Chapter Text
Simon was not expecting any kind of pomp or ceremony. He expected to grab his soldier’s pack, descend the many sets of stairs to the harbor, stroll up the gangplank and pray that the monster from his nightmares did not swallow him whole on the spot.
But there was a special service in the Garden at dawn. There was a special sermon, dedicated to extending the Last Tree’s roots further than ever before. He was given gifts: The seeds that would be planted during the wedding ceremony, consecrated ritual tools for the planting, an entire trunk full of clothing (who needed an entire trunk’s worth of clothes?), and worst of all, a set of ceremonial armor. It was still mostly the dull-black of proper armor, but intertwining designs of steel and copper had been etched into the breastplate and elsewhere - leaves and roots and branches and the tree, the tree, the tree.
A dozen soldiers would be joining him and Olesya on the journey, sent to become Simon’s own personal protection detail - The Heart Guard. There were a few familiar faces, but most of them he did not know.
At that point, Simon almost suspected The Father of giving a shit. But Olesya confirmed his suspicions. “You see the squishy bodied fellow over there in the blue? That is the Franciscan Consul. I hope he liked the show.”
Of course. This was international politics now. Couldn’t neglect one of the flock with others watching, even if that one was the sacrificial lamb.
But the sky had been blue as the sails of The Delphinium caught the wind, and the towering cliffs of Arboretum looked like just another mossy rock in a choppy sea. Simon did not think he would miss the sight all that much, except that now there was just a stretch of open ocean in the ship’s wake. Now there was nothing solid to blame if he saw dark shapes in the water.
“Commander.” Simon flinched at the noise before Lt. Ilyukhina even managed to put a hand on his shoulder. “Sorry.” she apologized quickly, drawing the hand back.
“What, Lieutenant?” Simon asked, aware that they were not alone on the deck - full of sailors scurrying at their tasks and the new Heart-Guard lounging like soldiers waiting for their turn on patrol.
“It does not have to be right now, sir.” Olesya lowered her voice, looking cautiously blank. But there was a cluster of small metal sticks in her hand, and the lack of an insubordinate grin was telling.
Simon’s gut sank. This was traditional for a new commanding officer. Show us what you're capable of. Show us what kind of fighter you are. Completing the rite would tell him whether these new bodyguards could actually be trusted to follow his commands in battle. He would know if he had their respect. But while Simon had kept up with a heavily-modified training routine after his brush with death, he had not fought anyone in a long time.
But it would be better to find out before he ended up on foreign soil with a squad that had no trust.
“No, let’s get it over with.” Simon said, adjusting the band that held his hair out of his eyes, trying to hide the fact that he was already beginning to sweat.
Olesya let out a whistle that made all the soldiers snap their heads up like dogs. “Heart Guard! Form up!”
Simon took his time undoing the laces of his jerkin, knowing that Olesya was passing out one of the numbered sticks to each soldier. Simon wriggled out of the jerkin and the shirt underneath, taking a deep breath as he heard the rattle of the dice on the deck. If they were going to be his new squad, they would see the scars eventually, the ones that covered much of his left side, his stump, his face, his neck. Simon kicked off his shoes, stripping off his stockings, knowing that one among the squad was doing the same. They would see where the damage done to his neck made his tattoo unrecognizable. They would see, and they would know.
“Ready, Commander?” Olesya asked.
Ready.”
He wasn’t. Not really. But the soldier across from him, also barefoot and stripped down to his breeches - he would later introduce himself as Daewon - slipped into a wrestling stance when Olesya called to begin, and Simon did the same.
Missing an arm fucking sucked. Simon’s body felt lopsided, too heavy and too light, in trouble almost from the start. But he hadn’t let that fucking fish get him without a fight, and Simon was too damned stubborn to let some muscleheaded hazing ritual keep him down for long. Simon was learning then, and learning fast - how to slip out of holds that would have kept a more-whole man locked down, how to leverage his legs more than his arms.
The fact that Simon managed to pin Daewon for the three-count was as much a surprise to him as anyone else. He rolled to his feet and offered a hand to help Daewon up. The soldier nodded a little, working out his shoulder joint.
“Alright.” Simon said to the others, catching his breath. “Anyone else want to try not pulling their punches this time?”
That got him a laugh. This next roll of the dice drew the lot of a tall, highlander woman - Ruth - with intertwining tattoos in dark blue along her cheeks and shoulders. She managed to get him pinned no less than four times for a two-count, but Simon found out how to thrash his way out of it before the three. When she finally got him pinned for good, it was because he was worn out - embarrassingly fast, he would need to train up his stamina again - not for lack of perseverance.
