Brayan knocked on the door to Maric’s room and then, when there was no response from within, opened it. Dara sat at the small table at the far edge of the room, a bowl of stew and a plate of figs cut into halves in front of him.

“Yes, sir?” Dara asked, eyes aimed at Brayan’s collarbone.

“You can stop that now, please, Dara,” Brayan told him. “Maric explained the situation to me.”

“Ah,” Dara said, his eyes dropping to the food in front of him instead. It didn’t look like he’d touched it.

Brayan walked over and sat down at the table across from him. He nodded at the food. “Who brought you this?”

“Oh. Mathers…” His mouth stayed open for half a second like he’d been about to tack on a ‘sir’, then closed again.

Brayan nodded. “He knows, then. He was acting strange about Maric and he’s never brought the rest of us rabble sliced fruit for breakfast.”

Dara made a face. “It was kind of him, but unnecessary. This was what I wanted to explain to Maric, but he was understandably upset. I haven’t been able to heal anyone for many years. I was able to heal Maric, but… it’s complicated. I don’t think I could do it again. I’m not a healer. Nobody needs to treat me like one.”

“I don’t think you’re giving yourself enough credit. Maybe Maric was too surprised by the situation to actually thank you, but you may well have saved his life. In my eyes, that makes you a healer.”

Dara shook his head, clearly frustrated. “It’s not about that. I’d just rather people didn’t think of me as a healer because I’m not a good one anymore. As a healer, all I can be is a disappointment and a failure. I’d prefer nobody else know.”

“I’m prepared to do a lot of things for you, Dara, but not that. My men need to know the truth. You’ve put us all into an uncomfortable position with this lie, and I won’t have them put in a situation where they might be unintentionally treating you inappropriately. Perhaps it doesn’t have to be public knowledge, but my men must know.”

Dara kept his head down, his hands gripping the sides of his chair. “Nobody has treated me like a healer for years. Does it matter?”

“How the king dealt with the situation was his choice, and I won’t disparage that, but he is above the law. With the exception of Maric, we’re not. As far as I’m concerned, being a healer is something you’re born with and something you will one day die with, and you should be treated accordingly. What you want is an important consideration, but you have to understand that treating you improperly is literal treason.”

“No, I understand. There are broader concerns.” Dara poked at one of the fig halves, but he didn’t eat it. “You know, I forgot how lonely this is. Everyone is nice to you, but it’s just… obligation. Last night, before Mathers found out, he told me he would take me back to Paige if something happened to Maric. I know that was something he offered out of respect for Maric rather than any personal feelings he had towards me, but at least it was genuine. I don’t want to sound ungrateful, but bringing me this nice breakfast was just... proper. I have no appetite right now, anyway.”

Brayan swiped one of the fig halves for himself and popped it into his mouth. No sense letting it go to waste. “Maric feels the same way about parties in his honor.”

“I know. We talked about these things a bit, but what could I say without being completely honest? And if I had been…” Dara shook his head. “I feel like that would have been the correct thing to do, but I’m not sure the outcome would have been any better.”

“Certainly different.”

“Certainly that,” Dara agreed. “I don’t think you can care for a healer in the same sense that he cared for me when he thought I was a bed slave.”

“You just care about a healer, right? Because a healer is a thing?”

“Ah. You were listening.”

Brayan stole another fig half. “Mm. It was an interesting perspective.”

“A healer isn’t allowed to be a person, because people have emotions and those are messy. At first, I kept the truth to myself because I thought that was the safer choice. But after that, once I got to know Maric… I think I wanted to just be a person for a little while longer.”

“I respect that, in theory, but in practise you put Maric in a situation where he had sex with a healer. There won’t be any direct consequences for that because he’s a prince, but it’s not a good look.”

“I know. It’s taboo. Even those guards who tortured me drew the line at anything sexual. It makes no sense, considering the reason you’re not supposed to have sex with a healer and the things they did do to me, but I wasn’t about to draw their attention to that.”

“Mm. Having sex with Maric doesn’t seem to have had the result of tramatising you.”

Dara’s lips stretched into something that was too sad to be called a smile. “I’m sure my old teacher would point out that I’m currently upset because I put myself in the position to form an attachment in a particularly tumultuous situation. If I’d built my sense of safety on something sustainable, maybe I would be able to actually reliably control my magic.”

“Do you agree with that?”

“I don’t think it’s untrue. What do you think?”

“I think…” Brayan swiped another fig half and ate it slowly. “I think, when it really comes down to it, human attachments are like alcohol to a drunkard. We crave them at times, but how often do they actually provide a net benefit? You and Maric were certainly attached to one another, but from what I’ve seen, it has caused you both a great deal of stress and very little real happiness.”

“I don’t know. It’s not exactly my area of expertise.” Dara spun one of the fig halves with his fingers. “My parents seemed happy. Not all of the time, but they always seemed glad that they were together.”

“I have no idea how my parents felt about one another. Or feel, I suppose. They’ve alive and still together. They aren’t very emotionally demonstrative people in general, and certainly not with one another.”

Dara looked Brayan in the eye for the first time since he’d entered the room. “Is that why you’re like this?”

Brayan’s eyebrows shot up. He didn’t know whether to laugh or be angry. He settled on neither. “And here I thought you had been completely failing to hold back your true nature. Turns out the real you is even more mouthy.”

“We’re encouraged not to hold our tongues to avoid concealing any emotional issues that need to be resolved. Of course, in practise I still repress my emotional issues, I just don’t bother to keep my snark in check. Or at least that was how I used to be when I was a healer, but I was a teenager then. I guess I don’t know who I am now.”

“Well, Maric has tasked me with taking care of your needs, so I would appreciate it if you would make my job easier and be direct about them.”

