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Cyrus Wyvernwind is four years old when his younger brother is born, and he’s terrified . He’s been studying with his tutor for hours, but the teacher waves him outside once they hear the news. Cyrus hurries to his mother’s tent, heart pounding in his ears. The labor had been hard on his mother, Cyrus knew, even if he didn’t really understand what that meant. Still, that isn’t why he was scared. What if his brother didn’t like him? What if Cyrus couldn’t help him, protect him?
He wavers near the entrance, hand hesitating in front of the tent flap before he shakes himself. There’s the noise of a baby babbling inside, and it’s enough to shake him out of his stupor. He’s never been the type to hesitate, so he steps inside, meeting his mother’s gaze from where she was still sitting up on her bed. He immediately freezes, eyes wide and guilty, but his mother just laughs.
“Cyrus,” his mother whispers, “What are you doing in here? I thought you were with the tutors?”
“I wanted to see!” Cyrus whispers back excitedly, craning his neck to try to get a good look at the bundle in his mother’s arms.
There’s a second where he thinks his mother might send him away, but she smiles tiredly and relents, nodding at him. Smiling, Cyrus climbs carefully onto the bed and finally sets eyes on his baby brother. The baby, which had been babbling since before Cyrus arrived, finally stops making noise, staring at his brother’s green eyes with his own wide blue ones.
His mother lets out a sigh of relief. “He’s certainly a performer, this one.”
Cyrus holds out a finger and his brother clasps it, easy as breathing. They both smile.
“What’s his name? Has Father seen him?”
His mother smiles easily, but he can see the questions exhaust her. Around them, a few of her attendants bustle around, one placing a cool cloth on her forehead.
“Well, my Little Sun, I’m sure your Father will come in later, he’s in a meeting now. There’s rather a lot of meetings as I couldn’t attend them this week. And as for a name…”
She trails off, using her hand that’s not holding the baby to smooth Cyrus’ hair away from his forehead.
“His name is Brontë Secondsun. Brontë, for the storm within our people. And Secondsun, for you will always be able to find a second in him, and you will always be able to depend on him. ”
Cyrus smiles brightly, Brontë’s hand still clutching his finger. His brother seems impossibly small. “And he can depend on me, right?”
His mother laughs. Cyrus loves when she laughs, a sound like shattering glass. It’s a sound unbecoming of a leader, but he loves it because he laughs like his mother.
He’s been hearing it less and less these days.
“Of course, my Little Sun,” she presses a kiss to his head. “Of course.”
Cyrus is nine years old when Brontë first picks up an instrument. The older boy plays, of course. He can carry a tune and strum on his lute to the satisfaction of his tutors, and his parents. He’d rather swordfight than practice music, though, and it shows.
Brontë is never like that. From the moment he picks up his sitar, it’s clear that the music was always meant for him. Cyrus stares at him in awe as his brother picks out notes, playing a tune simply from ear. The notes linger in the air.
Cyrus wants to follow them, chase them down below the Squall, to whichever cities lie below. He wants people to hear the music that his brother is creating from his fingertips.
Cyrus can play the lute. But Brontë becomes the music in a way that Cyrus would never dream of doing.
When Brontë sets down the sitar, he grins widely and turns to Cyrus.
“Did you hear it?” he asks excitedly.
Cyrus grins back at his little brother. “You were incredible .”
Cyrus is twelve years old when he gets into his first serious fight with Brontë. Years from now, he won’t even remember the start of the argument, but now he’s screaming at his brother, cheeks a shade of dark blue.
“Bron, I just wanted to LOOK at it!” He tries to grab the instrument from his brother’s hands, but the younger boy yells and yanks it away from him.
“NO, you’re going to break it like you break everything!” Brontë holds the sitar closer to his chest. “You killed Rocky last week!”
A servant tries to pull Brontë to the side, but he pushes them off. He’s strong for his age, especially when angry. Cyrus isn’t any better.
“I didn’t kill him! I didn’t!” He reaches out for the instrument one last time, and this time, his hand connects with the dandi and he grabs for anything he can reach onto.
There’s a resounding crack, and both the boys drop their hands in horror. The instrument falls to the ground with a crash, broken at the neck. The strings are askew, one snapped clean apart. Cyrus looks at his brother in horror. There are tears welling up in Brontë’s eyes, as he kneels slowly, gathering the pieces of instrument in his hands.
Numbly, Cyrus kneels and tries to pick up a piece, but Brontë slaps his hand away. There are tears trailing down his face, perfect tracks that splash down onto the cured wood of the broken sitar.
