Chapter 6

My whole head seemed to explode.

What?

Didn’t he just say they were dead?

I had cried over them.

I had believed it.

Before I could even think, Logan stepped forward, took out a handkerchief, and gently wiped the blood from my face. Then he glanced at his brother with mild reproach.

“You frightened her.”

Ethan clutched his maimed hand, face white as paper.

“You’re not dead?”

Luke crouched in front of him with a grin.

“We have to thank you for that idea, Mr. Walker. Otherwise a fool like me might never have thought of faking death. And your little dramatic wedding escape? Brilliant. Truly brilliant. My brother and I were still wondering how to get close enough to finish the job. Then you turned the whole capital upside down and made it easy.”

He blinked brightly.

“Your precious student had only just clawed his way back to the throne. Then snap—gone.”

Ethan’s face went gray.

Logan wrapped an arm around my waist and started guiding me toward the door.

“Chloe, we have to leave. It isn’t safe here.”

The gentleness in his eyes nearly broke me.

“I’ll take you somewhere no one can find you. I’ll take care of you for the rest of your life.”

I turned my head and looked at Ethan collapsed on the ground.

“What about him?”

Logan’s voice cooled.

“He won’t escape. The crown prince is dead. Within three days, the prince’s entire faction will be wiped out by the second prince’s people. Winners live. Losers die. Ethan Walker served the crown prince. You understand the rest.”

He did not need to say more.

I was lifted onto a horse and carried away down a brand-new road.

As we rode, Logan lowered his voice and finally explained.

“My name is not Logan. It’s Liam Hayes. My brother’s name is Leo Hayes.”

He paused, as if almost amused by his own bad luck.

“We never meant to hide forever. And we never meant to use you. But we had only just entered the Walker household when Ethan was demoted and sent away. Being left behind to protect you was an accident.”

He sighed.

“At first we meant to leave.”

Then his arms tightened around me as he held the reins.

“But that night, a real thug climbed through your window. And for the first time in his life, a shadow guard with blood all over his hands went soft.”

His breath brushed the top of my head.

“Does riding hurt? Sorry. There wasn’t time to arrange a carriage. Once we get back home, I’ll have the softest carriage built just for you. All right?”

I nodded shyly.

Beside us, Leo was riding with half a slab of smoked pork tied to his saddle.

He was still cursing.

“Why does he get to carry Chloe and I have to carry the pork?”

The floating words laughed until they cried.

Wasn’t that your own fault?

A practical guard really is different.

Moving house and the only thing they couldn’t leave behind was the smoked pork.

I thought then that perhaps even the greasiest smoked pork, in the eyes of someone who loves you, becomes a treasure too precious to throw away.

We rode for a long time.

Long enough for the fields to disappear, long enough for the air to taste unfamiliar.

When we finally stopped, it was at a quiet house tucked far away from any road I knew.

It was larger than the one Luke had moved me into before. Cleaner. Stronger. Hidden.

No one would find us there unless Liam wished it.

For the first few days after we arrived, I could barely sleep.

Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Ethan’s severed finger on the ground. Saw the blood on my face. Heard the way he had laughed while telling me they were dead.

But each time I woke from those dreams, one brother or the other would be beside me.

Liam would smooth my hair until my breathing calmed.

Leo would pretend to complain while shoving a bowl of hot soup into my hands.

And little by little, I began to understand something.

I had not cried because Ethan had hurt me.

I had cried because for one terrible moment, I had believed Liam and Leo were gone.

That knowledge settled into my bones so quietly I almost missed it.

Then one evening, while the wind moved softly through the yard, Liam sat beside me beneath the porch and told me the rest.

The second prince had risen.

The crown prince’s men had fallen.

The old order in the capital had been torn apart in one bloody night.

Ethan, as one of the crown prince’s closest supporters, had been arrested before dawn.

He would not be coming back.

I listened in silence, my fingers wrapped around a bowl of warm tea.