Ruth laughed as she helped Simon to his feet, clapping him on the shoulder. “With all due respect, you’re a slippery bastard, sir.”
Simon felt the corner of his mouth quirk despite himself. “That’s mighty close to insubordination, soldier.” he said, but there was no bite in it.
Another of the guards, a lean beanpole of a man with a shock of bright gingery hair - was it Matteo? - grinned, and said, “I thought we were all here because we’re a pack of insubordinate assholes, Sir.”
Everyone went still. Matteo had said the quiet part that no one was supposed to say out loud.
Simon suddenly understood why he’d been given an honor-guard at all: because the wars were over, and now that Edenne didn’t quite need every soldier, the Edennese navy needed something to do with every idiot and asshole they couldn’t just throw into a battle and hope their enemies eventually culled them from the flock. These were the fuck-ups, the leftovers, the ones who talked back, or said the quiet part out loud, who disobeyed orders they did not agree with - not badly enough to be brought up for treason, but maliciously compliant enough that no other commanding officer wanted them.
In short, Simon had been stuck with the dregs.
“Well.” he looked each of them in the eye, including Olesya, who was starting to smile. She knew him too well. “Now you’re my pack of insubordinate assholes,” he grumbled.
That got him a cheer and peals of relieved laughter and a few more pats on the back, including one from Olesya, who grinned at him.
They’d seen the scars. They knew he’d Seen Some Shit, even if they didn’t know the details. They knew that he wouldn’t take the easy route and they knew he was too stupid to give up fighting to survive. They knew he wasn’t an uptight asshole and they knew he was theirs. They knew.
Hope widened a crack in the cobblestones of Simon’s heart, putting out a leaf where nothing had a right to grow.
That was not the only hazing ritual in store for him, however. On their second afternoon, Olesya chalked two squares on the deck, apologizing cheerily to the sailors next on swabbing duty. “Alright, Commander, time to get you ready for the scandalous, sinful heathen practices of your new home.”
When she told him what the squares were for, Simon blinked. “...what, in public?”
“All the time.” Olesya grinned. “Nearly every social engagement - the ones at night, anyway.”
“...in front of everyone?” Simon felt his ears getting hot.
“Salacious, isn’t it?”
Simon swallowed hard. Edenne did not really do dancing. Dancing was usually a euphemism for something else.
Seeing the look on Simon’s face, Olesya finally had pity on her Prince. “Easy, Commander. Much of it is pretty tame. Or rather…it is only as tantalizing as you make it. Here, let me show you.”
Olesya started with the footwork, using the squares as a guide. Right foot stepped back, left foot out to the side, right joins left. Left foot advances, right steps to the side, left joins right. Repeat. “Think about the forms they teach us when we learn the sword, yes? Retreat with the right and lead with the left. One-two-three, one-two-three…”
Once Simon felt he had the pattern down, Olesya added the ‘partner’ aspect to a partnered dance. “One is the lead and one is the follow, yes? It will be easiest for you to follow, since much of the direction is given through the left hand. Now, your lead will put their right hand here, at your shoulderblade.”
The designated placement was around the edges of the scarred tissue, and to her credit, Olesya was quite gentle - as if it might still hurt somehow - leaving plenty of space between their bodies.
“Your left arm should be placed on top of that one - the hand would go on the shoulder, but…can you rest the stump there? Just like that, yes. Now I hold out my left hand like this, at about shoulder height, and you take my hand with your right. There we go. Now, we make certain we are slightly off-centered so we do not step on each other’s feet, no like this, put your leg between my legs.”
One of the soldiers whooped teasingly. Olesya laughed.
Simon’s head snapped in their direction. “Drop and give me twenty.”
“Awwww.” the soldier dropped to the deck and began doing pushups.
Olesya jerked her chin, drawing Simon’s attention back to her. “Alright, now we try it together. Let me guide you. See? It’s not so bad. It is like fighting someone, but in tempo!”
Simon let himself get drawn into the pattern of it. Once he got into the rhythm, it actually wasn’t that hard at all. Not looking at his feet was a challenge for a while, and not mouthing “one two three” along with Olesya and keeping the count in his head proved to be another hurdle. Then she added the spin, which was not easy, especially on the deck of a ship, but soon enough, Simon was almost sure he could manage a passable waltz without embarrassing two nations or himself.
“And I only have to do it the once, right?”
