Arms folded behind his back, shoulder against the stone, hood in place. Skull over dark cloth, teeth where his mouth would be, only his dark brown eyes uncovered.

You lifted your brows at him.

"Good morning, Sir Simon," you said.

"Princess," he answered. "Your schedule today is breakfast, audience with your aunt, council observation, then lessons of state."

"I see my jailer has memorized my hours," you said.

"If I had my way," he said, "you would have fewer of them."

You blinked. "Fewer what?"

"Hours," he said. "You are kept busy enough to tire a regiment."

You had not expected that.

A laugh slipped out before you could stop it. "You have noticed."

"I have eyes," he said.

You shrugged your cloak more firmly around your shoulders and started down the corridor. He fell into step as he had the day before.

For a few paces you walked in silence. You could feel him there, a steady weight at your back, not quite touching, always in reach.

"Tell me something," you said as you turned the corner toward the breakfast hall.

"Princess," he replied.

"You have been with my father since you were a boy," you said. "You must have an opinion on every lord in the council chamber. Even the ones who try to hide behind their beards."

"Several opinions," he said.

"Do you share them, or do you keep them under that hood with the rest of your secrets?"

He hesitated. You could almost hear the careful way he picked his words.

"My opinions are for your father, not the court," he said. "And not for gossip."

"I do not want gossip," you said. "I have more than enough of that. I want the truth. You see things they do not want the King to see. You hear what they mutter when they think you are only a shadow."

"That is my work," he said. "Not my conversation."

You looked back at him. "You can do both at once."

His eyes narrowed. "Why?"

"Because I am expected to sit in those councils soon," you said. "To nod in the right places and know when someone is lying to my father's face. It would be useful to learn from the man who watches their hands while they speak."

He had assumed, without quite realizing it, that most of what the tutors poured into your head ran out again when talk turned from books to swords. The realization that you were thinking about the same things he thought about, only from another angle, landed in his chest with an odd weight.

He cleared his throat.

"The lord with the long silver beard," he said slowly. "The one who complains that the taxes on his northern lands are unfair."

"Lord Albridge," you said.

"Yes. He always sits with his right hand on the table. Ring finger tapping when anyone mentions the border. He says he has no interest there. That tap tells me otherwise. He is waiting for something."

You filed that away.

"And Lord Henslow," you pressed. "The large one who always laughs a beat too late."

"His laugh is for show," Simon said. "He watches the room when he uses it. He enjoys seeing which men flinch at the sound. He is cruel. Never turn your back within arm's reach of him."

"Why do you say that so calmly," you asked.

"Because it is true," he said.

You walked the last stretch to the breakfast hall thinking about rings and laughs and the way you had never noticed the pattern of tapping fingers on polished wood.

Perhaps this will not be such a waste, Simon thought unexpectedly as he took his place at the wall. She listens.

After the meal, your aunt cornered you in a sitting room with embroidery hoops and sighs about propriety. Simon took up his post by the door, intending to endure needles and gossip for an hour.

It was not quite what he got.

"There is to be a celebration for the harvest next month," your aunt said, fingers neat on her thread. "You must be seen to be gracious to all. Even the small lords. Especially the small lords."

"I am always gracious," you said, tongue caught between your teeth as you tried to coax a stubborn knot out of your thread. "Except when I am not."

"Exactly," she said.

You pushed the knot down, then glanced over at Simon.

"Sir Simon," you called.

He stiffened slightly. "Princess."

"How does one look gracious while being told the price of grain for the third time in a row?"

"You are asking him," your aunt said, shocked.

"He is in the room," you said. "I assume he has eyes and ears on feasts as well as battlefields."

Simon considered.

"Men rarely watch the exact words you use," he said. "They watch your attention. If you look as if you are listening, they will tell themselves you have agreed with everything they have said, even if you have merely nodded and made polite sounds. If you look bored, they will remember only that."

"So I should stare very hard at their mouths," you said, "and hope they mistake discomfort for interest."

"That would work on some of them," he said. "But not the ones who matter. Pick two questions. Ask them of everyone. Remember the answers. You will know who is lying by who forgets what they told you."

Your aunt's needle paused. "Questions."

"How is your harvest," you suggested. "And. How is your eldest child?"

"That would work," Simon said. "Or. Where did you spend last winter? And, where will you spend the next?"

You watched him, head tilted. "You have thought about this?"

"I have watched men lie for many years," he said.

Your aunt cleared her throat and bent over her hoop, chastened. You went back to your work, but your gaze flicked to Simon more often than it had the day before.

He was not just a looming presence. He was a mind that had been sitting in rooms you would soon have to navigate, listening in ways you did not yet know how to.

He did not sound thrilled to be sharing any of that, but he did not withhold it either.

When you left the sitting room, thread marks still faint on your fingers, he fell into step beside you again.

"Thank you," you said quietly, where your aunt could not hear.

"For what," he asked.

"For treating my questions as if they are worth answering," you said. "Most men do not."

"You are not most, Princess," he said.

It slipped out before he could stop it.

You looked at him, startled, then smiled in a way that made something in his chest tighten.

Midday brought council observation.

You sat in your usual place at your father's left, ink and parchment in front of you, the appearance of note taking as important as the notes themselves. Simon stood behind you, within arm's reach of both you and the King.

Talk turned to trade agreements, then to rumors from the border. The names of neighboring lords drifted through the air like smoke.

Lord Albridge complained about tariffs. Lord Henslow laughed late. You watched their hands.

The silver bearded lord's ring finger tapped the table when anyone mentioned the northern road. Just as Simon had said.

You underlined his name on your parchment.

At one point, while the chancellor droned on about grain, your father leaned back in his chair and tilted his head just enough to catch Simon's eye.

"Well," the King said lazily, "what do your ghosts say? Are the hills as quiet as the chancellor insists?"

Simon glanced once at the map, then at you, then back to the King.

"There is more smoke than fire yet," he said. "But men do not build smoke without thinking of flame."

The King made a small, humorless sound. "Poetic. Is that Price's influence or my daughter's."

"Likely neither, Sire," Simon said.

You coughed to cover a smile.

Your father's gaze flicked to you, then to Simon again. There was a thought there he did not voice.

The day before, Simon would have assumed the King saw only a troublesome girl and a useful weapon. Today, he was not so sure.

The afternoon lesson was on the succession laws of three different kingdoms you might eventually have to treat with. It was dry, full of phrases like legitimate issue and disputed claims.

You should have been bored to tears.

Instead, when Master Harrow paused to fuss with his spectacles, you turned in your chair to look at Simon.

"You have fought in two of these kingdoms," you said.

Harrow blinked. "Princess. How did you know that."

"Because my father sends his best when he cares about something," you said, still watching Simon. "And he cares very much about who inherits a throne."

Simon shifted under the weight of both their attention.

"Yes," he said. "I have fought on both sides of that river."

"Which of their succession customs seems less likely to end in knives," you asked.

"None," he said. Then, after a beat, "but the one where the firstborn daughter may inherit by right at least gives men fewer excuses to pretend blood is not blood."

Harrow stared at him, then at you. "I had not thought of it that way."

"You have not spent as much time as he has digging princes out from under their own messes," you said.

Simon felt the corner of his mouth want to move. He held it still.

He had expected questions about weapons or scars or tales of battlefield glory. Those he could deflect easily. You were asking about law and power and human nature.

The more you spoke, the less you sounded like a girl peeking at soldiers from a tower, and the more you sounded like a woman who understood that the world was sharp and that she would have to be sharper.

He found he respected that, whether he wanted to or not.

During the late meal, Violet managed to maneuver herself into the seat beside you again.

"Has he spoken at all today," she hissed as soon as she had poured herself wine. "Blink if yes, twice if no."

"He has spoken," you said. "He has opinions on succession law."

Violet nearly dropped her cup. "Does he. What does the King's ghost think of inheritance."

"Terribly scandalous things," you said. "He thinks daughters should be allowed to inherit thrones."

Violet's eyes went round. She glanced down the table at the hooded figure behind you.

"He may be the most dangerous man here," she whispered. "Imagine. A knight who thinks women are people."

You bit down on a smile. Simon could hear them, of course he could. You saw his fingers curl slightly where they rested on his belt.

You did not tease him for it.

Instead, when you pushed away from the table later, you said over your shoulder, "You have not eaten."

"I will," he said.

"When," you asked. "When the world ends?”

"When you are in your room," he said. "Where you are slightly less likely to be stabbed."

"Only slightly," you said.

"You attract trouble," he said. "I am adjusting my expectations."

You blinked, then laughed, startled. It was becoming uncomfortably easy, this shift between prickling at him and enjoying the way his voice sounded when he let the edges soften.

He noticed it too. He told himself it was not a problem. This was still a post, still a task. Nothing more.

The thought did not quite settle.

That night, walking back to your chambers, the palace felt quieter than usual.

You were tired in the bones, the kind of tired that came from thinking all day instead of riding or dancing. The lanterns along the corridor painted soft halos on the walls.

Simon walked just behind your shoulder as always.

"You have not asked once to sneak down to the gardens today," he said.

You snorted. "You are a wall of iron in a skull hood. There is no sneaking past you. I have accepted my fate."

"Acceptance," he said. "You are full of surprises today."

You glanced back at him. "Do I surprise you?”

"Yes," he said, before he could stop himself.

You slowed. "Because I have not forced you to chase me up a tower?”

"Because you listen," he said. "And think. And remember. It is more than can be said for some men who sit in the council chamber."

Heat crept up your neck. "You thought I would not."

"I thought," he said carefully, "that you would care more for the trappings of your role than for its weight."

"My gowns," you said, "or my crown?”

"Both," he said.

You leaned your shoulder against the stone for a moment and faced him fully.

"I like gowns," you said. "I like jewels. I like being treated with respect and I like it when people remember I am in the room. None of that means I do not understand that the things I wear and the rooms I sit in exist because other people bleed for them."

