Page 232 of Spring Guardians & Songbirds

Thora faltered a little step back, the figurine she held slipped and fell to the ground with a clatter. It took her a moment to righten herself, a cold armour rising over her emerald eyes. “Does that make her unkillable?”

“Thora!” Eren called.

The look on my sister was one I recognised well—it mirrored my own. “Why, brother? We’ve been made to kill worse. Remember? I do. Because we didn’t get to shut our eyes like you, Eren. I watched and so did Snow. This would have never happened if—” Her jaw tightened. “If you had let Snow kill him that night.”

Every eye in the room came on me, including Kilian’s.

“One of my many good moments of being comfortable with violence. He’d taken away this very adorable plush toy I liked,” I said, giving everyone a tight smile and a few loosened up but Eren’s expression floundered, his head lowering.

“She was nine, Rora,” he said. “Nine.”

“Then you should have killed him,” my sister said.

Mal stood and grabbed her arm before I could say something. “Come on, little bird, let’s have a chat.” He took her over the balcony, his mouth moving slowly while she stood before him with her arms crossed and a vacant look in her face—it was empty, like she wasn't even inside her own body anymore. And Mal noticed, grabbing her jaw with a hand and shaking her head a little. To add more to the oddness, she snapped like that, her attention became warm and she nodded and talked back to him, normally.

“Did your brother use magic on my sister?” I murmured to Kilian.

He looked over at them, silver irises narrowing before he shook his head. “No. He doesn’t use his magic like that. Not even with Driada.”

Mal waved a hand in the air across the gardens and ran to me, struggling and fighting the sleeves of his shirt as he attempted to slide it down on his sweaty muscular body. “That is nice of you to visit me.”

“Where is he?”

His smile dropped. “Could have just pretended that you missed me, sister-in-law. The fool is fixing his gardens.”

Atlas had a pair of large shears in his hands and was sweating a bucket attempting to catch a bunch of branches overgrown atop a tall bush. Kilian, however, was nowhere in sight. Had he left poor Atlas to do his work?

“The two are joined to the hip,” I said, noting the young boy struggling from the heat and labour.

“Kil found him.”

“What do you mean found?”

“On a trip to Sidra. After we rested in a tavern for food before returning to Amaris, we heard a small child cry behind a rubbish bin. He was barely five, wearing a large nappy and covered in dirt, eating a half-eaten loaf that had more mud in it than bread. My brother refused to leave him. He refused to let anyone take care of him, too. Atlas slept in a room near his till not long ago. Ate with him and followed him everywhere, meeting, trials at Highwall and even patrols out at sea.” Mal laughed. “He even called Kil papa for a while. Funniest part was that Kil let him.”

How little did I know of him.

Atlas chose that moment to turn and wave a bony hand to us, and I suddenly found another human being…adorable?

Mal strode to the young priest and slung an arm over his shoulders, the boy’s posture drowned by the fool’s much bigger and taller one. “How is young Atlas? And where is your father?”

I smiled a bit, but Atlas went beet red. “Don’t start again.”

Mal pinched his cheek. “Why? I think it’s adorable.”

“It’s embarrassing,” Atlas said, trying to escape Mal’s hold.

“If Kil is your father, would that make me your mother?” I asked, taking a seat on a bench, facing the honey scented white rose bushes.

Atlas went crimson to the tip of his hair.

“Enough, you bullies,” Kilian said, coming from behind a maze wall, holding a large sack of soil on his shoulder before dropping it to the ground. He was messy, dirty, sweaty, ruffled, and gods help me, he was a treat I wanted to devour. He fluffed Atlas’s hair. “Are you alright, son?”

Mal and I laughed till our bellies hurt, and Kilian, too, showed us that perfect grin.

Annoyed and embarrassed, Atlas picked up his shears and trotted away further in the garden.

“This is how we will be now?” Kilian asked, taking off his gardening gloves. “Bullying children.”