"You Flinch"
1507 Words
Three nights into Frostholm, and I still could not sleep past two in the morning.
It wasn't the room. The room was perfect. The bed was the softest I'd ever slept in. The temperature was exactly right. No sounds from Declan coming in late, no tension seeping through the walls.
It was me.
My body did not know how to rest when there was nothing to brace against.
Luna was the same. She paced in my mind, restless and alert, scanning for threats that weren't there.
We're safe, I kept telling her. Nothing is coming.
She did not quite believe it. Neither did I.
So at two fifteen on my third night in Frostholm, I gave up on sleep, pulled on clothes, and went wandering.
The castle at night was a different place. Quieter. Shadows collecting in the corners of the wide hallways, the stone walls cool to the touch. A few guards moved through the lower corridors, nodding respectfully as I passed. None of them stopped me or asked questions.
That was new.
At Ironpeak, someone would have reported me to Declan within minutes. The Luna is wandering the halls again. Restless again. Unstable again.
I'd been watched my whole marriage. Observed and assessed. Every mood catalogued as evidence of some failure.
Here, no one cared that I was up at two in the morning. They just nodded and kept moving.
Luna settled slightly. See? Safe.
"Trying to believe it," I murmured.
I drifted through the east wing, then the main corridor, following the low emergency lighting along the baseboards. I wasn't looking for anything in particular. Just moving. Just trying to wear down whatever restless thing was keeping me awake.
That's when I heard it.
A rhythmic, heavy sound. Repeated. Steady. Coming from a set of double doors near the base of the north tower.
I stopped outside. The doors weren't fully closed. Through the gap came the sound again, and faint light.
I pushed one door open.
It was a training room.
Large. High ceiling with exposed beams. Mats covering most of the floor. Equipment along the walls, weights, ropes, a wooden practice dummy in the corner. And in the center, a punching bag hanging from a ceiling chain.
Caden stood in front of it.
He was shirtless. His back was to me, and I could see every muscle working as he drove his fists into the bag, controlled and rhythmic. Not wild. Not venting. Focused.
He was also covered in scars.
I could not help staring. They crossed his back and shoulders in thin pale lines, some long and deliberate, some small and scattered. Old wounds. Healed completely but permanent. The story of a person who had not lived a safe life.
He stopped hitting the bag.
He hadn't heard me. I hadn't made a sound. But he'd sensed me.
He turned slowly.
For a moment we just looked at each other. Me standing in the doorway in my sweater and loose trousers, clearly unable to sleep. Him in the middle of a training room at two in the morning, covered in old scars, looking not at all surprised to see me.
"Can't sleep either?" he said.
"No."
He reached for a towel from the nearby rack and pressed it to his face. "How long has it been a problem?"
"Since I left Ironpeak." I paused. "Actually, since before that. But it's different now. At Ironpeak I could not sleep because I was always waiting for something bad to happen. Here I can't sleep because I keep waiting and nothing does."
He looked at me for a moment. "Your nervous system is recalibrating," he said. "It takes time."
"Is that what this is?" I gestured vaguely at the room. "Your nervous system recalibrating?"
Something that might have been amusement moved across his face. "Yes."
"How long have you been doing it?"
"Since I was nineteen."
Twelve years of two in the morning training sessions. Of finding the only way he knew how to process things that would not stay still.
I stepped further into the room. The mats were firm under my feet. The air smelled like effort and old leather.
"Can I stay?" I asked. "I will not bother you. I just do not want to go back to my room and stare at the ceiling."
"You're not bothering me." He turned back to the punching bag. "Sit wherever you want."
I found a spot near the wall and sat on the mat with my back against the cool stone. I pulled my knees up and watched him work.
It was oddly calming. Watching someone move with such deliberate precision. No wasted motion. Every strike landing exactly where he intended it to. He wasn't fighting the bag. He was communicating with it.
Luna had stopped pacing. She was watching too.
He's strong, she observed. Not just physically.
"I know," I said silently.
After a while, he stopped. Wrapped the towel around his neck and looked over at me.
"You flinch," he said.
I blinked. "What?"
"Yesterday morning at breakfast. Owen reached across the table for the salt and you pulled back. This afternoon when I came into the office and closed the door, your shoulders went up." He was watching me carefully. Not unkindly. "You've learned to brace for impact. Even when there is not going to be any."
My throat felt tight. "I did not realize I was doing it."
"You probably do not. It's not conscious." He moved to sit on a low bench a few feet away, forearms resting on his knees, looking at me directly. "Who hurt you?"
The question was simple. Straightforward. Not accusatory.
"Which time?" I said, before I could think better of it.
His expression did not change, but something in his eyes did. Something that went very still and very focused.
"Start with the most recent," he said.
"My father slapped me the night of the ball. In front of Declan and my mother." I said it flat and even. "It wasn't the first time. He hits when he's angry. He always has."
"And Declan?"
"Declan never hit me. He did something different." I looked at the mat between us. "He used silence. Absence. Contempt. He was very good at making me feel worthless without ever raising his hand. It's more insidious that way. Harder to name."
"Harder to leave," Caden said quietly.
"Yes."
Silence.
"I will not push you to talk about the k********g," he said. "Not tonight. But when you're ready, I want to hear it. All of it. Because what I told you yesterday is true. I've already sent investigators to Silverridge. Whatever happened to you when you were six, I will find out."
I looked up at him. "You really mean that."
"I do not say things I do not mean."
He'd said that at breakfast. The same words. And somehow they landed differently now, in the middle of the night, in a training room, with no performance of it.
He meant it both times.
Luna made a soft sound in my chest. Pay attention, she said. This one is real.
"Can I ask you something?" I said.
"Yes."
"The scars on your back." I hesitated. "You do not have to answer."
"I know." He did not hesitate. "They're from when I first took the throne. There were challenges. Pack leaders who thought a nineteen-year-old was easy to break." A pause. "They were wrong."
"Were you scared?"
"Every day for two years." He said it without shame. "Fear is not the problem. Running from it is."
I looked at this man. Twelve years of carrying something enormous. Twelve years of two-in-the-morning training sessions to hold it steady.
"Does it get easier?" I asked. "The fear?"
"No. You just get better at walking forward with it."
I pressed my back against the cool stone wall and let out a long breath.
"I want to learn to fight," I said. The thought had been forming since the kitchen at Ironpeak, since the moment Isabel grabbed that letter opener and I had nothing. "Properly. Not self-defense videos. Actually fight."
Caden looked at me for a long moment.
"That can be arranged," he said.
"Would you teach me?"
Another pause. Longer this time.
"Yes," he said. "If you're willing to work for it."
"I've been working for things my whole life," I said. "The difference is now I'll be working for something that matters."
He stood. Picked up the towel again. "Get some sleep, Nora. We start training in the morning."
"I thought I could not sleep."
"Try anyway." He moved toward the door, then stopped. "The flinching will get better. Once your body learns that nothing here is going to hit you, it will stop bracing." He paused. "Give it time."
He left.
I sat alone in the training room for a while longer, listening to the quiet.
Luna was still and content in my mind.
Eventually I went back to my room, lay down, and closed my eyes.
This time, sleep came.
- Writer