He held your gaze, surprised by the bluntness.

"I watched you in the garden," you went on. "Watched you take stone on your back so it would not hit me. I have watched you ride out in rain that turned the roads to rivers. I am not blind to the cost of what I have, Sir Simon. I would be stupid not to learn how to carry it properly."

Silence wrapped around your words for a moment.

Then he inclined his head.

"I misjudged you," he said.

It was simple. No ornament, no excuse. Just the truth.

You swallowed. No one in this palace ever admitted that freely.

"I misjudged you too," you said. "I thought you would be very boring to talk to."

The sound he made might almost have been a laugh.

"And," you added quickly, more flustered than you wanted to be, "you are not."

"That is reassuring," he said. "I would hate to think I was only good for looming."

"Oh, you loom very well," you said. "That is still one of your primary talents."

"Good," he said. "It would be a shame to waste the hood."

You laughed, then caught yourself at your door, hand on the latch.

"Good night," you said softly.

"Good night, Princess," he answered.

As the door closed between you, he found that the Hall felt different than it had the morning before.

He had expected this post to be a long exercise in patience and irritation. Instead, he had spent the day talking about treaties and lies and harvest feasts with a woman he had once dismissed as a bright little thing with a dangerous habit of wandering.

She was still bright. Still in danger. Still far too inclined to wander.

She was also sharper than he had given her credit for. And, if he was honest with himself, not a bad person to spend a day shadowing.

He settled against the wall, letting the quiet fold over him, and admitted it in the safety of his own skull.

She is not just a princess, he thought.

She is the reason the King kept me alive. And she is going to make this post far more complicated than I had planned.

Not peaceful quiet.

That strange, suspended sort that only exists in the middle of the night, when the pipes have settled and the street outside has finally gone still and every sound feels louder because there are so few of them.

Simon is not asleep.

He has not really been sleeping properly for weeks, not in any way that counts. Drifting, maybe. Eyes shutting for an hour on the couch with one hand too close to the gun on the table and half his body still listening for locks, floorboards, windows, your breathing upstairs.

Tonight is no different.

He is staring at the dark ceiling, one arm thrown over his eyes, when he hears it.

At first he thinks it is the house.

A creak. A shift. Wind worrying at something outside.

Then it comes again.

A sound so small he nearly misses it.

A broken little breath.

His whole body stills.

Then another.

Not the restless turn of someone dreaming lightly. Not the muffled noise of a bad angle under the blankets.

A cry.

Soft. Caught. Wet with something that hits him low and hard before he is even fully upright.

He is off the couch before he knows he moved.

The stairs go under his feet too fast and somehow not fast enough. Every awful possibility his mind has been trying not to imagine for weeks arrives all at once as he reaches the bedroom door.

He pushes it open.

You are tangled in the sheets.

Half on your side, half on your stomach, hair stuck to your cheek, face twisted in a way that makes something savage and helpless rip through him. There are tears on your skin even now. Your hands are knotted in the blanket like you are fighting something he cannot see.

"No," you whisper, voice wrecked and far away. "No, no, please..."

He is at the bed in a second.

"Love."

You do not wake.

Your face pinches harder. Another sound breaks from you, this one thin and raw enough that he has to bite down on the panic trying to climb his throat.

"Hey," he says, firmer now, one hand on your shoulder. "Wake up. Come on. You're alright. Wake up."

You flinch under his hand, still trapped somewhere else.

A tear slips down into your hairline.

He cannot stand it.

His hand slides to your jaw, thumb brushing the wet from your cheek as carefully as if you are made of glass.

"Love, wake up."

Your whole body jolts.

Your eyes open without seeing for one terrible second. Wide. Lost. Somewhere between here and wherever your mind has dragged you. You suck in a breath like you have come up from underwater and then the room finally lands around you in pieces.

The dark.

The bed.

Simon.

You make a sound that nearly undoes him.

He is leaning over you, one knee on the mattress, one hand still cupping your face, the other braced by your shoulder so he does not crowd you too hard.

"You're here," you whisper, and then your voice breaks completely.

His chest caves in around the words.

"Aye," he says, barely getting it out. "I'm here."

Your fingers grab at his shirt before you even seem to realise you are doing it.

"Please."

That one word.

No explanation.

No dignity left in it.

Just need.

He closes his eyes for half a second.

Then he nods.

"Alright," he says softly. "Alright."

He does not think.

If he thinks, the old fear will come back in. The distance. The reasons. The rules he has been using to keep himself outside this room like a man trying to outstare his own heart.

So he does not think.

He kicks off his boots, strips his hoodie over his head, and slides into the bed fully clothed otherwise because you are already reaching for him again and he cannot bear another second of the space between you.

The moment he is down, you move toward him like your body has made the decision before your mind catches up.

He catches you.

One arm under your shoulders. One around your waist. Pulling you in until your face is buried against his chest and your leg is half tangled over his and there is no room left for nightmares to fit between you.

You are shaking.

Not violently. Not all over.

Just enough that he can feel the aftershock of it in the small muscles of your back, in the way your breath keeps catching against his shirt.

"I've got you," he murmurs into your hair. "I've got you. You're home. You're in bed. It's me. Just me."

Your hand fists in the fabric over his ribs.

He keeps talking because the silence feels dangerous, because he knows what it is like to wake with your body still halfway trapped in another place.

"You're alright," he says. "No one's here. Door's locked. Riley's downstairs. I'm right here."

Your breathing hitches once, twice, then starts to even out in little broken pieces.

He can feel the damp of your tears through his shirt now. Feel the heat of your cheek against his skin. Feel every place you fit him without effort because this is what your bodies know even when your minds are making a mess of everything else.

You tug him closer somehow.

As if closer is a place and a command both.

He goes.

Of course he goes.

His palm spreads over the back of your head. His mouth brushes your temple once, then your hairline, then the corner of your brow where the tension is only just beginning to unclench.

"You're safe," he whispers.

You make a tiny sound, half sob, half sigh, and press your face harder into him.

He should not be here, some treacherous old part of his mind tries to say.

He crushes that thought flat.

Not tonight.

Not while you are curled around him like this, still crying in the aftermath of something he cannot punch or shoot or reason with.

Your hand slides up from his shirt to his neck, then to his jaw, as if you need to feel the shape of him to believe he is real.

He turns his head enough to kiss your palm.

That is when the tear slips free.

He does not even feel it gathering.

Just suddenly there, warm and humiliating and quiet, sliding down from the corner of his eye into the mess of dark and your hair and the pillow beneath you both.

He keeps his face turned into your temple so you will not see.

Or maybe because if he lifts it, there will be more.

His chest hurts with the force of everything he has been keeping locked down. The distance. The guilt. The weeks of hearing you move around upstairs and not going to you. The sight of you twisted in the sheets and crying in your sleep because no one gets rescued all at once, not really.

He tightens his hold.

Not enough to wake the fear again. Just enough to say stay.

Your breathing slows.

The worst of the shaking eases out of you by degrees until what is left is only the occasional little hitch, the kind that comes after tears when the body is not fully convinced it can rest yet.

He keeps one hand on the back of your head and the other splayed wide over your waist.

Grounding you.

Grounding himself.

After a while, you whisper, barely audible against him, "Don't go."

It is not dramatic.

Not accusing.

Not fully awake, maybe.

That makes it worse.

His throat closes.

"I'm not goin' anywhere," he says.

And for the first time in weeks, he does not mean the street, or the couch, or the room downstairs.

He means this bed.

This moment.

You make a soft little sound of relief and settle deeper into him, finally letting your weight go.

He lies there awake in the dark with you wrapped around him and the last wet track of that tear cooling on his skin, and thinks that there are some kinds of pain no amount of distance was ever going to prevent.

Outside, the house stays still.

Downstairs, Riley shifts once and settles again.

Up here, your breathing evens against his chest until sleep starts to pull at you a second time, gentler now.

Simon does not sleep.

He just holds you tighter and listens, one hand still in your hair, while the shape of his own breaking goes quiet and wet and human in the dark.

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You loved learning. You did not love lectures that went on long enough to fossilize your bones.

"Princess, your penmanship on that last page was much improved," your tutor called, already fussing with his papers.

"Thank you, Master Harrow," you said, sweet as honey. "Perhaps one day you will even let me write something that is not a list of tariffs."

He made a strangled noise that might have been a laugh as you slipped out into the corridor.

The hall beyond was quiet, polished stone glowing in the late afternoon light. A draft carried the faint scent of beeswax and parchment. You smoothed your skirts, pushed a loose curl behind your ear, and turned toward your chambers.

You had taken three steps before you saw him.

Simon stood to the right of the door, exactly where the wall met the first column. He was so still he might have been carved there, part of the stone. The skull pattern on his fitted hood caught the light, bone white over black cloth, teeth painted over his mouth. Only his eyes were bare, dark brown and steady.

Your feet hesitated for half a heartbeat. Then you lifted your chin and walked.

As you passed him, he fell into step.

Not close enough to brush you. Close enough that you felt the weight of him at your shoulder, the soft scrape of his boots almost in time with your shoes.

You glanced sideways. He looked straight ahead.

"Sir Simon," you said. "The lesson is over. You can have the corridor back."

No answer. He kept walking with you.

You tried again.

"If you are on your way somewhere, do not let me keep you. I am only going to my rooms."

"I know," he said.

His voice was low behind the cloth. He did not sound like a man who intended to go elsewhere.

You turned the next corner. He turned with you.

You slowed your steps. He adjusted without missing a beat.

You stopped.

He stopped two paces behind you.

You turned around.

He faced you, broad and solid, hooded skull looking down. Up close like this he seemed even taller, six foot three of mail and leather and coiled muscle, the painted teeth a pale grin over something that was not smiling at all.

"Sir Simon," you said, very carefully polite, "why are you following me?"