“Da. As part of marriage ceremony. After the planting, you and your betrothed crown each other with flowers and do the dance. Something something Franciscan custom, something.” Olesya idly waved her hand. “Ambassador Thatcher and Chancellor Stratt managed to find way to honor traditions without taking five hours to do so.”
“Is that before or after staying up all night to guard a patch of dirt?” Simon raised an eyebrow.
“After!” Olesya grinned. “That part is just for us barbaric Edennese.”
“Oh good.” Simon sighed.
“Don’t worry, Commander, I’ll help.”
Simon grunted. An uncertainty was growing in him, and somehow his anxiety mounted the more he looked over the rail at the boundless seas and didn’t see a long, dark shape, or a stretch of blood-red water, which just seemed unfair. Maybe it was dead. If it wasn't, hopefully it was a long way from here and he’d be safely back on shore by the time it found him again. (As if a curse was the sort of thing you could escape by distance.)
But focusing on the ‘mission’ ahead (for lack of a better word) was helping Simon avoid dwelling on the convenient absence of horror. For the first time, Simon let his mind drift to the other person he’d be, well, planting seeds with in a few days. (Which also tended to be a euphemism that made Olesya cackle.) But in this case, Literally.
Simon had heard the masculine pronouns and tried to figure out… why them? Sex in Edenne generally came in two varieties - the procreative kind, because an army needed new soldiers and trees needed new gardeners every so often. Or the other way, which was - in Simon’s admittedly very limited experience - soldiers comforting each other. Physical contact helped soothe the horrors of war, and release was good for the body.
(There was probably a third variety, and that was whatever Olesya got down to in her spare time, but Simon didn’t want to think too hard about that.)
Sure, Simon also knew this whole arranged-marriage process was largely political, and there were ways to continue the bloodline that did not necessarily require bodies to be in the correct configurations for baby-making. It still made Simon wonder why his fiance had been chosen.
(That way, maybe Simon could figure out why Francisco was actually accepting Edenne’s castoffs, AKA himself.)
“What do we know about him?” he finally asked Olesya.
“Hmm? You mean your fiance?” his lieutenant teased, truly putting the ‘sister’ in ‘sister-at-arms’.
Simon glared. She grinned. Fortunately for Simon, Olesya was merciful. “He is the crown prince, with no siblings, a few cousins here and there, mostly little. I have not met him, myself. Apparently he is not much of one for parties - you have that in common. Sickly as a child, but presumably healthy enough now. I’ve heard he is a scholarly sort - he spent a long time at University. Like a long, long time.”
“How long is a long, long time?” said Simon, finding himself mimicking her inflection against his will.
“Long enough to get three different pieces of parchment that say ‘Doctor’ on them.”
A smart and studious man. And they paired him off with someone like Simon, a barely-literate ex-soldier. That was…a choice.
“Huh.”
“Also,” Olesya leaned in, eyes sparkling. “I have heard he is pretty cute, you know, if you like nerds.”
Simon raised an eyebrow.
Olesya held up her hands. “Look, I don’t know what your type is, exactly, but it can’t hurt if he is easy on the eyes, right? Especially the wedding night, yes?”
Simon felt his face running hot. “You’re an unrepentant lech, Lieutenant.”
“Just saying.” Olesya laughed, repenting nothing.
-------
His Royal Highness Prince Doctor Ryland Grace woke up from a dream about dancing with people-sized knives and realized very quickly that he was having one of his bad days. The kind where getting out of bed seemed like some kind of impossible barrier.
He tried to follow Doctor Armando’s advice. He bathed. He put on one of his softest doublets - an ivory affair with foxes embroidered on it in russet and black. Ryland had a leisurely breakfast and heroically did not succumb to flopping uselessly back into bed.
(The fact that the Marys had already been in to make said bed, sweep the fireplaces, bring hot water for the bath, take away hot water from the bath, dust, etc, helped. Ryland could not be a useless lump in a room full of movement and activity.)
He went for his morning ride, letting Marissa stroll, trot, and canter along their usual route without much guidance from Ryland. The dappled grey mare was a gentle beast, and once they reached the laboratory, she let Ryland achingly roll off her back and hobble her without much fuss other than snuffling at his hair.
It took Ryland far too long to realize that it was because the soap he'd used for his hair smelled like apples.
“Alright, greedy.” he accused affectionately. “There's clover and golden poppies there in the meadow, don't go too far.”
Marissa gave him an unimpressed look and wandered off to do just that.
Don't go too far.
