#cod simon riley

You knew which gallery windows bled the best morning light and which stairways stayed cold even in summer. You knew which tapestries hid alcoves big enough for two girls to squeeze behind, and which doorways were always, always guarded, no matter the hour.

You also knew that your father's mood rose and fell these days with the gossip of neighboring lords.

"No banners on the horizon yet," Violet said, swinging her legs under the window seat. "Just tongues."

She popped a sugared almond into her mouth and spoke around it, unbothered as always by decorum when it was just the two of you.

"Tongues lead to banners," you said, pinching one from the bowl. "That's what he's worried about."

Outside, the inner courtyard buzzed with activity. Servants carried crates toward the cellars; a farrier hammered at a shoe. Across the way, in the training yard, men in worn leather and steel moved in tight formations, their motions sharp as cut glass.

Violet followed your gaze and made a thoughtful humming noise.

"Speaking of tongues," she said. "Have you heard what they call them now?"

"Who?"

She rolled her eyes. "The King's favorites. Your father's pet lunatics. Him and his three."

You bit into the almond, sugar cracking under your teeth. "You'll need to be more specific. He has several pet lunatics."

Violet leaned closer, voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. That was the thing about Violet: even in silk and jewels, she still conspiratorially whispered like the baker's daughter she'd once been.

"They're calling them the One-Four-One," she said. "Whispering it, like it's a prayer or a curse. 'Don't cross the King; he'll send the One-Four-One.'"

You tasted the words, rolling them around in your head. "The numbers mean something?"

"Probably." Violet shrugged. "Or perhaps men just like making things more important by making them sound like they mean something."

Down in the yard, you could pick them out easily even from this distance.

Captain Price, with his graying beard and the easy, contained authority that made seasoned knights stand straighter when he walked past. Johnny MacTavish; the youngest of them, broad grin visible even from here, dark hair tied back, moving like he loved the fight more than he ought to. Sir Kyle, quieter, precise, eyes taking in every opening and angle.

And then there was him.

Sir Simon Riley.

He was taller than all of them, still. Broad through the shoulders, the lines of his body all muscle and scar under armor that fit like it had been made only for him. His boots were heavy, but they barely made a sound when he moved.

He didn't wear the old separate mask anymore, the one you remembered from your teenage years. At some point, without you seeing it happen, it had changed.

Now the skull was part of a fitted hood, black cloth pulled tight over his head and jaw, the bones sewn right onto the weave. Dark markings curled from the eye sockets down along the cheek, teeth suggested over his mouth in crude strokes. It should have looked ridiculous; it didn't. It looked like it belonged to him, as much a part of him as the sword in his hand.

All you could see of his face were his eyes: dark brown, as sharp as you remembered, watching everything.

"The King's ghost," Violet sighed, chin in her hands. "Or hound. Or whatever they're calling him this week."

"You sound like the laundresses," you said, but you couldn't quite keep the smile out of your voice.

"The laundresses do not get to sit in a window and stare at them without getting their ears boxed," Violet pointed out. "We do. It would be rude not to."

As if he heard her, Johnny wheeled his practice partner around in a sudden, showy move that had the younger men on the sidelines whistling. He caught Kyle in a headlock, laughed, nearly got his feet swept out for his trouble.

"Sir John is going to break his own neck one of these days," Violet said. "And half the maids' hearts before that."

You hummed, noncommittal, watching the way Simon stepped in; not to show off, but to correct. A quick, economical motion of his blade, tapping Johnny's guard lower, Kyle's elbow in, a silent command to reset. They listened. Of course they did.

"What about you?" Violet asked, nudging your knee with hers. "If you were forced at swordpoint to choose one of the legendary four, who would you pick to run away with and live in a cottage by the sea?"

"Four?" you echoed. "There are three down there."

"Four with you," she said promptly. "Try to keep up, Your Highness; it's unbecoming when a princess is the slow one."

You huffed a laugh. "And why are we assuming I'd run away with any of them? Perhaps I'd prefer a sensible marriage to a dull, kind lord with good land and no taste for war."

Violet snorted. "You? Dull? Please."

You let your gaze slip back to the yard, to the tall figure in the skull-hood moving through the men like a shadow.

"If I had to," you said lightly, "I suppose I'd take the one least likely to talk my ears off."

"Sir Kyle, then."

"Not him," you said, too quickly.

Violet's eyes lit. "Ah. I see."

"You do not see anything," you protested, but your ears felt hot.

"Oh, of course not." Her grin turned wicked. "You merely have an academic interest in the King's hound. For... research."

"For the safety of the realm," you said primly.

"Mm." She put on an airy falsetto. "'Oh, Sir Simon, I am but a humble princess; do tell me, how does one swing a sword so very dramatically—'"

You swatted at her and missed. She dissolved into giggles, the sound bright and bubbling in the little alcove.

You could feel it though, under the teasing: the way your heart had learned to pay particular attention whenever he was near. It was ridiculous, really. You were a grown woman. You had danced with princes and debated with ambassadors. You had sat through meetings where your father tried to ignore you and could not because you knew the tax ledgers better than his treasurer.

And yet one look from a pair of dark eyes framed in painted bone could send your thoughts scattering like startled birds.

You were meant to be in your rooms after dusk.

You usually were. You weren't eleven anymore, chasing storms up stairwells. You knew better. You knew the list of enemies had grown since those days, and not all of them lived beyond the borders.

You knew all that.

You still slipped out.

The corridor outside your chambers was quiet, tapestries muting your footfalls. You lifted your skirts just enough not to trip, walking quickly but not running;

running drew attention. Violet slept in the next room; you'd heard her soft snores through the door as you crept past.

You'd only meant to get some air. Really. The gardens at night were a different world: cool and damp and secret. You liked the way the moonlight turned the fountains silver and the way the roses smelled when no one was around to prune them.

You'd stayed longer than you should have, sitting on the edge of the dry fountain, talking nonsense to the stone fish that spouted water during the day.

By the time you slipped back in through the servants' entrance and into the main corridor, the lamps were turned low. The palace had that particular hushed feeling it only got in the deeper hours of the night, when even the scullery fires burned small.

You were halfway down the long gallery that led to your wing when a voice came out of the darkness.

"Princess."

You stopped so abruptly your slippers squeaked on the stone.

He stepped out of the shadow where two corridors crossed, as if he'd grown from it. Tall, broad-shouldered, the skull-painted hood turning his face into a pale, grinning nothing. His armor was stripped down for the night, only the leather and mail that sat close to his body, but he still seemed too big for the hallway.

All you could see were his eyes, dark brown and very, very awake.

"Sir Simon," you said, aiming for breezy and hitting something closer to breathless. "You nearly scared me to death."

"Nearly?" he replied. "I must be losing my touch."

His voice was lower behind the hood, softened and muffled by the cloth, but still rough enough to roll down your spine like distant thunder.

Your fingers tightened on your skirts. "Do you make a habit of lurking in corners?"

"Yes."

The flatness of it almost made you laugh. Almost.

"Where have you been?" he asked.

The question was simple. The weight behind it was not.

"In the gardens," you said, lifting your chin. "I couldn't sleep."

His gaze flicked past you, to the faint damp on the hem of your dress, the smudge of dirt at the edge of your slipper, the sheen of night air still on your skin. He saw too much with one glance. He always had.

"You are meant to be in your rooms after dusk," he said.

"So are the kitchen girls," you pointed out. "Yet somehow the cook still finds bread on his table at dawn."

"The kitchen girls are not the King's only daughter."

There it was again. That fine, irritating line between your title and your cage.

