Chapter Text
Those first few days of pale, pink-cheeked spring are gloriously, luxuriously perfect. Mists rise in the moonlight and cloud every dawn, only melting away in a glisten around the middle of the morning, maybe the fourth hour, right after terce. The redcurrants ripen, the breeze carrying their musky, woodsy scent in from the orchard. The cherry blossoms all fall, pink and white petals drifting around like spring snow, piling up in the shadows beneath the trees where he played once.
Adrian and Sypha wander through it all.
The works in the Hold can't be removed — and he thanks God and witches every day that Sypha hasn't tried that yet; he keeps reminding himself to warn her — but Trevor carries heavy stacks of volumes out of the upstairs library for her. She devours them in the orchard, tucked down on carpets of fading pink flowers with the blue-gray skirts she borrowed from Luminița spread all around her. She rests her shoulders against the trees, dappled in light and shadow the way he thinks a sister might once have been, except Sypha is alive. He wishes sometimes she'd rest her shoulders against him instead and it's terrible.
Adrian, meanwhile, is never without charcoal or paints, forever worrying at an easel or a sketchbook. He traces the angles of the trees, the fragile shapes of blossoms, the curves of the streams that run through the estate. He must do it a thousand times, wriggling his way out of lessons — with that too-sharp, too-sweet smile, made worse by sunny eyes and a hopeful cant to his brows — to follow them. It ought to be annoying, to have a ten year old forever tagging after them, but he fits, listening intently to Sypha while he traces the same line for the thousandth time, responding to her before trading jabs with Trevor. And that's terrible in its own way.
In short, it's wonderful. For so long as he ignores the absence of his fresh-wedded, fresh-widowed sister and the lingering, terrible guilt.
It can't last forever. Nothing does. Especially not the good things.
Trevor gets maybe two weeks to spend enjoying the spring.
If he's honest with himself, he probably couldn't have really enjoyed it longer. He's too easily made restless. Even recovering from a deathly fever, there are days he burns with some mad desire to push himself, to run further, to climb higher, to ask for more from his body, until there's no "more" left for him to ask or for it to yield.
The first sign of his break's end is the sharp rasp of something against his bedroom door one morning. He's still pulling a tunic over his head, careful of the open collar and his eye. The stitches have finally stopped weeping something thin and vaguely reddish that Lisa calls 'serum.' Nothing to worry about, she said, but his mother cut such impressively annoyed eyes when he got it on his clothes that he's still dressing carefully and trying to avoid mopping his face with his sleeve.
"At least you're awake at a decent hour," Grandfather Rafael says in the exact same tones he uses whenever Trevor has executed a perfect strike but missed his target anyway.
Trevor just tugs his tunic down and buckles his belt on. "Today, anyway." Yesterday, he's pretty sure he slept until the morning sun had burned away all the mist. Nobody had woken him up. He hadn't even bothered to get out of bed until he heard servants clattering around in the halls. It had been amazing. "Has Lisa said I can train again?"
"As long as nothing hits you in the head."
Trevor snorts. "She does understand what we do, doesn't she?"
Rather than repeat one of the Belmont family proverbs about peaceful people, Grandfather says, "You have to wonder."
In other words, he doesn't think so, but he's not about to insult a guest openly, even out of earshot.
Grandfather jerks his chin and turns around, limping quickly away, and Trevor follows. He thrusts a simple consecrated bullwhip out as he goes.
It's instinct to hook that on his left hip. Some part of his balance seems to slide home, into place, like he'd missed it without knowing he was missing it.
Grandfather has nothing else to say while they make their way down to the practice field. Trevor lifts new clay pots onto their posts.
"One-legged," is all Grandfather says.
Which starts making sense when Trevor's lashed his third clay pot while standing on one leg — a task easier ordered than performed; this seems to renew his balance troubles from the start of Lent — and Grandfather asks, hoarse and barking:
"Do you think me a fool, boy?"
Trevor misses his fourth target, swing going wild, and has to grab his whip in his other hand to redirect the strike. It hits true, at least. Potsherds fall into big splinters with a hollow, bone-like crack.
