Chapter IV : Between Swords and Silence

Rebecca's POV  

Rhys looked freshly scrubbed from the barracks, his blond hair damp, eyes bright and sharp in the morning light. His armor gleamed beneath a navy clove, and his expression... 

His expression shattered something in my chest.  

“Becca,” Rhys said, voice soft. “Are you all right?”  

I nodded, but it came out like a wobble. "Yes. I'm fine." 

Last night had left me raw, watching him linger for a moment and then vanish like I didn’t exist. And now he was here, right in front of me, and I had no idea what to say. 

Rhys shot a look past me to Gideon, who remained by the hearth, calm as a glacier.  

“I came to see her,” he said. Not a question. A challenge.  

“She’s here,” Gideon replied evenly. “You’ve seen her.”  

Rhys took a step forward, his jaw tight. "Commander, with respect, I'd like to speak to her. Alone." 

The 'with respect' sounded like it cost him something. 

Gideon’s eyes narrowed. “That’s not how things work anymore.”  

“Funny,” Rhys said, and some of the formality cracked. His voice went colder, sharper. “She didn’t seem like your fiancée twenty-five hours ago.” 

The air crackled. I shot out of my seat. “Okay! Okay! No need for sword-measuring at breakfast.”  

Rhys blinked, then laughed, but it didn't reach his eyes. "Right. Sorry." He softened a little when he looked at me, and gods, there it was. That warmth I'd been chasing for years. "I just... I wanted to check on you. I heard what happened. The rumors are everywhere. I didn't believe them." 

I opened my mouth. Closed it. Then said, “Most of it’s true.”  

Rhys frowned. “So you really made a love potion?”  

He didn't ask who it was for. But his eyes flicked to Gideon again, and something in his expression twisted. 

He thinks it was for Gideon. He thinks I wanted this. 

"I didn't mean to..." I paused, scrambling for words that wouldn't make this worse. "I mean, I meant to, but not for... It was... it's complicated." 

"Then tell me," Rhys said, and his voice cracked just slightly. "Tell me everything." 

Before I could answer, Gideon stepped forward. “You’ve asked your question.”  

Rhys turned on him, and I saw his hands curl into fists at his sides. "Commander, she's not a prisoner." 

"She is under my protection," Gideon said, voice ice cold. "And under palace law, that gives me full authority to decide who is allowed near her." 

Oh. 

Oh no. 

Rhys's jaw worked. "I've known her since we were children." 

"And yet," Gideon said, each word deliberate and cutting, "you only seem to notice her once it's convenient." 

Rhys looked like he'd been slapped. His face went pale, then flushed. "That’s not how it is, Commander." 

“Neither is returning now and pretending you were ever paying attention,” Gideon said. His tone was calm, almost clinical, which somehow made it worse. 

Rhys's composure cracked further. "I didn't abandon her. You know I was at war." 

"So was I." Gideon's gaze didn't waver. "But I wasn't blind." 

Rhys frowned, confusion breaking through the anger. "What's that supposed to mean?" 

I wanted to know too. My heart was racing, caught between them, trying to parse what Gideon was saying. 

Gideon’s gaze didn’t waver. “Nothing you’d understand.”  

Rhys stepped forward. “Look, I don’t know what you think you know...”  

“You don’t,” Gideon said, calm as ever. “That’s the point.”  

Rhys blinked, thrown off. “What?”  

I blinked between them, half expecting swords to get drawn. Or gloves thrown. Or whatever men like them did when their voices got too calm to be casual.  

Gideon didn’t elaborate. Just looked at him like he was already dismissed.  

Something in Rhys’s jaw shifted, like he wanted to push harder, to argue, but he didn’t know where to start. 

Because he hadn’t known. I’d spent years folding my feelings into small, safe corners of my chest, and he never once looked close enough to see them. 

I stood frozen between them, heart racing.  

“I think,” I said, voice cracking slightly, “that’s enough visiting for one morning." 

Rhys's face crumpled. Just for a second. Then he smoothed it over with the practiced ease of a knight who'd learned to hide his pain. 

"Becca," he tried one more time. 

"I'll be okay," I said quickly. Too quickly. "I promise." 

I didn't know if I was lying or not. 

Rhys lingered in the doorway, looking at me like he was trying to memorize my face. "If you need anything... anything at all..." 

"She won't," Gideon said, stepping forward again. 

The door shut firmly behind him, and the silence that followed felt like drowning. 

