and you’re going to hate it.

  Kylar’s gaze slid back to Kairi, and his voice dropped to something quieter, something almost afraid.

  “Don't ask her about the dreams." He said. "Not unless she brings it up."

  Darius watched him for a long beat, then nodded once. “Fine,” he said. “But you’re going to tell me what you know. All of it. Because if her body can do that,” he gestured toward Kairi’s healed waist, “then I need to know what happens the next time she burns.”

  Kylar’s throat worked. He looked away like he couldn’t stand the thought. Then he said, barely audible, “So do I.”

  Onyx snorted softly behind them, as if reminding them that whatever secrets they were unraveling, the road was still waiting, and the world was still hungry. Darius stood, rolled his shoulders, and forced the day into his lungs.

  “Up,” he ordered, voice steady again. “We move before the sun’s fully up. And this time,” he glanced at Zen, then Kurt, “no heroics.”

  Zen yawned and muttered, “Can’t promise that.”

  Darius pointed at him. “Promise.”

  Zen sighed dramatically. “Fine. Promise-ish.”

  Kylar didn’t join the banter. His eyes stayed on Kairi, watching her breathe as if he could will her into safety by sheer stubbornness. Darius glanced over to him to see if he needed help moving around and just watched him for a moment. He understood that feeling more than he wanted to admit. Every single shallow breath yesterday when he was holding her. He turned away and began to pack. Bedrolls strapped back on, horses ready to go and his mind went back to on simple truth that he was trying to wrap his mind around.

  Kylar had confessed without flinching. Most of them. Six years of roads and assignments and a prince quietly hunting for a girl he didn't even know was real, because somewhere in the world there was a meadow and a girl, and he’d decided that was worth any distance. Worth every page in those damn journals.

  Darius knelt down and gently tightened the cloak around Kairi one more time before lifting her with care. He turned toward his horse and stopped. Kylar was watching him. Not watching him, exactly. Watching his hands. His grip. The angle of Kairi’s neck. The way her weight rested against Darius’s chest. It was the same look Kylar used on doorways and rooftops. Measuring. Mapping. Deciding where the danger lived.

  Darius went still without meaning to. Because Kylar had never looked at him like that before. Kylar’s gaze flicked up to Darius’s face, and whatever calculation he’d been running concluded. The tension drained from him in a single breath. He gave the smallest nod, permission, thanks, trust, all folded into one motion.

  Then his eyes went back to Kairi, and he looked like a man cataloging every way the world had already failed her, starting with himself. Darius knew that look. The nights where the prince would go to the wall of the fort, the outpost and even the palace to 'get some air'. Later he promised himself. Later he would talk to Kylar.

  They set off as soon as everyone was ready to go.

  Darius kept Kairi cradled in front of him, her back against his chest, his arms locked around her like a living harness. Her head lolled once when the horse stepped wrong, and Darius adjusted immediately, tightening his hold, angling her so the jostle hit his ribs instead of her bruised side.

  It was the same way he’d carried boys off the training yard when they’d tried to pretend they weren’t bleeding. Same economy. Same refusal to make it dramatic.

  Every few minutes he checked her the only ways he could without stopping: the warmth of her skin through cloth, the rhythm of her breath against his forearm, the faint flutter of lashes that told him she was still in there somewhere.

  Zen rode close to Kylar on Onyx’s left, close enough that their knees could bump if Onyx decided to dance sideways. Kurt kept to the other side, watching the treeline and the road behind them in alternating beats, like he’d learned a new prayer and didn’t trust himself to say it out loud.

  No one spoke at first.

  It wasn’t silence exactly. There was the creak of leather. The soft clink of tack. Onyx’s steady breath, louder than the others, as if he carried not just a prince but a private fury in his lungs.

  Kylar’s shoulders were stiff, posture too straight for a man who’d been poisoned and stabbed. He’d said he was fine.

  He was not fine.

  He rode anyway, jaw clenched hard enough to make his face ache, eyes trained forward as if looking back would make the night come again.

  Zen kept stealing glances at him, then at Kairi, then at Darius, like Darius was supposed to hand him an instruction manual titled What in the Saints’ Name is Happening.

  Finally Zen broke.

  “So,” he said quietly, like he was worried the trees might report him. “This dream bond.”

  Kylar didn’t answer.

  Zen waited three beats, then tried again, softer, the tone he used when he was about to poke a bruise just to see if it still hurt.

