Arttu reached the healing chamber, his face still burning with the heat of embarrassment. The door seemed to weigh upon him. Unlike the moment before, Arttu had a faint dim in his eyes. He knew something had happened inside the throne room.

  “Did this happen because of me?” Arttu asked himself. It should have been about him, right? Reid always talked about him; every conversation he listened to was about him.

  How Arttu looked, how he became stronger, how he looked the same way as he did when he was littler.

  He needed to know what they were talking about, and if it was about him doing something wrong, he knew that he should apologize.

  Arttu held the brass doorknob, which was circular in shape, that poked his hands with some of its edges due to its imperfect construction.

  Although the slight pain that the edges gave, he opened the chamber door with shadowy confidence.

  The hinges gave a restrained murmur as the door yielded, as though even the chamber itself hesitated to admit him. The scent of medicinal herbs lingered in the air, mingled faintly with parchment and old wood. It was a room that had witnessed weakness often — collapse, recovery, silence — and it seemed to recognize him as one of its frequent inhabitants.

  Reid sat near the narrow window, light resting upon his shoulder but not warming him. A book lay open in his hands, though his eyes were not moving across the lines. They were fixed somewhere indistinct, somewhere beyond the page.

  For a moment, Arttu remained by the door.

  He had entered.

  And yet he had not.

  “Reid.”

  The name left him softer than intended, almost as if it feared rejection.

  Reid’s eyes shifted. Not startled. Not irritated. Simply aware.

  “Yes?”

  Arttu stepped further inside, letting the door close behind him with a muted finality. His fingers twitched faintly, remembering the uneven bite of the brass.

  “In the throne room… what happened?”

  Reid’s gaze returned to the book.

  “Nothing important.”

  The words were delivered plainly, without tension — which made them heavier.

  Arttu swallowed.

  It did not feel unimportant.

  “I really want to know.”

  The admission came carefully, as though sincerity required physical handling.

  Reid turned a page that he had not read.

  “It does not concern you.”

  That was when something unsettled in Arttu’s chest. Not anger. Not yet. Something closer to displacement.

  He had always been the center of such rooms. Even in absence, he had been the subject — of protection, of concern, of discussion.

  “Was I the reason you argued?”

  The question emerged differently this time. Not curious.

  Accusatory toward himself.

  The page stopped turning.

  Silence did not fill the room — it tightened it.

  Reid lowered the book slowly, placing it upon the small table beside him with deliberate care, as though the gesture required precision lest something fracture unseen.

  “Why,” Reid asked quietly, “must everything that transpires in this world find its origin in you?”

  There was no volume in his voice.

  That absence was more alarming than anger.

  Arttu’s brows drew together, confusion surfacing immediately, unguarded.

  “I only thought—”

  “Yes,” Reid interrupted, not sharply, but firmly. “You only thought.”

  He rose then, not abruptly, but with a weariness that seemed older than the room itself.

  “You stand where you stand,” Reid continued, “because I placed you there.”

  The words did not swell. They did not thunder. They existed — simple, terrible in their clarity.

  “I chose to make you formidable. I chose to remain beside you until others believed what I had already decided.”

  Arttu felt something shift within him — not collapse, but reorientation.

  Every memory rose without invitation.

  The ceiling of this chamber swimming above him after fever.

  The weight of exhaustion pulling him under.

  And always — when sight returned — Reid.

  Not anyone.

  Reid.

  Reid standing beside the bed.

  Reid adjusting the blanket.

  Reid watching.

  Like something that had always been there.

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  “I could have had a life,” Reid said, quieter now.

  “I gave it all away because I wished to. Do not misunderstand that choice as absence.”

  Arttu’s throat tightened.

  He had never considered Reid’s life as something separate from his own. It had seemed… continuous. As though Reid had begun the moment Arttu required him.

  And now that illusion faltered.

  Selfish.

  The word formed without defense.

  “I’m… sorry.”

  It was small. Earnest. Stripped of pride.

  Reid’s expression altered then — not softening, not hardening. Something else.

  Almost incredulous.

  “Why are you apologizing?” he asked. “You haven’t done anything wrong.”

  The statement did not relieve Arttu.

  It disoriented him.

  If he had done nothing wrong — then what had this been?

  His eyes widened faintly, confusion flooding him in slow increments. Tears gathered at the corners, not dramatic, not uncontrolled — merely present.

  He forced them back.

  He could not break here.

  If he broke —

  If he collapsed into apology and dependence —

  Then he would remain what he had always been.

  Constructed.

  Held.

  Carried.

  He lowered his gaze instead.

  Reid exhaled, the sound long and thin.

  “We leave at dawn,” he said at last. “Pack what you require.”

  Practicality descended upon the room like a curtain drawn after revelation.

  Arttu nodded once.

  They looked at one another.

  Not as protector and protected.

  Not as architect and monument.

  Something had shifted — subtly, irreversibly.

  Arttu turned and walked toward the door. His steps were slower than when he had entered, but steadier.

  When the door closed, the chamber returned to stillness.

  Reid reached for the book again.

  He opened it without searching for where he had left off.

  His eyes found a word on the page.

  Frechheit.

  He stared at it for a moment longer than necessary.

  Then he continued to read.

  Arttu stood in the middle of the hall.

  It stretched toward the castle’s exit in a long, pale corridor of stone — disciplined, symmetrical, endless. Yet it was not the length that unsettled him. It was the stillness.

  He should have felt sorrow.

  He searched for it.

  It did not come.

  His steps echoed faintly. One sounded hollow. The other almost hopeful. The rhythm between them refused to decide what it wished to be.

