Walk with me
1852 Words
They had moved on fast.
That was the thought I woke up with on the morning of my fourteenth day at Frostholm. Not grief. Not anger. Just a quiet observation, like noticing the weather.
Declan and Isabel had moved on fast.
And I was glad.
Because every day that passed with them moving forward meant they weren't watching me. Weren't thinking about me. Weren't planning anything aimed in my direction.
The photograph my mother had sent sat face-down in my evidence file. I hadn't looked at it again. I did not need to.
I got up, dressed, and went to the training room.
Caden was already there. He always was. I'd learned to arrive five minutes after six if I wanted to find him already warmed up, already focused, already settled into himself in the particular way that the training room brought out.
He was working through a series of movement drills when I came in, fast and precise, combinations of footwork and striking that were beautiful in the way that very functional things sometimes were.
He stopped when he saw me.
"Ready?"
"Yes."
He'd been training me for a week. We went slowly at first, basics, stance, how to fall without hurting yourself, how to hold your hands. He was a demanding teacher but a patient one. He never raised his voice. He corrected by demonstrating, not by criticizing.
"Again," he would say. Just that. And I would do it again.
Today was different. I could feel it when I walked in.
"We're going to spar," he said.
I stared at him. "I've been training for a week."
"You've been training for a week, and you're already better than most people are after a month." He said it without softness, like an assessment. "Sparring is not about winning. It's about learning how your body responds when someone is actually moving toward you."
"And if I freeze?"
"Then you'll learn that you freeze. And we'll work on it." He moved to the center of the mat. "Come on."
I came to stand across from him. He was significantly larger than me. Taller, broader, with twelve years of training behind him against my one week.
"You're not going to hurt me," he said, reading my expression. "I can control exactly how much force I'm using. You will not get hurt."
"I know."
"Then what are you thinking?"
I shifted my stance. "That I've been in situations where someone moved toward me and I did not fight back. I went still. I made myself small. I waited for it to be over." I looked at him. "I do not want to be that person anymore."
Something moved in his expression. Quiet and intent.
"Then stop being her," he said. "Move."
He came forward slowly. Testing. Not attacking, just closing the distance.
Everything in me wanted to step back.
I stepped forward instead.
He stopped. Adjusted. Came from a different angle. I tracked him. Kept my stance. Moved my feet the way he'd taught me.
We circled. He feinted left. My hands went up automatically. He smiled slightly, which I saw, and that made me smile too, which was a mistake because he moved while I was smiling and I almost missed the dodge.
Almost.
"Good," he said. "Again."
We worked for forty minutes. I was breathing hard by the end, sweat dampening my hair, legs tired in the particular way that meant I'd used muscles I hadn't known I had.
But I hadn't frozen.
Not once.
"You did not freeze," Caden said, as if reading my thought.
"No."
"How does that feel?"
I pressed my hands to my knees and caught my breath. "Like something I've been trying to do for a long time."
He handed me a water bottle. I drank.
"You'll be sore tomorrow," he said.
"I was sore yesterday."
"Good." He was almost smiling again. "It means you're building something."
I straightened up. The training room felt different than it had the first night I'd stumbled into it unable to sleep. It felt like mine now, in a small way. A place I'd earned the right to be in.
"Can I ask you something?" I said.
"You always ask that before you ask the actual question."
"I know. It's a habit." I turned the water bottle in my hands. "Owen told me you haven't let anyone train with you in seven years."
"Owen talks too much."
"Why did you say yes to me?"
He was quiet for a beat. Considering.
"Because you asked for the right reason," he said finally. "Most people who want to train with me want proximity. Status. Something to tell other people. You asked because you needed to learn something about yourself." A pause. "That's worth saying yes to."
I looked at him. Really looked.
At the twelve years of scars and two-in-the-morning sessions and a kingship he'd carried since he was nineteen. At the man who said exactly what he meant and nothing more. Who moved through rooms full of political calculation with a directness that must have felt, to most people, like danger.
To me it felt like relief.
Luna made a low, warm sound in my chest. I pressed my hand there briefly, without thinking.
Caden noticed. His eyes dropped to my hand and back to my face. He did not say anything.
"Thank you," I said. "For the training. And for..." I stopped. Started again. "For all of it. The job. The room. The way you told Renner off in that meeting." I held his gaze. "People haven't treated me like I was worth protecting in a long time. I'm still getting used to it."