His caretakers used to say that to him. Nannies, Governesses, Dr. Armando, Ser Carl… Don’t go too far. When he was younger and wanted to ride across all of Francisco, when he talked of finding a way for humans to fly, when he wanted to read every book in the palace library and any discipline anyone was willing to teach him. When he started studying the craftsmen who plied their trades on the palace grounds - blacksmiths and farriers, carpenters, glassblowers, . When he wanted to push his sickly body far past the limits of what it felt like giving him, he was warned: don’t go too far.
What they had meant was Stay Safe. What Ryland had heard was Stay Small.
Ryland hadn’t wanted to listen. Not until after the scholars’ symposium where he got a bit heated and might have called the Astronomer Royal a “staggering waste of aether.”
The deans, kindly, and with the most genteel manner, told him, in other words, to fuck off and go back to the palace, and that was more or less the end of Ryland’s time at university.
So he’d gone back to the Palace and had his own laboratory built, because that would not be a waste of aether or any other alchemical principle. And while there had been many bad days, eventually Ryland’s natural curiosity overpowered whatever limits he had decided were stupid. And Gigi had looked at him, and looked at the quilts and blankets and tapestries she had made during the years while she was more or less ignored by her kingly husband. Queen Gloria had told her concerned advisors that there were many worse ways of waiting around to become a King than advancing the scientific progress and education of the kingdom.
And so it went.
Ryland’s current project started two months ago. He had been sitting at breakfast in the Queen’s parlor, chatting with Gigi and Stratt, buttering his toast, when Stratt handed the first reports to the Queen about the blight on starwheat. Something was infecting wheat crops in their southern reaches. The plants were not growing as they should, or would grow and then stop. Instead of beginning green and turning gold as time marched on, green became a sickly purple, then brown, then black, then nothing. People called it a curse. An act of the gods. Some thought it a disease. Some blamed the Edennese, because they had been the enemy so long it was easier to blame them on principle than to actually stop and think logically for two seconds.
Star-wheat was one of the staple crops upon which the kingdom’s food supply rested. If there was not enough to harvest, then it would be a hard winter for everyone. The Consolidation Wars had ended, finally, with Edenne not accepting defeat so much as declaring a cessation of hostilities, but it appeared Francisco’s trials were far from over.
“Can I have a sample?” Ryland had asked.
Stratt looked at him. “Why?”
“So I can find out what’s actually causing it.”
She nodded. “I will see what I can do.”
And because she was Chancellor Stratt, a jar was delivered to Ryland’s laboratory within a week. It had been enclosed in oilcloth, wrapped in straw and lambs’ wool for the journey, sealed with wax, and inscribed with a few symbols for protection and warding off curses.
Ser Carl spent a lot of time during those first weeks listening to Ryland ramble for an hour at a time before occasionally saying something sensible like “but why isn’t it infecting other plants?” or “Have you thought about checking the weather reports?” or “Does it need to be hot or cold?” until Ryland put down whatever he was holding, having hit some kind of “Eureka” moment and moved on to the next phase of the project.
One day, Ryland burst into the privy council chamber with a well-sealed specimen jar in his hand. Chancellor Stratt and about ten other officials stood at his entrance, all eyes on the Prince.
"IT'S A MOLD!" Ryland proclaimed excitedly, with the tones that people normally said “It’s a girl!”, as if a baby had been born and he and Ser Carl were the proud fathers.
He was met with blank stares.
"Beg pardon, your highness?" Chancellor Stratt said, giving him her Full Attention. Normally this would be terrifying, but Roland was flying too high on the wings of discovery to care.
"It's mold," Ryland said, at a much more reasonable volume. "The blight, the one that's been killing all the Star-wheat? It’s a mold, like mildew. A fungus."
He held up the jar for her (and ...whoever these other people were) for them to see, as the purpley-heathery gunk slowly spread atop some other substance.
"That is good to know." Stratt said, a kind of cautious hope in her eyes as she looked at Ryland. Then, because Eva Stratt knew how to reward the curiosity of a brilliant mind, she said: “See what else you can find out, Your Highness.”
He found out that the blight liked rain. Warm rain. Like, for existence, the kind of rain you got in the unusually-rainy spring that Francisco was having this year. Ryland had finally gotten to the point where he could put a drop of the blight into a starwheat porridge and get it to grow consistently, provided the jars were kept in the sunny southern windows.
Ryland was almost to the point where he could start implementing solutions to see if they could destroy the blight without harming the wheat. For now, he was firmly using his process to attempt to distract himself from his impending doom marriage.
