Chapter Text
The room stood utterly still around them. It was long past the hour when the rest of Ardenscourt had gone quiet, and even the breeze seemed to die down to sustain the silence. Evan had seen some of his lowest moments, had listened to some of his darkest secrets, had cared for his most monstrous parts—and Destin had flinched.
There was no way he could pass it off as something else, not when his whole body had tensed up and he had shrunk away as if expecting to be struck. Some old instincts couldn’t be explained away any easier than they could be forgotten.
Evan froze, his hand slowly falling back to his side.
“You can leave,” Destin whispered. “I’ll apologize to Harper.”
“I can leave,” Evan said softly, “but please don’t ask me to. Please let me stay.”
Destin opened his mouth to argue, to give any number of reasons why he didn’t deserve to have Evan stick around, but the words caught in his throat. He drew in a shuddering breath, then another, and all at once his lungs didn’t seem to work right and his eyes burned with unshed tears.
This isn’t safe, this isn’t safe for you.
His vision blurred. It was only once he felt the steady pressure of hands gripping his upper arms that he realized he had stumbled with a sudden wave of vertigo. Gently, Evan gently steered him towards the bed, and he followed before he could think better of it, sinking down into the plush coverlet.
Evan sat beside him, wrapping a protective arm around Destin’s shoulders. Destin wanted to push him away, or check to make sure the door was locked, or force himself to his feet to find a more private place to succumb to this weakness. Instead, Destin’s fingers tightened around the lapels of Evan’s jacket and held him close as he tried to breathe.
“Hey,” Evan murmured. “You’re safe here, Des. No one is going to hurt you.”
I’m not afraid for myself, Pirate, Destin thought, and almost said it before he tasted the lie on his tongue. Harper and Evan’s safety weighed heavy over every other thought in his mind, but beneath it, there was the instinctual fear that had made Destin’s body flinch away from Evan’s careful touch. It was the reason why Destin stood with military posture and dressed demurely and kept most of his emotions locked firmly behind an iron gate. No matter how much distance he put between himself and his past, there would always be a part of him that remembered the pain of Delphi and Bittersweet Keep.
He was afraid. It felt impossible to believe that he would ever be able to walk into a room without looking over his shoulder, or to trust that there was nothing waiting to attack—but somewhere along the line, his body caught up to the words that Evan murmured in his ear. Eventually, Destin was able to draw in a deep, unsteady breath and feel the air completely fill his lungs. He slowly sat up straighter and freed himself from Evan’s tight embrace, twisting to face him.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Destin said shakily. “Go home, please, go anywhere but Ardenscourt. I should have begged you not to come to this pit of vipers. Tonight you’ve seen what happens here, and I swear to you, this isn’t the worst of it. You deserve better than me, than what this place will do to you if you stay.”
“I’ll happily disagree with you on the matter of what I deserve,” Evan said, “but this isn’t about me. This is about whatever is making you feel unsafe here. Please, talk to me. How are you feeling?”
“Not well,” he admitted.
“When did it begin?”
Destin let out a sputtering, mirthless laugh. “I’m afraid you’d have to go quite a while back.”
“Then start at the beginning,” Evan invited. “We have time.”
In spite of his urging, Destin didn’t trace the tangled knot in his chest back to the original source. They might have the time, but he wasn’t sure that he had the energy. He didn’t know where to begin, didn’t know what he could possibly say that would alleviate the worry in Evan’s green eyes, so instead Destin cast his mind back to that morning when Hal had summoned him to the throne room to ask him to investigate Akoujan.
He recalled the painful knot in his stomach as he saw the young king deep in conversation with Lady Matelon. Before he could think better of it, Destin blurted out, “My mother is dead.”
Evan gasped. “Frances? When?”
“Months ago.”
This was another reason why Destin had been hesitant to tell him. Evan had known her years ago, well enough to live with peacefully but not well enough to grow truly close, and still he looked close to tears at the news. His beautiful pirate had always felt things too strongly.