Dara met Brayan’s gaze again, but his expression was flatter now, closed off. “I don’t need anything from you, Brayan. Just go and do what you do best and update your men on the situation so that we can all continue on with our lives as smoothly as possible.”

Brayan sat back in his chair. “I’ll go once I see you eat two mouthfuls of that stew.”

“I’m not hungry.”

Brayan folded his arms over his chest. “Then I suppose you’ll have to endure my company until you are. I can have someone warm it up for you if it gets cold.”

Dara stared Brayan down for a few seconds, but Brayan wasn’t going anywhere. He was willing to wait this one out.

“Ugh,” Dara said, and he did as he was told. Once he had eaten his two mouthfuls, he pushed the bowl away. “Happy?”

“No, but I am leaving.” He stole another fig half. “These are good. You should try them.”

#

Brayan cleared all the rooms upstairs besides the ones Maric and Dara were in and gathered his men in the tavern at a large table where they had a clear view of the stairs. He asked the staff to give them some privacy and paid the few other patrons who had been in the tavern to leave.

“Is Maric okay?” Raedon asked before Brayan had a chance to get started.

Brayan raised his eyebrows. Raedon didn’t usually speak out of turn, but he looked genuinely worried. “He’s fine. You saw him come through here an hour ago.”

“He looked upset.”

“I assumed you were asking after his physical health, not his emotional wellbeing. He is upset, and if you’ll stop interrupting, I’ll explain why.”

Raedon dropped his gaze. “Sorry, sir.”

“Good.” Brayan stood at the head of the table and looked around at his men, waiting to see if anyone else was planning to be disruptive. Once he’d confirmed that all eyes were watching him attentively, he began talking. “As you all know, a cut on Maric’s chest had become infected and he was in poor health. That is now no longer an issue.”

The men looked between one another, trying to figure out if any of them understood Brayan’s meaning. Except Mathers. He hadn’t taken his eyes away from Brayan.

“This is because, as it turns out, Dara is a healer,” Brayan finished.

Silence fell around the table as the men processed what Brayan had just said and all that it implied.

It was Thayne who broke it. “Huh…”

“Did anyone know about this?” Garrod asked. “Did Maric?”

“Ah…” Mathers spoke up. “I found out last night, but Dara was in the middle of healing Maric at the time. He asked me to keep quiet, and I thought it would be in Maric’s best interests to adhere to his request.”

“I would have appreciated it if you had notified me of the situation, but I understand that you were in a difficult position,” Brayan told him. “And no, Garrod. Maric didn’t know. None of us did until this incident.”

“Why would he keep that a secret?” Raedon asked. “He would have been treated so much better if we’d known.”

“He hasn’t been able to use his ability for years, with the exception of what he did for Maric,” Brayan explained. “He doesn’t consider himself a healer anymore and doesn’t want to be known as one.”

“Still,” Raedon said. “We would have treated him as one anyway, right? That’s the right thing to do.”

“We would have,” Brayan agreed. “But those guards who had been torturing him were well aware of what he was when they did it, so as frustrating as it is, I do appreciate why he may not have thought revealing that information would do him any good.”

“The king let that happen to a healer?” Raedon asked. When all eyes turned to him, he drew in a breath. “Perhaps he didn’t know. Even if Dara wasn’t functionally serving as a healer, surely anyone caught doing him intentional harm would be hanged. That’s an act of treason.”

“Perhaps,” Brayan agreed, but he suspected the king had known exactly what was going on. Maric didn’t think highly of his father and had told Brayan certain things about him that made it seem likely he would have failed to protect someone the moment they were no longer useful to him, even if it wasn’t the wise or proper course of action. But that wasn’t a conversation he was about to have with his men.

“Did Maric really bed him?” Raedon asked.

Garrod gave him a light smack on the back of the head. “He didn’t know. Besides, if he hadn’t been able to use his magic for years but he was able to sort himself out when Maric needed him, I’d have to hazard a guess and say it didn’t do him any harm.”

“Fortunately, Maric is considerate towards his partners, no matter who they are,” Brayan offered. Typically they didn’t address the fact that sometimes he and Maric shared a bed, but as the only one present who had personally experienced that side of Maric, it felt pertinent to mention it.

“So are they going to…” Thayne said.

Brayan gave a firm shake of his head. “Now that Maric knows, he will treat Dara appropriately, as will the rest of us. Dara has requested that his abilities not become public knowledge, however, and unless Maric wishes otherwise, we will abide by that.”

“That will probably be simpler, assuming Maric won’t be bringing him to events anymore,” Mathers said. “If people knew he was a healer, we’d have to guard him just as much as we guard Maric. If nobody knows, he won’t be at risk.”

“I was thinking the same thing,” Brayan said. “Even if he isn’t able to heal, someone might want to take him on the off chance they can change that. I assume that’s why he was put to work in the barracks specifically, where he would be surrounded by guards. Just because they’d given up on him being useful doesn’t mean they would want him to fall into anyone else’s hands.”

“Have we also given up on him being useful?” Mathers asked. “I mean, we’ve been talking about it as though it’s a foregone conclusion, but he did heal Maric.”

“I honestly don’t know,” Brayan admitted. “From what I understand, it’s linked to his emotional state and he’s feeling rather defeated right now. But I’m not sure there’s any point worrying about it. Our duty is to take care of him as well as we can, and that’s also the best thing we can do for his magic.”

“That is very true,” Mathers said. “I learned a bit about healers as part of my medical training, just so that I would be prepared in case I ever had to work with one. Their magic requires focus that can easily be disrupted by external stress.”

“Well then, we’re going to be leaving as soon as we’re all packed up. Why don’t we work on making his spot in the wagon a bit more comfortable?”