Morning came slow, gray light seeping through the curtains, and Alex surfaced from sleep the way he always did now, awareness arriving before his eyes even opened, some old habit from a life that had taught him never to wake up defenseless.
He felt her before he saw her.
He opened his eyes.
Zara was already there, sitting on the edge of the bed, watching him with that particular tilt to her mouth that meant she’d been sitting there for a while and had no intention of apologizing for it.
"..." Alex looked at her.
"..." She looked back, the corner of her eyes crinkling faintly, the smile held just at the edge of breaking loose.
He sat up.
He was out of the bed and moving toward the bathroom before the blanket had even finished settling behind him, walking backward the entire way, eyes fixed on her like she was a wild animal he’d startled out of the brush.
"..." Zara said nothing at first, just watched him retreat, her eyebrows climbing slowly, arms folding across her chest as she leaned back.
"Why are you walking backwards?" she finally asked, tilting her head.
"You know you can walk normally, right? Nobody’s chasing you. There’s no threat in this room besides the two of us and possibly your own dignity, which you seem determined to protect by moving like a crab."
"I am just in the mood to moonwalk," Alex said, with the flat, unbothered dignity of someone committing fully to a lie he had no intention of explaining further, no matter how long she stared at him.
"Huh? What moon, what?" Zara’s brow furrowed, clearly turning the word over and finding absolutely nothing useful in it.
"Is that some kind of Winterfang dance I haven’t heard of? Because I’ve been trained in court customs and I don’t recognize it, and I’d like to point out that walking backward with your knees bent like that doesn’t look like any dance I’ve ever seen, it looks like you’re trying to escape something without admitting you’re trying to escape it."
"Nothing," he said, already at the bathroom door, one hand on the frame.
"I am going to get fresh."
He shut the door before she could ask again, before she could pick apart the excuse the way she’d been picking apart everything he said lately, faster and faster the longer she spent around him.
’She’s been doing this every single morning for a week now,’ he thought, running the water hotter than he strictly needed it, letting the steam climb the mirror until his own reflection disappeared behind fog.
’Sitting there, watching me wake up like it’s the single most entertaining part of her entire day. I refuse to give her the satisfaction of catching me completely off guard twice in the same week. A man has to draw a line somewhere, even if that man is currently five years old and hiding in a bathroom from a fifteen-year-old shadow guard.’
He came back out refreshed, hair still damp, the sleeves of his shirt rolled to his elbows, and made it exactly three steps into the room before two arms closed around him from behind and his entire face disappeared into the front of someone’s dress.
’Why is this always me,’ he thought, muffled, his voice not even making it past the fabric pressed against his cheek. ’Not that I mind this particular state of affairs, though I would very much prefer to not admit that out loud, a prince such as I is supposed to have some measure of dignity. Then again I am, if I’m being technical about it, a criminal in my last life, so maybe dignity was never really on the table to begin with. Ah, whatever. There are worse ways to start a morning than this, I suppose.’
"Oh, would you look at that!" Eclipse said, arms locked tight, not letting him go for even a second, her voice pitched somewhere between delight and disbelief. "How in the hell did you change so much in just a week? Who did this to you, huh? You’ve gotten taller, I swear, and you’ve got this presence now, like you actually know things you didn’t know before. What happened while I was gone? Tell me right now, I’ve been waiting the entire carriage ride back just to ask you this."
"Lem-Mee-Beetttthh—" Alex managed, the words dying somewhere against her collarbone, his hands pressing weakly at her arms in a gesture that had exactly zero effect on her grip.
"Oh, my bad." Eclipse released him, dropped down to his level in one fluid motion, and stared at him with both hands braced on her knees, examining his face like she was checking for counterfeit currency, her eyes tracking every small detail, the set of his jaw, the way he held himself, the faint shadow of exhaustion that hadn’t quite left him even after a full night’s sleep.
Alex took one long, dramatic breath, filling his lungs properly for the first time in almost a full minute.
’Air. Finally. She’s worse than mom, honestly. What is it with the women in this family and their collective obsession with suffocating a perfectly healthy five-year-old? I’ve survived a mana overload, a shadow bond, and ten straight exercises in one day, and somehow it’s the hugs that are going to be the thing that finishes me off.’
"Well," Eclipse said, straightening up and already moving toward the door with the particular energy of someone who had made a decision and expected the world to keep pace with her, "let’s eat breakfast, and you’re going to tell me everything that happened this past week, and I want no details left out. Not one. I mean it, Alex, if you skip something I will know, because I know exactly what your careful, edited version of a story sounds like, and then I’ll just have to ask Zara, and I have a feeling she’ll tell me the version with a great deal more embarrassing details in it than you’d ever offer up voluntarily."
"Yess... I will tell you," Alex said, following her out, matching her pace as best his shorter legs allowed.
"Just calm down a little. I thought you would be all tired after returning from so much work, but I think you slacked off during work, because I see no tiredness in you at all."
He gave her a slow, deliberate side-eye as they walked, watching for the reaction he already knew was coming.
"HAH! The audacity of a child to judge my work!" Eclipse rounded on him, one finger pointed squarely at his chest, her whole posture flaring up with theatrical outrage.
"I did all the work myself, I even missed an entire day of sleep because of it, and for your information I do not slack off, ever, least of all when it concerns this family, little brother. I would like that formally noted somewhere, preferably somewhere you’ll actually remember it."
"Oh, I totally believe you..." he said, keeping his face perfectly, deliberately straight.
"That doesn’t sound convincing to me at all," Eclipse said, narrowing her eyes at him, one hand settling on her hip as she studied him with open suspicion.
"You’ve gotten sneaky in one single week. I genuinely do not like it. I leave for a handful of days and come back to find my little brother has developed an entire personality of subtle disrespect toward his elder sister."
"I’ve always been sneaky," Alex said, not missing a beat.
"You’ve just never had the patience to notice it before now."
Zara, trailing a few steps behind with the faint, contented look of someone enjoying a show she hadn’t paid for and had no intention of interrupting, made no effort at all to hide her smile, one hand pressed lightly against her mouth as she watched the two of them bicker their way down the corridor toward the dining hall, the morning light stretching gold and warm across the polished floor ahead of them.