“But I thought she was living with her family in Tamron,” Evan managed, swallowing hard. “I thought she was safe there.”
“She was,” Destin said hoarsely. “She got sick. The winter fever. My uncle wrote to me when it happened, but I haven’t heard from him since. He didn’t respond to any of my letters. For all I know, he could be dead now too—the fever is catching, and his lungs were always weak. I haven’t had time to visit the Chambord estate.”
“You know that the king wouldn’t hold it against you if you went to Tamron,” Evan said, the words gentle and easing. “He would understand the need to be around your family and get your affairs in order.”
Destin tried to envision himself doing just that, journeying to the Chambord estate to pick up the pieces of what was left of his Tamric family. He imagined walking down empty corridors, every echoing footstep a reminder that his mother had never been able to break away and live a life free from fear. “In all honesty, Pirate, I don’t think I’m ready for it. I always wanted her to escape, to live without the general’s shadow behind her shoulder. Now, I never even got to tell her that he’s gone. I couldn’t give her that closure.”
“She wouldn’t want you to blame yourself,” Evan insisted. “Her soul is at peace, and I believe that she knows the truth now. I think she would want you to take your time and return when you’re ready.”
He suspected that she would, but it was still comforting to hear it said aloud. At the same time, speaking openly about his mother’s death made the whole ordeal sound terribly final, and he could see no outcome of this conversation that didn’t end with feeling even more alone. One day, he would go to his uncle’s estate and fulfill his familial obligations. Now, he had barely had time to begin processing his grief.
Destin opened his mouth, then closed it again. “I can’t talk about her right now,” he said finally. “I’m sorry.”
“You have nothing to apologize for.” Slowly, Evan slid closer on the edge of the bed until their knees were nearly touching. “Can you talk about what happened tonight?”
“There isn’t much to talk about.”
“Destin, you were terrified. Something happened that left you injured and made you fight with the princess, and then you—”
“No,” he interrupted, then backtracked. “I mean, yes, there was a mission to investigate Ambassador Akoujan from We’enhaven, but that wasn’t really the reason for…all of this. It was more like the tipping point. I haven’t—up until we defeated Celestine, it felt like I was always running, but at least there was a reason. I had to contend with the general and the Montaignes and the empress, and during my time in the north, I didn’t have time to stop or rest.”
Destin took a deep breath. This time, it didn’t catch in his throat, but still his ribs felt tight. “I don’t need to run anymore, but still, I feel his shadow behind me everywhere I go. I have nightmares about him, about Delphi, about losing you. I’ve been sleeping poorly and giving myself headaches. Sometimes, like just now, it catches up to me and I can’t breathe right. And I’m slipping. My work on the Akoujan job was appalling, really, I did everything wrong. I couldn’t stand the thought of Harper being in danger because of my failure, so I took it out on her.”
“She’ll forgive you,” Evan said. “She knows you were trying to protect her. And it isn’t as if she’s used to the danger of your life, so it makes sense that you are worried about her.”
“That’s just it,” Destin said heavily. “I shouldn’t have been. Harper has killed a man before, and I’m confident that she can take care of herself. She had the situation under control better than I did. I just couldn’t quiet the voice in my head saying that she was putting herself at risk.”
Evan stiffened. “Harper has killed a man?”
A jolt of electricity ran down his spine, and though he’d shouted at her just this evening, he leapt to her defense. “Luc Granger. Jarat Montaigne’s bailiff, despicable man. He harassed her all night, then held a dagger to her throat when she tried to defend herself. Don’t sound so horrified, she did the right thing.”
“I wasn’t horrified by what she did,” he corrected. “I’m horrified that she had to. You were right: Ardenscourt is a pit of vipers.”
“I should know.”
At that, Evan’s shock dulled into stern disapproval. “I won’t hear any of that. Say it.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know precisely what I mean. You said it often enough aboard our ketch.”
The memory returned to Destin with the weight of a tidal wave, along with the vivid image of what had awaited them upon their return to the cottage. His mouth felt dry. “I am not a monster.”