"What?"
"You say you'll have to make a deal with Dracula. Night creatures attack just days before your own sister's wedding. Dracula's own wife turns up. So I ask you again: do you think me a fool?"
Belmonts don't panic. So the sudden uptick of his own heart, the dryness of his mouth: that's just, oh, call it alarm.
He tries to still his thoughts and say something reasonable. Or at least calm.
What comes out is a hard-edged tone and the words, "I don't think I like where you're going with that."
He has the urge to relax his shoulders and stand a little straighter, to firm his jaw and glare back. He wants to clap his hand over his mouth and apologize for back-sassing the Huntmaster.
He wants to do both of those things at the exact same time. So instead he just stares hard at the broken pottery and tries to keep his shoulders from actually touching his ears.
"Well, you didn't lie," Grandfather observes. There's a pause, and he adds, even more reproving, "Quite. You're getting good at that."
Lying or not-quite-lying? Neither feels like a thing to be proud of. He knows better than to ask which, though, simply nods and slings his whip for the fifth target. This time, despite the tension in his shoulders creeping down his arms, he hits the pot without needing to adjust.
"Other leg for the next five."
Obediently, Trevor stands on his other leg and discovers that this one is a little weaker. He has to windmill a bit before he fixes his eyes on one point and tries his hardest not to move unless he has to.
The sixth clay pot crunches at the touch of the lash, but he overbalances and nearly ends up on his arse.
Grandfather remarks, with all the calmness of having expected it, "Knew you wouldn't be even. Simion had the same problem."
He's always known, of course, that his father had been a child once. Miniatures of the family at various stages, some painted, some merely inked, lurk all throughout the house. But he's never considered what his father's weaknesses might have been. Never thought they might have struggled with the same things.
It's such a strange idea to consider.
"Go again."
He goes again, balancing a little better, but not well enough.
"Again, boy. Who else knows?"
Target number eight escapes entirely unscathed, and Trevor goes down hard, catching himself on one arm. There's no way Grandfather didn't do that to him on purpose.
"Sypha and Sara."
"The Speaker knows of your circumstances. No trouble there. Sara… I'll handle her. Now go again."
Later, when he's started to shake from strain, Grandfather leans in. He points at Trevor with one thick-knuckled, arthritic finger. "Never, ever, ever," he says, "do that again. Silence is not permission. Do you understand?"
"I do. But it needed to be done."
He almost doesn't see the slap coming. As it is, he sees it only in time to brace himself, to turn his head with it. It's forehanded, most likely to spare Grandfather's old bones and take the brunt of the force on his palm, but it's powerful despite that.
His whole head buzzes from the force of it. The strike had thankfully landed on his good cheek — no accident, that — but between the stinging of his skin and the way it seems to throb all through his face, that choice hardly matters. Trevor blinks away sudden heat in both eyes.
"You don't make that decision. Maybe you've got all the saints and angels yelling in your ear, maybe you're from the future, none of it matters a fuck. I am Huntmaster. Not you."
He ought to bow his head, make the obedient reply he always had. Always has. He ought to. But there's a cunning little voice in the back of his head, like his own but deeper, that looks at Grandfather's bad leg and remembers that he has a weak heart.
If it came to a fight, he's younger, faster, and knows the old man's weak places.
Once again he does neither of those things. He touches his fingertips to his cheek, and says, quiet, "We want to protect this family, don't we?"
At the end of the day, that's the truest thing.
"Never, ever, ever make a bargain with a God-damned night creature again. We kill the night, Trevor; we don't climb into bed with it."
There's something in there to laugh at hysterically, but when he tries to pin down what's funny, it slips away. Something about Adrian. Something about how having him near is the same kind of terrible as having Sypha close to him, always close and never touching.
Trevor says, "Trust me, I don't plan on it," because it happens to be true, but the corner of his mouth twitches up into a smirk.
'Climb into bed with it.' (Ha, ha.)
Grandfather does him the favor of not belting the expression right off his face.