There was insistent knocking at the laboratory door.
Ryland got up to head to the door and heard another burst of insistent knocking.
Oh gods, Ser Carl never knocked like that. Nor did the Marys. Was there some kind of emergency? Brief flashes of a dozen different horrible possibilities did a mummers’ play in his mind before Ryland tore the door open and found himself face to face with three scroll-cases thick enough to kill a man with.
Then Ryland looked down and found himself face to face with Rocky. The Eridian looked different in the daylight: A thickly muscled build, green eyes, a frizz of dark brown curls atop his head, skin of ruddy orange with bands of brown, like unpolished tiger’s-eye. A flower was incongruously tucked into the open collar of his doublet, a soft rust-brown slashed all over to reveal green cloth underneath. A pale ruffle of lace stopped the sleeves at his elbow, leaving his tattooed forearms bare. He had the three heavy scroll-cases balanced over his strong shoulder like they were nothing.
More importantly, however, Rocky was giving him a very dubious expression. “Friend Grace lie to Rocky,” he accused.
“I…what?” said Ryland, very intelligently, still wondering how Rocky had even found Grace’s laboratory. There had been vague plans to meet and go over schematics, yes, but…. Oh no. Ryland felt the universal panic of all who have promised to clean a space in perpetuity but have not cleaned even when they knew company was coming over.
“Friend Grace no tell Rocky Grace is Prince Grace. Why Prince Grace say Doctor Grace?”
Ryland winced a little “Well technically, I am a doctor. Three times over, in fact.”
“But also Prince.” said Rocky, who was not going to let Ryland off on a technicality. “Which Grace no tell Rocky. Grace no give Rocky full name.”
“Yes.” said Ryland, who had already felt defeated when he woke up this morning. And also, “I’m sorry.”
“Hmm.” Rocky narrowed his green eyes at Ryland, as if debating whether to forgive him or not. He glanced past Ryland’s shoulder. “This is laboratory, yes?”
“Ye- wait, what are you?” Ryland blinked as he was gently pushed back, Rocky breezing into the room like a localized tornado.
“What this? Astrolabe? Good good. Bad design, but good to have. Ooh, Grace like bugs!”
“What - oh gods!”
Ryland scrambled, but Rocky had already set his scroll cases down on the only clear surface - all one foot of it - and was poking around the lab, touching things, or nearly touching things that were balanced very precisely and would topple if disturbed - the sort of thing Ryland had put there months ago and should have cleaned up then, but had not touched it since.
“Ooh, what this?”
Horrified, Ryland saw the trajectory of Hurricane Rocky and moved to stand in front of the collection of blight-jars, holding up his hands. “DON’T.” he said, forcefully enough that Rocky stopped. “Don’t touch.” said Ryland, more gently heart pounding against his ribcage.
Rocky pulled back half a step and peered over Ryland’s shoulder, tilting his head in curiosity.
“What are those?”
“They’re samples of the starwheat blight.”
Rocky’s eyes went wide. “The thing that kills starwheat.”
“Yes.”
“Grace just…have? Why?”
“To figure out how to stop it.” Ryland said, feeling his heart rate start to come down, finally. He let his spectacles hang from one ear and rubbed his eyes for a moment.
Rocky was watching him intently, and Ryland could almost see the gears beginning to turn in that brilliant little mind of his. “Good. Good good good. Rocky help.”
Ryland blinked. “Rocky help?”
“Yes! Rocky help fix!” Rocky grinned and shook Ryland by the shoulders. “Rocky best at fixing! Grace see!”
Ryland blinked. He had not expected the little man’s hands to be so warm, nor for that touch to have left a ghost of that warmth behind when Rocky let go. “Tell Rocky everything. Everything Grace know so far.”
Rocky turned to the long worktable, picking among the detritus for something to write on and with.
Okay. Just talk about the science. Ryland could do that. And he did! For a good half an hour, he paced around and filled Rocky in on all the developments so far- figuring out how to make the blight happen on purpose so they knew more about what caused it. “- only it turns out that the weather that, you know, normally makes a wheat crop grow really well, only it’s just slightly too warm and too wet and the blight is also using that to grow and - “
Rocky’s hand had gone still - suspiciously still - in Ryland’s peripheral vision. “What?” he asked.
“What is that? What are you - “
Ryland put his glasses back on and blinked. Apparently, while he’d been talking, Rocky had started reorganizing the laboratory. Books and papers were all piled in a heap on the worktable and Rocky had somehow found every tool in the lab and was organizing them all by size.