Their father whisks into the room, robes flowing gently around him as if suspended by air itself. He looks down at the broken instrument, then sighs and sends the servants away with a flick of his wrist.
He kneels down next to the boys, a wrinkle forming between his brow. Cyrus’s breath catches in his throat. He can’t have done this. He has to be perfect.
“What happened?” his father asks, a hint of exasperation in his voice. Cyrus swallows hard and does the only thing he can think of.
He lies.
“Brontë broke it! He was trying to keep it away from me!”
Brontë stares at him, eyes wide in betrayal. “I did not! You broke it!”
Their father sighed. “Enough.” He raised his hands in a distinctive gesture, one that Cyrus recognized. Brontë didn’t, though, and his eyes widened as he was hit by the truth spell. Normally, it was hard to feel when a truth spell affected you, but Brontë and Cyrus had studied enough about it.
Cyrus felt it like a physical weight on his chest, pressing his vocal chords against his throat. He shivered.
“Brontë, were you trying to keep the sitar away from Cyrus?”
Cyrus could see Brontë’s mouth work as he struggled to answer anything. He hung his head, not willing to look his brother in the eye.
“Yes,” Brontë says in a small voice, “I was.”
Their father sighs. “I’m sorry it’s broken then. We’ll put it aside, but don’t lie to me again.” He turns to Cyrus. “Don’t fight with your brother, Cyrus. You’re older, you should know better.”
Cyrus nods, head still pointed towards the floor.
He’s afraid that if he opens his mouth, he might say something he regrets.
So he keeps quiet, and stares at the ground, until his brother finally looks away.
Cyrus is fifteen years old and brilliant, until he’s not. He’d been doing well in lessons just a few months before, but some sort of switch had flipped and he just hadn’t been able to focus. He’d tried. He’d tried so hard. But he had heard his parents whispering about what his tutors had been saying.
He had heard what they had said about Brontë, too.
Logically, it’s unfair for him to be jealous of his little brother. But Brontë is just so good in so many ways that Cyrus will never be. Cyrus could never hold it against his brother, but there are some moments at which he wonders if his parents wish that Brontë was the first born.
Quietly, secretly, there are some moments where he wishes the same.
Cyrus is nineteen when Brontë runs away for the first time. Brontë and his parents never fought , at least not in the conventional sense of the word. It would be hidden in intense glances and refused touches, in the silent treatment or a backhanded compliment. Cyrus didn’t know how his little brother managed to go toe to toe with his parents like this. Didn’t he see that Cyrus felt the same as him? They all felt a little caged in the Silken Squall, but this was their duty . Cyrus had to be here and learn to rule, to advise the people. Brontë had to do the same, god forbid anything happen to Cyrus. Still, he didn’t really know how lucky he was. Mother and Father didn’t pay attention to him as much, sure, but they were more casual with him than they would ever hope to be with Cyrus.
Brontë saw it differently. He’s in his tent, shoving his things into a satchel that seems impossibly small when Cyrus comes in. They both freeze for a moment and stare at each other, surprise mirrored on their faces. Then Brontë shakes himself out of the stupor and continues shoving clothes in his satchel.
Cyrus stays frozen.
“You’re really leaving?” he whispers, too quiet for Brontë to hear. In the quiet of the tent, Brontë hears it anyway. His head jerks up for a second, but he doesn’t respond.
He’s shorter than Cyrus is, but not by much. Just last week, his mother had been joking at dinner that he’d overtake his older brother soon, and tower over them all. His father had laughed.
Where had it gone wrong?
Cyrus does the only thing he can think of, the only thing he’s really good at: he speaks. (He begs. He’s not so far gone as to not admit it.)
“Brontë, think about what you’re doing.” He pauses, swallows hard. “You can’t leave the Squall, the family needs you.”
Brontë scoffs.
“Because it’s all about the family , right? Never about what I want, or what you want. Just the Wyvernwinds.” He turns around and faces Cyrus again, and there’s a bitterness in his face that Cyrus knows all too well.
He hides it better. It’s not a point of pride.
Brontë sighs, finally, a crack in the anger giving way to helplessness. “Mom and Dad won’t notice I’m gone. They went out on their own once, they can’t fault me for doing the same.”
Cyrus runs a hand over his hair. It’s pristine. “They can .” he says simply, but Brontë has already set his jaw and slung his satchel over his shoulder. His lute is strapped along his back, the one Father had given him for his tenth birthday. Cyrus swallows hard.
Brontë means every word he says. He’s not like Cyrus. The last thing Cyrus wants is for his little brother to turn into him.