"Because you are walking," he said.

You stared at him.

"That is not an answer," you said.

"It is the beginning of one," he replied.

Something in your chest prickled. The near miss in the garden still lived in the back of your mind, a ghost of stone and shattering sound, but it had been days now. Long enough for fear to turn into stubbornness.

"I appreciate the other night," you said. "Truly. I have thought of little else. However, I cannot have you looming behind me every time I go to and from a room. People will talk."

"They already talk," he said.

"That is not the point."

"The point, Princess," he said, "is that you are not safe."

You folded your arms. "I am in the middle of the palace. It is mid afternoon. The only thing that threatens me here is Master Harrow's voice."

His eyes did not soften, "The King does not agree," he said.

You felt your jaw go tight. "What has my father decided now?"

Simon hesitated, just long enough for you to notice. Then he straightened, as if repeating something memorized.

"By order of His Majesty," he said, "I am assigned as your personal guard. Effective immediately."

You blinked. "Personal guard," you repeated.

"Yes."

"For... how long?"

"Until he says otherwise."

You stared at him, the words stacking slowly.

"So you are to stand outside my lessons," you said. "And my chambers?"

"Yes."

"You are to follow me to supper?"

"Yes."

"And to the chapel? And the library? And the gardens? And the privy if I let you?"

A beat of silence.

"I am to remain within reach," he said at last. "You are free to close doors in my face where modesty demands it."

Heat climbed up your neck.

"This is ridiculous," you snapped. "I am not a child. I do not need a nursemaid."

"I agree," he said.

The neat, immediate answer took some of the wind out of your anger.

"You do," you tried again, "see how this looks? I cannot move three paces without the King's hound at my heels."

His eyes narrowed a fraction behind the paint.

"You would rather be crushed under another statue," he said. "Or take an arrow through the throat on your way to morning prayers?"

"No," you said, sharper than you meant. You pulled in a breath, tried to smooth your voice. "No. But there must be a middle ground between bolting my door and dragging you everywhere like a shadow on a leash."

His gaze flicked to the side for a moment, as if he saw something over your shoulder that you could not. When he looked back, the hint of softness had drained away again.

"My life belongs to your father," he said. "At present, he wishes that life to be spent making sure you keep yours. You can complain to him if you like. It will not change the order."

You bristled.

"You are not happy about this either," you said.

"No," he said.

The bluntness of it startled a laugh out of you that you had not expected.

"So we agree on something," you said. "There is hope for peace in our time after all."

The corner of his eye creased, the closest thing you were likely to get to a smile with his mouth hidden.

"It is not personal," he said. "I am more effective hunting men in the hills than walking princesses from desk to door. That is all."

"It feels personal," you said. "You look as if someone has told you to mind an overexcited puppy."

"If you were a puppy," he said, "you might listen when someone called you back."

Your lips parted. "I listen."

"You listen," he corrected, "and then you decide whether you liked what you heard."

You could not argue that without lying. For a moment the two of you simply stood there in the quiet hall. Sunlight caught on the links of mail at his throat, on the faint line of his old scar. You felt very small and very watched, and you could not decide if you hated that or felt safer for it.

"Very well," you said at last. "You are my personal guard. I will try to remember not to sneak past you when I feel like fresh air."

"Try harder than you have in the past," he said.

You narrowed your eyes. "I should warn you," you said. "I am an excellent escape artist."

"I know," he said. "I've been catching you for years."

That brought a flush to your cheeks that had nothing to do with embarrassment in front of tutors.

You turned away before he could see too much and started down the corridor again.

His footsteps fell in behind you, steady and quiet.

After a few paces, you glanced back over your shoulder.

"Sir Simon," you said.

"Princess."

"If you must stalk me everywhere," you said, "you could at least pretend to be enjoying yourself."

The skull hood tilted. "I am not here to enjoy myself," he said.

"No," you said lightly. "That would be mine and Violet's job. You are here to glower."

"For once," he said, "we understand each other."

You rolled your eyes and faced forward again, but your mouth curved a little all the same.

He followed.

Simon was at her door before the sun cleared the inner wall.

The corridor was cool and still, stone leaching the last of the night from the air. Servants padded past on soft feet, carrying covered trays toward the kitchens. Somewhere farther off, a bell rang the first call of the day.

He stood where the wall met the doorframe, hands clasped behind his back, weight easy on his heels. Old habit. It let him move quickly in either direction if he had to.

The skull was already in place. Bone over cloth snug over his hair and face. The bone grinning where his mouth should be. Only his eyes were brown and bare.

He could not quite believe this was where the King wanted him.

Not in the yard putting steel into new hands. Not at the border keeping restless lords honest. Not riding out with Price to listen where the ground itself felt thin.

Here. Outside a princess's door.

He had seen enough men complain about softer posts over the years. Guarding a treasury, standing at a gate, escorting some noble's carriage to a marriage. None of those had appealed to him.

This, somehow, felt worse. More dangerous. Not because it was soft, but because he could already feel the itch under his skin. The part of him that did not know what to do with stillness.

The latch turned.

The door opened a crack. One of her ladies peered out, then jumped half a handspan when she found herself face to face with painted bone.

"Sir Simon," she squeaked.

"Good morning," he said.

She bobbed an awkward half curtsey and stepped aside.

The Princess came through the doorway a moment later, fastening a bracelet around her wrist with deft fingers. Her gown was a pale color that brought out the warm tone of her skin, skirts cinched high enough to walk easily. Her hair was braided back from her face, curls already trying to escape.

She stopped short when she saw him.

"Of course you are here," she said.

"Good morning, Princess," he replied.

"You know it is a very unnerving sensation," she went on, "to open your door and find a skull glowering at you."

"I will take it into consideration," Simon said. "Perhaps adding flowers?"

One of the maids choked on a laugh before smothering it.

The Princess's mouth twitched in spite of herself. Then she remembered she was meant to be annoyed.

"You do recall that we covered the day's schedule yesterday," she said. "Breakfast, lessons, half an hour of embroidery so my aunt does not cry, more lessons, the evening meal. There is very little room for assassination in that list."

"I am aware of your schedule," he said. "I am also aware that statues are not usually on assassination lists."

She narrowed her eyes at that.

"Fine," she said. "Come to breakfast and glower at my porridge."

She swept past him, skirts whispering. He fell into step.

The breakfast hall was already half full. Lesser nobles and courtiers who had no right to the high table but plenty of hunger filled the lower end, their chatter low and steady. The royal family sat at the raised table near the tall windows, light slanting in over polished wood.

The King glanced up as Simon escorted his daughter in. A brief, measuring look, then a thin nod. Approval. Enforced expectation. Both.

Simon took up position against the wall behind and slightly to her left. A good angle on the room. Close enough to reach her quickly. Far enough not to breathe down her neck.

He watched the doors, the serving staff, the way hands moved near knives and cups. Old habit.

He tried not to watch the way she toyed with her spoon while her father fielded reports, or the way her eyes glazed when the chancellor started in on grain levies.

"Your tutor tells me you have taken to trade accounts," the King said, mid meal.

She blinked, dragged back from whatever thought she had been chasing across the courtyard with her gaze.

"Master Harrow exaggerates," she said. "I have taken to correcting him when he forgets that two and two make four, not six when his friends are involved."

A few lords at the table choked on their wine.

The King's mouth twitched, then smoothed. "Mind your tongue."

"Yes, Father," she said, but her eyes were bright.

Simon watched the exchange from behind his mask, a small curl of something like amusement sitting under his ribs. She was not subtle, this one, but she was sharper than most of the men who underestimated her.

The meal dragged on. Reports, petitions, three different attempts by two different lords to slide talk of marriageable sons into the conversation.

Each time, Simon saw her shoulders tense a fraction. Her fingers tightened around her cup. She smiled when she was supposed to. She did not quite succeed in making it reach her eyes.

When the King finally rose, the hall rose with him. He gave his daughter a small nod.

"Lessons," he said. "Do not frighten Master Harrow more than necessary."

"I make no promises," she murmured.

Simon followed her out.

Lessons, he discovered, were a different kind of battlefield.

The morning began with letters from foreign courts. Her tutor had her translate them aloud from one tongue to another, then explain what they did not say, which turned out to be more interesting than expected.

"This phrase here," she said, tapping the parchment with her quill, "sounds like a blessing on your health, but in his tongue it is also used as a warning. He is reminding you that nothing is guaranteed."

Harrow cleared his throat. "It is also polite, Highness."

"Polite and a warning," she said. "Words can do both."

Simon leaned against the wall by the window and listened. He had sat in enough rough council rooms to know when something was worth hearing. She was quick. Quicker than most of the men who stood in those rooms.

Between exercises, she glanced back at him more than once. At first openly annoyed. Then with something else under it that he could not quite name.

He wondered if she knew her voice shifted when she was talking about duty. It dropped a fraction, smoothed out. Less laughter, more steel.

In the next room, after a short break, an older woman with sharp eyes and sharper pins lectured her on comportment, inheritance law, the history of queens who had ruled in all but name.

"Grace is not weakness," the woman said, pacing across the carpets. "Soft words can be as sharp as any sword if placed where they will cut."

The Princess sat straight backed, hands folded, listening. Simon watched the set of her shoulders, the way she swallowed hard when the woman mentioned heirs and alliances and the King's eventual death.

From time to time, her gaze flicked to him as if to check whether he was still there.

He was. He would be. That was the point.

He still did not have to like it.

By midday, he had counted three potential blind spots in the route between her classroom wing and the main hall, one guard who needed retraining, and at least two servants whose eyes lingered on her a little too long.

He filed their faces away without thinking.

They ate the mid day meal in a smaller chamber. No King, no lords. Just the Princess, Violet, two other ladies, and enough food to feed six hungry soldiers.

Simon took his place at the wall again.