Later, Trevor sits and allows Lisa to cut out this last round of stitches. With the wound finally staying closed and no longer weeping, reddened, or even particularly puffy, it's evidently time.
The soft sound as she snips each vinegar-washed linen knot grates on his nerves. There's a lot of them, so he opens his mouth and talks to cover the noise.
"So, you're really alright with Adrian skipping lessons every afternoon to tag along with Sypha and me?"
Lisa smiles. Crinkles form in the corners of her eyes, hinting at where her crow's feet will be someday.
"It's important for children to play. Knowing he'll be allowed to run and move and do as he likes later helps him concentrate when he's with me. Does your family not do the same?"
"The work comes first. Always. But we don't start much formal learning until seven or so." And, now he thinks of it… "Until lately, it was always more like play. Weapons, the obstacle course. Scary stories from the bestiary every night. Contests to see who could memorize the most."
He decides not to mention the grim little tales of unlucky peasant children and the things they get eaten by. And what did we learn from this, Uncle Leonărd asks from years and years ago, the memory grimy with dust and old fear and the shared Belmont determination to never, never, get eaten without a good screaming, burning fight.
He'd slept with a silver knife under his pillow for weeks at the story of Unlucky Nico and the Nocnica.
He doesn't think Lisa would understand. Alucard hadn't. He'd called it —
What had he called it? Who?
His thoughts trip to a stop. That name sounds familiar, and he can almost put a face to it. A bitchy, fangy, perpetually-needling-him face.
"Stop, Trevor," Lisa says, soft. "Let it stay gone."
He doesn't want it to go. But there's nowhere to chase it, no way to pin it in place until he can see it again, and he heaves a sigh.
"Already gone," he says, gesturing with one hand, flicking his fingers outwards to indicate how the thought has fucked quite thoroughly off.
Mariana stops him outside the surgery. She stares at his face for a long, long time — actually holds his chin between her first finger and her thumb to keep him still for it — and when she smiles, it seems a little strained.
Like she'd been worrying. Her eyes even look a touch too bright, not that he's fool enough to mention it.
"Look at that. All shiny and pink. And you can even still see out of it?"
He doesn't knock her hand away, though it's a near thing. It's the first time she's showed concern over him since their fight over Lisa. He wonders if they'll always be fighting about the future.
"I see well enough to aim better than you," he tells her.
She just laughs. "Oh, baby brother. That kind of boast gets put to the test. You sure you want to start that?"
He just grins. "Why wouldn't I?"
"Because you're going to get sand all in that freshly-healed eye." Her grin makes her own eyes crease, which makes their pale green look warmer than usual, and just like that, he can tell, it's all forgiven. He's her brother still, whatever their different philosophies.
"Pretty sure I'll surprise you," he says, and darts away, laughing, when Mariana makes to swat good-naturedly at him.
Whatever Mariana might have thought, they don't end up putting his boasting to the test. Mother intercepts them on the way to the practice sands, and he spends the afternoon in the Hold, re-learning Latin from Sypha and Luminița. It's one of the few places in the house Adrian has been barred from, small wonder, and where the dhampir spends the afternoon, Trevor isn't sure.
As it is, he copies down Latin verbs, conjugations, and declensions, trying not to grind his jaw at the way the letters all run together and look the same. He remembers hours in the Hold always giving him a headache, and they do the same now.
The fourth time Sypha frowns at one of his letters, then holds up a finger wreathed in flame and writes it again, to point out how he'd reversed it somehow, he nearly snaps. He manages not to, if only by reminding himself that he's the one who asked her help. She doesn't have to do this.
It still makes him grit his teeth. He hates the Latin alphabet. The letters the Slavs use make so much more sense to him.
By the time they have to leave the Hold and wash all the ink and dust off, the headache twinges and throbs through his skull. He squints against the light, making his way to his rooms by rote memory.
Dinner, at least, smells amazing. Now that Lent is over, Cook has begun to actually use their larder of spices and the earliest yield of spring. It's not quite ox-head season, but she's apparently got her hands on fresh fruit. The rich, cinnamony scent of her lemon sauce reaches his nose from well outside the dining room.