“What will happen to him?”

Liam was quiet for a moment.

Then he answered honestly.

“Nothing good.”

Leo, who had been sharpening a knife nearby, let out a low snort.

“He deserves worse.”

I did not tell them that hearing it did not bring me joy.

It brought me something stranger.

Relief.

For so long I had believed my life belonged to my husband.

Then I discovered that my husband had wanted a future that did not include me.

Then I thought I had found a new life, only to learn those men were living under false names too.

But unlike Ethan, their lies had never been meant to make me smaller.

They had not lied so they could throw me away.

They had lied because the world they came from was dangerous enough to swallow anyone near them.

One night, after we had settled into that hidden house and the cicadas outside would not stop singing, I finally asked Liam the question that had sat in my chest the longest.

“When did you start caring about me?”

He looked at me in surprise.

Leo, who had been halfway through biting into an apple, nearly choked.

“What kind of question is that?”

I ignored him.

I looked only at Liam.

He thought for a long while.

Then he smiled very faintly.

“Maybe the night that man climbed through your window.”

Leo rolled his eyes.

“Liar.”

Liam’s smile deepened just a little.

“Then maybe the night she asked me to warm her bed.”

Leo made a noise of disgust.

“You’re both impossible.”

I turned to him at once.

“And you?”

His face changed immediately.

“My what?”

“When did you start caring?”

He glared at me as though I had insulted him.

“I never said I cared.”

Then he stood up and stalked away into the yard.

The tips of his ears were red.

The floating words laughed with me.

He’s the easiest one to read.

A mouth harder than iron and a heart softer than dough.

I smiled for the first time that entire day.

That hidden house slowly became home.

Liam planted herbs in the back.

Leo complained all morning and still repaired everything that broke before I even had time to notice.

Sometimes I cured meat under the eaves.

Sometimes I learned to read by lamplight, tracing letters while Liam guided my hand.

Sometimes Leo sat nearby and scoffed at my slow progress, only to secretly memorize the lesson better than I did.

And sometimes, in the dead of night, when both brothers were with me and the blankets were warm and the darkness no longer frightening, I would think back to the village I had left behind.

The little pigpen.

The drafty windows.

The low dirt grave.

I would think of the woman who had once stood there crying over a man who never deserved her tears.

And that woman would feel like someone I had known in another life.

Still, peace never lasted forever.

One rainy afternoon, a messenger arrived.

Not from Ethan.

Not from the capital’s prisons.

From someone else.

From Liam and Leo’s true home.

They read the letter together in silence.

Neither of them spoke for a long time.

My heart began to pound.

“What is it?”

Liam folded the paper carefully.

“There is one last matter to settle.”

Leo’s jaw tightened.

“After that, we’ll really be free.”

The words should have comforted me.

Instead they chilled me.

Because I knew the world they had walked through before me had never been simple.

And every “last matter” in a shadow guard’s life was always soaked in danger.

That night neither brother tried to joke with me.

Neither teased.

Neither smiled.

Liam only sat beside me while I mended an old shirt, his hand resting over mine so gently it hurt.

Leo sat in the doorway sharpening his blade in silence.

The sound scraped through the room like a warning.

At last I put down the needle.

“Do you have to go?”

Liam looked at me.

“Yes.”

“For how long?”

“I don’t know.”

I swallowed.

Leo muttered from the doorway, “Don’t make that face. It’s not like we’re marching to our graves.”

I looked at him.

“Then promise me you’ll come back.”

He did not answer right away.

Then, with his back still half turned, he said, “I don’t make promises I can’t keep.”

That was worse.

Much worse.

I did not cry then.

Not in front of them.

But that night, with Liam’s arm around my waist and Leo pretending to sleep on the far side of the bed while listening to every breath I took, I stared into the dark and felt fear settle into every corner of me.

They had become my home so gradually I had not noticed it.

And now the thought of losing them felt like having the ground torn out beneath my feet.