Well, the time free of Sirius was too short.

  This time, though, he seemed different. More subdued.

  When Sirius looked around the orphanage, it was as if he were seeing it for the first time. His eyes lingered on the cracked walls and the threadbare clothes. He seemed to breathe in the musty air, to taste the smoke and aged wood, as if these things had not been around him for a month already.

  I watched him closely, my tremor sense painting the small details I would have missed otherwise. The way his gaze held on the dirt-streaked faces of the toddlers. The way his hand brushed against a broken toy, still cherished despite its splinters. Something was shifting.

  He no longer asked about my arm. In fact, he hardly spoke at all. Instead, he moved through the rooms with a kind of quiet hunger, as if he were searching for something he had not known he was craving.

  Every pause told me more than his words ever had. Every moment he lingered, every time he slowed, I could feel the tension of it. The high horse he had ridden in on seemed to sag beneath him, and his steps became less sure. He began to notice where he placed his feet.

  Even the chores changed. He stopped groaning about dishes, and instead studied the scarred and ancient plates as though they carried stories he had not considered before.

  It did not happen overnight. But over a few months, the shift was undeniable. He began to help the toddlers, awkwardly at first, then with more care. He played their games, joined their laughter, and somehow made space for himself in the rhythm of our days.

  At first, I kept tracking him with my senses, waiting for some false step, some cruelty ready to spill back out of him. Yet what I found instead was someone genuinely trying. Clumsy, uncertain, and often failing, but trying all the same.

  And that, more than anything, changed the orphanage.

  Finally, my curiosity got the better of me while I was preparing another ordinary meal in the kitchen. The steady rhythm of the knife faltered, and before I could stop myself, the words slipped out.

  “What happened to you?”

  The sound startled Sirius. He jolted, nearly dropping the spoon he had been scrubbing. For a moment, he froze, shoulders stiff, as if I had shaken him awake from some long dream.

  Slowly, he turned toward me. His eyes did not rise to meet mine, but stayed low, drifting across the scarred counter and worn floorboards. There was no pride in his stance, no smirk on his lips.

  For the first time since he had entered our orphanage, he looked less like a noble and more like one of us.

  Sirius shifted the spoon from one hand to the other, his fingers restless. For a long moment, I thought he would stay silent, but then his voice came low, almost ashamed.

  “My family sent me here,” he said. “I was… I was cruel. To the servants in our house. To anyone smaller than me. I thought being born into wealth meant I could do whatever I wanted. Order people around. Make them afraid of me.”

  He swallowed, still staring at the counter. “I liked the way it felt, having them jump at my words. I thought it proved I was strong. But my father caught me bullying one of the boys who cleaned the stables. It wasn’t the first time. It was just the last straw. He told me that if I could not learn to respect people, I would never be worthy of the position I was born into.”

  His shoulders slumped. “That is why I am here. Punishment, maybe. Or training. At first, I hated it. I hated all of you. I thought you were beneath me.”

  He finally glanced up at me, and his eyes flicked to my arm, then to where the scars scattered across my chest. His face tightened. “But when you told me your story… when you showed me what happened to you… I could not stop thinking about it. The wyrm, your parents, the scars. You were younger than I am now, and you lost everything. And still you live. Still, you fight.”

  His words trailed for a moment before he went on, softer. “It woke me up. I saw how empty I had been. I thought ordering people made me strong, but really, it just made me small. You made me see what strength really looks like. And I realized I had never thought about anyone but myself before.”

  The spoon clattered into the basin as his hands fell to his sides. “That is what happened to me. I know I can’t be different overnight, but I want to try. I do not want to be the boy who walked in here a few months ago.”

  The world seemed to still, as if my senses had gone quiet for the first time since I had awakened four years ago. No vibrations. No whispers through the stone. Only silence pressing against me.

  I turned his words over in my mind, trying to line them up, to place them in some kind of order that made sense.

  In the end, I found no words to match the sincerity of his speech. So I spoke simply.

  “Well, it is a nice change.”