God, he's missed this. How many years has it been since he's tasted this sauce?
Wait. That can't be right. They'd been in blossom — no, not since before Advent. So not since early summer of last year. Right?
It feels like it's been longer.
Doesn't matter, he decides, as Sypha passes him a plate of young pigeon, smothered in the yellow sauce. He tears into it eagerly, savoring every bite. Tangy, warm sweetness melts on his tongue, contrasting perfectly with the squab's gamey flavor.
Sypha appears to enjoy the dish as much as he does. Even Adrian, who can sometimes be fickle about flavor — probably a combination of being young and having a vampire's sense of smell — forgoes conversation to focus on the first really fine meal since the end of Lent.
"The cinnamon must be new," Sara observes, sitting back. Pigeon wreckage litters her plate. There's a drop of yellow on a tiny bird skull that sits at the head of all the bones. "That, or I'm just glad the fasting is finally over."
Luminița laughs. "Pretty sure it's both," she says. "Are you going to ask for seconds?"
Trevor's the one to grin and say, "I might."
Sara wrinkles her nose. "Oh, God. You're going to eat the family out of house and home now, aren't you? Don't boys do that?"
He shrugs, then takes the chance to needle her back. "You mean you didn't already try? Just a few years ago?"
Sara kicks him under the table. It's really barely a kick, more a brush of the arch of her foot over his shin, but he knows his sister and he knows what she meant to do, so he kicks back. He does it slow enough to go unnoticed by Mother, Grandfather, and Lisa, but hopefully hard enough to hurt.
Across from them, Luminița rolls her eyes. "How am I only the second youngest?"
"You were born old."
"She was born to be a nun," Sara corrects, and they both watch Luminița turn pink all the way to her ears at being called out over wanting to take holy orders.
His chest squeezes tight at the thought of any more of his family, save cousin Liviu, joining the Church. The bastards have nearly killed them all already.
"No sister of ours is joining the damned Church," he says, and the words come out lower, more intent, than he'd meant to sound. And yet that feels right: he will be dead and buried before he sees any member of his family in the hands of the so-called Holy Mother Church. Even a sister, even somewhere as safe and far away and respected as a convent. Especially a sister as gentle-hearted as Luminița.
Her eyes flicker toward Lisa. "Well, maybe I won't have to. There's ways and ways to avoid marriage, right?"
Sara tips her head, watching Luminița intently. "Is it marriage or the childbed you're so afraid of?"
Trevor kicks Sara under the table again. "You can't just ask that at dinner!"
Their sister's face closes down, shuttering everything away behind an expression of polite fondness. It makes her look even more like Noemi, despite her hair being red-brown where Noemi's is nearly black.
"I don't have to answer that," she says.
From the foot of the table, Mother asks, "What foolishness are you up to, youngest children?"
"Nothing, Mother," they all chorus, just as they always have, just as they hopefully always will.
Sypha, watching this exchange, snickers.
A rider arrives the next morning, his horse kicking up dust on the road. By the time he reaches the fountain and dismounts, they've all gathered near the front of the house. Mother, Grandfather, and Mariana wait in the entry hall, while the rest of them — save Lisa, who is working with Cousin Richter on his injured leg — wait by windows or near the stairs.
"That's Pătrașcu livery," Sara whispers.
Trevor hadn't recognized it at first, but Noemi and Sara seemed surprisingly close recently. It makes sense she would know the arms of the man who married their sister. Even if the man currently wearing them is all over mud, dust, and grass stains, such that his clothing barely has colors at all.
The messenger hands over something, though they all overhear the faint confusion when he tries to give it to Grandfather and Mother apparently holds her hand out for the scroll case. Whatever Mother reads, she does it silently.
Trevor hears the swish of her skirts as she turns away, sighing, and then the clarion call: "Rozana!" He doesn't hear the housekeeper's answer, but Mother's command practically rings off the glass: "I want half the servants packing, and half shutting the house. We ride for Târgoviște by noon tomorrow."