  “Is it… like a fairy tale thing?” Zen asked. “Like you meet in moonlight and exchange tragic backstories and then someone turns into a swan?”

  Kurt made a sound that was either a cough or a prayer. “Zen.”

  Zen lifted a hand. “I’m asking gently.”

  Darius exhaled through his nose and shifted Kairi a fraction higher, his forearms tightening like a brace. “Ask,” he allowed. “Just keep it quiet.”

  Zen’s mouth tipped, grateful for permission. He stared at Kylar like he might crack him open by staring hard enough. “You’ve been dreaming with her for six years.”

  Kylar’s mouth tightened. A pause, then the smallest nod.

  “Six,” Kylar said, voice rough.

  Zen blinked slowly. “And we’re just learning this now.”

  Kylar’s gaze flicked to Kairi, then away again. “It wasn’t yours to know.”

  “That’s… noble,” Zen said, then squinted. “Or terrifying.”

  “Both,” Darius muttered.

  Kurt, who had learned long ago that if Zen was going to fling himself off a cliff, you might as well tie a rope to him, leaned into the conversation like it was a controlled burn.

  “I doubt we would have believed you,” Kurt said, thoughtful. “Not at first. If I told you I was seeing a girl in my dreams, Zen would ask if she had wings and you’d ask if she could fight.”

  Zen pointed at him. “Accurate.”

  Kurt continued, “Is it every night?”

  Kylar hesitated, as if measuring how much truth they could carry without it tipping them. “Not every night,” he said. “Sometimes we missed each other.”

  Zen made a noise that was half laugh, half groan. “Saints preserve me.”

  Kurt’s eyes stayed on the road, but his voice softened. “So it’s not… controlled.”

  Kylar’s jaw flexed. “No.”

  Darius heard it, the thing under the words, and filed it away with the rest of Kylar’s tells. When Kylar said no like that, it meant don’t ask me how helpless it makes me feel.

  Kairi made a small sound then. Not a word. Just a faint exhale that made Darius’s arms tighten on instinct. His heart did that horrible stutter again.

  Kylar noticed immediately.

  He twisted in the saddle as far as pain would allow and looked at her over his shoulder, eyes sharp despite everything. “How is her breathing?” he asked.

  Darius nodded once. “Steady.”

  Kylar’s shoulders eased by a hair.

  Zen watched that tiny shift like it was a confession. Then, because Zen had never in his life learned when to stop digging once he hit something interesting, he asked the question that had been sitting in all of them like a stone.

  “What is she to you?”

  Kylar’s hands tightened on Onyx’s reins. His knuckles went pale. “A friend,” he said after a beat.

  Zen stared at him like he’d answered the wrong riddle. “That’s not what I meant.”

  Kurt hissed, “Zen.”

  Zen didn’t look away. “I know what you said. I’m saying it’s not the answer.”

  Darius didn’t correct either of them. He let it hang, because he wanted to hear the truth too, even if he already knew the shape of it.

  Kylar swallowed, throat working. His gaze flicked forward again, searching the road like it could save him from the conversation.

  “She’s…” He exhaled. “She’s Kairi.”

  Zen stared harder. “That’s her name.”

  Kylar shot him a look that could have peeled bark. “Yes.”

  Kurt, merciful and maddening at once, took the rope again. “In the dreams… what happens?” he asked, calm as if he were asking about weather. “You just… talk?”

  Kylar’s ears went pink.

  Zen’s face lit like a boy who’d just spotted the weak spot in a training guard. “Oh, look at that. The prince has blush.”

  “I’m bleeding internally,” Kylar said flatly.

  “Unrelated,” Zen replied.

  Kylar’s eyes narrowed. “We talk,” he said. “Sometimes we sit. Sometimes we spar.”

  Darius’s mouth twitched despite himself. “You spar in a dream.”

  “It’s not a dream,” Kylar muttered, then caught himself, breath tightening. He looked at Kairi again. “It’s… a place.”

  Zen leaned closer in his saddle, fascinated. “And?”

  Kylar sounded grudgingly honest. “She throws pinecones when she’s mad.”

  Zen perked. “She does not.”

  Kylar’s eyes narrowed. “She absolutely does.”

  Kurt’s brow furrowed. “There are pine trees there?”

  “No,” Kylar said, misery deepening. “That’s the problem. There are no pine trees within a reasonable walking distance.”

  Darius huffed a quiet laugh. “So she manifests them.”

  Kylar shot him a glance. “Apparently.”