Evan nodded. “Good enough for now, but we’ll get back to it. I’m so sorry that I didn’t see this sooner. That I wasn’t here for you.”
“You couldn’t have been, for most of it,” Destin said. “You were trying to survive just the same as me.” Those last five words might have been a lie—there had certainly come a point in the Fells when Destin stopped expecting his own survival. With the weight of a mage’s collar around his neck and news of the Sea Wolf’s shipwreck ringing in his ears, the uncomfortable truth was that Destin had stopped hoping for it. For Evan’s sake, he doubted he would ever share that particular part of his past, though part of him wondered if it had merely taken several months to catch up to him. Perhaps that explained his uncharacteristically erratic, destructive behavior in the hallway outside of the ambassador’s quarters.
“But once Celestine was defeated, I should have noticed. I should have seen that something was wrong.”
“Nothing is wrong,” he said. “That’s the point. Everything is better than it’s ever been, and I’m falling to pieces. I feel like I’ve been walking on a cliffside for…for a long time. The drop might be gone, but I can’t stop feeling like I’m about to fall.”
Slowly, Evan raised his hand to Destin’s face again. When he didn’t flinch this time, Evan cradled the curve of Destin’s jaw with a tenderness that almost ached, thumb brushing his cheekbone. “Then let me catch you.”
Destin closed his eyes tightly, savoring the warmth of his touch. “Pirate, you can’t. You’re far too good for all of this. Nothing good will come to you by being close to me.”
“My hands aren’t as clean as you would have yourself believe,” Evan said softly, resting his forehead against Destin’s. “And I can do with them what I like. For as long as I’ve known you, they have been yours to hold.”
Love is the one weapon you cannot conquer. It leaves you helpless.
When Evan had said those words to him years ago, Destin’s body had immediately tensed in denial—at the idea of being helpless, at the idea of love. He had changed enough since he was sixteen that he could now recognize the tangled feelings inside of him, but putting them to words was another matter entirely. A lifetime spent in Ardenscourt and Bittersweet Keep was hardly conducive to wearing his heart on his sleeve. Even in the privacy of his own room, speaking it aloud felt dangerous.
So instead of saying the words that he felt rattling in his chest, he sat back and let himself confess a different truth. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to fix what’s wrong with me.”
“You have time,” Evan promised. “Saints, Des, when was the last time you could be in this city without looking over your shoulder? Could you ever? I wouldn’t feel safe here either after that.”
“Be that as it may, Ardenscourt itself was never what hurt me here.” It immediately sounded like a lie, or at least part of one. Before he could be called on it, he quickly added, “Leaving wouldn’t solve my problems, and my work here isn’t done.”
“I know it isn’t.” It might have been his imagination, but he thought there was a hint of sadness in Evan’s voice. “But what happened tonight is not doing you any favors. Surely there’s a way for you to help the king and Harper without pushing yourself too hard.”
On a selfish impulse, Destin reached out and took Evan’s hand in his. “I can make changes. I’ll have to, if I want to avoid sabotaging missions like I did tonight. It was humiliating.”
Evan’s gaze was soft. “I think you should make some changes, though not for the missions. You are more important than any Ardenine intelligence.”
“To you, maybe.” Destin squeezed his hand. “I need you to believe that I know you would never hurt me. What happened tonight was…an unfortunate side effect of old pain. I could never be afraid of you. The last time I thought you posed a threat to me, we were rebuilding a barn in Carthis.”
“It feels like a lifetime ago,” Evan said. “But I’m no stranger to jumping at shadows, or seeing ghosts in familiar faces. You have nothing to explain. You’ve long since proven your trust in me.”
In a lifetime, Destin would never be able to earn the breathtaking kindness that Evan gave freely. It terrified him almost as much as the thought of what could happen to the pirate if he stayed in Ardenscourt, if he learned too much of what happened behind the city’s closed doors, if he—
But he wanted to stay. Destin couldn’t begin to understand it.
