The Boar’s Bane

The sisters did not go to the grove themselves.

That mattered.

Instead, they found Heyshem where the Huntsmen had gathered—at the edge of the city’s light, where tents thinned into brush and the smell of pine replaced smoke. He was seated on a low crate with Sheena beside him, her boots dusted from travel, her cloak unfastened in a way that suggested she meant to stay awake a while yet. Heyshem listened to the camp without seeming to—eyes half-lidded, attention wide.

Mira spoke first.

“He’s not lost,” she said. “He’s hidden.”

Heyshem opened his eyes fully. “From whom?”

“From praise,” Lyra answered. “From being named before he has chosen what to answer to.”

Sheena smiled faintly at that, not unkindly. “That sounds like him.”

Mira inclined her head. “He’s gone to the old travel grove. The one the city built around and forgot.”

Heyshem nodded once. “Good ground,” he said. “Quiet. He’ll come back when he’s ready.”

“That may not be tonight,” Lyra said. “And there are things being spoken already.”

Heyshem’s mouth tightened—not in anger, but in calculation. “I know.”

They did not ask him to intervene. They trusted him to decide whether he should.

That trust was returned sooner than expected.

Yahmes found them before the sisters could withdraw.

He approached without escort, crown absent, wearing the same plain dark wool he had worn before the Hall. Only the ring marked him now. Toren walked with him, slower than usual, his tunic newly mended, his posture still adjusting to pain remembered rather than present.

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Conversation stilled—not abruptly, but naturally, as people learned to breathe again around a new gravity.

Yahmes stopped before Heyshem and Sheena and inclined his head, not as king to subject, but as man to man.

“Sheena,” he said. “I am glad you made the journey.”

“I wouldn’t have missed this one,” she replied, eyes sharp, voice warm. “Too much finally being said aloud.”

Yahmes smiled at that, then turned his attention fully to Heyshem.

“There are marriages being proposed,” Yahmes said plainly. “Not announced. Not promised. Considered.”

Heyshem did not deny it. “Considered is the right word.”

Toren shifted slightly. “They’re meant to bind what’s been strained,” he said. “Not to decorate victory.”

Mira met his gaze. “We wouldn’t be here otherwise.”

Yahmes listened—to tone as much as words. “And Yohan?” he asked.

Lyra did not soften her answer. “He will be reluctant.”

Sheena nodded. “Because he will hear obligation first, not belonging.”

Yahmes exhaled, slow and thoughtful. “That is what concerns me.”

Heyshem studied him for a long moment, measuring something older than crown or title. “Say what you intend to say.”

“I will,” Yahmes replied. “But not before I ask.”

That earned him a flicker of surprise.

“I intend to ask Yohan to serve as my second,” Yahmes said. “Not tonight. Not publicly. As a man, not as a crown.”

Toren’s eyes widened slightly. The sisters did not react at all.

“He would not see it as honor,” Lyra said quietly.

“I know,” Yahmes answered. “That’s why I want him.”

He turned back to Heyshem. “But I will not do so without your leave. You are his kin in all the ways that matter. You stood when others stepped aside. If you say no, I will hear it.”

The camp seemed to lean closer, though no one moved.

Heyshem looked at Sheena.

She considered the question the way she considered weather—carefully, with long memory. “He will say yes eventually,” she said. “But only if he believes the asking comes from trust, not necessity.”

Yahmes inclined his head again. “Then I will ask as I should.”

Sheena’s gaze sharpened. “And you will allow him time.”

“Yes.”

“And you will not bind his answer to the marriages.”

“Yes.”

“And you will remember that he is blighted,” she added, voice steady. “Not broken—but changed. He will carry that longer than most men carry fear.”

Yahmes did not flinch. “So will I,” he said. “If he stands with me.”

Heyshem held the silence a moment longer, then nodded once.

“You may ask,” he said. “But not tonight. Let him return on his own feet.”

Yahmes accepted that without argument.

The sisters exchanged a glance—brief, relieved, resolute.

Somewhere beyond the camp, roots shifted in the dark, and a man sat beneath them, unaware that the ground he trusted had already begun to answer for him.