"Nothing happened," you said. "I walked. I looked at the moon. I walked back. No assassins hiding in the rosebushes. Promise."

"You do not know that," he said mildly. "That is rather the point of assassins, Your Highness."

You huffed. "You are being dramatic."

He did not move. Did not fidget, or sigh, or run a hand through his hair. He simply stood there, a wall in front of your path, eyes on you, weighing.

"You've heard the same talk I have," he said after a moment. "Neighboring lords testing the borders, counting their coin, their men. So far it is only talk. For now, that makes them more dangerous, not less. Men who only whisper have not yet committed to their foolishness. They are harder to see coming."

You hated that he was right. You hated that the reminder prickled under your skin like cold.

"I am not a child sneaking onto the tower stairs anymore," you said quietly.

"No," he agreed. "You are not."

Something in his tone made you look up at him properly. Made your pulse skip.

In the dim lamplight, the skull painted on his hood should have made him monstrous. Instead it just framed those eyes, the only visible part of him, dark and intent.

"It does not mean I would like to find you bleeding in the dirt one day because you fancied the moon more than common sense," he added.

It wasn't the words that did it. It was the way he said them: matter-of-fact, like he was stating the time of day. Like the idea of you hurt somewhere in the shadows was not hypothetical, but a picture he had already dragged himself through too many times to count.

Warmth flared at the same time as irritation.

"So what would you have me do?" you asked. "Bolt my door as soon as the sun touches the horizon? Sleep until the world is tidy again?"

"If I thought sleep would make the world tidy," he said, "I would have tried it myself, Princess."

The corner of your mouth betrayed you with the beginnings of a smile.

His gaze flicked there. You wondered, absurdly, what his own mouth was doing under the paint. If the scar on his cheek still pulled when he tried to smile back.

He stepped aside then, not much, just enough to leave space for you to pass within the circle of his reach.

"Allow me to escort you back," he said.

"You have already waylaid me," you pointed out. "Escorting feels redundant."

"Indulge me," he said.

You did.

You fell into step beside him, his stride slowed just enough to match yours. His presence filled the corridor: solid, quiet, radiating a kind of controlled readiness that made the hair on your arms want to stand up.

"Violet says the people call you ghosts now," you said, because silence felt suddenly too loud. "You and the others. The One-Four-One."

He made a low sound that might have been a scoff. "The people call us many things. Ghost is one of the kinder."

"Do you like it?"

"Liking has nothing to do with it," he said. "Names are for other people's benefit. We still bleed the same no matter what they shout."

You thought of the laundresses' stories. Of the scar under the paint.

"I do not like ghost," you said. "You are... too solid for that."

He glanced down at you, something unreadable flickering in his eyes.

"What would you call us then?" he asked.

You pretended to consider, wrinkling your nose. "Idiots," you said. "For charging into every stupid, dangerous thing my father points at."

He huffed. It was not quite a laugh, but close enough that your chest unclenched.

"At least you are equal-opportunity with your insults," he said. "You do not spare kings."

"I am very kind to cooks," you said. "When they deserve it."

You reached your door too soon. The lantern outside threw a circle of warm light on the stone.

He stopped a pace away, as proper as any courtly dance partner, and bowed his head a fraction.

"Sleep, Princess," he said. "In your rooms. Preferably with the door closed."

You made a show of considering. "I will try," you said. "No promises."

"Promises," he said, "are for people who control their own days. You do not. You have my understanding instead."

The words sat strangely in your chest, heavy and careful.

You curled your hand around the latch.

"Good night, Sir Simon," you said softly.

"Good night."

You slipped inside, the latch clicking behind you. You leaned your back against the door for a moment, eyes closed, heart beating too fast for someone who had merely taken a late walk and had a scolding.

Through the wood, you could almost feel his presence linger on the other side for a breath, maybe two.

Then the weight of him moved away down the corridor, boots quiet as ever, leaving you with only the echo and the memory of dark brown eyes watching you like you were something far more dangerous than any whispered war.

Not just as a blur of metal in the corner of your eye or a shadow behind your father, but as a man standing solid in the bright white of the training yard.

You had slipped away from your governess, as usual, ducking down the servants' staircase and squeezing behind a tapestry until her voice faded. Bare feet, bunched skirts, the thrill of getting away buzzing in your chest.

The little stone slit of a window over the yard was your favorite secret. You pressed your cheek to the cool wall and peered out.

He was the first thing you saw.

He was tall. That was what struck you first. Not giant, but taller than any man around him, shoulders wide under a plain quilted gambeson, arms thick and roped with muscle as he brought his sword around in a smooth arc. The strike landed with a ringing crack against his opponent's shield.

Dark blond hair clung damp to his forehead and the nape of his neck. His boots were heavy, you could hear them when he pivoted, but he moved quiet for someone that size, steps economical, sure. When he shifted into another guard, the light glanced off his blade, off the curve of his jaw.

He disarmed the other knight like it was nothing, steel flashing, the man's sword spinning away into the sand. The watching squires gasped. The man he'd beaten swore under his breath and tried to hide it.

You leaned farther, nearly smearing your nose on the stone.

"Who is that?" you whispered to yourself.

"Your Highness."

You startled. Your governess's hand clamped around your shoulder, gently iron.

"Who is he?" you insisted, nodding toward the yard.

She followed your gaze and made a small sound. "That is Sir Simon Riley."

"Sir Simon," you repeated, tasting the title. "He is a knight?"

"He is the King's knight," she said. "And not for little princesses to stare at. Come away this instant."

You dug your heels in as she tugged, trying to get one more look.

The tall knight turned his head. For a heartbeat your eyes met his from across the yard. Even at that distance you saw they were dark brown, sharp, and much older than the rest of him.

Your chest fluttered.

Then you were hauled away down the corridor.

"Stay away from knights," your governess scolded. "They are trouble and blood and war, not stories for your head."

You nodded because you were supposed to. But in your mind you kept seeing dark eyes and a sword that moved like part of him.

You did not stay away.

Not on purpose. The palace simply was not big enough to keep you out of each other's paths.

When you were nine, you rounded a corner too quickly, skirts too long, shoes newly polished and far too slippery. You collided with something solid.

Hands closed around your upper arms, catching you before your knees could hit stone.

You looked up.

He was right there this time, towering over you. Close, he seemed even taller, the top of your head not even reaching the breadth of his chest. Dark blond hair cut shorter now, sweat at the temples, dark brown eyes down on you with sharp assessment before he seemed to remember you were the princess.

"Easy, Your Highness," he said. His voice rumbled through his chest into your arms.

You straightened, trying to look less like a tangle of silk and panic.

"You were in my way," you said, because it felt better than admitting you had been running.

One of his brows lifted. Up close you could see a pale old scar nicking through it, a thin white line. "Apologies."

Behind him, two younger knights carrying spears stared very hard at the opposite wall, clearly trying not to look.

Your nursemaid puffed around the corner, grabbed you, started babbling apologies. You twisted in her grip, looking over your shoulder as she dragged you away.

He was still watching you, that same unreadable expression on his face, heavy boots planted steady on the stone, sword at his hip.

"Watch your step next time, Princess," he said.

You thought about that for days.

When you were ten, a summer storm swallowed the sky.

Thunder rattled the windows in their frames. Lightning turned the world outside white every few heartbeats. You snuck out of your chambers with a stolen candle to climb one of the towers and see the storm from the top.

You made it up. You did not think about getting down.

Halfway back, a gust of wind had your candle out. The stairwell plunged into darkness.

You told yourself you were not afraid. You put one hand on the wall and took careful steps. One, two, three.

Your toe caught on the cracked edge of a stone. You pitched forward with a little yelp you would later swear you never made.

