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The weather, temperature, and suit were perfect. Hundreds of people were in the audience, as was the king. 

Yet Ethan can feel that the air is suffocating.

Dylan could feel it too.

Through the perfect uniform, posture, presentation, and movement, his brow furrowed under the weight of all the expectations that would be on them during the event. 

“You don’t want to be here for this ceremony, do you?” he asked rather bluntly, as always, short with words but always straight to the point and into the heart of the matter.

Ethan took a slow but shaky breath, his shoulders falling heavy. “No,” he said through a soft exhale, relieving some of the weight with his brother to share some truth. “Not really.”

“And why is that?” Dylan asked more quietly, but just as firmly.

He led them both into a hallway where no one else could hear their discussion, in more privacy than the elaborately elegant foyer in which they stood. The signs, festive decorations, and the empty room all gave the brothers a disapproving glare of their early abandonment, but Ethan couldn’t hear any of it.

Ethan’s heart raced not with the present moment but with the sounds of the past echoing to him like a siren's call. He remembered the sound of the academy gates opening for the first time, early that misty morning, right on time as his father commanded his boys. The excited fear of the unknown rushed through his veins like a white water rapid, racing through icy tundras; a place he could imagine, a place he would yearn to go, like countless worlds and realms, countries and landscapes that he often fantasized about reaching someday.

“I can’t stay in Montranoe,” Ethan stated. “I need to be able to travel, to explore, discover distant lands, delve through long forgotten mysteries, and discover the unfound. And I can’t do that if I resign my fate to live in this city, this country, this world for the rest of my life.”

Dylan placed his hands on his little brother’s shoulders. Whether that was to steady himself or make sure that Ethan couldn’t just disappear was unclear. 

He closed his eyes tightly, letting the words sink in slowly, processing them at his own pace for just a few moments more. 

“I need to know that you understand we don’t have to leave for you to have it all.” He said, opening his eyes and looking straight into his brother's. “No, we don’t, but I do.”

Ethan looked back, holding his brother’s gaze before brushing off his hands and stepping away towards a window. It was still a perfect day and yet his senses stormed with the sounds of metal clashing as rivals compete for a sacred item, smell the smoke of a campfire burning out late into the night after cooking a warm meal, feel wet slick mud press it’s way out from under his shoes as he treks through the marshes of a glooming forest; all on the other side of the veil of this perfect day. 

“I have vowed that I will stand by you, protect you, no matter what happens. I will not take my oath in vain. Wherever you leave, I will follow.” Dylan said while reading the look of longing written over Ethan’s face, the one he always had growing up, and even now. There was no convincing him, no point in trying, and no reason to try to dissuade him. 

“Do you understand that this next step we’ll be taking will be the most serious decision either one of us has taken?” “Yes,” Ethan said promptly, turning back from the window and meeting Dylan’s gaze.

“Do you understand that your actions will affect more people than you know, more than you can count, more than you will ever get to see?” He stepped closer, challenging Ethan’s conviction. “I understand that.” Ethan nodded and took a step forward. “So, you understand that there are some people you are leaving behind, who will never forget this, never forgive you, and will never forget today’s betrayal?” Dylan asked more solemnly.

Ethan paused. His gaze wavered for a moment, hesitating, before he turned his back on his brother. “Our father never approved of anything that wasn’t his order anyway. As for the rest-”. The words choked up in his throat for a moment.

All the moments of joy and hope he found outside of his books flashed through his mind. Before the academy, before their mother passed, comfort he found, and the wounds that have healed because of those cherished times.

“The rest of them can learn to live their lives as if today never happened. I know not everyone will forget it, but they can forget about me,” he breathed. He didn’t believe the words he said any more than Dylan did, but to reach his dreams, this will have to be the ledge on which he takes that leap of faith, to trust his heart, trust his instincts, and believe.

“Ok,” was all Dylan said—plain, simple, offering no hint of what he truly felt. When Ethan turned to see his brother and understand what it was he felt right now, he had already begun stripping the uniform from his shoulders, unfastening the epaulettes, and pulling the cape free.

“If we’re going, we leave now,” he instructed his younger brother like a young and freshly new cadet. “There’s no stopping to get anything on the way out, we don’t go home. Once we’re out, we get a pack and we put all our things in there. Devices will need to be shut off until we get new ones.”

Dylan dismantled his uniform, piece by piece—ribbons, rank, medals—all symbols of his service, now cast aside. Ethan watched in stricken silence, reverent. Each piece looked heavier in Dylan’s hands as he took them off, already knowing the cost of failure. If anything goes wrong, that same honor will become his own executioner.

“I had already packed a bag,” Ethan said quietly, pulling on the messenger bag full of everything he would need to start over.
“I didn’t bring anything else extra for you. We could pull out some money on the way-”

“What you have is enough.” Dylan cut in. “Stopping wastes time. We need to be moving. Go,” he ordered, leading the way without looking back.

Throwing open the doors, Ethan could only stare at the broad shoulders of his brother’s back, leading them to their new lives. Leading them out from under the goddesses’ gaze so that Vontor’s shame and Selene’s tears will not fall upon them. 

Ethan held on to a small clasp of metal in his pocket tightly. It was not magically imbued in any way, yet it burned in his hand as if it too knew. The moment their feet reached outside the threshold, they were gone, swallowed by the silence they left behind and carried off by the wind to a future yet to be written.