If things went awry... But why would they? Narseh tried to push away another wave of unease.

The ambassadors and Prince stood in a circle, joined hands — and vanished. One moment fourteen people stood by the gate; the next, they were gone. The onlookers’ mainyu glowed with awe: the art of leaping across the Other Side was rare enough, but transporting so many people at once? That was something out of legend.

“He is our rightful Prince, the best of us, the strongest,” thought Arya, gazing at the place where only dust now floated in the air. “He knows what he’s doing.”

All this was framed in golden: “Peace, peace, peace...”

Narseh did not know whether Prince Ardashir would really be able to end the war, but at least he knew how to give hope — and that was no small thing.

Narseh also understood what price the Prince would have to pay for this hope, because he knew the limits of Ardashir’s strength better than most. So instead of heading home like the others, he went to the Prince’s grotto.

It was cold in the grotto now, and it was bad. Narseh lit the hearth, found a blanket made of white fox fur, boiled water, and poured most of it into a large basin. From water left, he brewed a cha leaves infusion, then sat down to wait. He didn’t know how long it would take the Prince to finish giving instructions to the ambassadors and saying his farewells, but if the water cooled, he would simply reheat it.

However, he didn’t have to wait long. Ardashir appeared in the middle of the room, staggering and possibly about to fall if Narseh hadn’t caught him.

They say there are no distances for the Other Side, yet traveling to well-known places is significantly easier than to unfamiliar ones. The Prince likely hadn’t visited Gray Ridge often. His strength had been calculated precisely to teleport the ambassadors there; returning was apparently considered a negligible task. His face was completely pale, sweat beaded his forehead, and his eyes were filled edge to edge with darkness, as if covered in pitch.

“Can’t even be alone in my own home,” Ardashir murmured without malice, leaning on Narseh’s arm. His darkened eyes stared blankly ahead, but he clearly understood what was happening and who was with him—a good sign.

Narseh seated the prince in a chair. He wrapped him in the fur blanket, then removed Ardashir’s leather travel boots. In their homes, Arya usually walked barefoot, and for now, the most important thing was to immerse the icy, stone-cold feet in the hot water basin. Narseh glanced at the Prince’s painfully strained face — his eyes were still clouded with darkness. Into the Prince’s ice-cold hands, he placed a steaming cup of cha. In the Owl clan, this brew was usually drunk with milk and salt. Narseh liked it plain, and he knew Ardashir also preferred the pure taste of the leaves, but in this case, milk and salt would aid recovery. It wasn’t Narseh’s first time seeing the effects of farn overexertion. This wasn’t the same as lingering too long on the Other Side, but it still was far from pleasant; the human body’s resilience had its limits...

Gradually, color returned to Ardashir’s face and limbs. After a minute or so, he blinked several times, and his eyes returned to their usual golden hue; the dark film vanished.

Their gazes met and intertwined.

“Thirteen people! Are you mad? What a foolish display!”

Narseh immediately rebuked himself for the disrespectful outburst — where had all that come from? And belatedly realized that he hadn’t even thought to shield his mind this time. In thoughts, there were no ranks or barriers; you spoke as freely as if the other were an extension of yourself...

“It would have been a display at any other time,” the Prince replied, “but after the chaos at the meeting, it was a necessity. They need to believe in me.”

It was astonishing how easy, how natural it felt to open his mind to the Prince again — like unclenching a fist.

Once the barriers of their shared mainyu had broken, hiding anything became pointless. Narseh dropped to the floor, resting his forehead against the fur blanket on Ardashir’s knees, spilling everything: how much he had struggled these past days, how confused, afraid, and longing he had been.

All this time, he had been angry at the Prince, deliberately ignoring how difficult these days must have been for Ardashir himself: making perhaps the hardest decision of his life by defying the majority of Arya; barely retaining power; losing Anahita... and many others, if not their lives, then their love and loyalty. People Ardashir trusted had turned away from him one by one, and the prince likely considered Narse a traitor too — by closing himself off, Narseh had surely added to his burden. Hadn’t Narseh seen how exhausted he was? He had, but his own resentment had consumed him, and he had deliberately made it worse.

Justin would have put it bluntly: Narseh had acted like a swine.

“I don’t know how to ask for forgiveness...”

As for the things Narseh had said in the heat of anger, they were unforgivable: “You decided everything for me without asking” — how could he have said that?

And yet, there had been a time when Narseh had felt hatred toward the Prince instead of gratitude for saving him. In those moments, when Narseh could muster more than indifference. Mostly, of course, he had felt indifferent. Forcing a soul back from the Other Side wasn’t right; it didn’t want to remain in the body, clinging to it by the thinnest of threads.

But that was long ago, and it now seemed so distant... Where had all that gone? Now, for Narseh, there was no greater comfort than lying like this, pressing his cheek against the fur-covered knee, slipping into the caring warmth of another mind — no, not just another, but the most familiar one. How he had missed this in recent days — it felt like half of himself had been lost...

Ardashir hesitated, then ran his knuckles down Narseh’s back.

“Narseh... I won’t apologize for deciding to keep you alive back then, nor for what I’m doing now. I choose what I believe to be the best course of action at the moment and never regret it. I was chosen to protect our people, and I will do so by any means available to me.”

Narseh lifted his eyes to the Prince. Ardashir’s gaze wasn’t cold, but neither was it warm. It was simply very resolute.

“And you won’t be able to change my mind.”

“I’ve already figured that out...” Narseh replied, somewhat gloomily.

“I want you to trust me, but that may not be easy.”

“I've realized that too...”

“And in the future, it will become even harder than it is now.”