Cyrus might have been able to shine, but Brontë? Brontë could soar. Cyrus is the firstborn, but he would always be the second best. It wasn’t something to be angry about, or even jealous. It was simply a fact. Cyrus has the power, but Brontë has the passion, the reason to use it.
But none of that matters.
Because Cyrus is the heir, and Brontë is the second son. They’re both Wyvernwinds.
And that was all they ever would be.
“Wait here,” Cyrus says suddenly, breaking the silence. “I won’t stop you from leaving, you have my word. I just… want to give you something. Please .”
Brontë looks him in the eye for a second, and Cyrus stares back. He wants to tell his little brother about his regrets, about his dreams, about how he missed him, even standing right in front of him. He says nothing.
Brontë gives him the slightest of nods, and Cyrus ducks out of the tent without a backward glance, making a beeline straight to his own. He doesn’t see either of his parents on the way, which is a blessing in and of itself. If they’d asked him, he’s not sure if he’d be able to lie. He can charm anyone other than his family. But for all he’s worth, he can’t make a person stay when they don’t want to.
So instead, he reaches underneath his bed, pulls out the boots that he’s only supposed to use on ceremonial occasions. The small opalescent wings shimmer a bit under the candlelight, just a hint of their arcane presence. Cyrus had gotten these boots when he was fifteen. Brontë had begged to try them out, and Cyrus hadn’t let him.
Wiping the last dregs of the memory from his mind, Cyrus hurries back to his brothers tent, boots slung unceremoniously in a sack over his back. A few people on the streets notice him and wave. He waves back.
He half expects his brother to be gone when he returns, but Brontë’s there looking more agitated than ever. Cyrus tosses him the sack and it hits him in the chest and falls to the floor.
“What was that for?” Brontë complains, rubbing his chest. He picks up the sack and opens it a little bit, then shakes his head and extends the bag back to Cyrus. “I can’t take this, Cyrus.”
“Look, you always wanted it, right?” Cyrus tries to smile. He succeeds. “I don’t use it anyway, come on.”
Brontë doesn’t look convinced. “It’s a family heirloom.” He opens the sack and looks into it again. “Mom and Dad gave it to you.”
“Mother and Father barely remember I have it.” Cyrus closes his brother’s fist over the bag. “If it keeps you safe, I want you to have it. Just in case.”
Brontë gives him another long look, then nods. There’s a sentence on the tip of his tongue, and for a moment, Cyrus thinks he’s going to stay quiet.
“You could come with me, you know.”
It’s such a novel idea that Cyrus almost laughs, but it turns bitter in his throat and settles into a half-smile. “You know I couldn’t.”
“No, I don’t!” Brontë looks resigned, defeated for the first time that night. “You could do the same thing as me, and no one would notice. We’d wait a few hours and sneak out, using the boots to touch down safely. Mom and Dad wouldn’t know until tomorrow morning. We’d be halfway to Jrusar by then!”
For a brief, fanciful moment, Cyrus considers it. He considers going adventuring with his brother. Leaving the Squall, his parents, his people. He considers freedom. He considers the life his brother wants to lead.
And then he smiles, and claps Brontë on the shoulder. “Not this time, brother. Stay safe.” He doesn’t look his brother in the eye as he leaves.
He’s afraid he’ll be convinced to leave when he sees the hurt in Brontë’s eyes.
Cyrus wakes up the next morning with the tendrils of a nightmare flaring in his thoughts, head aching in the temples. He washes himself and dresses in practiced motions, making sure his hair is slicked back, and the dark circles under his eyes are hidden. He’ll have to explain himself.
It’s almost insidious, the way that it feels like nothing has changed when he steps out of the tent. His mother gives him a quick kiss on the cheek as he passes her, and it burns.
“My little sun, would you mind promising Brontë we’ll eat dinner together tonight? I have to run to a meeting, but he was so upset last night, and I wanted to speak to him.”
“Of course!” Cyrus’s mouth responds before his mind catches up, and he imagines a dining table with three out of four seats filled. The hole in his chest opens up a little wider.
His mother breathes a sigh of relief. “He’s just by the horses right now, thank you, dear. I’ll see you tonight.”
Cyrus freezes, even as his mother rushes past him.
He heads to the stables.
Brontë doesn’t see him until he’s nearly next to him, but from the way his expression distorts into anger, it’s unmistakable.
“I suppose you want your boots back,” he says in a stiff voice, one so unlike his normal, airy one. He attempts to brush past Cyrus, but the older boy grabs his shoulder and glances around. They’re alone, or at least they seem to be, but Cyrus knows better than to take that for granted.
