“Tir?”

“Hmm?” Tir was studying a map, eyes intent, while the library lay quiet around them. At least Oliver thought he was studying the map; he might’ve been trying to scorch a hole through parchment with his eyes. “I’ve packed your heavier traveling coat, if you’re looking for it. And three different antidotes to various poisons; the dangers of the Quest change for each person. You may as well be ready. Do you want me to bring any sort of --”

“Stop,” Oliver said, and put a hand on the map. “We are every kind of ready. We couldn’t be more ready.” Physically, at least; though he didn’t say that part. “It’s a tradition every Heir follows, we’ve done the research, I’m prepared --” He wasn’t really, but he could pretend, for now. He flexed a bicep, knowing the ridiculousness would earn a reluctant smile. “-- and I’ve got you, and you can take out anything dangerous with those knives, I’ve seen you. Come up to the astronomy tower with me.”

Tir laughed. It wasn’t really an astronomy tower. It did happen to be the tallest and windiest tower in the palace, an old guard signal station; at the ages of eighteen and sixteen respectively they’d wheedled one of the newfangled experimental telescopes out of the University masters and spent nights speculating about far-off stars.

“I brought beer,” Ollie added. He had; he’d gone out of the library and come back. Tir had looked up, startled, upon his return. “Brewed with cocoa nibs.”

“In that case, lead on.” Tir fell into step beside him, going up. They didn’t speak much on the way, companionably so; they didn’t need to. At the top, through slitted windows, stars twinkled cold and clear.

Oliver handed him the beer -- a large earthen jug, unpretentious, happy to help -- and lit a lamp and sat down on the frost-bitten window-ledge, night at his back. “Okay, you want to tell me?”

“Do I want to tell you what?” Tir took a drink, took the chair by the telescope: a big battered ripped-velvet scarlet beast that’d once happily held them both. He tucked one infinite leg under himself and handed the jug back. His hair was tied up, neat and scholarly. His eyes stayed in shadow.

“Seriously?”

“It’s not ...” Tir shrugged at him -- annoyingly graceful even when slouching in a chair -- and accepted another drink. “Not something you need to worry about.”

“You tell me everything,” Oliver said. “I tell you everything. I told you when I was desperately in love with Lady Katherine that whole year, remember? It’s me, you can say anything.”

“I remember you constantly wearing that awful orange leather riding outfit because she told you she liked the color orange.” And if an emotion other than amusement hid in his voice Ollie couldn’t pinpoint it. “Oliver, it’s nothing you can do anything about, and I don’t want to distract you. I’m your companion. It’s your Quest.”

“I’m distracted right now. And you’re not talking.” He got up, came over to the chair, flopped inelegantly down on the dusty tower floor by fairy feet. From here he could look up, an odd sort of role-reversal for a Crown Prince and a companion, at those winter-pale eyes. “Don’t make me talk to myself, it’ll be a boring traditional Quest if I have to, come on.”

Tir stayed silent for a minute, but it was a loud silence; Oliver had the impression that he was trying to decide, turning possibilities over.

He tacked on, because he’d never been good at letting things go, “You can’t say anything that’ll make me stop being your friend, you know that, right?”

And Tir reached down, plucked the beer out of his hand, and finished off half of it. Then answered, “I know.”

“So ...”

“So it’s just that we’re heading North.” Tir got up, held out a hand. “Stop sitting on the ground. We’re heading back toward Fairy, and that’s all it is. Magic. More of it. And not necessarily nice. It’s just that, and I meant it about getting you off the ground, it’s cold and you should get some sleep in any case.”

Oh. That made sense. Tir was magic-sensitive; he’d never been bothered by good-hearted kindly-meant white-witch attempts at curing cattle, but he’d had nightmares for a week when the peddler with a cruel heart and a minor gift for love-spells had come to the closest village. He’d been the reason they’d figured that one out.

“Oh,” Oliver said aloud, understanding, thinking he understood. “Do you want to ... would you rather not come?”

“I’m your fairy companion,” Tir pointed out, an echo of his own previous statement, with bonus withering sarcasm. “I accompany you.”

“Yeah, but if you’re --”

“Shut up, Oliver.”

“Ow, hey,” Oliver protested, “I was trying to be nice.”

Tir looked at him across the moonlit tower. Their telescope, older and outdated now, yearned voicelessly for the sky. It stood framed by the space between them. “I didn’t mean that.”

“I know. You’re too sweet for that.” He’d used the word once to describe his fairy for a printed broadside news sheet, eight years ago; Tir’d never let him live that one down.

“I’m not really,” Tir said, low enough to be only for himself. Oliver heard him because the tower was quiet, but said, “What?” anyway.

Tir said, “I’m coming with you because otherwise you’ll forget your own underclothes,” and Oliver agreed that this was probably true, and followed him downstairs, feeling vaguely as if he’d said the wrong words, not asked the right question, missed a step on the staircase somehow.