Chapter 4 - A Different Kind of Quiet

The archive room in the Defenders Guild was colder than it had any right to be.

Devon had been working in silence for the better part of an hour, seated cross-legged on the floor with scrolls fanned out in a semicircle around him. The magical residue in one of the client dossiers wasn’t matching the projected pattern, and Caelan had asked him to “make sense of it before the bureaucrats got involved.”

Which meant a long night in a dim room, with arcane readings that made his temples throb and ink stains creeping up his sleeves.

A soft clink of ceramic interrupted him.

He looked up to see Gideon, holding a second cup of tea in one hand and his own mug in the other. His expression was unreadable, probably because it wasn’t meant to be expressive, but his gaze flicked to the clutter of papers and then back to Devon.

“You’ve been in here a while,” he said, by way of explanation.

Devon blinked. “Did Caelan send you?”

“No.”

“Oh.” He blinked again. “Well… thank you.”

He accepted the tea and gestured at a clear patch of floor. “You’re welcome to sit. I promise not to wax poetic about temporal resonance.” Gideon didn’t answer, but he sat anyway. For a while, neither spoke. The sound of tea being sipped and parchment being unrolled was the only movement in the room. Devon let the silence stretch, comfortable in it. Eventually, he spoke, soft, unhurried.

“You’re very different from him, you know.”

Gideon looked up, just slightly.

“Who?”

“My brother. Luca.”

A beat of silence. Gideon didn’t push. He just waited.

Devon set his tea down, gently. “We used to be close. But success is a strange thing. It fills the spaces you don’t want it to. Changes how people see you. And how they think you see them.”

He looked down at his notes, though he wasn’t really reading anymore.

“Luca resents me,” he said quietly. “And I understand. But I can’t fix it. He doesn’t want me to.”

Gideon stayed quiet. Not uncomfortably so. Just… present.

Devon smiled, faint and a little tired. “You’re not like him at all. Not in how you listen. Not in how you… carry things.” He tilted his head, studying Gideon the way he might study a faultline in a spell. Not invasive, just thoughtful.

“You remind me more of the kind of brother I wish Luca had let me be,” he said. “Quiet. Stubborn. Honest. And just receptive enough to know when to let someone talk.”

Gideon’s brow furrowed slightly. “I’m not looking for another brother.”

Devon grinned. “That’s fine. I’m not very good at staying in my lane anyway.”

Gideon’s lips twitched. The barest hint of amusement.

They fell into silence again. Comfortable. Natural.

Devon didn’t say it aloud, but he felt it settle in quietly. Not with guilt, not with regret, but with a quiet kind of peace. He was beginning to understand that not all silence meant shutting someone out. Some silences, like Gideon’s, made space for others to step in.

He hadn’t stopped caring for Luca. But in the space left behind, he’d found something new. Someone else to look out for, in his own quiet way. And maybe, just maybe, having another little brother in his life was its own kind of healing.