shadows

10

The first time Emil realized he was living two lives, it startled him.

By daylight, in the Greene estate, he was the shadow child — the half-blood tolerated, never embraced. His movements were measured, his words chosen carefully, his body trained to shrink into corners where he wouldn’t be noticed. Even then, Fred and Greg’s cruelty found him. Fiona’s icy disdain seeped into every room, a constant reminder that he was not, and would never be, one of them.

But in the village, by the riverbank, he became something else.

There, Emil was simply *Emil*. Not the bastard son of a man who barely looked at him. Not the reminder of a dead woman who had never belonged. With Thomas and Jacob, he was a boy — rough at the edges, perhaps, awkward with words, but free to laugh without bracing for punishment, free to speak without fear of his tongue betraying him.

The contrast was so sharp it frightened him. It was like looking into a mirror and seeing two faces staring back. He wondered, sometimes, which one was real.

---

The village itself seemed to conspire in his escape. The streets were narrow, alive with the smells of bread from the baker’s oven, woodsmoke curling from chimneys, the damp stone of wells and walls warmed by sunlight.

Children darted past him, shoving, laughing, careless in ways he had never dared to be. Their parents scolded them with exasperation, then pulled them into quick embraces that Emil watched with an ache lodged in his throat.

In the Greene estate, embraces were rare. Discipline was the language spoken there, with silence as its punctuation.

Here, even the scoldings seemed gentler, wrapped in affection.

And so Emil clung to Thomas and Jacob with quiet desperation.

---

The two brothers were older by a year or two, but they treated him like a companion rather than a nuisance. Thomas, broad-shouldered and sun-browned from helping his father with fishing nets, always had a grin waiting for him. Jacob, wirier and sharper in tongue, teased Emil often, but there was no venom in it — only the kind of ribbing that bound them tighter.

They taught Emil how to skip stones across the river’s surface, laughing when his first attempts sank without so much as a bounce. They dared him to climb the twisted oak by the water’s edge, then scrambled up with him when he finally took the challenge.

For the first time in his short life, Emil felt like he was part of something not built on scorn.

---

But the joy of it was edged with fear.

Even as he laughed, even as he raced the brothers across the meadow, Emil knew he was stealing something he was never meant to have. Each stolen hour carried the risk of discovery.

At night, when he returned to the Greene estate, he lay awake replaying the day’s moments — Thomas’s easy smile, Jacob’s quick wit — with a mixture of longing and dread. What if Fiona found out? What if the twins followed him one day?

The thought left him cold.

Still, when the morning came, he found himself sneaking away again.

---

The Greene estate was a place of echoes.

Voices carried too easily in its long corridors, whispers curling through the air like smoke. Emil learned quickly that nothing went unnoticed for long. Every creak of the floorboards, every door closed a moment too late, seemed to shout of his guilt.

He told himself he was careful. He slipped out when Fiona was busy with her charity visits, when Mike buried himself in ledgers, when Fred and Greg were absorbed in their lessons. Yet, no matter how cautious, he felt the walls lean in on him.

The estate had a way of watching.

---

The twins noticed first.

Fred’s sharp eyes followed him whenever Emil moved. Greg’s grin sharpened whenever Emil returned from one of his “walks,” clothes dusty, hair windswept, cheeks flushed with a life he wasn’t supposed to have.

“Out again?” Fred asked once, voice dripping with false casualness.

“Where do you go?” Greg pressed. “Always alone, always sneaking back like a thief.”

Emil muttered something about walking by the gardens, but the lie tasted sour. He could feel their eyes on him long after he’d turned away.

---

At meals, Fiona’s gaze became more piercing, as though she could see through his skin to the secrets underneath.

“You seem distracted,” she said one evening, her voice mild but her fork paused halfway to her lips.

“I’m not,” Emil whispered.

“Then why do you look away when I speak?”

Her words landed like stones. He couldn’t answer. Silence was safer than lies, but silence, too, was suspicious. Fiona let the moment linger before turning her attention back to her plate, yet Emil felt no relief.

---

The house grew colder with each passing day.

Emil would slip into bed at night, heart racing, mind replaying the day in loops. Had he shut the door too loudly? Had anyone seen him on the road? Did his shoes carry the mud of the village across the estate’s spotless floors?

He began to dread the evenings more than the days. It was then, under the estate’s candlelit hush, that the weight of scrutiny pressed hardest.

And yet, the next morning, he still stole away.

Because in the village, with Thomas and Jacob, there was warmth. There was laughter. There was a self he could almost believe was real.

Even as the estate’s shadow grew longer, Emil kept chasing the light outside its walls.

---

The Greene estate had always felt hostile, but now it felt alert.

Emil sensed it in the way the servants watched him, their glances lingering a moment too long, their whispers quick to dissolve when he entered a room. It was subtle, a change in air rather than action, but unmistakable. The house seemed to hold its breath around him, waiting for him to stumble.

And he would stumble. He knew it.

Every lie grew heavier on his tongue. Every half-truth carried more risk. Soon, something would slip.