An arm slid around your waist, hard and unyielding, stopping your fall.

"I thought I told you to watch your step."

That voice again, close to your ear this time.

The lantern he held lit his face from below. Rain beaded on his hair; plastered to his temples. The planes of his face were sharper now than when you'd first seen him: cheekbones cut clean, jaw dark with stubble. His dark brown eyes flicked over you, checking for harm before he seemed to remember himself and let go.

"Sir Simon," you said, feeling ridiculous for sounding relieved.

He looked past you up the stairs, then down. Always checking, always measuring.

"Alone, Your Highness?"

"I wanted to see the storm."

"And break your neck for it?" He huffed, a sound that might have been a laugh if it had any softness to it. He shrugged out of his cloak and set it around your shoulders. It smelled of leather and oil and the sharp bite of cold rain. It was so big it swallowed you almost to your ankles.

"The King will have my head if you fall from a tower," he said. "Come."

He walked you all the way back, lantern light casting your twin shadows long on the walls. He did not talk, but his heavy boots took each step soundless, like he'd learned how not to echo.

At your door, your governess nearly fainted with relief and outrage. Simon stepped back, giving her room to scold you, and the briefest flicker of something like amusement touched his mouth.

You opened your mouth to thank him, but the door shut on your words.

You lay awake that night listening to thunder, pulling his cloak tighter around yourself under the covers until the storm passed.

War talk began a year later.

The adults spoke in lower voices, but they did not lower them enough. You heard the way they said border and raids and skirmish, the way your father's hand closed into a fist over maps.

At eleven, you had learned which doors were never quite fully closed.

From the crack beside a hinge, you watched your father and his council bent over a table painted with your kingdom.

"They are testing us," the chancellor said. "Small hits, near the villages, nothing that will threaten the main road."

"Small hits build into larger ones," your father answered. "They smell weakness."

Simon stood on his right, armor plain but well-kept, helm under one arm. Even inside, with a dozen other men in the chamber, he moved quieter than most of them. He watched the map, arms folded across his broad chest.

He was a young man now, you'd heard. A man who had been your father's sword since he was still learning to read.

"The pass here," he said, callused finger tapping a narrow gap painted between green hills. "If they mean to push something heavier than raiding parties through, that is where they will do it. I recommend we put eyes on it."

"Yours," your father said, not really asking.

Simon did not look up from the map. "If that is your wish, Your Majesty."

"Take who you trust," your father said. "Bring me truth, not comfort."

"Yes, Sire."

You pressed your palm flat to the door. Leaving again.

He left two mornings later. You watched from the high balcony as the gates opened, horses stamping in the cold. He was easy to pick out even from above: tall in the saddle, dark blond hair catching what little sun broke through the clouds, cloak hanging straight from his shoulders.

He did not look up at the balcony. You told yourself he did not know you were there. Even if he did, he would and should not care.

They said he took a blade to the face.

You heard it from the laundresses first. You were not supposed to be in the laundry courtyard, but the steam felt good on cold mornings and they told the best stories.

"Straight through the line, they say," one woman said, beating a tunic against a flat stone. "Our lads holding, theirs screaming, and the King's hound right in the middle. Took a blade that would have gone into the captain behind him."

"And kept fighting," another put in, eyes shining. "They always do in the stories."

"It is not a story. My cousin's boy is a squire out there. Says he saw it."

You went cold all over and hot all over at once.

"You should not be here, Your Highness," your lady-in-waiting said, tugging you back toward the inner hall. "There are better things for your ears than blood and spears."

You did not argue, but your heart stayed in the courtyard.

When the riders came back, you were on the steps before anyone could tell you otherwise.

They came through the gate in a clatter of hooves and mud-splattered cloaks. Men thinner, horses tired. The air smelled of sweat and iron and the faint rot of bandages needing to be changed.

Simon rode among them, armor dented, dark blond hair longer and shoved back from his forehead. A strip of linen wrapped from his temple down across his cheek, stained rusty where it covered the wound. His dark brown eyes looked tired, but clear. He swung down from the saddle with the same quiet, controlled ease as always.

For a moment, as he turned to speak to an officer, his gaze slid over the steps.

You straightened without meaning to, chin lifting.

Then your father's steward called his name, and he disappeared into the palace.

You waited until dusk to slip away.

The healers' wing was full. Men on pallets, soft groans, the smell of boiled herbs. At the very back, in a small stone room with the door half open, you found him.

He sat shirtless on a narrow bed, back straight, muscles in his arms and shoulders coiled tight with the effort of sitting still while the healer cleaned the wound on his face. The blade had left its mark: a diagonal gash from just under his eye down toward his jaw. Angry, swollen edges, crusted with dried blood.

He flinched when the cloth bit into it, jaw clenching, but he did not pull away.

You shifted your weight, and the old floorboards betrayed you with a soft creak.

His head turned. Even half exhausted, his eyes cut to the doorway like an arrow loosed.

You froze, caught.

"Your Highness," the healer sputtered, immediately trying to bow and nearly dropping his basin. "This is no place—"

"I was just..." You swallowed. "I wanted to see that you were not dead."

It was a stupid thing to say. Heat rushed up your neck.

The corners of Simon's mouth moved, just enough that you saw how the new wound pulled with the beginnings of a smile.

"Not dead," he said. His voice was rougher than usual. "You can tell them that."

You stared at the thin, raw line on his face. You remembered the laundry yard stories and thought of a spear point aimed at someone else and his body in the way.

Your nurse caught up with you a moment later and hauled you out in a hiss of mortified apology.

You glanced back as the door swung shut.

He was still watching you.

The King called it a reward.

The court was summoned to the smaller hall a week later. You stood at your father's left, hands in proper folds, official gown heavy on your shoulders.

Simon knelt at the foot of the dais, armor polished as well as battered steel would allow, new scar a pale cut along his cheek. His dark blond hair had been trimmed close again, as if someone had hacked off the damaged part and not bothered much with neatness.

"Sir Simon Riley," your father said for everyone to hear. "You have been my sword since boyhood. You have bled for my walls, stood where others faltered. When enemies see you across a field, they know whose justice is at their throats."

The courtiers murmured their appreciation. You watched his profile: the set of his jaw, the way his shoulders did not quite relax even as the words washed over him.

"As such," your father continued, "I would see that they know you. And fear you, as they should."

A servant stepped forward with something wrapped in dark cloth. When the cloth was pulled away, people gasped.

The mask was bone-white. Shaped to fit over a man's face, brow to jaw, it had hollow black eye sockets and rough lines suggesting cheekbones, the shadow of teeth over the mouth. A skull, if a skull had been taught to sneer.

"Rise," your father commanded.

Simon rose.

Your father descended the last step of the dais and, with a pleased little smile, fitted the mask over Simon's face himself. Leather straps tightened behind his head.

"There," the King said. "Now when my enemies see you, they will see death itself riding toward them. And they will remember whose hand holds its leash."

Courtiers laughed. The chancellor smiled like he meant it.

You felt something twist under your ribs.

The mask hid everything. The scar, the tiredness, the small almost-smiles that never quite reached his eyes. The painted shadows turned him into a symbol instead of a man.

"As you will, Your Majesty," Simon said. His voice came slightly muffled now, deeper for the hollow behind the bone.

From that day on, you did not see his face in public again.

Years began to close over the moments like water over stones.

He passed you in corridors, heavy boots almost silent. Once, as you wrestled a stack of books bigger than your arms, one slid, about to crash to the floor. A gloved hand shot out. The book landed against his palm instead of the flagstones.

He handed it back, skull mask tilted down toward you.