Violet, who had been almost painfully careful not to look at him since he entered, finally gave in.

"Does he stand there all day now," she asked, leaning toward the Princess with her cup in hand, "or do you get to send him out to go and haunt someone else from time to time?"

"He has been glued to my shadow," the Princess said. "I suspect my father has hammered nails through his boots."

Violet pursed her lips. "Your Highness, if you are going to have the most interesting man in the palace stationed five paces behind you, you could at least have the decency to enjoy it."

"I am not enjoying anything," the Princess protested. Her gaze slid sideways and caught on Simon's folded arms, his broad chest, the way the skull framed his eyes. Her cheeks warmed. "Much."

Simon pretended not to hear. The room was not large. He heard every word. He told himself the heat under his own collar was irritation.

"You can talk to him," one of the other ladies said. "As long as he is always there, you might as well teach him embroidery."

"Can he sew," Violet asked thoughtfully.

"If you hand me a torn seam during an ambush," Simon said, before he could stop himself, "I will consider it."

Four heads whipped around. Violet clapped a hand over her mouth to smother a delighted laugh.

"You see," she whispered to the Princess. "He can talk. It is not just glowering."

The Princess looked at him, eyes narrowed as if he were some rare beast that had suddenly spoken.

"We will keep that in mind next time we ride into a trap," she said. "Thank you, Sir Simon."

"Princess," he replied.

The corner of her mouth curled despite the way she tried to flatten it. She looked down quickly at her plate.

Flustered, he thought. Annoyed and flustered both. He was not sure which amused him more.

Afternoon wore on. More lessons. More walking between rooms with her a half step ahead and him one pace behind.

He began to learn the rhythm of her days.

The way she always stopped for a heartbeat at the window that overlooked the training yard. The small way her shoulders relaxed when she saw movement on the far field.

The way she fidgeted with rings or cuffs when talk turned to marriage, or the way she stilled when someone mentioned the border.

The way she pushed past her own irritation when duty sat in front of her. How quickly she picked up a quill again after a brief complaint. How often she redirected a wandering conversation back to something that mattered.

He had watched her from a distance for years. This was different. This was seeing her every moment, in all the small in between spaces that court rarely bothered to notice.

He did not know what to do with that.

By late afternoon, the palace had changed temperature. The sun dipped low enough to throw long shadows across the inner courtyards, and servants began lighting lamps in wall sconces. The air tasted of meat roasting in the great kitchens.

The Princess dismissed her last tutor, who left with an armful of scrolls and a harried expression.

She turned and nearly walked into him.

He had shifted closer without quite thinking when the old man began to wave parchment near her face for emphasis. Reflex. He had dragged men out from under falling beams with less thought.

She stopped so abruptly that her gown brushed his mail.

He froze.

For one suspended second, they were close enough that he could see every fleck in her irises, feel the warmth of her breath faintly through the cloth over his face.

"Saints above, you are very large," she said quietly.

It was so sincerely exasperated that he almost laughed.

"It helps when someone is throwing statues," he said.

She sighed and stepped back, smoothing her hands over her skirts as if she could push the heat out of her cheeks.

"Dinner," she announced. "If my father tells me once more that I am to pretend everything is fine, I may overturn a tureen."

"I will stand between you and the tureen," Simon said.

"For its safety or his," she asked.

"Both."

The evening meal was smaller than the morning's assembly. A handful of high ranking nobles, the King, his daughter, one of his sisters and her quiet husband. The talk was the same as always, but quieter, the day's edges worn off.

Simon took his place behind the Princess again. Price and the others sat farther down the table, their presence a reminder that the talk of neighboring kingdoms was not only talk.

At one point, while her father and an older lord circled the subject of troop levies with words like stability and duty, the Princess tipped her head back just enough to look at Simon.

"How is the food down at that end," she murmured.

"Hot," he said. "Mostly."

"Better than ours then."

He had seen her plate. Everything cut into small, neat portions. Nothing over seasoned, nothing undercooked, nothing that might offend or distract.

"I will speak to the kitchen," he said. "They can send you something that is meant for men who worked today."

"I worked today," she said.

"Yes," he agreed.

She looked startled at the lack of sarcasm.

"Thank you," she said, softer.

The King glanced over. Simon straightened and went still. The moment passed.

Night fell heavy around the palace.

Lamps burned low in the corridors, wicks turned down to save oil. The air outside cooled, drawing a faint breeze through open arrow slits and high vents.

Simon escorted her back to her chambers in that softer light, the only sound their joined footsteps and the distant murmur of guards trading shifts.

She was quieter than she had been all day. Less complaint, more thought. She kept one hand loosely on her skirts, the other curled at her side. From time to time she brushed her fingers against the wall as if she needed the texture under her skin.

At her door, she stopped and turned.

His shadow fell over her, a taller outline against the lamplight.

"Do you stand here all night," she asked, "or do you vanish back to your mysterious lair under the palace once I am shut safely inside?"

Her tone was light, but there was a thread under it that he recognized. Worn edges. The day catching up with her.

"I will be outside your door," he said. "All night."

Her brows rose. "Truly?"

"Yes."

"Even if I snore?"

"If you snore loudly enough to bring the ceiling down, I will reconsider."

A small, unexpected laugh slipped out of her. It startled them both.

The sound sat warm in his chest.

She sobered a little, looking up at the skull that hid his face. Her gaze lingered on his eyes.

"Does this bother you," she asked quietly.

"What?"

"Standing outside a door while I sleep. Guarding nothing more exciting than a woman trying not to think about falling statues."

He thought about it.

"It is not what I am used to," he said. "But I have watched worse men than you while they slept. They did not deserve it as much."

A flush climbed her throat at that.

"I am not sure that is a compliment," she said.

"It is the only one I have," he replied.

She laughed again, breathless, then shook her head and reached for the latch.

"Good night, Sir Simon," she said.

"Good night, Princess."

She slipped inside. The door closed with a soft click.

For a moment, Simon stood there with his hand against the frame, feeling the hollow weight of wood and iron between them.

He could hear her on the other side. Faint movements. The murmur of her ladies. A low exchange of voices. Laughter, softer now, worn at the edges.

Then quiet.

He took up position beside the door. Back to the wall. Sword at his hip, heavy and familiar.

He listened to the palace breathing, to the distant shift of guards, to the small settling creaks of wood as the building cooled.

This is my post, he reminded himself.

Not the border. Not the open field. Not a hunt through enemy woods.

Here. One princess. One door. One man who wanted her dead enough to cut stone.

He settled his shoulders, rolled his neck once, and let his body slip into the easy, patient readiness that had kept him alive this long.

He would stand here as long as the King required.

And if the Princess thought he was more shadow than man by the end of it, he decided, that was probably for the best.

He just shows up at base in the late afternoon, jerks his chin toward the door, and says, "With me."

Simon looks up from the bench where he is half cleaning a sidearm he does not need to be cleaning this carefully.

"Now?"

"Now."

There is something in Price's face that makes further questions feel useless.

So Simon puts the weapon down, wipes his hands once on a rag, and follows.

He assumes it is work.

Another briefing. Another quiet little task force complication. Another meeting where Makarov's name gets pinned to a wall and everyone in the room pretends this is still about maps and not people.

It is easier to assume that.

Duty is simpler than hope.

Duty does not wait for you in a house full of your own mistakes.

The car ride is quiet at first.

Price drives. Simon stares out the passenger window and lets the city blur by.

It takes him three turns too long to realise the route is wrong for base, wrong for the safe house, wrong for anything official.

His stomach drops in that clean, immediate way that only happens when a truth arrives fully formed all at once.

"Price?"

Price keeps his eyes on the road.

"Aye?"

"You're not taking me to a briefing."

"No."

Simon's jaw tightens.

"Then where?"

Price finally glances at him once. Just once. It is enough.

"Home."

The word lands like a threat.

Simon looks back out the window immediately, but it is too late. He already knows the streets. Already knows the turn that leads to your neighbourhood, to the little row of houses with the chipped fence paint and Mrs Talbot's floral war zone and the front path he has been avoiding like it might explode under him.

"No," he says.

Price does not even blink. "Yes."

"I didn't ask you to do this."

"I know."

"Then turn the car around."

"No."

Simon's hand curls against his thigh hard enough to hurt.

For one ugly second, the instinct is there to open the door at the next light and keep walking until the city runs out beneath him. Anything but this. Anything but your face.

Price drives on.

"You can't force this."

"Watch me."

Simon laughs once, sharp and humourless.

"This is not your business, John."

Price's mouth goes flat.

"The second one of my mates starts using trauma as an excuse to make his wife carry the fallout alone, it becomes my business enough, Simon."

The words hit like a fist.

Simon stares at him.

"It isn't an excuse."

"No," Price says. "It's a reason. And reasons can still make you wrong."

Silence slams into the car.

Simon looks away.

The city keeps moving around them. People crossing streets, stopping for coffee, living in little ordinary pieces. The sort of life he has never quite trusted and still somehow wanted enough to marry into.

He rubs a hand over his mouth.

"She's safer if I'm not there."

Price snorts.

"Bollocks."

Simon's head turns sharply.

"Makarov used her to get to me."

"Makarov used her because she matters to you," Price corrects. "And because he's a cruel bastard. Not because your wedding ring is some sort of magical tracking device."

"He knows the house. The bakery. The routine."

"He knows them now whether you sleep on her couch or not."

That lands because it is true and Simon hates truths he cannot outmanoeuvre.

Price turns into your street.

Too late now.

Simon's pulse kicks once, hard.

When the house comes into view, something in his chest clenches so violently it nearly doubles him over.

Nothing dramatic has changed.

The same front steps.

The same window.

The same soft porch light.

A home he has not let himself enter properly in weeks, as if staying outside the shape of it meant he had not broken it.

Price parks at the curb and kills the engine.

Neither of them moves.

Then Simon says, "No."