Alright, of the things he'd expected to hear, that… had not been one of them.
Adrian tilts his head, as curious as he is disappointed. "Will both of you go?"
"I have to." He's not sure where the bone-deep certainty comes from, or why a chill of fear rolls down the back of his neck at the thought of not going. "Sypha, as a foster, you could stay here if you wanted."
"And miss out on the capital? And whatever your family is playing at?"
She scoffs at the very idea.
They both see Adrian's shoulders tense. He's trying to hide how upset he is — there is no way his father would allow him to travel to the capital in the company of Belmonts — but he's only a boy. He doesn't have nearly the control over his face and body he will a few years from now.
"There's a distance mirror in the Hold. If you want, while everyone else is packing, I could move it for you."
Trevor is pretty sure the binding on the Hold only applies to the books. He wouldn't have the Morningstar otherwise.
Adrian turns, chin lifting up just a little, eyes serious. "A distance mirror?"
"It only lets you look at things. But you could see us that way."
Adrian doesn't take him up on it, but he does look thoughtful.
The rest of that day becomes a whirlwind of preparing. Trevor is made to dig in his wardrobe, and then his trunks, for his cojoc. Not for wearing — the days are much too warm for that — but for sleeping in. The damn thing is basically an entire sheep, he's pretty sure, but he rolls it up and packs it anyway.
Entire sheep, if their wool is taken care of, are soft as clouds to sleep on. They improve any cot, any bedroll; hell, the shepherds in the mountains just throw the cloaks on the ground and sleep on them. He has vague memories of sleeping under trees with his back against a similar cloak, but the flashes flicker and dart away when he tries to figure out when they happened.
Because everyone is so busy, dinner is catch-as-catch-can. The servants and the Belmonts are all used to it, but it seems to startle Lisa, Adrian, and Sypha, who have seen the informal Sabbath dinners but never seen the family eat separately.
"It's always like this before hunts," Trevor says in between bites of a bread roll stuffed with chicken, layered over with the remains of the lemon from last night and a new butter sauce. "We're busy. Servants are busy. You eat when you're hungry and have time."
There isn't a single place setting at the dining table. Instead, the kitchen staff had left platters out on a sideboard for the family to serve themselves. Trevor himself is eating standing up, while Lisa and Sypha sit at the table.
Adrian doesn't seem able to decide where he should be. Trevor makes a point of ignoring that the half-human ten year old is being weird. Kids are always weird, and rarely calm about anything.
"Have you been on hunts before?" Adrian's the one to ask it. He sounds like he's only curious, like he doesn't care one way or another about the answer.
Which, considering Adrian, cannot possibly be true.
"Not really. I've gone on the travels, a time or four, but I was too young to fight." His job had been to keep up, carry anything extra, and learn what he could.
Turns out saying that was a bad decision, because now he has to explain why his sisters are calling the Good Friday shitshow his second hunt. Lisa and Adrian both make the exact same face when he explains that Belmonts carry babes into battle, quite literally strapping them to their backs. It's this mix of incredulous and horrified, all shocked wide eyes and open mouths, their focus intent on him.
Lisa keeps her counsel, troubled as she obviously is. Adrian is the one to say, so aghast his voice turns bitchy, "I keep thinking your family cannot possibly be more insane. How have so many of you survived to adulthood? Is that why you have so many siblings?"
We don't always live very long, he doesn't say, because even thinking those words hurts. He opens his mouth to reply and has to close it. Why does it hurt so much? What's hovering over him like memories across the years?
"Let it stay gone, Trevor," Lisa warns.
She's always saying that. He chooses not to wonder why.
"I have a lot of sisters because my parents wanted a son," he says, flat. No point mentioning how many, many Belmonts die in battle. How Grandfather Rafael was the youngest of his generation — how Trevor had once had Great-Great-Aunts and -Uncles, how he might have grown up with second and third cousins.