"Thank you, Sir Simon," you said, trying to meet the dark where his eyes would be.

He gave the slightest nod and moved on.

In the training yard, from your high windows, you watched him put new recruits through their paces. The shape of him was always unmistakable: six foot three, broad-shouldered, sword in his hand an extension of his arm. He moved with the same quiet precision you'd first seen when you were small, only more so now, everything unnecessary worn away by years of drill and battle.

Sometimes, when you were very certain no one could see you, you raised a hand in a tiny wave.

Once, you could have sworn the mask tipped a fraction in answer.

In the chapel, you slipped in early and saw a man kneeling at the back, mask on the floor beside him, head bowed. You recognized the line of his shoulders instantly, the scars on his arms where the linen of his shirt gaped.

He heard you. His head turned, and for the first time in years you glimpsed the strong planes of his face without the skull. Dark blond hair longer than regulation, the scar on his cheek now pale and smooth.

You drew in a breath.

He picked up the mask and slid it back on before you could see more.

"Your Highness," he said, voice echoing faintly inside the bone. He bowed his head just enough to be respectful, then left by the side door.

You stood there in the quiet chapel, suddenly very aware of your heart beating in your throat.

On winter nights, you paced the long gallery when sleep refused to come. Far below, in the courtyard, you sometimes saw him crossing from barracks to stables to gate. A lone figure, cloak dark against the snow, mask pale as the moon.

You were told over and over to keep your distance. That the King's hound was dangerous, that he belonged to war and not to you.

You believed them. You stayed where a princess was meant to stand.

Still, your eyes followed him whenever he was near, and some stubborn part of you tucked away every glance, every almost-smile, every quiet rescue, like bright coins hidden under your pillow.

Short interactions. Passing moments. Nothing that could be called a conversation.

But under it all, war was looming closer, line on the horizon growing darker.

And whether anyone knew it yet or not, Sir Simon Riley was already part of the story your life was going to become.

Not breaks.

Changes.

There is still no clock in the room. No window. No strip of daylight or night to tell you what shape the hours are taking beyond the ache in your body and the rhythm of trays and guard checks and the way your thoughts go soft at the edges when you have been awake too long.

But you have learned this silence.

You know the hum of the vent. The tiny click before the slot opens. The heavy lock. The measured tread of the guard outside your door. The controlled hush of a place built for people to disappear inside it.

This is different.

It is still quiet.

It just has tension in it now.

A vibration under the floor that was not there before. Not loud enough to be machinery. Not quite footsteps either. More like the building has gone from asleep to listening.

You sit up slowly on the cot, blanket falling from your lap.

The overhead light washes the room in the same blank white it always has. The sink still gleams. The camera in the corner still watches.

Nothing has changed.

Everything has changed.

You swing your feet to the floor and stand.

Your heart is beating too hard already.

Do not get ahead of yourself.

You have thought rescue before. Once because of a different engine noise outside the corridor. Once because the guard's shift changed half an hour early and your body, traitorous thing, had interpreted any break in routine as possibility.

Neither time gave you anything.

You learned from that.

Hope can be a weapon here too.

So you breathe through your nose, once, twice, and go to the door as quietly as you can.

You press your ear to the cold metal.

At first there is only the low building hum and your own blood in your ears.

Then, faint and far enough away that it might still be nothing, you hear boots.

More than one pair.

Not the usual measured walk of the guard outside. Faster. Heavier. Multiple.

Then a voice.

Too muffled to make out.

Then the sound of something metallic hitting concrete.

Your stomach drops clean through you.

You stand back from the door, pulse climbing.

This is not a tray.

This is not Makarov drifting in to study your fear and talk like he owns the language of your life.

Something is happening.

Somewhere in the building a door slams hard enough to rattle through the walls. Then another sound tears through the silence.

Gunfire.

Your whole body locks.

For one terrible second you do not move at all. Instinct and terror and disbelief all hitting at once.

Then the world jolts into motion.

More gunfire. Short controlled bursts. Shouting now. The shape of command in voices too distant to understand. A crash from somewhere down the corridor.

You do not know if this is rescue.

You do know it is violence and change and if you are still standing in the open when the door goes, you will be exactly where somebody else wants you.

Move.

You look at the room with new eyes.

No real cover. Bed too flimsy. Sink too exposed. The only place that offers anything at all is the narrow angle between the cot and the wall nearest the hinge side of the door.

You go there.

Fast. Low.

You crouch, every muscle shaking with the effort not to bolt toward the door and pound on it and scream Simon's name into the metal like you can force the universe to answer.

Gunfire cracks again, much closer this time.

Then a voice you know.

Not the words.

The cadence.

The violence of the Scottish in it.

Johnny.

Your heart stumbles.

It is so sharp and immediate and impossible that for half a second you nearly laugh.

Then something heavy slams against the corridor wall outside your door and a man screams.

Not long. Not dramatically.

Cut off.

You press one hand to your mouth and keep breathing through your nose because if you start crying now you will miss something.

Boots.

Running.

A shouted order in a voice gone flat and hard.

Price.

You know it even through the door.

Your whole body starts to shake harder.

Not because you are falling apart.

Because this is real.

This is really happening.

Then the lock on your door gives a hard metallic thud.

Not the measured disengage you know from meals and guards.

Something mechanical. Forced.

The handle jerks.

Sticks.

Another thud.

A low command outside, sharp and fast.

Then the hinges scream and the whole door blasts inward.

You flinch back with a choked sound before you can stop it.

The room fills with motion all at once.

Black kit. Mask. Rifle up. Fury in human shape.

For one split second, before your brain catches up, he is exactly what Makarov said he was. Not husband. Not home. Not the man with flour on his sleeve and your ring line etched into his skin.

Something else.

A weapon pointed at the world.

Ghost.

He clears the room in less than a breath. Left corner, sink, cot, camera. Eyes everywhere at once. Body so taut with controlled violence it almost hums.

Then he sees you.

Everything changes.

Not soft. Not safe. Not fully. There is still a rifle in his hands and blood on one glove that you pray is not his and his chest is heaving under the vest.

But his eyes find yours and the monster cracks down the middle.

Your name tears out of him.

And there he is.

Simon.

You make a sound that is not quite a sob and not quite his name and push up from the floor too fast. Your knees almost give. The room tilts.

He is moving before you fall.

The rifle drops on its sling. His hands are on you, hard and shaking and all over at once. Your face. Your shoulders. Your arms. Your neck where the injection went in what feels like years ago. Your ribs. Your wrists.

"You alright," he demands, voice rough and ruined and trying so hard to be professional that it breaks on every second word. "Talk to me. Talk."

You grab at his vest because if you do not touch him you are going to lose your mind.

"I'm here," you say. Or try to. It comes out wrecked and wet and unbelieving. "I'm here."

His forehead almost hits yours. He stops it by sheer force.

"Any injuries."

You shake your head too quickly. "No. I don't think. They drugged me. The first day. He made me bake."

The words make no sense in the room and yet they are the truest thing you have.

His eyes go wild for one awful second and then shut hard.

"Later," he says. To himself more than you. "Later."

Another burst of gunfire cracks somewhere close enough that the wall kicks dust.

Johnny's voice tears through the corridor. "Ghost, move."

Simon's whole body jerks like a leash went taut.

Price is there in the doorway a heartbeat later, weapon up, scanning the hall even while his eyes flick over you in one swift brutal inventory.

"She mobile," he asks.

"Yes," Simon says, too fast.

You are already nodding because you understand the shape of this much at least. There is no time to collapse into him. No time to be found and become only found.

You have to move.

"I can run," you say.