“I appreciate it,” he said, pushing down the warmth in his chest. “But I’m not quite finished with explaining myself tonight. I still need to make things right with Harper.”
Evan nodded. “You do. Go to her and apologize, but after you’ve finished, come back. Let yourself sleep. I’d like to stay with you tonight, if you’ll let me.”
The no was so immediate that Destin felt his lips form the shape of it, an instinctive refusal with all the reasons why he couldn’t and they shouldn’t and it was safest to leave him alone. Then the reality of the notion sunk in. He imagined returning from his conversation with Harper to find an empty room, the curtains drawn and Evan retreated to his own quarters. It was a dismal prospect.
“All right,” Destin said instead, and pushed himself to his feet. “I’ll come back.”
“Good.” Evan brushed a featherlight kiss on the back of his hand, then let him go. “She’ll forgive you, Destin. Be honest with her.”
There was a limit to how transparent Destin was willing to be, especially when the other party in question was a fourteen-year-old girl who had no business knowing about the shadows that his mind harbored. But while Harper might be young, she was far from naive. Surely she knew or suspected that his outburst tonight had been the result of a deeper wellspring overflowing—it didn’t take much investigation to arrive at the likely source.
Still, as he walked the familiar path to Harper’s quarters, he knew he had to strike a balance. Harper deserved the truth from him about how he had treated her tonight, but she deserved better than to lie awake at nights plagued by phantom images from his past. He intended to make sure that she never followed too closely in his footsteps.
Steeling himself, Destin raised his hand to the door and knocked three times in quick succession.
“Who is it?” Harper called.
Good. He’d been worried that she might have fallen asleep by now.
“It’s Destin. Please let me in, I need to talk to you.”
The door opened to reveal Harper Matelon. Her mother and other members of court might have taught her how to maintain perfectly straight posture, but the guarded expression on her face was all his doing. Her eyes bore the unmistakable sheen of residual tears, though they were the only lasting reminder of the argument.
She gave him a measured look. “What is it?”
“May I come in?” Destin asked quietly.
Harper sighed, then nodded and closed the door behind him.
By the looks of things, he’d interrupted her at her writing table, which was covered in letters, maps, and blueprints. He’d taught her well, Destin thought as he peered down at the scribbled notes in the margins, but the applications were all hers. In spite of his fears for her safety, the girl had a good head on her shoulders and a sharp mind that would serve her well in the field. If he got out of the way long enough to let her.
“What is it?” she repeated.
“I want to apologize,” Destin said, looking up from the writing table and launching into his speech without preamble. “For excluding you from the mission, and for how poorly I treated you when you arrived anyway. I was in astonishingly bad form tonight. If you were in any danger, it was because of my recklessness, not any mistake on your part.”
Harper managed a humorless smile. “At least be honest and admit that my brother put you up to this apology.”
“He encouraged it,” Destin acknowledged. “So did Ash, and my friend Jocelyn, and Evan. Right now, it’s common knowledge throughout the castle that I’m an asshole. But I’m not here because of them. I’m here because of you.”
“Hmm?” She tilted her head, already marginally more receptive. “Because I was right about the ambassador?”
There was a guarded edge to her voice that Destin knew all too well. Live long enough with slights and broken promises, and you started to see them everywhere you looked.
He vowed that he would do everything in his power to stop that dangerous path before it began. “No. Because regardless of whether you were right or wrong, I should have listened. Because I failed you, and I don’t want you to think it was acceptable when it isn’t. What I said to you was cruel and I hope to earn your forgiveness.”
“It isn’t every day that an adult asks for my forgiveness,” Harper noted, her words dancing on the edge of normalcy. Her eyes were beginning to soften.
“It’s rare that I apologize at all,” he admitted. “But I need you to believe that I’m not here to regain favor with your brother or my friends. I’m here to make things right.”
She nodded slowly. “I forgive you. Though I wish tonight had gone differently. I did everything you taught me for an infiltration and reconnaissance job, but you weren’t there to see it.”