I stood there, hands shaking, trying to process what had just happened. “You didn’t have to bite his head off, you know.”  

“I didn’t,” Gideon said, sitting back down. “I was being generous.”  

I raised an eyebrow. “That was generous?”  

Gideon didn’t answer. Instead, he handed me a folded note.  

“What’s this?” I asked.  

“A list of royal tailors,” Gideon said. “They’ll come to you. You’ll need gowns for the engagement ceremonies.”  

“I don’t need anything fancy,” I muttered.  

“You’re marrying the Knight Commander,” Gideon said. “You do.”  

I stared at him. At the man who just verbally gutted Rhys with no raised voice, no emotion, and now was planning my wardrobe like it was a military mission.   

“Gideon?” I asked cautiously.  

Gideon looked at me.  

“About last night, about knowing me,” I pressed. “You said you have known me longer than I realize.” 

Gideon was quiet for a long moment. Then he stood again, walking to the window. “I remember everything I need to, Rebecca. More than you think. I don’t say things I don’t mean.” 

A small, sharp silence opened between us. 

The memory came up then, slow and aching. 

I’d been twelve. Clinging to my mother’s robes as we walked the marble halls of the palace, the air sharp with the scent of steel and stone and power. My heart had pounded with every step past those guards in polished armor.  

And then I saw him.  

Newly knighted, seventeen, his sword still too big for his frame. But he stood like he was carved from something ancient, eyes already too sharp, too quiet.  

Not yet the Commander. Not yet feared. Just a boy trying not to look like he was still grieving.  

He’d nodded at my mother. She nodded back, without breaking stride. Later that evening, I asked who he was.  

“Gideon Malik,” My mother said, grinding dried bellroot into a vial. “Of Blackthorn Hall.” She didn’t look up when she said it, but I remember the way her hands slowed for just a second.  

“Born into gold, but no mother to hold him. She died when he was born. And then his father was gone the day he was knighted. Poor boy. That kind of loss... it hollows you out if you are not careful.” 

My mother said Gideon was respectful. Always addressed her as ‘Mistress Rosewyn.’ Never once tried to flatter. Never once overstepped. 

“But he’s lonely,” She’d murmured once, almost to herself. “Lonely in a way you can’t fix with kindness.”  

I remembered thinking Gideon looked like a statue that had lost its sculptor. Beautiful, but unfinished.  

It was three months before my mother died. After that, everything blurred. I had always assumed he had forgotten me, if he had ever seen me at all. 

And now… he was going to be my husband.  

The thought didn’t feel real, not in a way I could hold. It hovered just outside reach, too strange.  

I looked down at the folded list in my hand. Tailors, gowns, engagement ceremonies. Everything sounded too fancy, too formal, too real. I wasn’t made for gold-stitched silk or courtyards full of staring eyes. I made tea that cured heartbreak. I burned scones. I had a squeaky shop door and a chipped teacup collection.  

I wasn’t supposed to be here. But I was.  

And somehow, so was Gideon. He watched me with that unreadable expression, as though he had already figured out how this would all end and was still doing it anyway. 

“Do you regret it?” I asked quietly. 

Gideon didn’t turn. “Regret what?”  

“This,” I said. “Saving me. Binding yourself to all of this. To me.” 

His shoulders lifted in a slight breath. “No.”  

The word was simple, but it settled somewhere deep in my chest. 

Gideon turned then and finally looked at me, his expression steady and certain, like this was a decision he had made long ago and never once reconsidered. 

“Rebecca,” he said quietly, “if I did not want this, I would not be here.” 

I searched his face, trying to find doubt, obligation, anything that might explain it. But there was nothing except resolve. 

It was not just duty holding him here. 

It was a choice. 

I lowered my gaze, suddenly aware of how tightly I was holding the paper. Carefully, I tucked it into the folds of my dress and straightened. 

“Then,” I said softly, “I suppose I should try to look like I belong.” 

Gideon’s gaze dropped to the list in my hands. “They’ll be here by afternoon.”  

I nodded. Tried to ignore the flurry of nerves that came with the idea of people poking and measuring and dressing me up like a doll. 

I moved toward the table to pour another cup of tea, but my foot caught on the hem of my dress. 

I pitched forward with an undignified yelp, and before I could hit the floor, two strong arms caught me by the waist and steadied me.  

I froze.  

Gideon had moved across the room like a ghost. One hand still at my waist. The other cupping my elbow. 

His voice dropped, rougher than before. “Easy.” 