Simon looks at you like he hates the fact that you have to.

Price's voice cuts clean through both of you.

"Then move."

Ghost comes back into Simon's face in pieces. Not replacing him. Layering over him. Making him sharp again where he had split open.

He grabs his rifle one handed, the other never leaving you.

"Stay on me," he says. "No matter what. You understand?"

"Yes."

"Do not stop unless I stop you."

"Okay."

He nods once.

That is all the tenderness the corridor is going to allow.

He takes your hand.

The rings that should have met do not. Your left hand is still bare.

The absence punches through him so visibly that you see it even now.

Then he pulls you into the hall.

Chaos hits you like heat.

The corridor outside your room is longer than you imagined from inside the silence. Concrete walls. Recessed lights. Industrial grey. A place built to look like nothing so that nothing would stand out.

Three doors hang open farther down, one blown half off its hinges. Smoke or dust or both blur the far end.

A body lies crumpled by the wall.

You do not look at the face.

Johnny is ten feet ahead, half turned, weapon up, a grin on his mouth so feral it almost does not belong to a human being.

"Found the missus then," he barks, and even now there is that absurd warmth in the shape of the words.

"Move," Simon snaps.

Johnny grins wider. "Aye, aye."

Gaz appears out of a side room with a tablet slung against his chest and a sidearm in his hand, expression razor calm in a way that makes everything feel one inch more survivable.

"Two more on the east stair," he says. "One possible fallback route behind the kitchen. We've got ninety seconds before local response if this place has any friends."

Price jerks his chin. "Kitchen route. Less exposure."

You do not know where the kitchen is until Simon hauls you around a corner and suddenly there it is. The industrial room. The stainless steel. The oven bank. The table where butter tarts cooled under Makarov's gaze.

Your stomach turns over so hard you nearly stumble.

Simon feels it.

His grip on your hand tightens just enough to steady, not enough to trap.

"Eyes on me," he says.

You wrench your gaze away from the counters and back to him.

Right.

Move.

The kitchen is not empty.

A guard you have never seen before comes through the far service door with his weapon already half raised.

You do not even process the threat before Simon does.

He lets go of your hand, shoves you hard behind the central prep island, and fires in one smooth motion.

The sound in the enclosed room is unbearable. Violent enough to rattle your teeth.

The man drops.

You clap both hands over your ears a beat too late and force yourself not to curl into a ball on the floor.

Simon is over the body and past it before it has fully settled.

Ghost.

Not the shape in the mask from your room. The whole thing now. Speed and efficiency and a kind of terrifying grace that makes your blood go cold even as it saves your life.

He turns back the second the service door is clear.

"On me."

You move.

The service corridor beyond the kitchen is narrower and darker. Pipes overhead. Utility smell. A maze. The sort of space you would hate even on a normal day.

Today it is salvation.

Johnny takes point. Gaz on rear now, checking corners with one hand while his other taps coordinates somewhere on the device strapped to him. Price in the middle long enough to make sure you are physically between them all, then shifting to cover the next turn.

They fold around you as they move. Machine precise.

Not leaving you room to think too much.

At the next junction someone opens fire from the right.

You hit the wall by instinct and Simon covers you with his body before your brain is even fully caught up.

Price returns fire over both of you. Johnny curses, lunges forward. Gaz drops to one knee and angles a shot past the pipes with terrifying calm.

It is over in seconds.

Not enough seconds for your pulse to come down from the first round.

Simon's hand is on the back of your neck when the noise stops.

"You with me."

You nod against the wall because your voice is not working right.

He searches your face, sees enough, and drags his focus forward again.

The next hall is longer.

The lights flicker once.

Then the whole building shudders.

Not a collapse. Not yet.

Something bigger than gunfire. Charges maybe. A structural hit somewhere above. The ceiling spits dust into your hair.

Gaz's voice cuts tight and urgent through the comms you can only hear faintly from Simon's shoulder mic.

"They're trying to seal the west side. We need out now!"

Price does not even break stride. "Then we take east."

You almost ask what east is.

No time.

Simon's breathing has gone hard and controlled beside you. He keeps touching you as you move. A hand at your back. Your wrist. The space between your shoulder blades. Like he has to keep making contact so you do not vanish again.

At the next doorway, they stop so fast you nearly slam into him.

Makarov's voice carries from somewhere ahead.

Not close enough to see.

Close enough to hear.

Calm. Mild. Speaking Russian to someone else as if the building is not under assault. As if this is all unfolding within expected margins.

The sound of it turns Simon into something you have never seen with your own eyes before.

Not more violent.

More still.

Every part of him sharpens to one impossible edge.

Price feels it too. You see it happen between them. Some old, wordless conversation in one glance.

"Simon," Price says, low and lethal. "Not now."

Simon's jaw locks so hard you think it might crack.

For one horrifying second, you think he is going to go.

That he is going to peel off after the voice and leave the rest of the room behind because Makarov is there and you are here and the line between vengeance and rescue is one heartbeat wide.

You grab his hand.

Hard.

He looks down.

It is such a stupid little thing in the middle of all this. Your bare left hand clenched around his gloved one. Fear and dust and adrenaline and no ring and no room for speeches.

"Take me home. Please," you say.

The words hit him like a slap and a prayer both.

Ghost does not vanish.

It just bends.

Back toward you.

That is enough.

He nods once. Violent with restraint.

Price does not comment. He just says, "Move."

The next stretch is the worst.

Stairs down. Service exit below. Gunfire from somewhere above now too, which means the route is not clean and they all know it.

Halfway down, the lights blow.

The corridor plunges into emergency red and shadow.

You freeze for one stupid, blinding half second because the world has become smoke and sirens and boots and blood and all your body wants to do is crouch and cover your head.

Simon's hand clamps around your wrist.

"Eyes on me."

You do it because his voice leaves no room not to.

He backs down the next steps facing you, one hand on you, weapon angled over your shoulder. Johnny is below, covering down. Gaz above. Price everywhere at once somehow, a constant moving stabiliser in the centre of the formation.

A figure appears at the turn below.

You do not see a face. Just motion.

Johnny drops him before your mind names it.

Another shot from above.

This one too close.

You hear the impact before you understand what it means. A hard ugly hit and a breath punched out of someone's chest.

Simon's body jerks.

Your whole world stops.

"Simon."

He shoves you down two steps so hard you nearly go to your knees, then swings and returns fire with a burst so controlled it looks mechanical.

"Move," he snarls.

There is pain in his voice now.

Not fear. Pain.

Your heart tries to tear itself out of your chest.

Price is there in a second, one hand checking Simon's side even while firing with the other around the turn.

"Through and through," Price grits. "Not deep. Keep moving."

Not deep.

Not dead.

Move.

You move.

Because he told you to. Because Price told you to. Because if you stop here with blood on the stairs and the lights red and Makarov's people closing in from both ends, this all becomes meaningless.

The service exit is a metal door at the base of the stairs.

Johnny kicks it open.

Cold night air slams into you like another world.

The yard outside is half loading dock, half gravel lot, ringed by wire fencing and abandoned pallets. Lights from security poles throw everything into ugly gold and black.

A van engine roars somewhere left. Men shouting. Another burst of fire from the roofline.

Extraction is not neat.

Of course it is not.

Gaz peels off to the right, taking down a camera with one precise shot and then covering the fence line. Johnny drags one of the movable barriers over with his free hand and kicks it into place for temporary cover. Price is on comms, voice like iron, calling the outer team in.

Simon is bleeding.

Not much.

Too much.

You can see the dark bloom along his side even through the kit and your body wants to stop and put both hands there and make the world wait.

