Page 59 of Decoy

The secrets were on the tip of my tongue, aching to escape. But regardless of the relationship we’d forged, the man was still an assassin with a mission targeting the Estorian heir to the throne; until I knew his motive, I needed to keep my identity as a decoy a secret.

“I need to give the advisor more information to progress the investigation beyond the shallow ones we teased about earlier.”

His lips twitched. “Specifically about me. Is it Their Majesties seeking this, or your own curiosity?” He wriggled his eyebrows.

My cheeks heated, my reluctant admission there was some truth to his merciless teasing. “I will gladly claim such a reason if it motivates you to cooperate.”

“I might be persuaded if we make it another game, one I’ll do my best not to end prematurely due to a kiss, as tempting as the idea sounds.”

I was intrigued by any game where his secrets might be the prize, but though many mysteries still surrounded him, my curiosity became captured by an unexpected one in particular. “Are you truly the best big brother in the world?”

The faint light illuminated his adorable blush, but even his embarrassment couldn’t mask the pleasure he took in the title.

“It appears your efforts to snoop through my bedroom weren’t entirely unproductive. For all my admirers, my darling sister is definitely my biggest fan.” His expression gentled, a reverence tainted with a hint of sadness. “I want nothing more than to be a brother she can admire, who bestows light rather than the darkness and carnage from my tainted profession I make every effort to keep a secret from her. I cling to her sentiments that I’m a good brother, when in reality it couldn’t be further from the truth. For as close as we are, she doesn’t truly know me—my rigorous training as an assassin, the doomed future awaiting me, and especially my fears. Our entire relationship is built on a lie, and the moment she realizes the truth, I’ll lose her forever.”

“Your relationship could never be broken so easily. The person I consider a brother from my time growing up at the monastery”—my voice faltered on the lies I’d woven around our connection—”made many mistakes, but none changed the love he bestowed on me or distorted the memories we shared; his care is far more important to me than his flaws. Now that he’s gone, I wish he’d shared more of himself with me. Now I can only live with the regret that I never knew the shadows that filled his heart because he deliberately kept them from me.”

Luke lifted his gaze from his hands twisting in his lap. “What happened to him?”

Emotion clogged my throat. “He died.” I still couldn’t accept the horrible truth even after all of these years. Perhaps that was the true reason I’d dedicated my life to revenge—not just to keep him close, but in hopes of better understanding him, for he’d left nothing else behind for me to learn of the reasons he’d been hurting.

“I cannot imagine the pain of losing a beloved sibling.”

I searched the emotion filling his eyes that went deeper than his aversion to blood and killing. This was his true fear: not of murder, but of losing his beloved sister’s affection. “Love isn’t conditional. I have no doubt she’d be proud of how hard you’re trying to be a person worthy of her.”

“I doubt I can cling to my false sense of honor forever. She makes it so easy when I’m with her—she’s a ray of sunshine that dispels every shadow—but the moment I leave, they only return.”

I understood all too well. My own experiences had distorted what had once been cherished memories, joy now tainted with the knowledge that I’d lost everything—the privilege I’d enjoyed throughout my childhood gave me something to miss after it’d been stolen, the memory of my parents had become distorted by their fate that had led them to the executioner’s block under false accusations of treason, my time with my brother was now darkened with the tragedy that had led him to perish at the end of a noose, a death our lost noble status had forced him to endure as a common criminal.

Luke gently wiped away the tear that had escaped to trickle down my cheek. “Whatever you’re carrying, you need not bear it alone.”

“No one else but me can carry it—it’s my duty to pursue the goal my brother left for me, for his sake.”

“Even though it’s a burden?”

How could he instinctively know my deepest secret I’d never admitted even to myself? Doing so felt like a betrayal to Zeke’s dying wish, something the love that had survived the distance brought by death couldn’t bear. It was as if Luke was connected to the shadows filling my thoughts, allowing him to see every hidden corner of my heart.

I sighed. “Its weight doesn’t matter, it must be borne regardless.”

“I would never wish any burden on my precious sister for anything in the world, especially my own. Whatever you carry, I doubt your brother would want you to bear it if there was any other course; instead he’d want you to be happy, as I want for Laila.”

Zeke wouldn’t want me to bear his burden?The thought went against everything that had made me who I was, but discarding this identity would cause me to lose my last connection to my brother.

“But if I let it go…there’d be no purpose, not only to the life he lived but that it was cut so tragically short.”

Luke’s touch cradled my cheek. “I don’t claim to know your brother or his motivations, but have you ever considered that his true purpose wasn’t whatever mantle you took upon yourself at his death, butyou?”

I yearned to believe him, even as I couldn’t quite let go of my desperation for Zeke’s sacrifice not to have been in vain. Yet I’d never considered that by giving meaning to the price he’d paid, I was sacrificing the life he’d worked so hard to protect, for he’d constantly assured me that all he did was for my sake. If not for the miracle that had plucked me from the dungeon, I’d have joined him at the gallows and his efforts would have been for naught.

It wasn’t until this moment that I realized just how tightly my life had become wound with my brother’s. Ever since our parents’ execution, he’d been consumed with the thought of revenge, a path which had eventually led to him to use the skills he’d spent years acquiring to infiltrate the palace to take back the magical heirloom that had been confiscated along with our estate…and like me he’d been caught, but no miracle had spared him the noose.

Losing him had nearly destroyed me. I’d only created a new life from the ashes through adopting his desire for revenge as my own. Though the crushing burden had led me directly into the danger Zeke had striven to keep me from, looking back, I couldn’t consider this path of revenge to be entirely meaningless.

It’d led Zeke to train me in the skills he thought I might need to survive—abilities in stealth and knives that had helped me follow in his footsteps after his efforts had eventually led to his death. And though my own path had also ended in failure, it’d also led me to Luke, something I could never regret, no matter the cost.

These feelings only increased my desire to deepen our relationship. This trust in him didn’t make sense, even as nothing had ever felt more right. I could feel myself drawing closer to him, a sensation I never wanted to cease exploring. This feeling compelled me to converse with him even as the hour grew ever later, talking until the eastern sky began to grow light.

Little by little we gradually opened up to one another, uncovering the layers that had previously protected our backgrounds as our conversation eventually drifted to stories from our past. I prepared to speak of the fake background created for the masquerade of my time hiding as the true princess…only to hesitate, torn between playing along with the charade and forging a genuine connection with this man growing ever more dear.

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