Light streams overhead in skin-baking rays. My new home sits before me as I trudge to the well for a drink. A half-day after the trial, and the internal struggle continues. Who do I want to be?

Guardian? Or Protector?

Because more and more, it seems as if I can only choose one. As is, me and Ran haven’t been patrolling in what feels like a century. She’s turned her attention to finding her kind, and I’ve been consumed by the competition and training.

I fidget with my sleeve, rubbing sweat from my forehead and wincing as sweat tickled down my spine. Ew.

Sparing with the knights kept me sharp since I’d slowed some from the constant bombardment I’d pushed my body through. Otherwise, Sir Rowen never would’ve pinned me.

Right? Right.

I roll my shoulders, feeling a few bruises dotting my back, but nothing that wouldn’t heal with Ran’s help come evening.

She liked healing me at night, in sleep. I wince, remembering the one time she and Rose healed me when I was awake right after getting my family back from Darshius. Yep, I’m not going to complain about the out-of-it, late at night, healings.

“Aria! Come on. don’t you wanna spar?” Jack says, poking me on the shoulder with his sheathed sword.

I flinch my hand away from the blade on my side, forcing a smile on my face and swallowing a groan as my first reaction to being touched is to pull a blade and get stabby. “Go pester Sir Rowen or one of the other knights not on duty, squirt,” I reply, rubbing his hair as I would Ran.

He ducks out of range, sending me a baleful eye as he shoves it back down, only for one piece to stick back up without his knowledge. I try not to smile, his voice bringing my eyes back down from the rebellious strand.

“But you’re better than them,” he says, petulance turning his voice into a pout.

I chuckle, wrapping my arms around his shoulders, ignoring the slight twinge of my ribs. It’s so much better than the dull ache it’d been for weeks. I suppose not fighting for—however long since the dragon encounter—is a boon. Chasing after rabbits doesn’t count. “But that won’t matter until you get the basics down, little man. Then you can actually be a challenge to the oh so high and mighty Sir Ri,” I tease with a wry and sarcastic twist of my lips, bowing with a flourish.

It falls flat when he doesn’t laugh or even smile.

His eyes dart around the backyard, and I feel a minuscule pinch of something in his soul I couldn’t quite put my knife on.

“What is it, squirt?” I ask, sweeping his leg out from under him and shoving him to the ground. I sit cross-legged beside him.

His back slaps the dirt. He wheezes out a breath, sitting up and leaning on his knees, still not looking at me. “When will we see you again?” he asks, and then he meets my eyes. His blue-green gaze is filled with pain. With longing, suffering, and a hint of anger. “You’re gone all the time, sis. And even when you’re here—” He trails off, and I’m afraid he won’t continue. But he does, in a whisper which nearly doesn't reach me. “Even when you’re here, you aren’t.”

At the simple words, my heart bleeds. I pull him to my side, choking on emotion. “I’m so sorry, Jack,” I whisper, kissing his hair.

He pulls back, eyebrows bunching together as he picks up dirt and lets it trail between his fingers. “I know, sis. And I know it’s not easy for ya. At all. But… we miss you. I miss you.”

A deep sigh leaks between me lips, and I lean back on my elbows. He looks at me. “What we’ve been through… Jack, I feel like I’m not really here, either.” I shake my head. “I don’t know, exactly. But you’re right, kiddo. And I’m sorry. I love you so much it hurts to think you could be taken from me again. And I think a part of me runs from that, even as I try my best to protect you.”

He looks out over the yard, his shoulders heaving with a deep breath. “I’m so sorry… I couldn’t protect them, sis. Couldn’t protect you,” he says, voice tight and breaking around the tears choking his throat.

I… ahh, shoot. What did I do? What do I do? “Shhh. Squirt, it’s alright. It was never your fault.”

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He shakes his head. “It was! Papa charged me with being the man of the house. And I failed. I failed.”

I wrap myself around him, trying to hold him together even as his gut-wrenching cries breaks me into tiny pieces. I hug him tighter, his tears making the numbing wall rise, but I dash it away, in that moment choosing to feel with my brother instead of putting up a wall of indifference to protect myself from the hurt. And boy, it rises. A bitterness, a hole, a sinking pit I have no words to describe. But I hold myself together despite the pain, knowing that right now, my brother needs me.

“There was nothing you could’ve done differently, my wonderful, brave brother. You protected Momma and Jill in every way you could, even going to another world with Jill and dying to protect her. You have nothing to be ashamed of and everything to be proud of. I am so proud of you. So, so proud. And I know Pa would be, too.”

He sniffles, looking up at me and wiping his nose with his sleeve. His eyes are glassy with tears and swollen from crying, the depth of pain, of grown-up wisdom mixed with child-like innocence… how I wish I could have protected him from the horrors of this world until he was older. “You really think so?”

