Chapter 57: A Little Less Guarded

Xavion remained seated, his fingers instinctively brushing the edge of the eyepatch. The silence that followed was entirely different from the heavy, clinical tension of the examination. It felt light now, almost fragile, stretching across the embroidered rug where the physician’s medicine bag had rested just moments before.

A quiet knot of embarrassment tightened in Xavion’s chest.

He had let Lioren go out of his way to arrange for a physician, setting up a formal consultation in the heart of the Grand Duke’s capital residence, only to hit a brick wall the moment he was asked to remove his eyepatch. Lioren hadn’t complained, not once, yet Xavion still felt that heavy, nagging sense of having fallen short. He had made things infinitely more difficult than they needed to be, turning a straightforward medical check into a tense display of boundary-drawing.

After a long moment of internal debate, his jaw tightened. He shifted his weight on his seat.

"Your Grace," Xavion began. "I... I ought to apologize. For my behavior just now."

Lioren blinked, his head tilting sideways with a look of genuine, absolute bewilderment. "Apologize? For what?"

"For making the examination difficult," Xavion said, his thumb grazing the seam of the eyepatch. "You arranged for Master Fane to come all this way, and I couldn’t even bring myself to remove the patch. I know you only wanted answers about the recent pain, and I... well, I suppose I couldn’t bring myself to do it."

A soft, disbelieving huff of air escaped Lioren’s chest. He chuckled, crossing his arms over his vest.

"Oh, gods above," Lioren muttered, shaking his head. "Your Highness, you’ve got to be kidding me. You are apologizing because you didn’t want to rip a piece of eyepatch off your own face in front of an old man you met twenty minutes ago?"

"It is a matter of basic courtesy..."

"It’s a matter of basic sanity!" Lioren interrupted, his tone warm, breezy, and entirely devoid of judgment. He leaned forward again. "Listen to me. You don’t have to be comfortable with letting people stare at an old wound just because a physician happens to hold a clipboard. There is zero point in forcing yourself into a state of sheer misery before you’re actually ready. If another examination becomes necessary down the road, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. For now? Take all the damn time you need."

Beside them, Evelia crossed her arms over her chest, letting out a dry, knowing hum. "Well said, brother. Though I suppose it’s rather rich coming from the man who spent three weeks hiding a torn calf muscle under a winter cloak rather than let a medic look at it."

Lioren’s head whipped around so fast his neck nearly snapped, his eyes widening in immediate horror. "I did not hide a torn muscle. That is a malicious, fabricated piece of family propaganda!"

"You literally walked with a limp so pronounced the royal guards thought you were doing a new court dance," Evelia shot back, her lips twitching with amusement. "And every time someone suggested calling a physician, you got this wild, rabid look in your eyes and insisted you could walk it off like some heroic peasant in a bad romance story."

"The situations are completely, fundamentally different!" Lioren sputtered, stabbing a finger in her direction. "My injury was a minor athletic mishap..."

"You fell off a balcony while trying to impress a visiting duke’s falconer by claiming you could identify every hunting bird in the estate," Evelia reminded him.

"...and that," Lioren continued right over her, raising his voice to drown her out, "is an entirely separate ordeal! Besides, you’re leaving out the most crucial, traumatic detail of your little story, aren’t you?"

Evelia didn’t even blink. "Which detail would that be? The part where you barricaded yourself in your room with a butter knife?"

"The part where you," Lioren roared, throwing his hands up in utter disbelief, "the brute woman of the Roscaire household, had practically ripped my trousers apart just to get a look at the bruise!"

"You wouldn’t cooperate!" Evelia countered, her voice rising to match his in pitch and volume. "You were acting like a feral badger trapped in a laundry basket! I wasn’t going to let your leg get worse just because you cared more about your pride than your own health!"

"There were other ways! More civilized ways!"

"Oh, please. You’d be lost without me keeping you in line."

"I despise it! I feel victimized on a daily basis!" Lioren turned his hands toward Xavion in a dramatic, pleading gesture. "Do you see this? This is what I live with. A sister who has zero respect for my personal boundaries, my wardrobe, or my dignity as a Grand Duke."