Narseh briefly recalled the girl from Justin’s memories and his own surprised thought: so this is what it means to love someone despite all their flaws and sins, seeing them as clearly as the bottom of a sunlit stream...

“Reality must be accepted as it is. I’ll try to accept it...”

Yet he still felt a gnawing anxiety within. He didn’t try to hide it from the Prince in mainyu, but the bright, thoughtless joy of their long-awaited connection faded.

With a heavy sigh, he stood up. He checked to make sure everything was in order. The logs in the hearth crackled warmly. The room was no longer as chilly. The Prince was wrapped in a blanket, and everything below his neck resembled a small white bear, but above, he increasingly looked like a living man.

Ardashir took the last sip of cha, grimaced, and handed Narseh the empty cup.

“Ugh, salty and disgusting...”

Narseh smiled faintly at the childish complaint.

“It’s necessary. I’ll pour you another. Please drink... And I’ll prepare something for you to eat. You need to regain your strength.”

He refilled the cup but paused to adjust the blanket around the Prince’s neck.

And froze: there was a scar.

Narseh noticed it only now because it had been hidden by Ardashir’s short braid. The scar was small and thin, freshly healed. Exactly the kind a fravashi’s claw might leave if it aimed for the jugular vein and missed by barely a quarter of a finger.

"Anahita..."

Narseh touched the mark on the skin mesmerised, a dark, heavy rage welling up within him. He suddenly clearly understood that if the one who had done this had not already been dead, he would have killed her himself, kill her with a long, horrible death. And he wouldn’t regret it for a minute.

“This is...” His voice broke.

Ardashir said quietly: “Narseh...” and touched his head, his hair. He gently fingered them, ran Narseh's hair through his fingers, and pulled a few strands behind the ear. He probably looked terribly pained, since Ardashir was trying to calm him down like if he was a child...

Narseh more or less pulled himself together. What kind of inept healer closed the cut that left a scar?

“I’ll try to remove it,” he said evenly. “It's still quite fresh.”

“Okay... Sometime later,” the Prince responded with sincere carelessness. And suddenly he smiled: “Hot temper is precisely the trait that can destroy you... It’s terrible that anger suits you so well.”

He put his palm on Narseh's cheek, ran his thumb along his cheekbone. His smile was, as always, completely disarming: more in his eyes than on his lips, sly and as if intended for Narseh alone. All anger was gone at once, and instead, on the contrary, he wanted to do something good and surprising. The Prince was always making fun of him... Narseh realized he was smiling back, and must look awfully stupid.

“I see... I guess to you I'm something like...” He sent the image of a ruffled, angrily hissing kitten to the Prince in his mainyu - funny and touching.   

“Oh, no. Not at all.” But Ardashir said nothing more. He sighed and removed his hand from Narseh's cheek.

For some reason, the emptiness that formed in the place of his hand stung, but Narseh had no idea what he wanted in return, nor how to get it. His fingers trembled over the fur blanket, straightened it, smoothed out a non-existent fold. He did what he understood and knew how to do - provide simple, silent care...

“Forgive me for getting angry so easily... I know why you forbade me to go,” he said quietly. “If something happens during the negotiations, you’re afraid I won’t be able to control myself and ruin everything.”

“No, that's not what I'm afraid of. Everything will already be ruined,” Ardashir noted reasonably, “but in addition, I will lose you. I wouldn't want that.”

The response thought should have been withheld, but it, bitter and angry, turned out to be faster:

“Weighing our farns and fighting qualities, assessing who can be lost and who cannot — that is Bizanth's logic...”

Ardashir said gloomily:

“I believe we are gradually learning this from them. To weigh. Subtract and add. Especially since we mostly have to subtract. But actually, I wasn’t talking about fighting qualities...” 

“...I wouldn’t want to lose a friend,” the Prince finished with a thought.

Narseh was embarrassed to the point of blushing, but did not hide his response:

“ If you let me go, I wouldn’t be happy about it either. It’s just that now I would be worried not about Justin, but about you...”

“Well, well, Narseh,” said the Prince with some surprise, “I certainly don’t need a bodyguard...”

However, his mainyu was colored with golden warmth. He placed his hand over Narseh's fingers, which were still lying on the shoulder on top of the blanket, carefully, as if touching a timid animal, and did not remove it.

Narseh, feeling desperately impudent, opened up in mainyu the question that had been tormenting him for a long time:

“ What did she say to you that day? The Threadweaver. After the words that you have your own fork in the road.” And he immediately got embarrassed: “Sorry, I shouldn’t have asked...”

Ardashir, however, after a pause, replied:

“ Almost the same thing that you yourself recently told me. That even knowing the future clearly and in detail, like reading from a book, does not mean  you can't make mistakes.”

Narseh stood near Prince Ardashir’s chair, the Prince’s small, graceful palm resting on his hand; Narseh, not really understanding what he was doing, stroked it timidly, very lightly. He should have started to prepare food, to do something sensible, but like a fool, he just couldn’t budge, and would stand like that forever.

He had once thought his whole soul had burned to the ground in Juniper Land... But now Narseh had two people he considered family again, something to protect. And he also thought that being a shell without a soul was easier in a way: when you lost everything, it didn't hurt at all, there was nothing to be afraid of... And he had something to lose.

“Forgive me for my doubts. I will try... not to be a fussy mom, as Justin says. I know you don’t need my warnings...”

“Maybe that’s exactly what I need,” Ardashir objected. “Blind loyalty that knows no doubt is worthless. You are right in your own way, Narseh... There is a line between meddling and playing God, and I fear one day I will no longer know where it lies. But if you're around, you'll tell me if I cross it.”