I give a firm nod, pushing back his hair and kissing his forehead. “I know so.”

I die a little inside when he puts the snot-covered arm around me, but choose my brother over my squeamishness of bodily fluids. He settles against me as we listen to a goat baa and a few chickens clack and birds sing as the wind sways against the still-slightly overgrown grasses and flowers. But I kinda like the wild feel of our yard and hope it never looks as pristine and perfect as Hans’ and Jenny’s place. It makes me feel a little more at home, since the forest is where I belong.

Then the front door crashes open with a bang, and I jerk up, knife already half-way past its scabbard when Momma emerges from the interior, smoke billowing out behind her in an angry black and grey cloud. I settle back in the grass as she coughs, a maid coming behind her.

“Mrs. Naomi, please stop with your experiments before you burn down the estate!” the maid coughs between expletives.

I exchange a broad grin with Jack, and the little man actually releases a laugh. Then a chuckle bubbles past my lips and I clamp both hands over my mouth. I looked at Jack, seeing him cross-eyed and toad-cheeked trying to hold in his laughter, and I can't help it.

We're both clutching our stomachs when Momma glances over with streaks of black through her grey-blonde hair.

She waggles a finger at us, trying to speak but coughs erupt instead.

Which only makes us laugh harder.

“Get your behinds up here and help, or so help me, you won’t get dinner and will sleep in the stable!”

I exchange a glance with Jack, and the mischief in his eyes warns me. I try to stop him, I swear it. Maybe not as hard as I should’ve when he saunters away and just out of grabbing range.

“Seared eyebrows not on the menu, I take it?” he asks, blinking innocently at Momma.

Yeah… Momma’s eyebrows are gone. Her face is red and glowing and nearly tight-looking from the heat of the fire. And her skin is slightly shinny without a hint of hair anywhere on her face. At least her hair is back in a kerchief. Momma feels her face, her eyes growing darker in rage, and then she’s down the steps and swatting Jack’s backside with a wooden spoon.

“En gaurd!” He bats away her spoon with his sheathed sword.

Wrong move, bud.

Her face grows hard as granite, but something in the depths of her eyes and the pursing of her lips hints at something much lighter than she wants Jack to see. She's hiding laughter. Which makes my own soul soar.

Jack gulps, drops the sword, and holds up his hands. “Mercy!” he cries, but Momma grabs him by the ear and swats his backside as if he were five years younger.

I slap a hand over my mouth, trying to contain my mirth, and the wooden spoon swats me on the backside.

“What was that for?” I wail, hands on my hips.

Her eyes twinkle, even behind the stern set of her lips and the glower of her non-existent eyebrows. “Encouraging him.”

I shake my head, opening my mouth, and then gasp as ice-cold water crashes over my head like a crown and trickles down my back. The culprit stands on the porch, glancing between me and Momma with wide blue eyes. “Oh, dear. It looked like you needed a little cooling off,” Jill says, batting her eyes as Momma chokes on a laugh behind me and I try to decide between shock and outrage. “Oh, and Aria, would you take me to the market this evening? Becca’s mom said we could go if you’d take us?”

I growl something unintelligible. The maid passing Jill merely shakes her head with a sigh. She passes Jill another water bucket, which she uses to douse Momma, who sputters in shock.

“So help me, child of mine—” I share a glance with Momma, and we both race for the well and buckets.

Before Momma calls a truce, we’re all soaked and shivering in the afternoon sun, including the maid, Mrs. Dwight, who Jack finally got a laugh from when he slipped and fell in wolf poo.

And Ran’s excrement is quite large. Jack’s still gagging by the well, trying to rip his tunic off and nearly giving Momma a heart attack when he strips out of his trousers and begins untying his small clothes. She puts a stop to that, forcibly holding his small clothes up so no one will die of indecent exposure, and then takes him to the house by the ear.

Sir Rowen helps me up, chuckling at my water soaked tunic. “Got enough yet, sir?” he asks, smiling broadly.

I shake my head, flinging water. “I won’t need to bathe for a week,” I say, wringing out my tunic. And then I blush, crossing my arms over my chest. Water doesn’t agree with my… disguise.

Rowen laughs as I hightail it into the house, getting salutes and chuckles from the rest of the knights on duty on the way through.

“Get back to your stations!” I growl.

“Sir, yes, sir!” the cheeky knights say, not even bothering to salute or look away.

I shake my head, biting my cheek to hide a grin.

When I finally get changed and ready to go with Jill to the market, my heart’s more full than it has been in a long time.

I went to find Ran as Jill relaxed until it was time for us to go pick up Becca for the evening market.