Evelia offered a serene smile. "If I hadn’t stepped in that day, you’d probably have done permanent damage to your leg. Honestly, I sometimes wonder if I should have just left you limping around until you couldn’t walk at all, just so I wouldn’t have to spend the rest of my life dragging you out of trouble." She paused, her eyes glittering with mischief. "Though, looking back, I can’t entirely guarantee there won’t come a day when I just decide to throw you off the northern cliffs myself."

Lioren looked genuinely, deeply scandalized, clutching a hand to his chest as if he’d been physically struck. "You hear this, Your Highness? Matricide! Or...or sibling-cide! She’s plotting my murder in broad daylight!"

Neither of them seemed even remotely concerned that they were having this unhinged shouting match directly in front of an Ostharian prince who was still processing his own morning medical crisis.

Xavion watched them trade accusations, his initial embarrassment slowly dissolving under the sheer absurdity of the spectacle. There was something oddly comforting about the way they went at each other. They were practically shouting at each other, yet neither had reached for a sword or made any actual attempt on the other’s life.

He wasn’t sure what surprised him more: their complete lack of restraint or their apparent certainty that neither would actually hurt the other. For some reason, he found that rather remarkable.

At some point, right in the middle of Lioren listing the monetary value of the ruined trousers, Evelia turned her head sharply toward Xavion.

"Well?" she demanded, fixing Xavion with a bright, challenging look. "As an impartial third party who has unfortunately witnessed this circus, whose side are you on, Your Highness? Was trouser-ripping a proportionate response to a balcony fall?"

Xavion blinked, caught entirely off guard. The corner of his mouth lifted slightly, an unusual sight on his usually serious face. He had zero intention of getting dragged into a sibling blood-feud, knowing full well that taking either side would only invite crossfire.

Xavion merely shook his head, hoping that would be enough to show he had nothing to add. Judging by the way both siblings looked at him, however, they had taken it quite differently.

Evelia let out a triumphant bark of laughter. "Look at that! Even the Prince knows you’re hopeless!"

Lioren groaned, letting his head fall back in theatrical defeat, though the corners of his mouth were stubbornly curling upward.

"Well," Lioren muttered, straightening up and brushing an imaginary speck of dust off his knee. "As long as someone is being entertained by my public humiliation."

Evelia soon turned her attention back to Xavion, her expression gentler than before. The teasing was gone, replaced by genuine concern.

"Truthfully, Your Highness," she said softly. "You don’t need to feel guilty about what happened earlier. Lioren has always been like this whenever someone under his roof is hurting. He worries first, panics second, and thinks about tactical discretion roughly three days too late."

She offered a reassuring smile. "He can be excessive, and his methods are often deeply questionable, but his concern for you is entirely real. We don’t expect you to trust us overnight, or pretend that moving here hasn’t turned your entire life upside down. But you never have to apologize for wanting to keep something to yourself, especially when it concerns your own body."

Xavion listened in silence, his fingers resting quietly against his knee.

He still wasn’t entirely certain what to make of it all. He had spent years learning how to survive in hostile courts and brutal campaigns, conditioning himself to expect betrayal behind every smile and hidden traps beneath every polite gesture. He had trained himself to reveal nothing, to keep his weaknesses locked away, because showing a fracture was an invitation for someone to break you completely.

Lioren hadn’t tried to force him to remove the eyepatch. Evelia hadn’t questioned him about the poison or asked why he was so determined to keep his ruined eye covered. They had let him make his own choice without questioning it or making him feel guilty. Somehow, they’d even managed to turn the whole awkward situation into an argument about Lioren’s ruined trousers.

"You know, sister, it’s nice to hear you say something nice about me once in a while."

"You’re so very welcome. Would you like me to praise your remarkable ability to injure yourself and then refuse treatment next?"

"That’s not what I meant!"

"Then be more specific, dear brother."

"And here I was, foolishly hoping for a moment of sisterly affection!"

"And yet, I’m the one who saved your precious leg. You’re welcome."

As the siblings resumed arguing over whether Lioren’s ruined trousers could ever recover from Evelia’s ruthless treatment, Xavion felt an unfamiliar warmth in his chest.

Perhaps, one day, the walls would lower on their own. Perhaps, with time, he would learn to trust them enough to take off the eyepatch without feeling the need to hide anymore.