This time it comes out quieter.

Price unbuckles his seat belt.

"That isn't going to work on me, Simon."

"She hates me."

Price turns in his seat and looks at him fully for the first time since the ride began.

"No," he says. "She's hurt. There's a difference. You'd know that if you'd stop admiring your own misery long enough to go inside."

Simon flinches.

Price softens by half an inch, which on him feels enormous.

"You're scared," he says. "I know. But at some point fear stops being caution and starts being cruelty."

The car is very still.

The street beyond the windshield looks ordinary enough to insult him. Somebody's curtains twitch two houses down. A bicycle leans against a fence. The world has the nerve to keep being normal.

Simon looks at your front door and cannot make his body move.

Price follows his gaze.

"You can sit here and play martyr if you like," he says. "Or you can get out of my car and talk to your wife."

Simon's jaw tightens.

"What if talking makes it worse?”

Price opens his own door.

"You've already done the worse version," he says. "Now try honesty."

Then he gets out and leaves Simon in the passenger seat with the engine ticking cool and his own reflection faint in the window.

For one pathetic second, Simon actually considers staying there until Price gives up.

Then he sees Riley in the front window.

The dog is upright on the sill bench, ears pricked, body suddenly alert.

Of course.

The dog sees him first.

Not heroic. Not cinematic.

Just Riley, going still in that watchful, working way, then hopping down out of sight.

Simon closes his eyes once.

Then opens the door and gets out.

His boots hit the pavement too loudly.

The front path feels longer than it ever did before.

Price stands by the gate with his hands in his coat pockets, not coming closer, not giving him a speech, just waiting him out with the kind of infuriating patience only a man in command of too many stubborn people can manage.

Simon reaches the door.

He stands there.

For one second. Two. Three.

Then the door opens before he can knock.

Riley is there first, tail low and controlled, then lifting the moment he recognises Simon properly. Good dog. Clever dog. Traitorous little bastard.

Simon crouches on instinct, one hand finding the heavy fur at Riley's neck. The dog presses into him, all straightforward loyalty and warm weight and no interest at all in human self sabotage.

"Yeah," Simon murmurs, voice rough. "I know."

He looks up.

You are standing in the entrance behind the dog.

And for one split second he genuinely does not know what to do.

Because there you are.

Not some imagined version built out of guilt and longing and the memory of your voice.

You.

Hair tied back badly. One of his old jumpers hanging off one shoulder. Bare feet. Tiredness written all under your eyes in ways that make something ugly twist through him.

You look at him like you have been waiting and dreading and hoping and grieving all at once.

He has imagined this a hundred times.

None of the imagined versions got the silence right.

Neither of you moves.

Then you step back.

Not warmly. Not coldly either.

Just enough to leave space in the doorway.

He comes in because apparently his body still knows how to obey you when you say nothing at all.

The house smells like tea and dog and laundry and you.

It nearly floors him.

Price, blessedly, does not come inside. The front door clicks shut behind Simon with soft finality and then it is just you and him and Riley in the hall with all the wreckage standing politely between you.

You fold your arms.

He looks at your face. At the way your mouth is set. At the way your shoulders are holding too much.

"Hi," he says, because there are no good words and apparently his brain has chosen the worst possible one.

Your laugh is tiny and sharp.

"Hi."

Riley, sensing enough tension to know his best work is now simply existing, goes and lies down by the stairs.

Traitor.

Simon rubs a hand over the back of his neck.

"You look..." He stops, because the truth is exhausted and thinner and beautiful and angry and like someone he does not deserve to put adjectives on right now.

"Awful," you finish for him.

He shakes his head immediately. "No."

You lift a brow.

He tries again.

"Tired."

That almost gets something out of you. Not softness. But maybe the shadow of real feeling under the hurt.

"Yeah," you say. "Funny how that happens."

The words are not shouted.

They still cut.

Simon swallows.

"Can we sit?”

You hold his gaze for one long second.

Then you turn and walk into the living room without answering.

He follows.

It feels obscene, how familiar the room is. The couch. The blanket over the arm. Percy in the window somehow more alive than ever out of pure spite. The side table where his mug used to live most evenings. The place he should have occupied and chose not to.

You do not sit on the couch.

You stand by the fireplace with one hand braced on the mantel like staying upright requires thought.

He stays closer to the doorway than the room deserves.

The distance between you feels ridiculous and exact.

"You sent me a dog," you say.

Not an opening line.

An accusation.

He takes it.

"I know."

"I just want to hear you admit that out loud first."

He nods once.

"I sent Riley."

You laugh again, still without humour.

"Good. Great. We're grounded in reality then."

He looks down at the floorboards for a second.

"I thought..."

You wait.

He does not finish.

You stare at him.

"No," you say quietly. "You do not get to trail off and expect me to do the work of understanding you for you anymore. What did you think?”

His head comes up.

You have never seen him look more cornered by gentleness than by anger.

"I thought you needed protection," he says finally. "And I..."

His jaw works.

"I couldn't be the reason you needed it."

There it is.

The thing itself. Naked and ugly and devastating in its simplicity.

You are very still for a second.

Then you nod once.

"Okay," you say. "Good. That's honest. We can work with honest."

He looks almost relieved.

You see it happen and something in you hardens.

"Then let me be honest too," you say.

He straightens without meaning to, like preparing for a hit.

"You do not get to rescue me and then abandon me for my own good."

The sentence lands exactly the way you wanted it to. Not loud. Not hysterical. Sharp enough to go clean through.

His face changes. Not all at once. Just enough that you know he heard it.

"That's not what I..."

"It is exactly what you did," you cut in. "You can dress it up however you want. Protection. Distance. Safety. You can send me a highly trained dog and sleep at Johnny's and tell yourself you're nobly suffering for me. But you left."

His mouth opens.

You do not let him get ahead of you.

"You left me in the aftermath of my own rescue," you say, and now your voice is shaking but only because the truth has weight, not because you are losing control. "I came back from that room and I was terrified and wrecked and trying to remember how to be in my own body again, and my husband decided what I needed most was his absence."

"Love."

"No."

That stops him.

The room is so quiet now you can hear Riley sigh in the hall.

You take one breath.

Then another.

Then keep going because you have been living with this under your skin for too long not to drag it all out now.

"I am not minimising your fear," you say. "I know what happened to you. I know enough now to understand why your brain did what it did. I understand why this feels like proof to you that loving me made me a target. I do understand." Your eyes burn. "What I am rejecting is your decision to make my life smaller without asking me if that is a risk I was willing to take."

He stares at you like you have put a hand directly into his chest and closed it around something vital.

"Makarov knows about you now," he says, voice gone rough. "He knows the house, the bakery, your routines. Anyone close to me is a target. You know that."

"Yes," you say. "I do."

"I cannot do that to you again."

The words break at the edges. There it is. Not coldness. Not really. Just fear run through a meat grinder until it came out shaped like distance.

You nod slowly.

"And if you leave," you say, quieter now, "that's still a choice. Don't dress it up like sacrifice."

He goes white under the skin.

You keep your eyes on him.

"That is what you don't get to do," you say. "You don't get to act like your absence is some neutral thing that just happened because bad men exist. You chose it. Maybe for reasons that make sense to you. Maybe for reasons rooted in pain and trauma and history that I will never fully carry the way you do. But you chose it."

The silence after that is unbearable.

Simon looks down. Then away. Then back to you.

He looks hit.

Good.

He should.

"I thought if I stayed back," he says slowly, as if every word is being dragged over broken glass, "if I made enough distance, then maybe the next time someone looked at my life they'd see less to use."

Your laugh is bitter now, because how could it be anything else.

"Less to use," you repeat. "I'm not a weak point in your file, Simon. I'm your wife."

His eyes shut for one second.

When they open again, they are bright and wrecked and still maddeningly convinced of their own logic.

"And that is exactly why I had to think like that."

"No," you say. "That is exactly why you should have talked to me."

He drags a hand over his face.

"What would you have said?”

The question is not dismissive. It is almost desperate. Like maybe some part of him really still thinks there was a version of this where you would have agreed to his vanishing and he could have called it mutual.

You do not look away.

"I would have said that you don't get to decide alone what I'm willing to risk."

That one lands deepest of all.

You see it happen.

The whole line of his body tightens, then stills.

Because there it is. The part he cannot out argue. The place where his logic stops being protection and becomes control, even if he never meant it to.

You take one step closer.

Not many. Just enough that he has to feel the weight of your words without the comfort of distance.

"I married you with my eyes open," you say. "Not perfectly open. No one can be perfectly ready for this. But open enough. I knew your job. I knew the danger. I knew loving you meant the world might someday notice me in ways I hated. That was my choice too."

He looks stricken.

"You don't get to come in after the fact and decide on your own that I'd be better off with less marriage," you say. "Less husband. Less touch. Less home. You don't get to make that call because you're scared."

His throat works.

You are crying now. Quietly. Furiously. You let the tears stay where they are.

"You don't get to rescue me and then leave me alone in the wreckage," you say again, softer this time. "That is not protection. That is just another way of leaving."

For a second, you think he might walk out.

Not because he does not care.

Because he cares so much and you have just named the exact shape of the thing he was trying not to see. For men like Simon, sometimes the first response to unbearable truth is retreat.

He does not.

He just stands there looking at you like he has been skinned.

"I was trying to keep you alive," he says finally.

You nod once, tears still on your face.

"I know."

"I thought if I stayed out of the bed, out of the house, out of your routines, then maybe..." He laughs once, broken and ashamed. "Maybe I could cut the line myself before someone else used it to hang you."

Your eyes close for a second because there it is. The child in the house of terror. The soldier with the murdered family. The man who thinks love means vulnerability means blood.

You know it.

You see it.

You still cannot let him build a marriage around it.

When you open your eyes again, he is still there. Still raw. Still not understanding the answer.