“Why are you here?” he asks in a low voice. Brontë jerks away from him immediately.
“Do you want me gone that badly?” he asks. There’s an attempted joke, somewhere in his voice, but it falls away to a plantive question. The stiffness is still there, in his voice. Cyrus hates it.
Brontë sounds like him.
“No, Bron, I don’t want you gone,” Cyrus drops his hand uselessly back to his side. He’s no good at this. If he had been, Brontë wouldn’t have even thought of leaving. “Mother wants us to have dinner together tonight. I hope you’ll be there.” He moves to turn away, then sighs.
“Keep the boots, alright? They suit you better anyway.”
Cyrus is twenty three, and attending his third ball in as many weeks, exhausted. Still, every time, he pastes a smile on his face and talks to as many people as he can. Brontë is here for this one to save him, making a face across the ballroom every time he gets dragged into a new dance. It’s the first ball he’s been to in about a year, and Cyrus can’t wait to make fun of him for it. For now, though, Cyrus laughs with his date, one of the prospective betrotheds that his parents had chosen for him. She’s pleasant enough, and Cyrus just wants to spend a nice evening with her. The whole ‘arranged marriage’ situation isn’t as much of a difficulty for him as it is for Brontë. After all, that’s how his parents got married.
There’s a commotion at the end of the ballroom, and Cyrus convinces his date it’s nothing, offering to get drinks and setting off in the direction of the noise. Brontë sidles up next to him.
“Do you know what’s going on?”
Cyrus shrugs, giving his brother a light smile. “Relax, Bron, I’m sure it’s nothing. It’s the higher-ups table, Mother and Father are over there. Someone probably revealed a piece of hot gossip or so-”
Cyrus freezes as the table comes into view. A man, dressed in worn clothes that were clearly meant to look noble, holds his hands above his head, eyes wide and panicked. His eyes run through the crowd, falling on all the spectators in turns. The guards around him hold their swords aloft. Cyrus sighs. He always hates when this happens.
He glances next to him, and does a double take. Brontë looks horrified .
“ Please ,” the man pleads to the crowd in a hoarse voice, “ Please, I just wanted to see . If there’s someone with mercy, please stop this! ”
Cyrus shakes his head and looks down at the ground. The man’s fate was sealed the moment he stepped inside the ballroom. It’s sad, but that’s the way the world works.
Brontë moves to step forward, and Cyrus’s heart jumps into his throat. He grabs the back of his brother’s sherwani and bodily pulls him back into the crowd. Across from them, his father makes eye contact and shakes his head subtly.
Cyrus rounds on Brontë. “What are you doing ? You’ve been to balls before, you know how security is!”
Brontë tries to detach himself from his brother’s grip to no avail. “Someone should do something!” he whispers, “I know it’s serious, but they don’t need to kill him.”
Cyrus doesn’t know how to fix this. He can’t stop this. For all purposes, his brother is still a child, at nineteen years old. He’s been to events, but he’s never had to hurt anyone. Never seen anyone hurt, short of simple wounds.
Still, if they make a scene at this event, there’ll be hell to pay at home, and Cyrus can’t have that, for him, or for Brontë.
So he keeps a strong hold on his brother’s shoulder, even as the guards close in.
Even as the scream echoes out, and blood splatters against the floor. Cyrus makes sure to watch, to regret.
It’s a cost he is willing to make. His parents tell him that is the mark of a leader.
He believes them.
Brontë doesn’t.
Cyrus is twenty nine when Brontë runs away for good. His parents don’t notice for five days, until there’s some sort of formal event that all of the Wyvernwinds are supposed to attend. Cyrus notices the day after, but he says nothing.
What can he say? Brontë was always meant to fly. He wasn’t like the rest of them.
He wasn’t like Cyrus.
Mother paces around the front room of the tent in finery, while Father wrings his hands, sitting at the center table.
“Cyrus, we are depending on you. The presence of all the Wyvernwinds has been requested for the ceremony, and as much as your brother shirks his duties, we do not press him. But for this, we need him. Where is he?”
If his father’s voice betrays a note of concern, Cyrus can’t hear it.
“Father, I don’t know.” His voice wavers slightly, though from what, he can’t tell.
Brontë hadn’t argued with their parents in weeks. There was nothing that should have caused the second son to run away.
Cyrus had checked Brontë’s room yesterday. The winged boots that he had given his brother, all those years ago, were gone. His lute had vanished, along with the flute-axe Brontë cherished so much. That’s when he had known .