He sees you see it.

"Don't," he says, not unkindly, just brutally focused. "Later."

Then a man comes out of the loading bay with a sidearm and your body beats your brain for once.

There is a length of broken pallet wood by your foot.

You grab it and swing.

It catches the shooter across the wrist just as he raises the gun.

The shot goes wild into the air.

Johnny turns and finishes the problem before it can become anything worse.

The man drops.

The plank slips from your hands.

For one stunned heartbeat, everyone freezes.

Then Johnny gives one short bark of laughter, wild and bright with adrenaline.

"That's it lass!"

You are too busy shaking to answer.

Simon stares at you like he has never seen anything in his life and none of the things in that look are appropriate to the moment.

Then he grabs the front of your jacket and yanks you behind the barrier a second before glass explodes from somewhere to your left.

The outer team hits the yard hard after that. More bodies. More controlled noise. More boots. The whole shape of the fight changing now that 141 has its package and only one direction left to care about.

Extraction.

Price makes the call.

"Move her!"

No one argues.

Johnny goes first. Gaz takes rear. Price covers the open ground while Simon half pulls, half runs you through the gap in the fencing toward the waiting vehicles beyond.

Every breath hurts.

Every footfall is a hammer in your bones.

He is still holding your hand.

Still.

Even bleeding and shooting and moving, he will not let go.

You reach the first vehicle and somebody you do not know swings the rear door open.

Simon almost lifts you in.

You scramble the rest of the way on your own because if you let him carry your whole weight now, you think he might actually collapse.

He climbs in after you.

Price slams the door.

The vehicle lurches forward before everyone is fully seated.

Johnny is opposite, chest heaving, grin gone now that the work is done enough to feel. Gaz beside him with blood on one sleeve that you pray is not his. Price up front barking directions into comms like there is no room in the world for anything except the next ten minutes.

Simon is beside you on the floor of the transport, not even on the bench.

He grabs your face with both hands.

"You hit your head?"

"No."

"Any injections after the first one?"

"I don't think so."

"Did he touch you?"

You blink.

It is such a loaded question you almost choke on it. Not because you do not understand. Because you understand too well what he means by touch and what that answer could do to him right now.

"No," you say fast. "No. Simon, no. He used me. That's all. He made me bake. He talked. Taunted me. That's all."

His eyes squeeze shut for half a second.

When they open, they are glass bright and awful.

His hands are shaking.

Actually shaking now.

He is trying to do the professional sweep again. Pupils. Neck. Wrists. Shoulders. But the precision is starting to fray at the edges under the fact of having you close enough to feel.

You catch one of his wrists.

"I'm right here," you say.

That almost ruins him.

His mouth opens and shuts once.

Then he folds.

Not fully. Not collapse. Not anything he would let the others name.

He just drops his forehead to yours with one broken exhale and stays there for one second too long.

Johnny looks away.

Gaz does too.

Price keeps his eyes front and his voice on comms, giving him privacy with military tact and maybe the deepest kindness he has ever shown either of you.

"This happened because of me," Simon says, so low you barely hear it over the engine and the ringing in your ears.

"No."

"Yes."

"No."

You put both hands on his face and make him look at you.

"This happened because of a fucking terrorist," you say. "Because he is rotten and strategic and cruel. Not because you loved me."

His expression twists.

"You think that makes it better."

"No," you say. "I think it makes it true."

He stares at you like he wants to believe you and does not know how yet.

Blood is still seeping at his side.

You look down and curse softly.

"Simon," you say. "Show me."

He ignores that at first. Still looking at you. Still trying to make his eyes line up with reality.

"Simon!"

That gets through.

He peels one hand away from you long enough to press it over the wound and you pile both of your hands over his. Your rings should be there. Both of them. The absence of yours is a little fresh cut in the middle of everything.

His gaze catches on your bare hand too.

Another little flinch.

"We'll get it back," you whisper.

He almost laughs. It comes out like pain.

"That's what you're worried about."

"No," you say. "But I know you are."

That gets the tiniest, most broken smile you have ever seen on him.

The vehicle keeps moving.

Sirens somewhere behind or ahead, impossible to tell.

Your whole body starts shaking now that stillness is an option. Shock moving in after survival. Delayed. Nasty. Unstoppable.

He sees that too.

"Hey," he says, voice changing. Softer. "Hey. Breathe for me."

You do because he asks.

In. Out.

Again.

His hand leaves the wound just long enough to drag his hoodie half off and wrap it around your shoulders despite your protest. The fabric smells like him and smoke and the outside world and it almost undoes you worse than the rescue did.

You lean into him anyway.

Johnny finally speaks from the bench opposite.

"You're both a bloody nightmare, by the way."

It is so normal, so him, that you laugh once through the tremor in your body.

Gaz huffs a breath that might be agreement.

Price's voice cuts back from the front.

"Five minutes."

Five minutes to where, you do not know. Medical. Safe house. Somewhere with more light and less blood and a real lock on the door that belongs to you this time.

You do not ask.

You just keep your hand over Simon's on his side and let your head fall against his shoulder.

You are alive.

He got to you.

The room without windows is behind you.

The bakery is somewhere back there too. Open sign lit. Apron on the hook. Ordinary life cut in half.

You know, even through the shock, that nothing fits back together neatly after this.

He knows too.

You can feel it in the way his body stays wound under your cheek. The way he keeps scanning the corners of the vehicle even while holding you like you might disappear through the metal if he loosens his grip.

You are alive.

He is not okay.

Neither of you is.

The vehicle tears through the dark carrying both truths at once.

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It was the second one, cut short like someone had clapped a hand over a mouth, that tore Simon out of sleep.

He sat up fast, breath already running ahead of him. His little bed in the corner of the loft was still warm, rough wool blanket tangled around his legs. Moonlight leaked in through the warped shutters and turned the dust in the air silver. Everything looked wrong. Too still.

Then he heard the thud. Heavy. A body, not a chair.

His hand went for the knife under his straw mattress before his mind even caught up. It was small and ugly, the handle wrapped in old leather. His father's, once. His now.

"Mum?" he whispered.

No answer.

He crept off the bed, bare feet silent on the warped boards. The air smelled odd. Smoke, but not from the hearth. Something sharp under it.

Another sound. Not a scream this time. A low, ugly sound. His father's voice. Words slurred, too thick to understand.

Simon moved toward the ladder and went down, one careful rung at a time, the knife tight in his fist. His heart was a drum in his ears. Somewhere outside a dog barked, then went quiet.

The single room below glowed red and gold with firelight. The hearth was burning too hot, flames licking at the soot-blackened stones. Shadows leapt across the walls.

His mother lay on the floor.

For a moment Simon's mind refused to name what he was seeing. Her skirt was rucked up around her knees, hair loose and wild on the packed earth. Her cheek was pressed to the floor, eyes open wide. Her lips moved like she was still trying to speak.

His father was on top of her.

"Get off," Simon heard himself say. The words came out thin. "Get off her!"

His father's head lifted. The firelight caught his face, all broken veins and anger, eyes bloodshot. There was blood at the corner of his mouth. Not his.

"Get back up there," he snarled. "This is none of yours."

Simon's fingers hurt from how hard he held the knife. "You're hurting her!"

His mother's gaze jerked to him. For a heartbeat he saw something bright in it. Hope, maybe. Or terror for him instead of herself.

"Simon," she wheezed. "Baby, go."

The sound of her voice broke something open.

"No!"

He stepped down off the last rung and into the room. The knife looked small, pathetic, in his hand, but it was something. It was all he had.

His father's face twisted. "You little bastard."