I stared at him. At the sudden closeness. The heat of him, the scent of cedar and steel. His eyes held mine. For a moment, neither of us moved. 

Then he let go. 

I stood there blinking, pulse still racing like I’d just danced with a thunderstorm. “Right. Sorry. I’m a walking hazard.”  

Gideon’s lips twitched. Just barely. “I noticed.”  

I scoffed, rolling my eyes and pouring the tea with great caution this time. “And you still want to marry me. Curious.” 

Gideon said nothing.  

But his silence didn’t feel empty.  

The tailors arrived mid-afternoon. There were three of them, all pale and pinched-looking, with dozens of swatches and bolts of fabric in their arms. They bowed to Gideon like he was a god and then turned their beady eyes on me.  

"She’s smaller than I expected," One whispered to the other in a tone that made me want to vanish.  

Gideon was gone by then, off to the training yard or a war council or wherever terrifying men went when they weren’t saving potion-makers from execution. I almost wished he’d stayed. 

By the time they finished measuring and tutting and pinning samples to my body, I felt like I’d been skinned and sewn back together. They left behind sketches and schedules and a warning not to eat too much bread before the next fitting.  

Charming.  

I collapsed on the bed when they finally left, staring up at the carved beams overhead.  

Everything was spinning too fast. I hadn’t even had a chance to process Maddie’s exile from my life, or the look on Rhys’s face when he left, or the fact that I now lived in Gideon Malik’s quarters. Like… lived here.  

My body ached. My heart felt raw.  

So when the door creaked open and Gideon stepped in again, dusty and windblown, I didn’t even sit up. I just groaned into the pillow. “If you brought another tailor, I swear I will jump out the window.” 

There was a pause, and then he said simply, “Just me.” 

I rolled over and sat up. “Where have you been?” 

“Drills. Reports. Arguments.” 

“That sounds miserable,” I said, studying his face. “You really need a hobby.” 

His mouth shifted slightly, not quite a smile yet. “I had one.” 

“Oh?” I tilted my head. “What happened to it?” 

He met my eyes. “She accidentally gave me a love potion.” 

For a second, I just stared at him, unsure if I had heard him right. Then the meaning settled in, and a laugh slipped out of me before I could stop it. “That’s the worst pickup line I’ve ever heard.” 

Something changed in his expression. The corner of his mouth lifted, slow and quiet, like the reaction surprised even him. 

It was the first time I had seen him smile without restraint. It softened him, made him look less like the Knight Commander and more like the boy he once was. 

I looked away before I got stuck in it. “So. What now? Do we just… wait until the Queen parades me through the next banquet in a shiny dress like her new trophy?”  

“Not a trophy,” Gideon said. “A shield.”  

I turned to him, frowning. “A shield?”  

“The nobles think you’re a threat. The Queen sees you as leverage. If I can keep you close, I can keep you safe. That’s all this is.”  

But his tone shifted on that last line. Like it wasn’t only that. 

I crossed my arms. “You didn’t have to tie your future to mine just to keep me safe.” 

“I didn’t want a temporary solution.” 

I blinked. “So instead you picked permanent prison?”  

Gideon stepped closer. His expression stayed the same, but his voice grew quieter. 

“You’re not something I’m trapped with.” 

The words caught me off guard. 

Gideon stood so close that I could feel the heat radiating off his armor. 

"I'm not asking you to love me, Rebecca," he said. "I know why we’re doing this. I haven't forgotten how it started. But I’m not going to lie to you about it, either." 

I looked up at him, my heart hammering against my ribs. "What are you saying?" 

"I'm saying that this marriage started as a way to keep you safe," Gideon said. He didn't look away. "But I wouldn't have done it if I didn't want more than that." 

I forgot to breathe. The room felt smaller all of a sudden. "Gideon..." 

He reached out, his thumb catching the edge of my cheek for just a second. It was a brief touch, almost like he was testing the air, but my skin burned where he’d grazed it. 

He pulled his hand back quickly, his jaw tightening as if he was forcing himself to stay composed. 

"Get some sleep," he said, already stepping toward the door. "If you need anything, tell me." 

"I will," I said. My voice sounded thin and shaky. 

Gideon gave a short nod and walked out.

I still didn’t really understand him or why he was doing any of this. 

But one thing was clear. Gideon hadn't stepped in just for the sake of palace politics. He was the only person in this entire place who actually had my back. If he was willing to stand by me, then I had to figure out how to stand by him, too.