"You don't get to do that without me," you say. "You don't get to decide to amputate parts of our life and call that love."

He flinches.

"I know that now," he says.

You search his face.

He means it.

And he does not mean enough by it yet.

That is the horror.

He hears you. You can see him hearing you. But something in him still has one hand on the door of that same old logic. That same terrible belief that maybe if he is careful enough, distant enough, sacrificial enough, he can outsmart loss.

It is not gone.

Not yet.

You feel the exhaustion hit then. Not physical exactly. Soul deep.

You step back.

He watches it happen with a kind of panic that stays locked behind his teeth.

"I don't know what to do with you right now," you admit.

His face changes at that. A little like grief. A little like acceptance.

"Fair."

You wipe your cheeks with the heel of your hand.

"I'm too tired to keep dragging you to the obvious," you say. "And you're too busy trying to save me from your love to see what your absence has actually done."

His mouth parts.

Nothing comes out.

You believe, in that second, that if he knew how to say the right thing he would. That is not the problem anymore.

The problem is bigger. Older. Buried under too many bodies and too much dirt and all the terrible lessons he learned before he ever met you.

The room goes quiet.

Not resolved quiet.

Just the kind that comes after something cracks but before anyone knows what can be built from the pieces.

Riley appears in the doorway and looks between the two of you, restless but wise enough not to intervene in human stupidity.

Simon glances at the stairs.

Then back at you.

"I can stay on the couch," he says carefully.

It should not hurt.

It does.

Because even now, even after all of that, his first instinct is still a compromise built out of distance. Same house. Different room. Close enough to protect. Far enough not to contaminate.

You laugh without humour.

"Of course you can."

His eyes close briefly.

"I didn't mean..."

"I know what you meant," you say.

That is the problem. You know what he means too well now.

You are suddenly too tired to stand there and be looked at by the man you love while he fails to come all the way back to you.

"I'm going upstairs," you say.

He nods once.

Not because he wants you to. Because he does not know how to ask you not to without making another promise he is not ready to keep.

You move past him.

For one second, when you draw level, it feels like maybe he will reach for you.

He does not.

That hurts worst.

You go up the stairs without looking back.

In the bedroom, the bed waits exactly as it has every night he chose not to lie in it.

You sit on the edge of it in the dark and listen.

Downstairs, floorboards creak once.

Then the soft, awful sound of the couch taking his weight.

Same house.

Separate rooms.

Below you, your husband keeps watch like a man punishing himself in the name of love.

Above him, you lie in the wedding bed alone and stare at the ceiling and know, with bone deep certainty, that this is not the end of the story.

Just the end of what pretending could save.

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You are on the couch in leggings and a hoodie, Riley sprawled across your feet like a sentient weighted blanket, a mug of tea gone cold on the side table. The television is on mute. Some daytime thing with too much smiling and bright kitchen sets. You have not been watching it.

You have not been watching much of anything.

You are tired in that deep, ugly way that has nothing to do with sleep anymore. Riley helps. The dog helps more than you want to admit. He follows you from room to room, settles himself against the bathroom door when you shower, lifts his head at every sound outside like he has appointed himself guardian of your broken little world.

But he is still a dog.

Not your husband.

Not the man who should be here.

Price knocks once and lets himself in after you call out, because at this point half the 141 has some variation of a key or alarm code and you are too drained to care.

He takes one look at you and sighs through his nose.

That is worse than pity somehow.

"Afternoon," he says.

You push yourself upright.

"Hi."

He sets the bags on the kitchen counter and starts unpacking with the purposeful energy of a man who cannot fix the real problem so he is going to at least make sure you have soup and decent bread.

Riley gets up, checks him, then settles again.

"Dog's put on a god complex," Price says.

You almost smile. "He fits in, then."

That gets the smallest twitch at the corner of his mouth, but it vanishes quickly.

He glances over his shoulder at you.

"You eaten?"

You shrug, "Not really."

Price closes the fridge door a little harder than necessary.

"That's not good enough."

"I know."

He turns fully then, bracing one hand on the counter.

The kitchen goes quiet around the two of you. The kind of quiet that feels chosen, not accidental.

"I'm getting tired of seeing you like this, Riley," he says.

The bluntness almost shocks a laugh out of you.

"Well, imagine living it, John."

His face softens a fraction.

"Aye," he says. "Fair."

You look down at Riley's ears and stroke them once, just for something to do with your hands.

"He sent me a fucking dog," you say, because apparently that is still the sentence your body reaches for when the pain gets too big. "A very lovely dog. A very useful dog. But still a dog."

Price exhales slowly.

"I know."

You let out a breath that catches halfway into something sharp.

"I don't know what else I'm supposed to do. I've tried giving him space. I've tried not pushing. I've tried understanding that he's scared and fucked up and trying to make it make sense in his own head. But I'm his wife." Your voice cracks there. "I came back. I came back and he's still gone."

Price watches you very carefully.

There is no judgment in it. Just that heavy, assessing kind of concern he wears when things have gone bad in ways he cannot order his men out of.

"He's doing what he thinks is right," Price says.

You laugh once, exhausted and bitter. "That doesn't make it right."

"No," he says quietly. "It doesn't."

That makes your throat tighten.

Because if Price had defended him outright, if he had tried to smooth this into something noble and tragic and masculine, you might have snapped. Instead he gives you the truth clean.

Simon thinks he is protecting you.

It is still hurting you.

Both things are true.

Price comes around the island and sits in the chair opposite the couch, elbows on his knees, hands clasped.

"I understand why his head's gone where it has," he says. "I don't excuse it. But I understand it."

You look at him.

He hesitates for just a second. That alone tells you this matters.

"You know the outline," he says. "Not the weight of it."

Your whole body stills.

You have always known there were depths Simon did not hand out freely. Old grief. Old violence. Trauma so baked into him it changed the shape of the man before you ever got him in your kitchen stealing lemon bars.

You knew that.

You did not know what exactly lived down there.

Price looks like a man deciding whether to break a promise for the greater good.

Then he does.

"He had a brutal childhood," Price says, voice low and even. "Abusive father. Sadistic bastard. Tormented him with animals. Made him look at things no child should ever have to see, let alone laugh at. Dead bodies, overdoses, that kind of filth. Broke the family down piece by piece and called it normal."

You stare at him.

The room feels oddly far away.

Price keeps going, because if he stops now it will only make it worse.

"Simon was raised in a house where fear was a game everyone else seemed to understand and he didn't. The butcher apprenticeship came later. Part refuge, part survival. That's where some of the skull imagery tied itself in. Something about staring down what frightened him and wearing it back."

Your chest hurts.

Not in the same way as before. Not cleaner either. Just differently.

"He joined the SAS because he wanted out," Price says. "Wanted purpose. Wanted a way to turn all that violence into something useful. Then came Mexico."

You have heard the name once or twice before, never with details.

Price rubs a hand over his mouth.

"His commanding officer sold them out. Simon was captured by a cartel. Tortured for months. Buried alive in a coffin." He says it flat, as if softening the words would insult the truth of them. "He got himself out. Used the jawbone of the man who betrayed him to do it."

You feel a horrible coldness move under your skin.

Price does not look away.

"When he made it back to England, he thought he could protect what was left of his family. He couldn't. His old brainwashed colleagues found them first. His mother. His brother. His nephew. His sister in law." He pauses. "They were murdered because of what touched him and because he thought he could outrun it."

You close your eyes.

Oh.

Oh.

It does not excuse anything.

It explains too much.

Price's voice stays steady.

"That's where Ghost really took hold. Not the mask. Not the name. The man. The part of him that decided love makes you targetable. Makes everyone around you vulnerable. The part that believes if he lets himself have something warm, eventually somebody cruel will use it to make him kneel."

Silence fills the kitchen.

Riley lifts his head once, sensing the shift in you, then sets it back down.

You open your eyes slowly.

"And then 141," you say, because your voice needs something to hold onto.

Price nods.

"His skill set and his reputation brought him to us. By the time I got him, the damage was already there. He was useful. Lethal. Loyal as they come. But some parts of him had made up their mind long before I met him." His mouth flattens. "Then he met you."

That lands harder than anything else.

You laugh once, watery and spent. "Lucky him."

Price's eyes soften.

"Aye," he says. "Actually."

You look away, blinking too fast.

It makes more sense now. The couch. The base. The dog. The impossible, cruel logic of stepping back from you like distance might build a wall Makarov cannot get through.

A child in a house where fear was control.

A man buried alive by betrayal.

A soldier who came home to dead family because the wrong people knew where to hit him.

And now you.

Taken from your bakery.

Used.

Returned to him.

The line is hideously clear.

You see it.

You still do not understand how he can let that line matter more than his vows.

You still do not understand how he can look at his wife, alive and wrecked and waiting, and decide she needs his absence more than his body in the room.

Your hands curl tighter in Riley's fur.

"He made a commitment," you say quietly.

Price says nothing.

You lift your head and look at him fully.

"I know why his head is broken around this," you say. "I know why his fear sounds convincing to him. I even know why he thinks I'm safer if he lives three feet outside our marriage like some tragic idiot." Your throat burns. "But he made a commitment. He married me. He does not get to decide alone that loving me from a distance is enough."

Price watches your face for a long moment.

You can almost see the exact second something settles in him.

Not new information.

A decision.

He nods once.

"You're right."

That almost undoes you more than the backstory did.

Because there it is. Clean. Not Simon's pain. Not your grief. Just the truth laid flat between you.

You wipe furiously at your face with the heel of your hand.

"He needs to come home," you whisper. "He needs to be with his wife. He doesn't get to turn me into some sacred thing he can only protect from the porch."

Price leans back in the chair, one hand dragging down his beard, thinking in that heavy captain way.

Then he stands.

You blink up at him.

"What?"

He reaches out and squeezes your shoulder once. Solid. Certain.

"I'll get him here."

