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“I was twelve,” Atlas said with enormous dignity, though I caught the reluctant twitch at the corner of his mouth. “And it was a very convincing recovery.”

“It was not,” Lazaros said cheerfully. “Mother laughed so hard she had to sit down.”

I pressed a hand to my mouth, shoulders shaking, while Atlas leveled his brother with a look that promised retribution, and Lazaros looked entirely too pleased with himself. And for a moment, sitting in the morning sun with incredible food, two bickering brothers, and the perfume of those climbing vines all around me, the war felt like a distant memory.

It was almost enough to make me forget that it wasn’t.

Almost.

We were still laughing, Lazaros midway through a second, even more incriminating tale about a young Atlas and a stable goat, when a servant appeared at the edge of the terrace and cleared his throat.

“Your Majesty,” the man said, with a low bow. “The training grounds are ready.”

I looked between the brothers, expecting Atlas to rise.

Instead, it was Lazaros who pushed back his chair, brushing crumbs from his front with the air of a man glad of any excuse to move.

“That’ll be me,” he said, catching my confusion. “Your king has more pressing matters this morning, by the look of him. And besides, the bow has always been mine.” He grinned, entirely without modesty. “You’re looking at the finest shot in all of Theïkós. It isn’t a boast if it happens to be true.”

“It’s still a boast,” Atlas said dryly, making no move to leave his seat. Then, with the grudging fairness of an older brother, he added, “Though not, I will admit, an untrue one. The bow is the one weapon in which my brother has ever bettered me.”

Lazaros pressed a hand to his heart. “Mark the hour. He confessed it aloud, and there were witnesses.” I giggled at that.

“Put a sword in his hand, however,” Atlas continued, unbothered, “and the natural order of things is swiftly restored.”

“Put a sword in his hand,” Lazaros confided to me in a loud whisper, “because it is the only weapon brutish enough to suit him.”

“And yet,” Atlas said mildly, “I am the brother still seated, and you are the one being sent off to practice with your bow and arrow.”

I sat up so fast I nearly knocked over my cup.

“Archery?”

Both brothers looked at me, startled by the sudden enthusiasm.

“I’ve always wanted to try archery,” I confessed, perhaps with a little too much eagerness. “Always. There was a bow at the base once, but Riley said I’d take someone’s eye out and never let me near it.” The memory came soft this time, fond rather than sharp. “I always thought I’d be good at it.”

I felt the change before I saw it.

Atlas had gone utterly still. Not the easy stillness of a man at rest, but the taut, dangerous quiet of one holding something on a very short leash. His jaw had set, a muscle feathering at its edge, and when I glanced up, the warmth had drained clean out of his eyes. Even his hand had tightened around his cup, a hairline crack appearing like a tiny storm had built inside.

“Riley.” My best friend’s name left him flat and cold, carved from stone. His hand closed over mine on the table, his grip just shy of too tight. “You will never again need that boy’s permission for anything. Do you understand me? You are here now.” His voice dropped, rough at the edges. “And here, there is nothing in any realm you cannot have, should you want it.”

It might have been the most romantic thing he had ever said to me.

Instead, all I heard beneath it was exactly how much Aster had told him… and how very near the surface that fury was still sitting.

Lazaros caught it as well.

I watched something knowing pass behind his eyes, quick and careful, and though I didn’t understand the whole of it, I understood enough to know he was deciding, in that very moment, to steer his brother back from a cliff edge the rest of us couldn’t quite see.

“Right,” he said briskly, clapping his hands together loudly enough to scatter the tension before it could settle. “On that thoroughly cheerful note,” he flashed me a grin, smooth as anything, the subject already changing beneath his hands, “A bow it is, then. Stick around, and maybe you’ll get your chance. The finest archer in the kingdom has been known to take on the occasional student… when the company is worth the trouble, of course.” He said, placing a hand to his stomach and bowing to me in a deeply respectful gesture.

Then he was loping off across the terrace and down toward the grounds, all that restless energy finally turned loose, leaving me alone at the table with his brother and the warm hush he left behind.

To my surprise, Atlas made no move to follow.

Instead, he reached over, plucked the last pastry from my plate as though he had every right to it, and settled deeper into his chair like a man with nowhere in all the realms he would rather be.