  Zen made a delighted sound. “So you’ve been getting pelted with conjured pinecones for years, and you thought, yes, I shall fall in love with this woman.”

  Kylar’s jaw flexed. “It wasn’t… like that.”

  “Then what was it like?” Kurt asked quietly, voice gentler now.

  Kylar didn’t answer immediately. His gaze went distant, like he was looking at willow branches and summer light instead of a hard road and blood on bandages.

  “I didn’t decide all at once,” he said finally. “I just… started adjusting around her.”

  Zen blinked. “Adjusting.”

  Kylar made a short sound of agreement. “You learn someone by the small things,” he said. “What makes them laugh. What makes them go quiet. What they do when they’re scared.”

  His eyes flicked toward Kairi again, softening. “She pretends she isn’t,” he added. “Always trying to be braver than she needs to be.”

  Darius’s voice came without thinking. “Pointers,” he said. Then, because that sounded too much like a plea, he grounded it. “If she’s pretending. Tell me what to watch for.”

  Kylar nodded once, grim. “I can give pointers.”

  The words landed heavier than the morning air, because they weren’t instruction. They were trust.

  Zen cleared his throat like he could shake off the weight. “Alright. Serious question. Did she know you were her dream person, or did you just show up last week like the gods handed her a prince wrapped in a ribbon?”

  Kylar hesitated. The smallest pause.

  Kurt caught it immediately. “She knew before you got there.”

  Kylar’s shoulders rose and fell with a careful breath. “Yes,” he said.

  Zen stared. “And she didn’t tell anyone.”

  Kylar looked at Zen, eyes tired. “Would you?”

  Zen opened his mouth. Closed it. “No.”

  “Exactly,” Kylar said.

  Kurt’s voice stayed dry. “Also, if you told Zen, Zen would tell a tree.”

  Zen put a hand over his heart. “I would tell a tree quietly.”

  Darius cut in before Zen could spiral into defending his honor to an oak. “When did you decide you were going to court her?” he asked, bringing them back to what mattered. “Not ‘I care.’ Not ‘I’d die.’ I mean when did you decide you were going to put your name on it.”

  Kylar’s throat bobbed. “Darius.”

  “Answer,” Darius said, not unkind, but firm. “Because if I’m going to keep her safe, I need to understand what she is to you. And what you intend to be to her.”

  Zen muttered, “Ash Guard interview.”

  Kurt said quietly, “He’s not wrong.”

  Kylar stared at the road for a long moment. Onyx’s ears flicked back, like even the horse was listening. Then Kylar admitted, low enough it felt like a private thing accidentally spoken aloud.

  “When she started waiting for me.”

  Zen blinked. “She always waits for you.”

  Kylar shook his head. “Not like that.”

  Darius glanced at him, brief. “Explain.”

  Kylar’s fingers flexed on the reins. “At first she treated me like an accident,” he said. “Like an intruder.” His mouth twitched faintly. “Called me stalker.”

  Zen barked a soft laugh. “She called you stalker?”

  Kylar sighed through his nose. “Yes.”

  “And you kept coming back,” Zen said, incredulous.

  “I didn’t have a choice,” Kylar murmured, then corrected himself with tired honesty, “and then I did. Because she was alone.”

  Kurt’s voice softened. “And then?”

  Kylar’s gaze went far away again. “Then she made room,” he said. “A little. A bench that came out of the ground for us. A foot of space on the grass. A blanket when it was cold.” He swallowed. “A laugh she didn’t guard.”

  His eyes flicked toward Kairi, and for a second the hard line of him cracked into something raw.

  “One night I didn’t show up for longer than usual,” he went on. “Assignment. Night patrol. I came back and she was there, waiting like she’d been holding the place together with her own hands. The relief on her face when she saw me was…”

  Zen’s expression shifted. Less teasing. More understanding.

  “That,” Kylar finished, voice rough, “was when I knew I would spend my life trying not to disappoint her.”

  Darius stared forward, jaw set. “Saints.”

  Kurt nodded slowly, like he’d decided something he hadn’t wanted to decide. “So the ring…”

  Zen snapped back like a dog hearing a whistle. “Yes. The ring. Are we going to talk about the ring.”

  Kylar’s ears went pink again, and he looked genuinely miserable. “Must we.”

  “Yes,” Zen said immediately. “We must. Our prince has given his family ring to a foreign princess.”

  Darius answered for him, voice dry. “It’s not on his finger because he’s a guard. It’s on a chain because he’s an idiot.”

  Kylar shot him a look. “I heard that.”