---

Fiona’s suspicion sharpened with terrifying precision.

At first, she asked idle questions — or what seemed idle. “Where did you spend your morning?” “Did you enjoy the gardens?” Harmless words, spoken with an almost gentle tone.

But Emil saw the way her eyes pinned him, the way her lips pressed together when his answers faltered.

He tried to prepare lies in advance: he had been reading, he had been helping in the kitchen, he had been walking by the fields. But Fiona was too clever. She remembered details he forgot to invent.

“You said the fields,” she murmured one evening, her voice soft as silk. “But the rain yesterday left them too muddy to walk. Your shoes are clean. How strange.”

Her smile was thin, without warmth. Emil lowered his eyes, his throat burning, and said nothing. Silence was safer.

For the moment.

---

The twins made things worse.

Fred and Greg prowled around him like wolves circling a wounded animal. Their questions were sharper, their jibes crueler, their curiosity feigned but relentless.

“You vanish like a ghost,” Greg said one afternoon, his tone mocking but his eyes intent. “Maybe you’ve found a new family. A better one.”

Fred smirked. “Imagine that. The bastard boy with secrets of his own.”

They laughed, loud enough for servants to hear, loud enough for their words to carry. Emil’s stomach knotted. The twins weren’t just teasing anymore. They were laying traps.

---

It was worst at dinner.

The family sat at the long polished table, candles flickering against the silverware, shadows stretching across the walls. Emil always felt out of place there, but lately, the tension had grown unbearable.

Fred and Greg dropped hints with every bite.

“Funny how Emil never seems tired, even though he wanders so much,” Fred said with feigned innocence.

Greg leaned forward, his grin sharp. “Maybe he’s meeting someone. Isn’t that right, Emil?”

Their father, Mike, barely looked up from his plate. But Fiona’s fork stilled, her eyes sliding to Emil.

The silence that followed was heavier than any accusation. Emil forced down a mouthful of food that tasted like ash, his chest tight.

---

At night, he clutched his thin blanket and tried to steady his breathing. He thought of Thomas and Jacob, their laughter, their easy friendship. That was his truth — wasn’t it? That was the only place he belonged.

But in the Greene estate, truth and lies twisted together until he couldn’t tell one from the other. Each day he survived felt borrowed. Each step he took echoed like a warning.

Suspicion had taken root. It was growing fast, and soon it would bloom into something he could not contain.

---

The walls of the estate pressed tighter with each passing day. Emil could feel them in his chest, in the stiffness of his shoulders, in the way his breath grew short whenever Fiona’s gaze lingered.

So when the chance came — a rare moment when the twins were distracted, Fiona gone to oversee one of her endless committees, Mike locked away in his study — Emil seized it.

He slipped out the back door, the air biting with the promise of rain. His heart raced, not just with fear but with relief. Each step he took down the winding path toward the village loosened a knot inside him, as if the estate’s grip weakened with distance.

By the time he reached the river, he was running.

---

Thomas was already there, crouched over the water, tossing pebbles that plinked and sank. Jacob lay sprawled on the grass, arms folded behind his head, humming some half-remembered tune.

When they saw Emil, both boys lit up, their smiles unguarded.

“About time,” Jacob teased. “We thought the lords had locked you in a tower.”

Thomas clapped Emil on the shoulder. “Or worse, buried you in books.”

Emil laughed, the sound sharp with relief. Here, he wasn’t the Greene bastard. He wasn’t a shadow. He was just Emil — awkward, clumsy, but wanted.

---

The three of them spent the afternoon in the meadows by the river. They raced across the grass until their lungs burned. They climbed trees and dangled from the branches, daring each other to jump.

For a few hours, Emil forgot Fiona’s piercing eyes. He forgot Fred and Greg’s jeers. He forgot the suffocating silence of the Greene dining hall.

When Thomas shouted his name across the meadow, when Jacob shoved him into the river shallows and they all went tumbling in, Emil felt something he hadn’t in years — something close to joy.

---

But joy was fragile, and fear never let him go for long.

As the sun dipped lower, Emil’s laughter grew thinner. He caught himself glancing toward the road, half-expecting to see the twins lurking there, or Fiona’s figure standing in cold disapproval.

“Something wrong?” Thomas asked, noticing the way Emil’s smile faltered.

Emil shook his head quickly. “No. Nothing.”

But his chest ached with the lie.

---

When it was time to leave, Emil lingered at the riverbank, watching the water ripple in the fading light.

“I’ll come tomorrow,” he said softly. “If I can.”

Thomas grinned. “You’d better. Jacob owes you a rematch in climbing.”

Jacob rolled his eyes. “He’s too slow. He’ll never beat me.”

Their laughter followed Emil as he walked away, echoing like a promise.

But the closer he came to the estate, the heavier his steps grew. The weight settled back onto his shoulders, pressing him down, until by the time he slipped back through the servants’ entrance, he felt small again.

The house was waiting. The eyes were waiting.

And Emil knew the walls had not loosened at all — they had only drawn tighter.