"Your fiancee is back," Red told Syryn. "Go on, I'll finish up here." 

"No," Syryn replied. "I don't want to leave you alone in the forest with a corpse. I know you don't care but I do." 

"But-" Red wanted to remind Syryn that he had been alone when he was burying the corpse and that it was fine.

"Just let me have this, Lucien." 

Syryn began shovelling like he had a grudge against the corpse. 

"Don't fight with Rowan," Red replied as he began to match Syryn's pace. 

"What makes you think I'm going to pick a fight with him?" 

"Calm down, Syryn." 

"No!" The mage forcefully said as he huffed out a puff of breath. "Don't ask me to calm down. It makes me angrier." 

"Fine. Why are you mad at Rowan?" 

"He took off our ring before leaving to meet the king or whoever." 

"I'm sure he had a good reason for it," Red replied calmly. The shallow grave was now nearly filled.

"Yeah, I bet he does. I'm just mad that he didn't tell me about it till the last moment." 

"Eh, you were asleep the entire day." 

Syryn sighed. "You're right. Think I'm just insecure because I don't know him as well as you do." 

"The man left everything behind to search for you, Syryn. Have some faith." 

"Yeah," the mage replied, feeling stupid. He hit the freshly turned earth with the flat part of his shovel a few times. 

"Let's go back and meet Rowan before he starts panicking when he finds you missing." 

____

Rowan had changed out of his fancy clothes and was turning on the lamp in the kitchen. 

"Ryn, where did you go?" He asked noticing the dirt on Syryn's sleepwear. 

"We were out digging a spot in the garden where I buried an animal," Lucien replied before Syryn could say a word. 

"What animal?" Blue eyes turned to the redhead. 

"A bird that Lucien shot out of the tree. He wanted to see if the feathers could be salvaged for something he's working on." 

The lie tumbled out of his lips easily when he realised that Lucien didn't want Rowan to know about the corpse. 

"Oh," Rowan replied. Even if he thought it strange, the blond didn't comment further on it. 

"Why are you late, Rowan?" Red asked the man.

The anti mage pulled a chair out and took a seat, gesturing for the brothers to join him. 

"I was held up by the King. I'm sorry, Ryn. I wanted to come home soon but it was difficult to extricate myself from the palace." 

Syryn sat opposite Rowan. Red took a chair next to Syryn. It was like an interrogation led by Lucien.

"Okay. But where's your ring, brother-in-law?" Red said with a sharp emphasis on the 'brother-in-law.' 

"It's not what you think, Lucien." 

"That's what they always say," the redhead replied without missing a beat. 

Syryn was warmed by the way Lucien came to his aid despite the redhead defending Rowan when they were in the forest.

"Red, hear me out," Rowan calmly told the boy. "And Ryn too." The light of the lamp flickered in Rowan's serious eyes and it looked incredibly blue. "I have been burdened with the responsibility of being Eos' champion. It means that I have to marry a priestess or priest chosen by the goddess." 

Syryn had suspected that Rowan was promised to a noblewoman. He wasn't entirely wrong since Rowan was promised to someone else. 

"You mean Lillith," Red replied with a snort. "We all know she'll get chosen. Don't we, Rowan?" 

"We don't," the blond replied. "As far as I'm concerned, Syryn is the only one I'm willing to accept." 

"But that's not for you to decide," Syryn calmly replied. He was disturbed by what he was hearing but his heartbeat remained steady. 

"I don't care," came Rowan's surprising reply. "I'll abandon my duties if it comes to that. I've decided that you're the only one I want, Ryn." 

"Then why did you take the ring off?" Red asked. 

"To protect Syryn. If they find out about this," Rowan's gaze turned to Syryn. "Lets just say that it's going to piss off a lot of people." 

Syryn accepted his reasoning but Red wasn't convinced yet.

"But people already know about you and Syryn. It's not far fetched to think that Lillith and her parents would have heard about it." 

"They think I'm just having fun before I settle down with the chosen one," Rowan replied. "I want them to continue thinking that for a while longer. Unless-" the anti mage paused as he exchanged a look with Syryn. "-you want me to tell them the truth. If that's what you want, just say the word, Ryn." 

Did he want that? Syryn silently thought about it. No, he wanted some peace while he figured out his life. It was too soon after the mess he had been embroiled in back at Silisia. 

"Let's keep it quiet for now," he told the anti mage. 

"How long?" Red asked. 

"Not too long. The King is pressuring me to get the ceremony done with and I can't hold them off for much longer. One year at the most," Rowan told the brothers. "And then if Syryn is willing, I will have the ceremony performed. Will you come, Ryn?"

Rowan's gaze was focused on Syryn's face. He had been rejected once by the mage when he'd posed the question.

"I don't know," the mage honestly replied. "What does the ceremony entail?" 

Rowan realised then that he couldn't move forward with it while Syryn remained an amnesiac. It wasn't fair to the mage because he needed all his memories to make an informed decision about it. 

"Let's talk about this tomorrow," Rowan deflected. "It's very late, Ryn." 

"Sounds like you're avoiding the question," Red, the meddlesome child, gave his opinion. 

Rowan appreciated the redhead's concern for Syryn but wished that the child wouldn't say such inflammatory things. It was true that he was avoiding the question but not because he had something to hide from them.

"Until Syryn gets back his memories, we aren't making decisions that cannot be reversed," Rowan told both of his listeners while looking from one to the other. "Anything else you need to clarify?" 

"No, that'll be all," Syryn said as he stood up. Rowan's explanations had satisfied him. There was no need to further dwell on the matter.

The anti mage breathed a sigh of relief. He hadn't done anything wrong but being questioned like that by Red could make a grown man feel like he was a criminal.