A failed assault on Dracula's castle had seen to some of them, and an entire mausoleum of pricolici to others. A balaur had killed Great-Uncle Cristian and all his sons, and a zburator had driven his only daughter so mad they'd hidden her away in a convent and stopped saying her name.
"Why?"
Does he want to get into the sticky bits of inheritance? The need to carry the name on? The fact that his father had envied Uncle Leonărd and his three living sons for years?
Trevor shrugs. "Nobles always do." And weird as the Belmonts are, as unlike the other boyars as they've always been, they are still nobles.
Adrian, thankfully, takes this at face value, and doesn't press further.
Whoever is knocking at his door after moonrise — and probably after midnight — had better have a damned good reason, Trevor grumbles to himself. He rolls out of bed anyway and hisses at the cold wooden floors beneath his bare feet. He may be the only son of the heir, but that doesn't mean he gets any more rugs than anybody else.
He opens his door to find Adrian and Sypha standing outside his room. People just can't stop dragging poor Sypha out of bed in the middle of the night, he thinks, looking at her heavy cloak. Adrian's hair has been gathered into two braids, presumably to avoid tangling at night, but also possibly to give Trevor a laugh.
He bites in the inside of his cheek and doesn't care if it's obvious. "Oh my God," he says.
Adrian sniffs, inclining his head in what should be a condescending look. It's actually hilarious. "Don't," he says, like he thinks he's going to stop Trevor.
"I wouldn't dream of making fun of your pigtails. They're much too pretty," he says, fake-solemn, and Adrian glares.
Sypha is the one to lose patience. "Perhaps you could invite us in? This hallway is freezing!"
He steps back from the door, extending a hand and bowing over it. It's melodramatic, but a little melodrama is fun sometimes. Sypha and Adrian both sweep inside and head for the sheepskin rug in front of his fire.
It takes only a gesture for her to wake the embers, which had burned low. Trevor doesn't waste a second in pulling the bed warmer out from the foot of his bed. It's gone cold enough that he's able to hold it bare-handed. He offers it to Sypha with a hopeful look, and grins when she rolls her eyes but heats the whole vessel — and the water inside it — in her hands.
Once he's wrapped the bed warmer in his sheets and slid it back under his covers, Trevor sits at the foot of his bed. "So, not that I'm not going to miss Adrian, but what brings the two of you here in the middle of the night? We have an early start tomorrow."
Sypha looks to Adrian, which means it's his fault. Adrian, for his part, shifts uncomfortably, before finally drawing something silvery from the pocket of the coat he's wearing over his nightshirt and loose trousers.
"Just being able to see you didn't seem any better than not going with you. So I talked to Mother, and she said I could use these. We always carry them, in case she has to ride away somewhere for a birth or a bad sickness or something."
Adrian makes absolutely no move to clarify what he means by 'these.' Instead, he just looks down at the silvery thing, pointy little face much too grave despite his baby-round cheeks. His fangs show a little as he talks, a sure sign that he feels relaxed — it's the first time Trevor's seen even a hint of tooth since the Monday or Tuesday after Easter, when they'd met again.
Or maybe the boy's just tired. If he's really a daywalker, like a human, he's probably up pretty far past his bedtime.
"Right, but what do you mean by 'these?'"
Adrian lifts his hand. The silvery thing resolves into a mirror, bigger than his palm, but not by much. "Communication mirrors."
Trevor stares.
So Adrian digs his hand into his other pocket and pulls out a second one. "Mother and I only have these two. So you'll have to share. I'm sorry to —"
"Sharing isn't going to be a problem at all." He says it as firmly as he can. "I'll be riding with Sypha anyway. That you're even letting us borrow one of them…" He runs out of words.
"What Trevor, who is being rather presumptuous to assume I will ride with him, is trying to say is that this is a very kind, very sweet gesture, and we thank you for it. We will take very good care of the mirror, until it's time to return it."
Adrian's cheeks turn bright pink, even in the dim firelight, and he ducks his head, mumbling.
Trevor raises his hands, making a mocking quote gesture. "'Presumptuous,' you say. Forgive me for that; I just can't think of anybody I'd rather ride with."