  And with that, I went back to the steady rhythm of chopping, the sound of steel on wood filling the quiet between us. He returned to scrubbing the dishes, his movements slow and thoughtful.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Thorn. For the briefest moment, his lips tilted, as if he were fighting back a smirk. It was gone as quickly as it came, but I could have sworn I saw it.

  It was the look of someone who knew something the rest of us did not.

  —

  It had been nine months since Sirius first arrived. I could not point to the moment it changed, but somehow we began to speak to one another. It happened slowly, like water wearing down stone, as the hours in the kitchen stacked up.

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  There is something about the repetition of mundane tasks done side by side that weaves people together. The endless rhythm of chopping, scrubbing, stirring, and stacking. Shared suffering mingled with small sparks of joy. A bond hidden inside monotony.

  At first it was Sirius filling the silence with stories. Tales of hunts he had gone on with Thorn outside the capital, of game tracked through the forests, of sleeping under the stars far away from the walls that caged him. His voice grew brighter when he spoke of the wilds, and I could feel how badly he longed to escape the city’s suffocating stone.

  I had no such stories to share. My life had been bound to these aging walls since I lost everything. I was grateful to have them instead of the streets, but gratitude still left space for that desired freedom.

  Yet his stories stirred something in me. Each word painted pictures of trees I had never seen, of skies that seemed too wide to imagine. And as I listened, I felt a longing awaken, a buried desire that I had not known was there. A hunger for more than survival.

  I had read many books and tales of adventure, but as Sirius spoke, what had lived in my mind began to stir awake in my heart. His words carried a vibrancy and excitement that the pages couldn’t.

  Sirius leaned against the counter, the dishcloth dangling like a forgotten banner in his hand. His voice dropped low, almost secretive.

  “It was a boar,” he said. “But not just any boar. This thing was huge. I swear it was the size of a horse. Maybe bigger. Its tusks were curved like swords, sharp enough to cut through a tree.”

  I raised an eyebrow and kept chopping. “A horse-sized boar?”

  Sirius pointed the rag at me. “Don’t give me that look. I was there. You weren’t. When it came out of the brush, the ground shook. I could feel it even through the saddle.”

  That caught my attention. I let my senses drift into his story, imagining the vibrations he described.

  “We had been tracking it for hours,” Sirius continued, his eyes shining now. “Thorn was ahead, quiet as always, and I was right behind him. Bow ready, arrow notched. My heart was racing, but I was steady. At least, that’s what I told myself.”

  He mimed pulling a bowstring, his skinny arms straining as if he were reliving it.

  “Then the forest went still. Birds stopped, wind stopped, even the trees seemed to stop breathing. That’s when I knew something was wrong. And then it came.”

  He slammed the rag on the counter for emphasis.

  “It burst out of the undergrowth like an earthquake with legs! The boar was snorting and tearing up the ground, and I swear its eyes were red. Glowing red. It charged straight for me, and I loosed an arrow. Right into its shoulder. But do you know what happened?”

  I glanced at him, dryly. “It bounced off.”

  Sirius snapped his fingers. “Exactly! Like I had shot a stone wall. That’s when my horse panicked. It reared, and before I could hold on, I was flying through the air like some sack of grain.”

  He mimed the tumble, flailing his arms. “I hit the ground so hard I saw stars. Real stars, in the middle of the day. My bow went one way, my dignity the other. And when I looked up—” He sucked in a breath. “The boar was charging me. Tusks down, mouth open, steam pouring from its nostrils like a dragon. I knew I was about to be skewered like meat on a spit.”

  Despite myself, I stopped chopping. “So how are you alive?”

  Sirius straightened, puffing out his chest a little, but there was a flicker of seriousness in his eyes. “Thorn. Out of nowhere, he stepped between me and that beast. He didn’t flinch, didn’t even blink. Just lowered his spear and waited. And when the boar came in full tilt—he met it head on.”

  His voice had risen with excitement, but now it slowed, almost reverent.

