Their meal was eaten mostly in silence, Flynn lost in the turmoil of his thoughts and Beaumont seemingly content to keep to himself. Normally, the silence would have pleased Flynn to no end. Normally, he would have no interest in dissecting anything remotely personal with another individual. But with Beaumont, his normal seemed to have shifted. He just wasn’t sure what to do about it. They had finished their meal and were almost back to St. Michael’s before Flynn decided that silence was not at all what he wanted.

“Thank you,” he said into the darkness of the night, the air crisp with the promise of winter.

“For what?”

“The painting. I’m sorry if I came across as ungrateful.” The wind had died, and his breath rose in a foggy cloud.

Beaumont shrugged. “Don’t trouble yourself,” he mumbled.

“Do you have siblings?” Flynn suddenly needed to know more.

He saw Beaumont duck his head, and for a moment Flynn wasn’t sure if he was going to answer. “Two brothers,” he muttered after a pause.

“And are they artists as well?”

“No.”

“What do they do?”

There was another long pause. Somewhere in the distance, hooves clattered. “They work for my father,” Beaumont finally said.

“In Aysgarth?”

A hesitation and then a nod, followed by an empty silence.

Flynn frowned. “What does your father do?”

“He manages land.”

“A steward then?”

Beaumont shrugged. “Something like that.”

Flynn scowled at the ambiguity of his answer, and Beaumont caught his expression.

“I’ve never been close to my family,” the boy said, his eyes slipping away again. “They’ve never seen value in me or…approved of my…ah…ambitions. For as long as I can remember, I have only ever been a disappointment to them.” There was an edge of frustration and sadness that Flynn recognized well. Because Flynn had also had to fight legions of people who didn’t think that he would ever amount to anything. He still was fighting.

“I’m sorry.” Because as much as Flynn had fought, he’d been armed with the knowledge that his mother, the only family he’d ever had, had believed in him completely and passionately. “Was it difficult to leave?”

Beaumont made a small noise that was difficult to interpret. “There was no one and nothing to leave,” he mumbled. “My only regret was that I didn’t find the courage to leave sooner.”

Flynn stopped abruptly in the middle of the deserted lane, the handful of buildings on either side of them silent and dark. A broken fence listed drunkenly, creating strange shadows across the road. “You were meant to do this, you know,” he said to Beaumont’s back.

The boy stopped, and he slowly turned to face Flynn. In the dark, it was impossible to see his features clearly. “Do what?” he asked in a voice so soft Flynn almost missed the question.