The words land so simply they take a second to register.

Your heart kicks hard.

"How?"

Price's mouth does a grim little almost smile.

"I've been keeping my nose out because there's a difference between leading a man in the field and meddling in his marriage." He glances toward the window, toward whatever distant point currently holds Simon. "I think we've crossed that line."

Despite everything, a tiny, incredulous laugh escapes you.

"You're going to trick him."

"If I have to."

That is so profoundly Price that for the first time in days, something close to real warmth moves through your chest.

He pats your shoulder again, once.

"Make yourself some proper food, love," he says. "And brush your hair. If I'm dragging one of my boys home to his wife, I'd like him reminded what he's being stupid over."

You stare at him.

Then you laugh. It breaks a little in the middle, but it is still a laugh.

Price nods, satisfied with that small victory, and heads for the door.

At the threshold, he pauses.

Without turning, he says, "He loves you enough to ruin himself over it. Now we just need to make him understand that's not the same thing as loving you well."

Then he leaves.

The house goes quiet again.

Not empty quiet this time.

Charged quiet.

Riley lifts his head and looks at you like he knows something is moving in the air.

You look back toward the front door long after Price is gone, your pulse beginning to race for the first time in weeks with something that is not only dread.

Not hope exactly.

You do not trust hope yet.

But maybe the shape of something coming.

Maybe the first crack in the wall your husband built with his own hands.

You sit there a little longer with Riley pressed warm against your leg and Price's promise still ringing in your ears.

I'll get him here.

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By day they belonged to the court, all bright chatter and rustling silk, ladies drifting along gravel paths with perfumed handkerchiefs pressed to their noses, gentlemen pretending not to count how many times they were noticed. At night, with the lanterns lit and the fountains turned down to a murmur, they felt like they belonged to you again.

Violet had begged off tonight, pleading a headache and a new dress that needed last minute pinning. You had smiled and let her go. Some things even looming war could not compete with.

So you walked alone.

The air was warm enough that you had left your heavier cloak behind. Your lighter one floated open behind you as you followed the curve of the central path, shoes whispering over crushed shell. The roses had gone wild this year, climbing higher along their trellises than any gardener liked, white and red and a deep bruised purple that only showed its true color when the lanterns caught it.

Up ahead, the marble nymph that poured water into the main basin gleamed in the lamplight. Vines had crept up her pedestal, twining around delicate stone ankles. Someone should cut those back, you thought. You made a mental note to remind the groundskeeper.

For now it was only you, the faint hiss of water, and the quiet rustle of leaves.

You tipped your head back to look at the sky. It had been trying to decide all day whether to clear or storm. Now a strip of indigo showed between drifting clouds, a few early stars daring to brighten.

The palace murmured beyond the hedges, a constant distant hum. Somewhere a late messenger's horse clattered on stone. Somewhere a watchman coughed.

You let your shoulders loosen. The talk of neighboring lords and restless banners could not quite reach you here. Not when the air was heavy with roses and damp earth and the flat stone of the fountain cool under your fingers.

You climbed the two low steps to the edge of the basin, skirts gathered in one hand, to look at the fish drifting lazy in the dark water.

The marble nymph loomed above you. You had never thought to be wary of her.

The sound, when it came, made no sense at first. A faint crack, like a branch giving way under too much snow. The hairs on your arms lifted.

You looked up.

One of the carved vines that had wriggled their way into the pedestal's old joints had split something vital. The thick base of the statue was already leaning, the weight of it drawn forward. The whole figure tilted with slow, sickening grace, shadow falling.

It was coming down. Onto you.

You did not move fast enough.

You had time for one shocked breath, the stupid thought that marble did not move like that, and then something slammed into your side. Hard.

An arm locked around your waist. Your feet left the stone. The world snapped sideways.

You hit the gravel with a grunt, the impact knocking the air out of your lungs. A heavier weight hit next, near you but not on you, the shock of it trembling through the ground.

Stone shattered.

The statue crashed down where you had been standing, head first into the basin's edge. The fountain screamed under the impact, marble splintering, water surging up and then pouring out in a wild, broken spill. Shards of white and gray flew. One whistled past your ear close enough to sting. Another rang off metal.

Someone swore, low and vicious, directly beside your ear.

The arm around your waist tightened, dragging you in against a body that was all hard planes and unforgiving lines. You felt the jolt run through him as another chunk of stone hit somewhere along his shoulder.

"Stay down," Simon growled.

You hadn't even seen him. He had not been by the path, not near the gate. Yet here he was, suddenly between you and the ruin, between you and every angle of danger, the heavy bulk of him sheltering you as water and dust and shards of marble rained down.

Your heart battered at your ribs. Your fingers had found his forearm without you realizing it and were digging in, knuckles white against dark leather and the hint of mail.

When the worst of the noise faded, you realized you were half sprawled across him. One of his knees dug into the gravel for balance, the other leg braced, boots planted. His grip on your waist was rough and absolute, anchoring you as much as shielding you.

The skull loomed above you when you tipped your head back, lanternlight turning the bone into something that should have been monstrous. Dirt and chalk dust smeared the white now. A thin streak of red cut along one cheek where a flying fragment had found him. The cloth clung to the line of his jaw.

His eyes were the only living thing in all that bone. Dark brown, hot and sharp and furious.

"Are you hurt?" he demanded.

"I..." You tried to sit up. His arm held you for a heartbeat longer before he let go, fingers trailing heat even through the fabric of your dress.

You pushed yourself onto your elbows and then to your knees. Your palms were scraped, tiny stinging lines already forming where gravel had bitten skin. Your hip throbbed with a bruise from where he had hit you sideways.

You were alive.

You looked at the place you had been standing.

The statue lay in broken pieces, the nymph's serene face split clean through. The basin's edge had crumbled under the impact, water pouring down into a widening pool that already soaked the hem of your dress. A chunk the size of your torso had crushed the flagstones where your feet had been.

If he had been a breath slower.

Your stomach rolled.

"That," Simon said, voice flat, "was no accident."

You glanced at him. "The stone is old, the vines..."

He shook his head once. Little clouds of dust drifted off his hood and shoulders.

"The base was cut," he said. He jerked his chin toward the shattered plinth. "The crack pattern is wrong for age. Someone weakened it, likely days ago, then waited for the right moment to loosen the rest. Either when someone stepped there or with a trigger we have not seen yet."

Now that he said it, you saw it. The edges too clean in some places, too precise. Like a butcher's work, not time's.

A chill that had nothing to do with water went up your spine.

"You are sure," you said.

"Yes."

You did not ask how. Simon Riley never sounded more certain than when he was talking about how something might kill you.

Voices were shouting now, distant across the garden. Your scream and the crash had finally traveled through rose and stone.

You became conscious, all at once, of how close you still were to him. Of the heat of his body where it had pressed along your side. Of the imprint of his fingers on your waist.

You pushed to your feet. He rose in one smooth motion, towering over you again, broad and solid. His hood had slipped askew, exposing a sliver of skin at his throat, damp with sweat where the edge of the cloth rubbed.

Blood slicked the curve of his pauldron, a thin line still sliding down from a shallow cut at his temple. He had turned his head at the last moment, you realized, taking the stone on himself instead of letting it glance off you.

"You are bleeding," you said, because the alternative was to start shaking and you did not trust yourself not to.

He glanced at the red, then back at you.

"So are you," he said, nodding at your scraped hands.

"These are merely scratches."

"So is this."

He said it like it was nothing, like he had not nearly been crushed under a goddess of carved marble.

Footsteps pounded closer. Lanterns bobbed as guards ran, half armored, weapons not fully buckled on. The captain of the watch, pale and sweating, skidded to a stop at the edge of the chaos.

"Your Highness," he gasped. "By all the saints, are you—"

"She is alive," Simon said. "Barely."

The captain's eyes darted from the smashed statue to the two of you. "The pedestal, it must have been..."

"Sabotaged," Simon cut in. He did not raise his voice, but the single word snapped through the air like a thrown blade. "Do not insult both of us by pretending otherwise."

The captain swallowed. "I will send men to search the grounds at once."

"And the walls," Simon added. "If I wanted an easy assassination, I would put a crossbow in the branches above that path." He pointed to the overhanging trees. "Loose the bolt when she stepped up to the basin, then pull the weakened statue to bury the proof in rubble."

A sick, hot twist turned your stomach again. "Do you think there is a bolt up there?"

"Yes," he said. "Or there was."

He strode to the nearest tree, movements gone from controlled to predator quick. His hand caught a low branch. In a heartbeat he had hauled himself up, boots digging into bark, cloak snagging. He vanished into leaves and shadow.

You heard the crackle of branches, the faint scrape of something being dragged free, then a sharp curse.

He dropped back down a moment later and tossed something long and ugly onto the broken stones between you.

The crossbow bolt gleamed where the lanterns caught it. The head was barbed and blackened, made to punch through mail, not hunt deer. The shaft was stained with resin where it had been tacked into place.

Whoever had set this up had known what they were doing.

The captain stared, mouth open.

"Send word to the King," Simon said. "Now."

The captain bolted for the gate leading back toward the palace.

For a few moments, the only sounds were the rush of broken water and the drip of it from your skirts. Your fingers started to tremble.

Simon stepped closer, not so near as before, but within reach if you swayed. The skull watched you.

"You are sure you are not hurt?" he asked again. There was something under the evenness now, something tight.

You held up your hands. "Scraped. Bruised. My pride is dented."

"Good."

He sounded like he meant it.

You studied him, dirt and blood and all. The hood made it hard to read him, but his shoulders were set too tight, his fingers flexing once at his side as if he had to remind himself not to reach for you again.

"You were not scheduled to guard me tonight," you said. It came out more like a question than you intended.

"No," he agreed.

"Then why were you in the garden?"

His eyes met yours. The dark behind the paint gave nothing away, but you had watched those eyes for years. You could read at least a few of the small shifts.