He shoved away from her, stumbled to his feet. His belt hung loose, buckle clanging as it swung. He lurched toward Simon, one big hand reaching. Simon could smell him now. Rotgut, sweat, the tang of old blood ground into the wool of his shirt.

"Dad, stop!"

The hand closed over his shoulder, fingers digging in hard enough to bruise. His father shook him once, twice, like he could rattle the defiance out.

"You think you're a man now," he hissed. "Carrying that little pig-sticker around? You're nothing! You hear me?"

The grip tightened. Pain tore through Simon's arm. His eyes stung, but he swallowed it. The knife was trapped down by his side. His father's thumb dug into the bone of his shoulder until Simon felt something crackle.

"Put it down," his father said. Spit flecked his lips. "Go back up. Or I'll give you something to cry about, boy."

His mother tried to get up. She slipped in her own blood and fell.

"Please," she gasped. "Please. Leave him."

His father's head snapped toward her. "Shut your mouth!"

The hand left Simon's shoulder just long enough for his father to turn and kick her in the ribs. She folded in on herself with a sound Simon had never heard from her before. Small. Broken. Dying.

He moved without thinking.

By the time his father spun back, Simon's arm was already coming up. The knife was in his hand, blade catching the firelight. His father reached for him again, big fingers spread, and Simon drove the steel forward as hard as he could.

It went in easier than he expected.

For a heartbeat there was no sound at all. His father's eyes went wide, not angry now but almost surprised. His breath hitched.

Then the blood came.

It spilled hot over Simon's knuckles, slick and sudden. His father wheezed and staggered back, looking down at the knife hilt pressed to his own shirtfront like it had appeared there on its own.

"You," he croaked.

Simon yanked the blade free. The sound was wet, awful. His father dropped to his knees. One hand pawed at the wound, then at the floor, trying to catch himself. He failed.

He fell face-first into the rushes. He did not get up.

The fire popped. Somewhere outside, the dog barked again.

Simon stood there, chest heaving, the knife hanging from his numb fingers. His father's blood ran down his wrist and dripped off his elbow. It pattered onto the floor in a steady rhythm.

"Simon!"

His mother's voice dragged him back. She was sitting up now, one arm clutched around her ribs. Her lip was split, blood on her teeth. Her eyes were huge and wild.

"Baby," she whispered. "What have you done?"

"He..." Simon's throat closed. He swallowed hard. "He was hurting you."

She looked at his father's body. Looked back at him. He saw the moment it hit her, what this meant. What they had just become.

"Listen to me," she said, voice shaking in a way he had never heard. "Listen. You take that knife and you go. Now. Out the back, through the field. Do not look back. Do you hear me?"

"I'm not leaving you!"

"You are!" She grabbed his wrist, fingers slipping on the blood. "If they find you here... if they see him like this... they will hang you, Simon. Do you understand? They will hang my boy."

"I can tell them." His voice climbed high, thin. "I can tell them what he did. They will see!"

Her grip tightened until it hurt. "You think they care what a man does to his wife in his own house? You think they will listen to a boy?"

Her eyes filled. The tears made them look even bigger.

"Please," she whispered. "Please. Run. Live. That is how you make this mean something. You live. You do not die on a rope for him."

A fist pounded on the door.

"Open up!" a voice shouted. A man's, slurred with ale. A neighbor. Another. "Harris! We heard shouting!"

His mother flinched. Her hand shoved at his chest, hard enough to make him stumble.

"Go," she hissed. "Out the back. Now."

There was another heavy blow on the front door. The latch groaned.

Simon's legs woke up before his mind did. He turned and ran for the back, boots forgotten by the door. The kitchen window gaped, shutters half open. He grabbed the sill, pushed through, felt wood scrape his ribs and stones bite his knees. Then he was out in the cold night air, stumbling into the little yard behind the cottage.

The stars looked wrong. Too many, too bright. The moon hung low and red over the dark line of the treeline.

He ran.

The field behind the house was fallow, low stubble scratching at his bare feet. He cut across it, breath burning, the night air knifing into his chest. Voices rose behind him, angry, shocked. Someone shouted his mother's name. Another voice cursed.

"Boy went that way!"

"Get him!"

Light flared as someone lit a torch.

Simon pushed harder. The ground blurred under him, dark, then darker, then gone as he plunged into the trees. Branches whipped at his arms and face, scratching, clawing. He did not stop. The knife was still in his hand, slick with blood, and he clung to it like it was the only real thing in the world.

Roots grabbed at his feet. He went down hard once, knees slamming into the earth, hands scraping on stones. Pain flared up his shins. He staggered back up and kept going.

Voices crashed after him, getting closer, then farther, then closer again as they followed the sound of his breaking branches.

He burst out of the trees onto the old road that led toward the city. For a heartbeat he froze, chest heaving, knife hanging at his side. The city walls hunched on the horizon, black against the sky, lights pricking along their line.

Hoofbeats rolled down the road like distant thunder.

Simon's head snapped up. A small troop of riders was coming, dark shapes against the moonlit dust. The one in front carried a banner. The King's colors hung from it, limp in the still air.

Panic flooded him. He darted for the ditch, trying to fling himself back into the tree line, but his legs finally betrayed him. They buckled. He went to his knees in the mud, breathing like he had swallowed fire.

"Hold," a voice called. Deep. Commanding.

The hoofbeats slowed. Stopped.

Someone swung down from a saddle. Boots crunched on gravel. Armor creaked.

Simon tried to push himself up. His arms shook. The knife almost slid from his hand.

"Stay back," he rasped. His voice came out wrong, raw from screaming he did not remember doing. "I will use it!"

A low chuckle. "You already have, by the look of you."

A hand caught his wrist, fast as a snake. Gloved fingers clamped around his thin arm, turning it. Moonlight spilled over the blade and the blood that crusted it, over the smaller smears on Simon's nightshirt.

The man holding him swore softly. "Saints. How old are you, boy?"

Simon tried to jerk free. The grip tightened.

"Twelve," he spat. It felt like a lie and the truth both. "Let me go."

"Not yet."

The others murmured. One of them stepped closer, torch held high. The light washed over Simon's face, over the dirt and the blood and the wild stare.

"He is the one they yelled about," someone said. "The Riley boy. They say he killed his father."

Simon bared his teeth. "He deserved it!"

Silence.

The men shifted, uneasy, glancing to the rider who had spoken first. He had not let go of Simon's arm.

"Bring him," that man said.

Simon twisted. "I said let me go!"

The knight looked down at him properly then. The torchlight caught a face lined by weather and war, eyes a clear, cold gray. Not cruel. Not kind either. Weighing.

"You have a choice, lad," he said. "Run into the dark and the wolves will have you before dawn. Or come with the King's men and answer for the blood on that blade."

Simon swallowed. His mouth tasted of iron. "If I go with you, they will hang me."

The knight's grip loosened just a fraction. "Maybe. Maybe not."

He released Simon's wrist and stepped back. For a moment, strangely, there was space. An opening. The trees behind, the road ahead. The life he had just torn apart somewhere in the fields behind him, already fading.

"You choose."

Simon looked down at the knife. His father's. His.

He thought of his mother's eyes when she told him to run. How she only had a hand full of breath left and she used it to save him. He thought of the way his father had laughed when she begged. He thought of rope and wood and the feeling of a noose tightening around his throat.

Slowly, he closed his fingers tighter around the hilt and lifted his chin.

"Take me to him," he said. "To the King."

The knight's mouth twitched, almost a smile. "Brave little bastard."

He caught Simon by the scruff and shoved him toward one of the horses. A soldier hauled him up behind a rider with a grunt, big hands nearly spanning his whole chest. The horse shifted, snorted.