He was quiet for a long moment.
"Get used to it faster," he said simply.
I laughed. A real one. Short and surprised.
He almost smiled properly. Almost.
"Breakfast," he said. "Come on."
We walked back through the quiet castle together, the morning light spreading through the high windows as it got later and the staff began their day. I was still catching my breath from the spar. He looked as composed as always, which I was starting to find only slightly unfair.
Owen was at the breakfast table already, as usual. He looked at my flushed face and Caden's quiet composure and said nothing, just pushed the coffee pot toward me.
"Hard session?" he asked mildly.
"We sparred," I said.
Owen's eyebrows went up. He looked at Caden.
Caden sat down and opened his folder. "She did well."
Owen turned back to me with a look that said a great deal in a small space.
I poured my coffee.
After breakfast, Caden appeared in my office doorway.
"Walk with me," he said.
I looked up from the correspondence I was working through. "Now?"
"You've been inside for fourteen days. Come."
I could not argue with that. I saved my work and followed him downstairs, out through a side door I hadn't used before, into the castle grounds proper.
The grounds were extraordinary. Wide stone paths winding between old trees, formal gardens on the south side, a wilder stretch on the north that was all long grass and pale boulders and the distant sound of water. The air was cold and sharp and smelled like mountain pine and something clean I could not name.
I breathed it in.
We walked in silence for a while. Not the loaded kind. The comfortable kind.
"The investigators returned from Silverridge," Caden said eventually.
I went still. Kept walking, but my whole body had focused.
"And?"
"The investigation file on your k********g was not simply incomplete," he said. "It was deliberately cleared. Key witness statements removed. Evidence logs falsified." He paused. "Someone with authority inside the pack decided that the truth of what happened to you was more dangerous than the lie."
My throat felt tight. "My father."
"We're still piecing together exactly who made which decisions. But yes. Someone very close to the top of the Silverridge pack hierarchy was involved." He walked steadily beside me, not looking at me directly, giving me room to feel what this was. "We will know more within the week."
"You're telling me now. Not waiting for the full picture."
"I told you I would keep you informed. That's what keeping you informed looks like." He paused. "You had a right to know as soon as I knew."
I looked at the mountains ahead of us. At the pale peaks against the gray morning sky.
Whoever had taken me at six years old. Whoever had decided a child's disappearance was less important than their own position. Whoever had spent twenty years making sure I never found out.
They were going to be found out.
Because of this man walking beside me in the cold morning air, who kept his promises.
"What will happen?" I asked. "When you know for certain?"
"We bring it to the Council," he said. "Formal charges. A proper hearing. Whatever was done to you as a child will be addressed by the law." He glanced at me. "It will not undo it. I want to be honest about that. But it will be named. And the people responsible will answer for it."
I nodded slowly.
Luna was very quiet inside me. But not absent. She was there, paying close attention, in that way she had when something important was happening.
We turned on the path and started heading back toward the castle. The morning had grown lighter, gold settling over the mountains now.
"Can I ask you something?" I said.
"You always say that."
"I know." I looked at him. "Do you think I'm going to be okay? Here. In this life. Going forward."
He stopped walking. I stopped too.
He turned to look at me directly, those silver eyes steady and clear.
"Yes," he said. Not quickly. Not as reassurance. As a considered answer.
"How can you be sure?"
"Because I've watched you for two weeks. I've watched you organize a disaster into a functioning system. Stand in front of men twice your age and make them listen. Train every morning even when you're sore. Block your father's number and go back to work without letting it break your rhythm." He held my gaze. "People who are not going to be okay do not do those things."
I felt the words settle into me. Not like they fixed anything. Like they confirmed something I'd been slowly building and hadn't had the language for yet.
"Thank you," I said.
"Stop thanking me." But it was almost gentle when he said it.
We started walking again.
Above us, a hawk crossed the pale sky, riding something invisible and rising on it easily.
Fourteen days.
I'd been here fourteen days, and already I wasn't the same person who had walked out of that ballroom with a bandaged hand and nothing but a packed bag and the desperate wish to be something other than invisible.
She was still in me, that person. I did not think she'd ever fully leave.
But she wasn't all I was anymore.
That felt like the beginning of everything.
- Writer