It didn’t make it hurt any less.
His mother pauses in her pacing, meeting her husband’s gaze and shaking her head.
“We don’t have time for this.”
Cyrus immediately startles away, but he feels his brow go slack after the motion of the spell is complete.
“Cyrus, where is your brother, please ?”
The truth spell loosens his tongue, but it loosens something in his heart as well.
Cyrus laughs, and it sounds like broken glass. Like windchimes falling to the ground. He hasn't heard the sound in a while.
“I don’t know where he is, Mother. I saw him last five days ago.”
There’s a pause, and Cyrus feels like he has to explain himself, explain more.. “Mother, Father, I’m sorry . I should have never let him leave.”
“No.” His father agrees stiffly, finally standing up. “You shouldn’t have.” He offers an arm to his wife, who dusts off her clothes and sighs.
“We might be able to salvage this yet if we say Brontë is ill, or maybe on a trade journey. We’ll discuss it on the way there.”
“And Cyrus?” His father pauses by the door, staring back at him.
Cyrus feels the pressure on his chest release as his mother releases the spell, and it’s all he can do not to scream.
“Yes, Father?”
“ Please be on your best behavior. We need this ceremony to go well, and without Bron, it’s already…” His voice trails off, but his eyes stay on his first son.
So Cyrus does the only thing he can do at this point.
He lies.
“Always.”
Cyrus is thirty when he follows his brother’s advice. He should have known he’d screw it up somehow. His escape is far clumsier, and far more noticed than Brontë’s, nearly dismantling two tents on his way out. He twists his ankle ten minutes after he leaves the Silken Squall, and the pain makes him gasp for a second. For one single, selfish moment, he wants to go back to the Squall. Go back and curl up in his tent, and act like nothing was wrong in the morning.
The first time Brontë had run away, he had come straight back. Cyrus had never asked him why.
Cyrus should have asked him why.
For one moment, he wants nothing more than to play the role of the firstborn and be sheltered and imprisoned like the caged bird he had been.
Then the moment passes, and all he feels is ashamed.
If there was one way he could show that he wasn’t cut out for this life, this would be it. Running away, only to run back immediately. If it hadn’t been apparent in their childhood, it sure as hell was obvious now.
Cyrus might have been the firstborn, but he would always be the second best. He knew it from the moment he saw his brother's bright blue eyes open. Maybe not in his parents’ eyes, or in the eyes of the people, but in every way that it matters.
Gritting his teeth, Cyrus pushes onward. He can make it.
He will make it.
Now, he's thirty one, and making every mistake possible. He uses his real name once, twice, and then can’t seem to get rid of it. It sticks to him like hot tar, burning wherever it touches. He falls into a deep debt, and falls even deeper when trying to square it away. Somehow, he’s pursued by nobles and criminals alike. He makes one good decision, getting involved with the Corsairs, a group of thieves that hate nobility.
If only his parents could see him now.
Would they cry, or would they simply denounce him?
He just wants to get out of the mess he’s created by himself. All the times that his parents had implied that Brontë would never make it on his own, that he’d get caught in some debt, that he'd come back.
If his parents could see him now, Cyrus thinks he’d be ashamed.
If Brontë could see him now, Cyrus thinks he’d beg for forgiveness.
He’s barely making a dent in whatever he owes when suddenly Brontë seems to appear from nowhere with a group as unusual as it is terrifying. There’s a woman who looks undead, an earth genasi with cracks through his skin, a strange golden being, and a quiet human with electricity running through her veins. What terrifies him most, though, are the quiet halfling with a sword and the tall faun that stands next to his brother.
They move together with an easy familiarity that Cyrus and Brontë have never had, will never have. For a moment, Cyrus feels angry , angrier than he’s ever been.
He’s angry at the Silken Squall, for making his family rule.
He’s angry at his parents for forcing their pressures on their sons.
He’s angry at Brontë for doing so well for himself, for finding a family outside of their own stifling one, for being the success he always said he would become.
He's angry at himself, for having nothing.
Cyrus flinches at nothing a second after. This is why he hates getting angry. He forgets that the helplessness comes right after it.
Brontë introduces himself as Dorian Storm . Cyrus says nothing. He’s afraid that if he opens his mouth, he might say something he regrets.
Brontë says that everyone who he cares about is in the room with him.
Brontë doesn't know that Cyrus is here. He's not meant to be included.
It hurts more than he'll ever admit.
Cyrus regrets. He regrets a lot of things.
He's been told that this is the mark of a leader.
He's not so sure anymore.