  “And,” Darius continued, merciless and fair, “because he wanted her to have something of him that was real.”

  Kylar’s gaze dropped, then flicked to Kairi, softening. “Yes,” he whispered.

  Zen squinted. “That’s a yes in Naberia.”

  Kurt added, “Not official.”

  Darius said, “But it’s a yes.”

  Kylar didn’t argue. Which, for Kylar, was as loud as a declaration.

  They rode in a stretch of quiet after that, the kind where everyone was chewing on what they’d learned and trying not to make it heavier.

  Kairi shifted again, a small restless movement, and this time her lashes fluttered longer. A faint crease formed between her brows as if she was fighting her way up through heat and dark.

  Kylar noticed instantly. His whole body tensed like he was ready to catch her from across the road.

  “Kairi,” he said softly. Not a command. Not a demand. Just her name, offered like a hand.

  Her lips parted. A faint sound came out, more breath than word.

  Darius dipped his head closer. “You’re safe,” he murmured, steady and certain even if he didn’t feel it. “We’re moving. Just rest.”

  Her fingers twitched where they lay against Darius’s arm, like her body was remembering it could choose to move.

  Zen watched, uncharacteristically quiet. Kurt’s eyes stayed on the trees, but his shoulders loosened by a fraction.

  Darius checked her wrist with the back of his fingers, then asked the next question like he was stepping onto thin ice.

  “Does she ever get hurt there,” he asked, “in the meadow?”

  Kylar’s face did something complicated, flipping between emotions like someone shuffling cards too fast. He glanced once at Darius, then at Kairi, then back to the road.

  “Yes,” he said. “Not… not in the way you mean.” He exhaled. “She gets hurt. I get hurt. But injuries don’t follow you out of the dream. What’s already on you comes in with you.” Kylar glanced to his shoulder then back to the road. "She tries to patch me up, it sticks sometimes."

  Zen couldn’t help himself. “So you’re saying she has placed her hands all over you.”

  Kylar’s head snapped toward him. “Zen.”

  Zen lifted both hands in surrender. “I’m just saying, I know what injuries you’ve had, Highness. I have washed blood out of your shirts. I am connecting dots.”

  Kurt, saving Kylar out of habit, slid in smoothly. “Her healing,” he asked, mild, “is why you always looked like you should be in bed and insisted on sparring anyway?”

  Darius laughed, sharp and breathless. “Bastard,” he muttered at Kylar’s back. “Is that how you did it?”

  Kylar gave a small, helpless shrug that somehow managed to be smug. “Who knows,” he said. “I’m mysterious.”

  Zen snorted. “You’re stubborn.”

  Kurt said, “You’re terrible at resting.”

  Darius said, “You’re going to die out of spite.”

  Kylar didn’t even deny it. That was how long they’d been a unit. They knew his flaws the way they knew the weight of their own blades.

  Zen nudged his horse closer until Onyx flicked an ear back, annoyed at being crowded. “Alright,” Zen said, quieter again. “If you’re giving pointers. What does she do when she’s scared and pretending she isn’t?”

  Kylar’s eyes stayed forward, but his voice gentled. “She gets sharp,” he said. “Not mean. Sharp. Like a knife used to cutting rope. She jokes. She picks at you. She tries to keep you talking so she doesn’t have to listen to her own head.”

  Darius absorbed it without comment, his grip tightening a fraction around Kairi as if he could physically hold the knowledge in place.

  “And,” Kylar added, almost reluctantly, “she goes quiet right before she breaks. If she stops teasing, if she stops correcting you… that’s when you need to be closer.”

  Zen swallowed. “Noted.”

  Kurt murmured, “Saints.”

  Darius said, low, “Thank you.”

  Kylar nodded once, like it cost him something to give it. Then he tightened his reins, jaw setting again, posture going too straight for a man who should have been on a cot.

  Zen watched him, then muttered, half to himself, “He lets us tease him because it keeps him breathing.”

  Kurt didn’t look over, but his voice was gentle. “That’s always been the point.”

  Darius’s gaze stayed fixed on the road. His arms stayed locked around Kairi like a vow.

  “Keep the talking,” he said quietly.

  So Zen did, because Zen had always been good at filling silence when silence would eat you alive.

  They let Kylar have his “mysterious.” They let Kurt have his scanning and half-prayers. They let Darius be the steady wall.

  And they kept moving, together, like they’d been trained to do.

  Toward the next town. Toward the next problem. Toward whatever waited on the road ahead.