And Peter… Peter was gone too. Fergal’s memories of his older brother were strange, fractured things. A looming presence. A voice that was too loud. The feeling of being watched with something that wasn’t quite affection. And then, one morning, the news that Peter had been drinking—as he often did—and had fallen and hit his head on the edge of his bedside table, killing himself.
Fergal remembered the funeral. He remembered his father’s stony face. He remembered Gregor’s hand on his shoulder, steady and warm, the one solid thing in a world that kept shifting beneath his feet.
He’d always been there. Through all of it. Every loss, every lonely night, every frozen morning in this godforsaken compound. Gregor had been the one constant in his life, and he couldn’t keep pretending that was all Gregor was to him.
He opened his eyes, staring at the chair where Gregor had sat, at the indent he’d left in the leather cushion, at the tea he’d abandoned.
He stilled.
Gregor had left his tea. In all the years Fergal had known him, Gregor had never once left a room without his tea.
A slow smile spread across Fergal’s face.
Same time tomorrow, Your Highness.
Oh, Fergal would be there. But he wasn’t going to wait until Thursday to see Gregor again. The formal lessons were Gregor’s territory—structured, controlled, safe behind the barrier of textbooks and academic propriety. If Fergal wanted to see the man behind the tutor, he needed to find him in a place where the armor was already down.
He picked up Gregor’s abandoned teacup and cradled it in both hands, feeling the warmth seep into his fingers. Gregorhad his routines. Early morning patrols along the compound’s perimeter. Solitary runs through the forest. Late evenings in the small workshop behind the main building, where he maintained the clan’s old-fashioned weapons and, Fergal suspected, found the closest thing to peace that his mind allowed.
The workshop. That was where Fergal would find him.
He drained the last of Gregor’s tea. It was still warm, faintly sweet, with a hint of something smoky. It tasted like cedar and patience and all the things Gregor would never say aloud. Fergal set the cup down, squared his shoulders, and went to plan his next move.
He was done throwing pebbles at the wall. It was time to find the door.
CHAPTER TWO
The blade didn’t need sharpening, but Gregor’s hands needed something to do, and the rhythmic scrape of the whetstone was the closest thing to meditation he’d ever found. So it would be sharpened again.
Scrape. Turn. Scrape. Turn.
The workshop was cold enough that his breath misted in the air, despite the small wood-burning stove in the corner. He could’ve stoked it higher, but Gregor preferred the chill. It kept him sharp. And tonight, he needed every edge he could get.
Fergal knew.
Scrape. Turn.
The little shit absolutely knew what he was doing.
Gregor set the blade down and pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes. The afterimage of the study lingered like a burn—Fergal leaning forward in his chair, those sharp brown eyes watching him with an intensity that had nothing to do with Section Twelve D of the Code and everything to do with the slow, deliberate dismantling of Gregor’s sanity.
“Have you ever wanted something you knew you shouldn’t have?”
Gregor’s jaw clenched at the memory. He’d handled it. He’d shut the lesson down, gathered his materials, and walked out with his dignity intact. His voice hadn’t wavered. His hands hadn’t trembled. He had been, as he always was, perfectly in control.
Except for the tea.
He’d left his damned tea. In all those years of lessons with Fergal, through debates that had turned into shouting matches and discussions that had stretched past midnight, through the time Fergal had thrown a book at him in frustration and the time they’d laughed so hard over a mistranslation that Gregor had actually had to wipe his eyes—through all of it, Gregor had never once left a room without his tea.
And Fergal, because Fergal noticed everything even when Gregor desperately wished he wouldn’t, would’ve clocked that immediately.
Sloppy. Careless. Unacceptable.
He picked up the blade again, letting the familiar weight ground him. The sword was old, forged in the style of his ancestors, with a dragon etched into the cross guard that had worn smooth under centuries of hands. It had belonged to no one of importance. Gregor had found it in a market in Edinburgh two hundred years ago, half-buried in a box of rusted relics, and had recognized the craftsmanship for what it was. He’d been restoring it ever since, not because it had any practical value in a world of automatic weapons and magic, but because the act of caring for something old and forgotten felt like a form of prayer.
His workshop was full of such things. Swords and daggers lined the walls, interspersed with leather armor he’d repaired and tools he’d collected over the centuries. The workbench was scarred and stained, the wood darkened by oil and time. A single lamp hung from the ceiling, casting warm light over the center of the room and leaving the edges in shadow.
It wasn’t much, but it was his. The one space in the compound where he wasn’t the tutor or the royal guard, wasn’t forced to keep up his walls. In here, he was just a man with a blade and a bench and the quiet company of his own thoughts.