  “The impact was like a crack of thunder. The spear went clean through, and the beast toppled right in front of me. I swear its tusks missed me by inches. If Thorn had been a heartbeat late, I would’ve been gone. Just… gone.”

  For a moment, he was quiet, staring at the floor as if the image still lived there. Then he shook himself and gave a half-smile. “I still have the scar from the fall. Right here.” He tugged at his sleeve to show a faint pink line near his shoulder. “I didn’t touch a bow for a month after that. And I am still trying not to see that beast every time I close my eyes for sleep.”

  He tossed the rag back into the basin and gave me a sideways look. “So, yes, maybe it wasn’t as big as a horse. But I promise you, it felt that way. And I’ll never forget the sound of Thorn’s spear breaking its charge. Saved my life, plain and simple.”

  I returned to chopping, though my eyes lingered on him a moment longer. “Sounds like you owe him a lot.”

  Sirius’s smile faded into something more thoughtful. “Yeah,” he said softly. “I know.”

  Not for the first time, and after many of Sirius’s stories, I began to wonder what it would truly take to fight and survive beyond these walls. What kind of skill lets a man like Thorn bring down a charging boar?

  What kind of strength and calm let Asher loose an arrow and drop his mark from across a field? He had taken me to the guild a couple of times and showed me the archery range. I still remember my jaw hitting the floor as I watched him unleash arrows with inhuman accuracy.

  My eyes drifted to the knife in my hand as I kept cutting. Of all the tools in the kitchen, knives had always drawn me. They felt natural to me, almost like an extra limb. Years of practice had made them part of who I was. Tossing and catching them had become second nature, woven into my bones.

  I had learned to feel their weight in my palm, to read the shift of balance the moment I flicked my wrist. I knew the rhythm of their spin in the air and the instant they would land back in my hand. My senses, sharpened beyond the ordinary, had long since mastered the feedback. Every tremor, every shift of air, every fraction of timing — it all guided the blade home. I couldn’t remember the last time I cut myself.

  I wondered, not for the first time, if this could become more than a comfort. Could these motions that steadied my mind become something more, something dangerous, something useful? If I could throw with such precision in play, could I strike with precision in battle?

  The thought lingered as I chopped, each thud of steel on wood echoing the beat of that question.

  What if my skill with knives could move beyond defensive comfort and into offensive power?

  “Sirius?” I said his name like a question, my knife pausing mid-chop.

  He turned, eyebrows raised. “Yeah?”

  I shifted my tremor sense toward him and Thorn, measuring every flicker of their reactions before the words even left my mouth.

  “Do you think Thorn could train us? To kill a boar like that… to fight and survive in the wild, or even in battles against beasts and men?”

  Sirius blinked, his face slowly turning thoughtful. Thorn, however, stilled like a drawn bowstring, his attention narrowing in on me.

  “I mean…” The words tumbled out faster now, carried on a current I hadn’t meant to release. “What if, between our duties, we learned to fight? To adventure beyond these walls, to conquer monsters, to stand against evil men!” My voice increased with an excitement I hadn't realized was within me, a desire sparked by his stories and the books I had eagerly read.

  But the moment I heard myself, I faltered. My chest cooled, shame flooding in where boldness had burned.

  “…Oh. Never mind. My thoughts got the better of me.”

  I turned back to the chopping block, burying the embarrassment beneath the blade.

  “Yes!” Sirius’s voice cut through the air, full of sudden fire. “That is a brilliant idea, Bryn!”

  I glanced at him in surprise as he spun toward Thorn, already opening his mouth to demand training on the spot. But then he froze, catching the look on Thorn’s face.

  I could not decipher it. The man’s expression barely shifted, yet something in his eyes seemed to answer without sound.

  Sirius, though, seemed to understand. He always did. He had a way of reading Thorn’s silence as if words lived there.

  He turned back to me, grinning, though his voice had softened. “We should probably check with Mistress Elora first. I think Thorn would agree to whatever I asked, but I’m not sure she’d be thrilled about training us to fight instead of washing dishes.” His grin turned to a small, almost conspiratorial smile.