As they turned toward the city, Simon looked back once. The trees were just dark shapes now. Somewhere beyond them, his home still burned. The sky above it pulsed orange.

He did not cry.

He set his jaw and stared at the rising walls of the King's city instead.

The King sat on a high, carved chair that looked more like a throne than the real one ever did. It was narrower, closer, easier to loom from.

Simon stood below it on the black and white tiles, bare feet cold, hands sticky with drying blood. The knife lay on the floor between them. A thin line of red had crawled from the blade toward the King's boot and stopped there.

"So," the King said. His tone was almost conversational. "You killed your father."

Simon stared at the knife. "Yes."

"Why?"

"My mum. He was hurting her." His throat scraped on the words. "He killed her."

The King leaned back, fingers tapping on the arm of his chair. He was not old, not young. His hair was going gray at the temples, but his eyes were dark and sharp. They took Simon in the way a butcher might look at a strange cut of meat.

"You did not run far," he said. "Were you trying to find me?"

Simon hesitated. "No."

That seemed to amuse him. "Honest at least."

Silence spread between them. Simon felt it, thick and waiting.

"They want to hang you," the King said at last. "The elders of your village. The priest. They say a boy who puts a blade into his own father's heart must be put down, before he grows into a worse man than the one he killed."

Simon's fingers twitched. He thought of his father's hand on his shoulder, squeezing until he saw stars. He thought of the way his mother's ribs had bent under that boot.

"I will never be him," he said.

One of the guards behind him snorted. The King lifted one hand and the sound stopped.

"You sound very sure of that."

"I am."

The King watched him for a long time, head tilted, like he was listening for something Simon could not hear. Finally he said,

"I see two truths. One, you are a boy who has killed. Two, you are a boy who will kill again."

Simon's lips parted. "No, I..."

"You will." The King's tone did not rise. It did not need to. "The world is full of men like your father. Who take and hurt and laugh while they do it. Someone must stop them. Someone must cut out the rot."

He lifted a finger. A guard stepped forward, picked up the knife, wiped it once on his own cloak, and held it out hilt first.

"The sword," the King said calmly. "Or the noose."

The hall seemed to shrink. Simon could hear his own heartbeat. Hear the small scrape of leather as the guard shifted. Smell metal, old sweat, the faint incense clinging to the stones.

He could picture the noose. He had seen one once in the town square, when they hanged a thief who had taken bread in winter. The way his legs had kicked. The way the crowd had watched.

Simon lifted his hand.

The hilt was rough against his palm, warm from the guard's fingers. Not heavy. Not yet.

He wrapped his hand around it.

The King's mouth curved in something that was not quite a smile.

"Good," he said. "You will be trained. Fed. Clothed. You will sleep in the barracks and drill until you can barely stand. You will learn to obey. Your life is mine now. Do you understand?"

Simon swallowed. "Yes, Your Majesty."

"Look at me."

He did.

"You kill for me," the King said quietly, "or you die for me. That is the bargain you made the moment you drove that blade into your father's chest. I am only putting a name to it."

Simon held his gaze. His fingers tightened on the knife until his knuckles went white.

"I understand," he said.

The King nodded once. "Then welcome to my service, Simon."

The clang of steel on steel rang across the training yard, sharp and bright in the morning air.

The boy was gone.

The man who moved where Simon had once stood was taller by more than a head, shoulders corded with muscle from years of drill. His hair was cropped short, gone from chestnut to something dusted by early gray at the temples. A bone-white mask covered his face, painted with the rough suggestion of a skull.

He flowed through the sequence the weapons master called, blade lifting, turning, cutting, always in the right place. His armor was plain, unadorned, the metal dulled from use rather than polished for show. Sweat darkened the linen at his throat.

Around the yard, younger men watched between their own drills, glancing at him with something like wariness. He had earned it.

Simon did not look at them.

He moved, and the sword sang in his hands, and the morning light slid over steel and leather and the blank, grinning mask.

When the sequence ended, he held his final guard a moment longer than needed, breath steady. Then he lowered the blade.

"Again," he said.

He did not have a boy's voice anymore.

From the high windows of the palace that overlooked the yard, he felt eyes. The King's walls were full of them. Nobles, servants, courtiers, all peering down. Somewhere behind one of those panes, behind silk and carved wood and gold, a princess lived her caged life.

Simon lifted his sword and moved back into the pattern, the past a ghost in his grip, the future waiting somewhere he could not yet see.

ghost who spots you standing near the barriers and physically slows down. after months away it's always a little shocking, seeing you in person again, seeing someone soft after spending so much time surrounded by hard things seeing home

ghost who notices you're trying very hard not to move, hands clasped together, biting the inside of your cheek, eyes already shiny. he instantly realizes this challenge is about to fail spectacularly

ghost who feels his chest tighten the second your eyes meet. god, he missed you. he missed you so much it stopped feeling like a normal emotion somewhere around month two. after that it became something else entirely, something that sat permanently beneath his ribs

ghost who watches your entire expression collapse. the determination? gone the attempt at self-control? gone. because suddenly you're looking at him like you've been holding your breath for months

ghost who doesn't even make it a second himself. that's the funny part: everyone assumes it'll be you. but the second he sees your face his feet are already moving

ghost who starts walking toward you immediately, long strides, eyes never leaving yours and you break the second you realize he's coming

ghost who sees you start running and for one brief moment he actually smiles, a real one, the kind that almost nobody ever gets to see

ghost who opens his arms before you even reach him. there is absolutely no universe where he's making you stop at arm's length after months apart. absolutely none

ghost who catches you when you practically throw yourself at hiim, arms wrapping around his neck, face immediately buried against his chest. his arms lock around you so quickly it's almost startling. like muscle memory, like instinct and like he's been imagining this exact moment every night before sleep

ghost who lifts you clean off the ground without thinking because he needs you closer. having you pressed against him still doesn't feel close enough somehow

ghost who buries his face against the side of your head, eyes closed. just for a second, just long enough to breathe you in. he missed that too: your shampoo, your perfume. you

ghost who doesn't say anything immediately. his throat suddenly feels tight: emotions have never been his strongest skill. he's spent months imagining this and somehow reality is worse or better, maybe both

eventually all he manages is "there she is." voice rough and completely wrecked

ghost who keeps one hand cradling the back of your head the entire time, fingers tangled in your hair: protective and grounding like he's reassuring himself you're real

ghost who notices you're crying immediately because he notices everything about you. especially now "hey." forehead pressing against yours, gloved thumb wiping beneath your eye "don't cry." meanwhile he's holding you like if he lets go you'll disappear

ghost who absolutely forgets there's an audience. forgets about soap filming, forgets about the entire base. the second you're in his arms nothing else matters. nothing

ghost who gets mercilessly teased afterward when everyone watches the video. the footage shows you breaking almost instantly but it also very clearly shows ghost reaching for you first before you've even started moving, before the challenge technically begins. already opening his arms, already walking toward you

soap replaying it over and over

"look at him." "lt lasted about half a second." "didn't even pretend."

and ghost just stares at him, expression completely blank before taking the phone and secretly sending the video to himself

ghost who watches it alone later that night, not because of himself but because of you because it catches the exact moment your face lights up when you see him. the exact moment you stop trying to be brave. the exact moment you run straight into his arms like you belong there and for a man who's spent most of his life feeling untethered from everything

that's his favorite thing he's ever seen

© BITTERSWEETLYBLUE. do not copy, translate, edit my work then claim it as your own, attempt to plagarise or repost it on any other website nor feed into AI. you will be blocked.

A/N: yes this is a repost