Because of the Elders. Their laws echo in my head even now.We do not strike the powerless. We do not bring violence into the human world unless forced to. We are guardians, not tyrants.I swore to those rules when I was but a boy, and breaking them meant more than a punishment. It meant dishonor.
And then there is Ash. My Ember. She isn’t helpless. She’s not meant to be wrapped in cotton and hidden away whilst I handle her demons. She’s a sorceress, a queen in her own right — even if she doesn’t remember or isn’t willing to take up that mantle. Part of me held back, hoping she’d stand up, find that spark of herself again. Hoping she’d learn she could put a man like Brett on his knees without any outside interference.
She can.She has.
But tonight… the culmination of everything. Every moment of her unease, her fear. Every moment of discomfort, of him touching her without permission, of him inserting himself into her life.
Watching her. Messaging her. Stalking and terrifying her. Twisting small, tender, intimate things she does when she thought no one was looking — he made them dirty, claimed them ashis.
And then…
Then he spoke her name like itbelonged in his mouth.
Thatwas when the rules stopped mattering.
The Elders aren’t here. Ash isn’t here. Just me and the man who believes he is entitled. That obsession is love, and believes taking is the same as knowing.
As earning.
Maybe I failed tonight. Not because I hit him, but because Iwaited so fucking long to do it.
Because I let the laws and my own restraint weigh heavier than the sick dread in Ash’s eyes every time she felt him near — real or imagined.
Never. Again.
I flex my bloodied hands, watching him groan in the dirt. The Elders can strip me of every honor they’ve ever given me — I’ll take it. Ash can hate me for this. As much as it would hurt, I’ll take that too. But I will no longer stand idle while he crawls closer with his poison, his entitlement.
I won’t do it. Her very well-being, autonomy at risk. Not with her. Not with her heart, our world, on the line.
The thoughts curl in my gut like a worm I can’t hope to spit out. Maybe beating him bloody won’t erase the shit he has said. Maybe the filth he has spewn into the air around Ash will bloom later, in some small, private room inside her head where even I can’t follow.
He’s planted images — intimate, invasive little facts, half-truths glinted in the stitches of fantasy — and even if they’re lies, they are still seeds. People will believe the seeds that have landed nearest to pain in their desire for gossip. What if when Casie trips over a memory or wakes in the dark, Brett’s hideous words are the first thing to step forward and explain that ache?
What if she thinks of them and looks at me differently — wary.
Wary in a way that matches the way Brett makes me wary, the way he wants to be her watcher?
The idea makes me want to throw up.
My hands are clenched so hard that my bones ache.
I can already imagine the worst. Her brow folds in a way that says she has found something in her head that she doesn’t like. The small recoil when I reach for her hand, the questions swallowed and left to just… fester. The times I was her blade. When I couldn’t see, but felt a million times sharper.
So the fear I feel isn’t sitting in one place. It’s spreading. Through memory, through the itching guilt of all the moments I’ve let slide because of rules and hope. It asked the question I’m bound to hate: had I protected her or had I only made this worse by making sure his mouth was shut while his poison stayed untouched and un-spread?
I crouch close in the damp grass, watching the rise and fall of his ragged breathing. The park hums like nothing has happened, thanks to my shields. The world doesn’t care if someone like Brett dies; the problem is the world also doesn’t care what he whispered.
I do.
There are brutally simple things to do — clean my hands, hide the evidence of a fight. Keep him somewhere he can’t come at her while he heals.Ifhe heals. But the simple things aren’t going to protect her, nor are they going to inspire the trust between us.
So instead, I’ll do the sort of things that the Elders would nod at… mostly.
First, I’m not going to tell her what was said. There’s no point. She would gain nothing from the filthy things he spat, from the way he tried to own her with words.Some truths are knives you hide willingly from the ones you love; some are weapons you hide because love doesn’t always need to bear the wounds. She doesn’t need Brett’s garbage echoed back at her as validation that he deserved what he got. She needs me present and steady, not for me to be the cause of any new fractures.
I will continue to watch. Not in the weird, suffocating way Brett watched, but like a sentinel who gives her distance and refuge. I’ve always had her back and that will never change. I’m eternally grateful that I’m no longer standing at the edges of her life, on guard should something dark try to slither in, I can have my boot on its neck before she notices. I’m here to protect. To catch the recoil before it becomes a full blow out.
I’ve already started to erase him from the small, public things — the calls, the texts, the shadowed seats at the shop. It’s part of the reason she’s rarely alone, even at work. He’s proven that there is no low too low for him. He’s tried so hard to make the world small for her, with his obsession surrounding her. I’ve worked to make it infinitely bigger, to fill it with quiet mornings, the smell of coffee, the small rituals ofus,stitched into her new normal. Habits act like mortar and often heal in a way that thunder can’t.