It's Sypha's turn to flush. In this light it's just barely visible on her skin, which is always a deeper tan than his own, but it's definitely there. As if to cover it up, she rises, padding toward him, and leans in to kiss his cheek.
"That, too, was very sweet," she says, but he only half-hears her over the feel of her mouth on him, the soft puff of her breath against his skin. He can smell the soap she'd bathed with, some mix of wildflowers and cloves.
So, now they're all blushing. Great.
She retreats quickly, hopefully before his face heats up, and drops a kiss on Adrian's cheek as well. Probably so he won't feel left out. Or maybe she's just overcome with how sweet the both of them are.
Adrian's the palest of them all, and when his flush deepens, it almost makes his whole face glow like the embers in the fireplace.
"That wasn't necessary," he says in his bitchily condescending tone, but Trevor's onto him. That's the voice he uses when he's having feelings.
"Of course not," Sypha replies, sounding utterly content now that she's wrought havoc on them both.
Trevor flings himself backward, lying down along his covers, and groans. "Please get out of my room, now. Both of you. Actually, wait, Adrian, come here."
Sypha doesn't even shift in place, just stretches herself out along the sheepskin rug, and watches as Adrian heads over to Trevor's bed.
"What," Adrian says, flat.
Trevor makes a slow spinning motion with one finger. "Turn around." When Adrian does, Trevor says, "Okay, now take a step back. And another one, and another," until the backs of Adrian's knees bump into the bedframe.
Before the boy can ask what the hell is going on, or jerk away, Trevor gathers his legs underneath him, sitting up, and tugs on both ribbons knotted at the ends of Adrian's pigtails. They come loose easily, and Trevor sets one in his lap while he gently works all Adrian's hair loose from the plaits.
"Did you do these yourself? They looked a little crooked." He tugs on Adrian's hair, just because he can.
He can't see Adrian's face, but the deep frown is obvious in his voice. "Mother makes me put it in braids every night to stop it tangling."
"Every night? Since when? Because you're kind of shit at it." Trevor gathers all the hair and finger-combs it, then separates it out, considering one of the slightly more complicated braids that Sara likes to sleep in. "Which side do you sleep on, left?"
"Yes. How'd you know?"
He has no idea. "Just a guess." He keeps the crossovers at the top loose, winding them slowly around from the left side of Adrian's head to his right, working in bits and pieces until he has a braid that starts near the left temple and meanders down.
Sara's not the only one of his sisters who likes this braid. Even Mariana uses it sometimes. It's comfortable, but it makes loose curls that start all the way up.
"There. This should be comfortable for sleeping on your side. And it gives you a curl that goes up to… here." He pokes the back of Adrian's head.
Adrian turns, staring seriously at him. The firelight makes his eyes seem to flicker.
"Do you not want a curl?"
"It's only hair. I'm not a girl; I don't care if it curls or not. I told you, I braid it because Mother makes me."
"Well, you're welcome," Trevor grouses.
That, at least, reminds Adrian that Trevor had done him a favor, and he ducks his head again. "Thank you," he says, in something that sounds a little more like a mumble.
"Anytime."
Weirdly, he means it. But he also means it when he says, "Alright, you can get out of my room now. Please. I'm tired."
Adrian smirks, but he hands Trevor one of the silvery little mirrors. Trevor wraps it in cloth and tucks it into his pack.
Maybe he really is too soft-hearted for the family's work. Or maybe he's just all soggy inside because of the absolute mess that Good Friday was, and the wreck it's made of all of them, one way or another. Either way, Trevor can't say he really likes the thought of leaving home only a fortnight after returning.
He'd much rather stay here, continuing his training with Grandfather and enjoying the company of Sypha and Adrian and his sisters.
But Belmonts go where they're needed, and Father has summoned them to the capital. Trevor turns in the saddle as they leave, watching Grandfather and Cousin Georgeta, who are watching them from the windows.
He turns back around, following his mother and sisters, and turns his horse away from home.