  “Will there be a time when he will not love me?”

  The thought arrived uninvited.

  It did not wound him.

  That frightened him more.

  His emotions and his thoughts no longer aligned. They drifted beside one another like strangers forced into proximity.

  “What am I thinking?” he murmured inwardly. “Is this truly what I should think now?”

  There were other things he felt like thinking about.

  And yet—

  That question persisted.

  Not fear of losing Reid.

  But fear of existing without being loved by him.

  He slowed.

  The corridor did not.

  Something resisted within him. Not guilt. Not laziness. Not even insecurity.

  He examined each possibility as though inspecting cracks in stone.

  He looked at each of them. But his eyes flew closer to the damaged ones.

  Insecurity? No. He had been insecure before. This was different.

  Sloth? No. His body felt restless.

  Then what?

  The answer surfaced slowly, as though rising from a depth he had never dared measure.

  Addiction.

  The word did not accuse him.

  It clarified him.

  He stopped walking.

  For a moment, the hall seemed to expand impossibly — the walls distant, the ceiling unreachable.

  Then something inverted.

  The walls shortened.

  The corridor compressed.

  It was not the castle that changed.

  It was his perception of it.

  His mind widened in a way his body had never known.

  He had mistaken devotion for oxygen.

  And now, for the first time—

  He inhaled on his own.

  His body remained the same height, the same weight, the same familiar vessel.

  But inside it—

  Something broke open.

  He began to move.

  Not walking.

  Running.

  The sound of his steps no longer echoed with uncertainty. They struck the stone with decision.

  He did not think about where he was going.

  That was new.

  He passed beneath archways that once felt monumental. They seemed lower now. Less divine.

  The guards called his name.

  “Arttu?”

  He did not turn.

  Not in defiance.

  In indifference.

  The castle doors opened and the air outside struck his lungs with a sharpness that felt almost violent.

  He ran through the roads of Aquilonish without direction. The city blurred — stone and faces and sky folding into motion.

  He did not belong to anyone in that moment.

  The fields opened before him, vast and unstructured.

  He had once believed them endless.

  Now they felt inviting.

  Then he saw it—

  A mountain in the distance.

  Still.

  Unmoved.

  His body moved faster than his mind ever had.

  There was no time to think. No room for it. The ground rose and fell beneath his feet, and he followed it instinctively, like a current pulling him forward.

  The horizon that had once seemed like the end of everything now felt closer. Not because it had moved.

  Because he had.

  The mountain stood ahead — wide, steady, immense — but it no longer frightened him. It did not feel like something to measure himself against.

  It felt like something to touch.

  His breath grew uneven. His legs began to ache. But the ache was bright. Alive. It did not press him down.

  It lifted him.

  And then—

  A smile found him.

  Not carefully.

  Not thoughtfully.

  It simply appeared, as though it had been waiting for permission.

  It stretched across his face without asking whether it should.

  It felt wrong at first.

  Too light.

  Too unguarded.

  But it stayed.

  And as it stayed, something in his chest opened.

  Like a flower that had mistaken the weight above it for the sky.

  He did not think of lilies.

  He felt like one.

  Not the kind placed in vases.

  The kind that pushes through soil without knowing what sunlight is.

  He ran harder.

  The wind struck him from the side, trying to tilt him off balance. It tangled through his hair, pressed against his ribs, filled his ears with rushing sound.

  He laughed.

  Not loudly.

  But helplessly.

  The bees circled the wildflowers along the lower slope. One brushed past his sleeve and disappeared again. The world moved around him without asking who he was.

  And for once—

  He did not need it to.

  The sun burned above, too bright to stare at. Sweat slid down his neck. His lungs protested.

  He kept going.

  His legs were no longer graceful. His breathing no longer steady.

  But he was moving.

  He was running because he wanted to see how far he could.

  That was new.

  Halfway up the mountain, he stumbled.

  His foot caught on a stone and he dropped to one knee, palms scraping against rough ground.

  For a second—

  Reid.

  The thought flickered.

  Reid would tell him to slow down.

  Reid would steady him.

  Reid would—

  Arttu pushed himself back up before the thought finished.

  He did not reject it.

  He did not resent it.

  It was simply there.

  Like a voice echoing from a room he had already left.

  He climbed.

  Higher.

  The air thinned slightly. The slope sharpened. His calves burned now — truly burned — but the pain felt earned.

  The smile returned wider than before.

  Not because he had realized something.

  But because he hadn’t.

  He did not know what this feeling meant.

  He did not name it.

  He did not examine it.

  He only felt it spilling through him, too large for his small body, too bright for explanation.

  When he reached the final stretch, he ran.

  Not carefully.

  Not strategically.

  Like a child racing the wind.

  And then—

  He reached the top.

  He stopped only because there was nowhere left to run upward.

  The world opened around him.

  Fields behind him.

  Sky above him.

  Horizon unbroken.

  His chest rose and fell violently. His legs trembled. His hands shook from effort.

  And he laughed again.

  This time freely.

  There was no one beside him.

  No one below him.

  No one watching.

  Only him.

  The wind moved through his clothes. The sun struck his face. The height made him slightly dizzy.

  For a fleeting second—

  He wondered if Reid would be worried.

  The thought did not chain him.

  It passed.

  He stepped closer to the edge and spread his arms slightly, not dramatically, just enough to feel the air press against him.

  He felt small.

  He felt enormous.

  He felt unfinished.

  That did not frighten him.

  He was free enough to stand alone on a mountain and smile without asking permission.

  Like a lily.

  Blooming.