The Assassin Who refused to Kill me

Soren's POV I didn’t mean to hear it. That truth stayed with me long after everything else stopped making sense, long after the house began to feel like a strange place to be. I hadn’t gone looking for answers that night. I hadn’t been curious enough to look into things that had always been kept hidden. I was just walking down the hall, thinking about other things, halfway between one thought and the next, when I saw a thin line of light under the study door. It was late. The kind of late when even the guards walked softly and the house settled into a quiet that felt almost calm. The study should have been empty. I slowed down without meaning to. At first, it was just a feeling. My pace changed, I paused for a reason I couldn’t explain. Then I heard voices, low and careful, speaking in a way that made it clear the talk wasn’t meant to be heard outside those walls. My father spoke first. Even through the door, I knew his voice. Strong. Sure. The kind of voice that ended conversations instead of starting them. I had grown up hearing that voice, but never like this. There was something heavier in it, something that seemed to hang in the air instead of passing through. Then my brother answered. That’s what made me stop completely. There was something wrong in the way he spoke. Not loud, not angry, but colder than usual, without any feeling. It didn’t match the brother I knew in my head – the calm, distant heir who always seemed to be in control. I shouldn’t have stayed. I should have walked away and let the moment pass without any problems. Instead, I moved closer. It wasn’t a planned decision. My body moved before my mind could catch up, my hand brushing against the wall as if I needed something to hold onto. The closer I got, the clearer their voices became, the words starting to form something I could understand. At first, it didn’t mean anything. Names I didn’t know. Bits of information that didn’t seem complete. Then my father said something that made everything else disappear. “Your mother should never have been in that room.” I stopped breathing. For a second, I thought I had heard wrong. My mind tried to twist the words into something softer, something that made sense. But before I could, my brother spoke again, and this time there was no doubt. “She wasn’t supposed to find out,” he said, his voice steady in a way that made my stomach hurt. “If she had stayed out of it, none of this would have been needed.” The world around me changed. I didn’t move. I couldn’t. I stood there, just outside the door, my heart beating loudly in my ears as the meaning behind those words became real. They weren’t talking about her memory. They weren’t remembering her. They were talking about what happened to her. About the night she saw something she wasn’t supposed to see. About the decision that came after. My father let out a slow breath, like this was something he had accepted a long time ago. “It couldn’t be allowed to spread,” he said. “You know that.” “I do,” my brother replied. There was no doubt. No struggle. Just agreement. I pressed my hand harder against the wall, my fingers squeezing tight as if I could hold onto something solid. The words kept coming, each one sharper than the last, each one hurting me deeper than I thought possible. “She understood too much,” my brother continued. “By the time we realized how far it had gone, there was only one choice left.” “And you handled it,” my father said. “Yes.” The word landed heavily. Simple. Final. I felt something inside me break. It wasn’t loud. It didn’t come with a clear moment of breaking. It was quieter, something collapsing inward, leaving behind an empty space that filled too quickly with something I couldn’t hold. My mother hadn’t died the way they said she had. She hadn’t died from sickness. She hadn’t been lost to something unavoidable or something they couldn’t stop. She had been killed. And the people who did it were standing a few feet away, talking about it like it had been necessary. Like it had been the only choice. Like it had been nothing. I don’t remember stepping back, but I must have. My body moved before my mind could follow, my chest tightening as something sharp pushed through me all at once. My breathing became uneven, shallow, like I couldn’t get enough air into my lungs to calm myself. I tried to stay quiet. I tried to move away without making a sound. But something slipped. A breath. A step. I don’t know what. All I knew was that the voices inside stopped. The quiet that followed felt wrong. Too sudden. Too heavy. My heart dropped before I even knew why. Then I heard movement. The scrape of a chair. The sound of footsteps. The faint noise of the door unlocking. I didn’t run. Not yet. I stood there, frozen in place, as the door opened. And my brother stepped out. For a second, neither of us moved. The light from the study spilled into the hallway, crossing the space between us. I could see him clearly, the sharp lines of his face, the still way he stood. He looked at me. Not past me. Not through me. At me. Recognition came first. Then something else. It was small, but I saw it. A change in his eyes, something tightening behind them, something that felt planned in a way I had never seen directed at me before. He knew. He knew I had heard. “Soren.” My name sounded different coming from him like that. There was no warmth in it, no friendliness. It felt like something being placed between us rather than shared. I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. My throat felt tight, my thoughts scattered beyond anything I could put together. All I could do was look at him, the reality of what I had just heard hitting me again and again without giving me space to understand it. He took a step forward. That was enough. I turned and ran. I didn’t think about where I was going or what would happen next. I didn’t consider whether it would make things better or worse. I just moved, my feet carrying me forward as the world blurred around me. My eyes were already wet with tears, the hallway stretching out in front of me in shaky lines as I tried to focus on anything other than the sound of my own breathing. I could barely see. I could barely think. All I could feel was the weight pressing down on my chest, the memory of those words playing in my head with a clarity that made it impossible to ignore. *She shouldn’t have been in that room.* *She wasn’t supposed to find out.* *There was only one choice left.* I stumbled slightly as I turned the corner, catching myself against the wall before pushing forward again. My hands shook, my breath breaking with every step as I forced myself to keep moving. I didn’t stop until I reached my room. The door slammed shut behind me harder than I meant to, the sound echoing through the space before falling silent. I locked it without thinking, my hands fumbling slightly before the lock clicked into place. Then I stepped back. And everything hit me at once. My legs gave out before I could stop them, sending me down onto the floor as the weight of it all crashed over me. The tears came harder this time, blurring everything as I pressed my hands against my face, trying to block it out even though I knew it wouldn’t help. Nothing helped. The truth didn’t leave just because I wanted it to. It stayed. It settled into every part of me, filling the space where everything else had been. It changed the way the room felt, the way the house felt, the way I understood everything I had ever known. My mother was gone. And the people who were supposed to protect her had taken her away. A sound broke the quiet outside my door. Footsteps. Slow. Careful. I froze. For a moment, I didn’t breathe. The footsteps stopped just outside. I could feel it, even without seeing him. The presence on the other side of the door, the quiet certainty of it, the knowledge that I hadn’t gone unnoticed. My chest tightened again, the tears still falling as I forced myself to stay still, to make no sound, to give nothing away. The handle didn’t turn. The door didn’t open. But he was there. I knew he was. And somehow, that felt worse. I stayed like that for what felt like forever, sitting on the floor with my back against the bed, my breathing uneven, my thoughts running in circles I couldn’t escape. Eventually, the footsteps faded. But the feeling didn’t. It lingered, heavy and certain, settling into something I couldn’t ignore. He had seen me. He knew what I had heard. And nothing about that could end well. I pressed my head back against the edge of the bed, my eyes closing as the exhaustion finally began to take over. But even then, even in that moment of quiet, one thought stayed clear. Everything had changed. And whatever came next, there was no going back to how things had been before.