“What did you do?” Ryland stared in horror.
Rocky, who had been making gentle words of encouragement while Ryland rambled and saying things like “yeah” and “uh-huh” and “go on”, finally snapped. He slapped his hands on the table and began pointing. “DIRTY!” - a cup of tea gone cold and half a scone Ryland had picked at the afternoon before when he had no appetite - “DIRTY!” - cobwebs and dust all over a set of complicated glass jars - “DIRTY! HOW CAN GRACE FUNCTION LIKE THIS?”
“WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?”
“WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?”
“I HAD A SYSTEM!”
------
Two hours later, Ryland and Rocky sat on the floor, looking up at a brand-new shelving unit that perfectly nestled into the southernmost window. Rows of blight-jars lined the shelves, neatly labeled rather than scrawled upon. (For all that Rocky’s grasp of spoken Franciscan could use some work, his handwriting was textbook-perfect.) There was plenty of room for more jars and more experiments. A sketch of an updated laboratory - with room for a workstation for Rocky, Ryland had noticed - was being worked on in Rocky’s lap.
They had fallen into the quiet exhaustion that followed a milestone of progress, and Ryland was fighting to hold on to the satisfaction of it while his body complained.
“I admit it,” he caved. “It is better this way.”
Rocky shrugged. “Rocky fix,” he said, even doodling the columns and the arches and the panels in the glass dome above them.
Ryland nodded to himself. Maybe he could use a lab partner, even one as imperious and commanding as Rocky. Or a friend, a voice in his head that sounded very much like his grandmother pointed out.
“Grace?” Rocky asked, tentatively breaking the silence.
“Yeah, Rocky?”
“Why Grace no say Prince?” Rocky asked, still softly. The hurt that had been there seemed gone, leaving only curiosity in its wake.
Ryland hesitated. Did he admit that he was running away? That Rocky had accidentally thwarted his chances of escape? That Ryland was about to be stuck in an arranged marriage and the pressure of it was crushing him like a grape?
No, he settled for the thing that topped it all. “Because sometimes ‘Prince’ is too heavy.”
“Prince is too heavy?”
“Yeah,” Ryland sighed.
Rocky nodded to himself. “Prince is…burden?”
“Kingdom is heavy burden.” Ryland said, scrubbing a hand over his face. “There’s uh…it’s a lot. A lot of people, a lot of land. A lot of ways things can go wrong. And everyone will be looking to me for answers.”
“Prince Grace become King Grace one day.” Rocky nodded to himself. “Grace rather be Doctor Grace instead?”
“At least ‘Doctor’ is a title I earned.” Ryland reached up to the worktable behind them and grabbed a pile of papers to start sorting. “I went to university a long time to be a triple doctor.”
“Doctor-doctor-doctor Grace.”
Ryland chuckled. “Yeah. That gets a bit long though, so Doctor Grace is fine. ‘Prince’ is just something I got from having the right parents.”
“Prince-Doctor Grace.” Rocky said, rubbing out a bit of charcoal dust with an already-blackened thumb.
“That’s me.”
“One day King-Doctor Grace.”
“Hopefully not anytime soon - woah!” half the papers in his lap slid to the floor, ruining his very important pile-system and making a mess. He sighed. If he’d been by himself, it might have been the kind of mess he just left for his future-self to deal with. But Rocky had already set his sketch aside to help pick up, so Ryland dove back into the fray. Somehow, in one afternoon, he and Rocky already had found a place where they could work on a project together in silence, and something in Grace’s heart thrummed happily at the feeling.
Rocky picked up a piece of something from the floor. “Friend Grace, what is this?”
Ryland looked over. It was the sketch of Prince Simon, ‘The Butcher', in all his cocky, irritated glory. That happy hum turned to anxiety all over again. And after he’d been blissfully distracted from the whole arranged-marriage business, it all came back, like acid reflux putting a sick feeling in his stomach and chest.
Ryland managed to choke out the word “Fiancé” and tried to go back to sorting papers.
Rocky let out a wolf whistle.
Ryland felt his face grow hot, dropping the stack he’d just gathered. “Rocky!” Ryland scolded, scandalized.
“What? Rocky can appreciate art. Rocky no want pinned to Rocky wall, but can appreciate art, yes yes yes.” Rocky grinned.
Ryland groaned and hid his bright red face in his hands. Maybe this ‘lab partner’ arrangement was a terrible idea after all.