The difference was that Percy knew exactly what waited on the other side. And he was going anyway.
“She needs someone,” Percy said. His voice was quiet. “And right now, Thiago is the only one at her door. That can’t stand.”
“You can’t protect her alone against the entire Order.”
“I don’t need to protect her against the entire Order. I just need to be there. That’s the part we got wrong, Sol.” He held my gaze. “We thought protecting her meant standing between her and the threat. But the real danger was leaving her with no one to stand beside.”
For two hundred years, Percival had followed. Lucian led, I strategized, and Percival fell in step behind us because that was the shape we’d given his life. We’d trained him, guided him, sheltered him.
He wasn’t following now.
“You and Lucian.” Percy paused, choosing words with a care I wasn’t used to hearing from him. “I respect what you decided. In that study, with the council pushing for her elimination and the kingdom on the line. I understand why you thought the rejection was the only move.”
I let him finish.
“But I don’t agree. I didn’t agree then. I don’t agree now. And sitting in Veyndral just feeling her pain isn’t a thing I can do, regardless of what the crown or you think is strategically sound.”
He’s a man who’d weighed his loyalty to us against his loyalty to her and found them both pulling in the same direction.
I crossed the room and stood in front of him. The bruise I’d put on his jaw was a stain against his skin, and the sight of it sat in my chest beside two decades of silence and every decision I’d made for people who hadn’t asked me to.
My hand found his shoulder. The same gesture my father had given me before leaving.
“Don’t get caught,” I said.
Percival’s eyes went bright. He blinked once, hard, and then the grin cracked across his face. Dimples and all.
“Since when do I get caught?”
“Since always, Percival. You get caught constantly. It’s your most consistent talent.”
He put his hand over mine on his shoulder and squeezed once. Then he picked up the expedition pack, slung it over his shoulder, and walked toward the door.
I followed him to the entrance of the estate. The Glowwood stretched beyond the path, bioluminescence painting the trees in pale blue.
Percival stepped onto the path. Turned back once.
“I’ll take care of her, Sol.”
“I know.”
He walked. I watched his back until the Glowwood swallowed him, the blue light closing around his shoulders the way it had closed around my father’s twenty-four years ago.
For two centuries, Percival had been the one who followed. The one Lucian and I protected without asking whether he wanted protecting. The one who grinned through every reprimand and showed up the next morning ready to do it all over again.
And now he’d just done what neither Lucian nor I had managed with all our centuries of strategy and restraint and careful calculation.
He’d simply decided. And gone.
Percival has become a better man than either of us.
34
— • —
Mira
I didn’t sleep that first night.