"Because you have developed a habit of sneaking out," he said. "And you are rarely as clever about it as you think."

Heat flared in your cheeks. "You have been following me."

"Yes."

There was no apology in it.

Before you could find a reply that was not incredibly unwise, more footsteps approached. These ones measured, heavy, accompanied by the whisper of finer cloth.

Your father arrived with a knot of advisors and guards, face white with fury and fear.

His gaze took in the smashed statue, the flooding fountain, the crossbow bolt on the ground, the smear of blood on Simon's shoulder, you standing in wet skirts and dust.

"What happened?" he snapped.

Simon stepped forward, between you and the worst of the wreckage, and bowed his head just enough.

"An attempt on the Princess's life, Your Majesty," he said. "The statue was deliberately weakened. A bolt was set above the path. The plan appears to have been to loose it when she stepped up, then mask the mechanism under a collapse."

The throne room felt too small for the amount of noise inside it.

Voices climbed over each other, thick with outrage and fear. Advisors crowded below the dais, robes brushing, rings flashing, all of them gesturing at once as if they could shout the danger away.

"She must be sent to the summer palace," the chancellor insisted. "Or the old fortress in the north. Somewhere isolated, somewhere defensible."

"Walls will not stop treachery if it is inside the gates," another lord snapped back. "Whoever planned this had help here. You cannot tell me a gardener cut stone that clean on his own."

"A double guard on her chambers at all times. No more walks in the gardens. No visits to the market. No feasts. If we limit her movements, we limit the chances they have to strike."

"Or we advertise our fear," someone else muttered.

The King sat in his carved chair and listened, his fingers steepled, his face unreadable. The shattered marble had been cleared from the gardens, the fountain capped, but the image of his daughter under the falling statue hung in the air like a ghost.

At the foot of the dais, Simon stood as he had stood a hundred times before, boots planted, shoulders square. The skull painted on his hood stared where his face would have been. Dirt had been scrubbed from the white now. The thin cut at his temple was hidden where the cloth met his skin.

He said nothing.

He had told his part. Described the weakened pedestal, the hidden bolt, the way the timing had been planned. There was nothing else to add.

"Enough," the King said at last.

The word cut through the noise cleanly. The arguments sputtered out.

He rose.

"Shuttering her away will not fix this," he said. "My enemies will not stop wanting my blood just because my daughter is hidden in a tower like a stolen relic. They will simply look for other throats to cut. Mine. Yours."

A few of the advisors shifted uneasily.

One of them cleared his throat. "Your Majesty, with respect, the Princess is the easiest way to hurt you. We must at least limit her freedom until we know who did this."

The King's mouth thinned. "We will tighten her schedule. She will not leave the palace walls without my approval. No more unguarded walks. No unsupervised outings. She is not a child, and I will not treat her as one, but I am not a fool."

"Then who will guard her, Sire?" the chancellor asked. "A permanent watch rotation, perhaps. Six men at a time, three shifts a day."

The King's gaze slid to Simon.

You could have heard a pin drop when he spoke next.

"She will have one guard," he said. "Sir Simon Riley will not leave her side."

The words landed like a thrown stone in a still pond. The ripples were immediate.

There was a sharp intake of breath from someone in the back. A murmur ran through the room.

"Your Majesty," the marshal began carefully, "forgive me, but Sir Simon is needed in the field. He is already stretched thin with the border patrols and the One-Four-One. To remove him from those duties just to play nursemaid to the Princess is an unfortunate use of his talents."

Simon kept his eyes forward. His jaw clenched once under the hood.

The King did not look away.

"Sir Simon is the only reason my daughter is not lying under a broken statue tonight," he said, voice calm. "The enemy has proven they will reach for her if they can. They have also proven they understand that if she dies, it is as good as cutting my throat. I will answer that by placing my sharpest blade exactly where they aimed last."

He descended two steps of the dais, which was as close as he ever came to meeting anyone at eye level in that room.

"Sir Simon."

Simon bowed his head a fraction. "Your Majesty."

"You do not leave her," the King said. "You walk where she walks. You sleep outside her door if you must. You put yourself between her and anything that moves too quickly in her direction. If she is eating, you are in the room. If she is walking, you are at her shoulder. If she is with friends, you are at the wall. Discreetly, if possible. Very much not, if necessary."

Simon felt something heavy settle into his ribs. Watching the borders meant movement, open sky, distance between himself and the politics of the court. This would be different. This would be hallway after hallway, the constant hum of nobles, the chatter of ladies in waiting, a bright, curious princess who had never learned to stay where she was told.

"Your Majesty," he said, picking his words carefully, "the One-Four-One are already tasked with investigating which lords are stirring. Pulling me from that effort will slow it. If I am tied to your daughter's skirts, I cannot be on the roads, or in the hills, or listening where I need to listen."

"You think I do not know that," the King said quietly.

Their eyes met. Behind the bone, Simon's gaze stayed steady.

"This is not a request, Sir Simon," the King added.

No one in the hall spoke.

"Yes, Sire," Simon said.

The King turned his head. "You will all adjust your plans accordingly. The Princess is bait and target both now, whether we like it or not. My hound stays at her side. Dismissed."

The advisors began to file out, some still muttering, some already recalculating how this new order shifted the board. A few glanced at Simon as they passed, measuring him in a new light.

Babysitting a spoiled princess, he thought grimly, and caught the flicker of guilt that came with it.

Spoiled or not, she had nearly died on a bit of garden stroll.

"Sir Simon," the King said again. "Stay."

He stayed.

The throne room emptied. The heavy doors shut on the last trailing robe. The sound of the lock sliding home echoed off stone.

The King came all the way down from the dais now, each step deliberate. Up close, Simon could see the hair at his temples had gone more silver than last year.

They were almost of a height this way, although the King had to tilt his head back a little to look directly into the dark where Simon's eyes were.

"You are unhappy," the King said. It was not really a question.

"I will do as ordered," Simon replied.

"That is not what I asked."

Simon held his tongue for a moment, then decided there was no point. The man who had seen him at twelve, barefoot and blood spattered, holding a knife that shook in his hand, was not likely to be fooled by silence.

"I am of more use in the field," he said. "With Captain Price and the others, watching the borders, finding which lords are rattling their swords. Standing in doorways and glowering at ladies is not what you forged me for."

The King's brows drew together, not in anger but in something like curiosity.

"You think guarding my only child is not work worthy of your skill," he said.

"I think," Simon said, "that you did not take me in and teach me to kill so I could trail after a princess every time she wants to breathe fresh air."

For a moment he thought he had gone too far.

Then the King laughed. It was a short, tired sound with no real mirth in it.

"Twelve," he said. "You were twelve when you stood in front of me with your father's blood on your hands. Do you remember what I said to you?"

Simon remembered every word.

"You offered me the sword or the noose," he said.

The King's gaze sharpened. "And you chose?”

"I chose the sword."

"Yes." The King circled him once, slowly, like he was inspecting a piece of old, familiar armor. "I took you in when you had nothing. No name that anyone wanted to speak. No family that would claim you. No future that did not end on a rope. I fed you. Clothed you. Put a blade in your hand and showed you where to swing it so that other men's monsters would die instead of you."

He stopped again in front of Simon.

"Your life belongs to me, Simon," he said, softly. "You know this. You have known it every day since you picked up my knife instead of the hangman's collar. When I tell you to ride to the border, you ride. When I tell you to hunt warlords in the hills, you hunt. When I tell you to shadow a spoiled girl who does not yet understand how many people would trade her life for my crown, you do that too."

The bluntness of it sat like iron in Simon's gut. None of it was a surprise. It still felt like something being nailed in place.

He inclined his head. "Yes, Sire."

"You think this is a waste of your talent," the King went on. "It is not. Someone just tried to kill the most efficient way to hurt me. They will try again. Perhaps not with statues and bolts next time. Perhaps with a poisoned cup, or a knife in a crowded hall, or a friendly face at a feast. I want the man who sees the shape of a trap faster than anyone else between her and that."

Simon thought of her standing under the falling stone, eyes wide, skirts catching water. Thought of her hands shaking after, of the way she had looked up at him as if he was the only solid thing left in the world.

He thought of her slipping along corridors at night in thin slippers and a cloak far too light for her station, convinced she was safe because the stars were pretty.

Spoiled, yes. Rotten, no. Sheltered. Too bright for her own good. But not stupid. Not heartless. She had been worried about his cut before she had counted her own bruises.

"This will not be easy," he said quietly.

"Good," the King said. "You do not work well when things are easy."

He put a hand on Simon's shoulder for a moment, just enough pressure to feel the weight of it.

"The sword or the noose," he repeated. "You chose the sword. This is where I need it now. Not at the border. Not in some hill fort. Here, at her back. You will still ride with Price when I send you, you will still chase snakes in other courts, but until we have a head on a spike for this, she is your first duty."

Simon let the words settle. Every instinct in him itched for the road, for the clarity of an enemy with a visible banner. Court was messier. Threats here wore perfume and smiled.

He forced that aside.

"Understood," he said.

The King withdrew his hand.

"Good," he echoed. "Go. She will protest. Let her. Then remind her that I am still King and that you answer to me, not to her tantrums."

A flicker of something that might have been amusement ghosted through Simon's chest at the thought of the Princess throwing a tantrum on his breastplate.

"I will remind her," he said.

He turned to leave.

"Simon," the King said as he reached the doors.

He looked back.

"You are the deadliest man in this court," the King said, tone almost conversational. "It is past time she understood that your presence is a privilege, not a leash."

Simon did not trust himself to answer that. He bowed once, then walked out into the corridor, where the air felt cooler.

Babysitting, he told himself, mouth tight behind the bone and teeth of the mask, and tried to pretend that his pulse had not changed at the thought of her turning, seeing him there, and realizing he was not just in her path by accident anymore.