Destin found that he regretted it too. Despite his reluctance to see her endanger herself in the espionage field, he took genuine pride in her work, and there was no denying her rapid proficiency. He would have been there to witness her skills in action tonight, had he not been preoccupied with throwing himself into peril without a safety net.
“From now on,” Destin announced, “I’d like to do this differently. I’ll be your mentor for as long as you need one, and a friend long after that, but this should be a partnership. We should be honest with each other when something needs to change. What do you want from me, going forward?”
Harper raised her chin. “I want you to trust me.”
“Easily done. I already do.”
“Oh, I know that,” she said, waving it away with a hand as if the notion was obvious. “You trusted me when we broke out of the Pit. You trusted me when we started training together here. You trusted me with your secret when you told me about you and Evan.”
“It’s never been much of a secret, Harper,” Destin said, a sick feeling rising in his stomach. “Well, the court at large knows nothing of Evan, but they’ve always known about me. Frankly, I’m surprised that it was news to you when you saw us together in the gardens. Thanes and courtiers love to talk.”
Her brow furrowed, nonchalance melting into something solemn. “I’m sorry. Did anyone—I mean, was it—?”
“It was in the past,” Destin said firmly, though every waking moment reminded him that it wasn’t. Part of his vow to protect his protégé was to protect her from the darkest parts of his history. “You did us both a favor by killing Granger, in any case. Now, if you know that I do, why would you ask me to trust you?”
“I know that you trust me,” Harper promised, blessedly permitting the change in subject. “But sometimes, I think you forget. I think you’re so used to working alone that you don’t know how to stop. And I wish you’d take the time to practice, because I want us to be a team.”
He swallowed hard, his throat stinging again. “I can do that. I swear to you, I’m trying to change.”
“Just don’t change too much.” Already, she was regaining that familiar smile. He was unspeakably grateful that his venomous words hadn’t been enough to dim it entirely. “The reason I started doing this was to be just like you.”
“That’s the problem,” Destin said, fighting past the ache in his chest. “I don’t want anyone to be like me.”
Silence lingered in the space between them. Destin wished he could take the words out of his mouth, now that he heard how close they came to exposing the very pain he was trying to conceal from her.
Then:
“Destin,” Harper said abruptly. “Can I hug you?”
For a moment, he was rooted in place as though frozen. He couldn’t rationalize why the idea felt foreign to him—after all, he was no stranger to touch. Just that night, he’d been held by Evan through the worst of his panic, and handled clinically by Ash as his wound was stitched. It was rare that touch in his line of business carried any sort of affection, but it didn’t always carry the sting of violence.
It wasn’t even that Harper had never embraced him before, because she had: when he arrived at the clan camp up North, when the king gave his consent to her learning the arts of Ardenine intelligence, when she mastered a new reconnaissance technique in their lessons. This was different. This was more than a fleeting moment of relief or excitement. This was an exceedingly rare display of honest affection, distilled into a single question and a lingering pause.
Destin nodded.
It was another long moment before he relaxed into it. He’d never had a sister—and thank the Maker for it, or else the general would’ve had yet another target—but there was something oddly fragile and comforting in knowing that someone looked up to him. Even after all of the mistakes he’d made, Harper cared enough to offer him comfort and give him a second chance.
“I’m sorry for calling you lieutenant,” Harper murmured. “I don’t think of you like that.”
It wasn’t enough to quell the residual unease in his body—still he felt the flutter behind his ribs, the electricity jolting through his veins, the tension in his jaw tugging at new stitches. It wasn’t enough to soothe the voice in his head that had been alert for years. He wasn’t sure how many years it would take to unwind that tightly-coiled spring inside of him, or to say that he wasn’t a monster and let himself believe it.
But here was one person who believed it, and there was another waiting for him back in his quarters. Destin had never been in the habit of foolish hope, but he was beginning to suspect it might be infectious.
“This will never happen again,” he said softly. “I promise.”
Harper nodded against his shoulder. “I believe you.”
I believe you.
Somewhere deep inside of him, he felt the edges of an old wound begin to knit themselves whole.