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Bait’s glowing body pulsated softly under the hanging sheets, which was the exact tip-off Callum needed to find his brother. There wasn’t much Ez didn’t like, there wasn’t anything he was frightened of or hid from, even the things he secretly wanted to. But he always hated today.
They’d built the fort a few weeks before when it was raining, and Ez was going stir-crazy, driving all the servants to distraction. It was not as good as the planning sketches. He’d wanted it to look like the Winter Lodge but it sort of looked like a cottage that melted, with towers of pillows held up by broom handles and blankets looping over each other in multicolored arcs. But it was huge and they’d worked hard, and somehow neither of them had wanted to take it down, and Callum found himself spending humid afternoons inside drawing.
“Hey!” Callum says, trying to hide his frustration and poking at what he thinks is his brother’s shoulder under a comforter. It’s his leg. Close enough. “Morning prayers are starting, we have to go. Aunt Amaya is here already. I think Gren's going to make some kind of secret Gren family recipe later? It was unclear, but he seems really excited to be here for some reason.”
“Nope,” says Ezran, shaking his head into the floor. “No. I’m not coming out until it’s over.”
Callum sighs. “If you don’t come out you won’t get to eat.”
“I’m not going to eat either! I’m not hungry.” Ezran’s stomach growls as if it hadn't been full only hours earlier. “Bait’s very hungry. I’m not hungry.”
“Okay, then I’m coming in,” Callum says, shimmying his way inside. It looks nice. Bait is kind of a good accessory for a haphazard living space. He always matches the decor. Callum wants to laugh at how miserable he is trying to look, with a pillow directly on top of his head and holding his arms over Bait like a stuffed toy, way more miserable than he actually is. “Why do you hate the Hanina so much, anyway? Is it because it’s called the Festival of Atonement? Because I am just now realizing how that sounds.”
“I don’t wanna apologize for anything,” Ezran says, with his usual perfect logic. “I don’t want to have done anything wrong. People are always mad at Dad unless he acts like he knows they’re going to be mad. Even Viren, and I hear Soren talking about it sometimes too. What if people think I’m a bad prince? Or,” he drums his knuckles against, Bait, who turns pale green, “A bad person?”
Callum thinks about that for a minute. He is positive this can’t afford to end like the Ezran Thinks He Can Understand What The Raccoons Say conversation or A Bunch of Jerk Kids Called Ezran Weird And Now I Have To Kill Them Ineffectively conversations. It’s one of those things he understands but doesn’t know how to express, and it’s somehow always on him to explain that stuff. He’d be bitter about it, if it didn’t break his heart a little.
“Grown-ups have a lot to apologize for. You and me, we’re kids, buddy. We haven’t done anything wrong yet.”
“You do wrong things all the time!” says Ezran. “No offense.”
“None taken, that’s a fair point. But you know that’s not what I mean—you haven’t done anything wrong yet. And if you have, it’s just not a big deal, no matter what the books say." Softer, then, "I promise I won't let anything bad get written down about you.”
“I never want to be a grown-up. I want to a veterinarian. Or a baker.”
A quick, ice cold thing catches Callum by surprise. You won’t, he thinks. You don’t get to decide what you want. You’ll be King.
“Why not both at the same time?” he says. “You can own the first ever animal hospital slash bakery in Katolis.”
“It has to be vegetarian,” says Ezran firmly, who has only recently discovered what vegetarian means. That was a long month for everyone.
“Anything else would be upsetting, sure,” Callum agrees. Ezran’s big blue eyes finally meet his. Callum curls his middle finger and his ring finger down, the others pointing up, shakes his hand back and forth, faster and faster, waits until Ezran does the same. It was one of the things that used to calm him down, afterwards. Another Harvest Month, when they filled the courtyard with firelight and Ezran kept asking where Mom was, where was Mom? and wouldn’t listen to the answers everyone gave him.
“Fine,” Ezran says, with no actual fight in his voice. “I’ll come. But I’m going to tell Dad that you said all grown-ups are all bad people, and so is Soren. And you have to draw me whatever I want later, even if it’s a horse.”
“Got it, your imperial majesty,” groans Callum, poking him in the ribs.
“I’m not sure Soren knows he’s a bad person,” he adds hastily. “So let’s have that part be our secret.”