Page 31 of Demon Daddy's Hidden Daughter
I should go back to my room. Should respect her obvious need for solitude and leave her to whatever peace she's found in the night air. But something about her posture—the careful way she holds herself, as if she's afraid of taking up too much space even in an empty garden—makes that impossible.
The tea cup feels warm and solid in my hands as I step outside, my bare feet finding the familiar path through muscle memory. She doesn't look up when I approach, doesn't seem surprised by my presence, but I see the subtle tension that runs through her shoulders when she realizes she's no longer alone.
"Couldn't sleep either?" I ask quietly, settling onto the bench beside her but leaving careful distance between us.
Her laugh holds no humor. "Sleep and I have a complicated relationship."
The admission hangs between us like a bridge I'm not sure she wants me to cross. But something about the darkness, the way midnight makes confidences feel safer, encourages me to wait rather than fill the silence with meaningless words.
Minutes pass. The night air carries the distant sound of zarryn moving in Tovren's stables, the whisper of wind through the flowering hedges. Lenny's breathing is steady but too controlled, like someone consciously managing each inhale and exhale.
Finally, she speaks without looking at me.
"Sometimes I still dream about chains."
The words hit like a physical blow, stealing the breath from my lungs. She says it so quietly, so matter-of-factly, that for a moment I wonder if I imagined it. But the rigid line of her spine, the way her knuckles have gone white where they grip her knees, tells me this confession costs her everything.
I set my tea cup aside, afraid I might crush the delicate porcelain in my suddenly clenched fists. The rage that sweeps through me is different from what I felt about Thalor—deeper,more personal, tinged with a protectiveness so fierce it threatens to consume rational thought.
"The sound of metal scraping stone," she continues, her voice distant and hollow. "That's what wakes me most nights. I know I'm here, know I'm safe, but my body doesn't believe it yet."
She finally turns to look at me, and the moonlight reveals eyes that hold too much knowledge, too much pain for someone barely older than my youngest cadets. There's something raw and unguarded in her expression, as if the darkness has stripped away the careful barriers she maintains during daylight hours.
"I don't like closed doors much. Or being inside when I can't see all the ways out." The admission seems to surprise her, like she hadn't meant to voice it aloud. "Some nights I come out here and sit for a while, just to prove to myself that I can leave if I need to."
The pieces click into place with sickening clarity. Why she tenses when doors close behind her. Why she moves through the house like someone expecting to need escape routes. Why she's not an early riser—because she's probably just fell asleep.
My hands shake with the effort of keeping them still, of not reaching for her when everything in me screams to offer comfort. But I understand enough about trauma to know that unwelcome touch, however well-intentioned, can feel like another violation.
"I hide it from Ava," she says, and there's fierce determination in her voice now. "She's been through enough uncertainty. She deserves to feel safe, to have a childhood that isn't colored by my nightmares."
"You both deserve safety," I tell her, my voice rougher than intended. "And childhood, and peace, and every good thing this world has to offer."
She looks at me like I've spoken in a foreign language, confusion and disbelief warring in her expression. It breakssomething in my chest to realize that kindness is so foreign to her experience that simple compassion feels incomprehensible.
The silence stretches again, but it feels different now—heavy with unspoken truths and possibilities neither of us dares name. I want to ask who hurt her, want to hunt down every person who made her believe she deserved chains and darkness. I want to burn down the world that taught her to apologize for existing, that made her think needing help was weakness.
But instead, I slide from the bench to kneel beside her on the stone path, bringing us to eye level. The position puts me below her rather than above—a choice I make deliberately, instinctively understanding that she needs to maintain whatever small advantage makes her feel safer.
"If you need anything," I tell her, holding her amber gaze with steady intensity, "anything at all—day or night, reasonable or impossible—you tell me. And I'll make it happen."
Her eyes widen, and I see the exact moment she tries to retreat behind familiar walls of self-reliance. But the walls are thinner now, weakened by confession and moonlight and the simple fact that she's allowed herself to be vulnerable in my presence.
"You've already given me more than I thought I'd ever get," she says quietly, and the admission nearly undoes me entirely.
Because looking at her now—hair silver in the moonlight, eyes luminous with unshed tears, courage and fragility existing in perfect balance—I realize with painful, complete certainty that I want her in every sense of the word. Want her laughter and her fears, her strength and her scars, her past and whatever future she'll allow me to share.
I want to learn every expression that crosses her face, want to be the reason she smiles instead of just the witness to it. Want to wake up with her hair spilled across my pillow and fall asleepto the sound of her breathing. Want to give her everything she's been denied and protect everything she holds dear.
But kneeling here in my garden with moonlight painting her skin like starlight, I also understand with crushing clarity that she doesn't need another person trying to claim her. Doesn't deserve for me to cross lines she hasn't invited me to cross, to complicate her hard-won peace with desires she might not share.
She needs a friend. Someone who can offer safety without expectation, protection without possession. Someone who can prove that not all men want to take more than they're given.
So I remain kneeling on the cool stone, close enough to offer comfort but distant enough to preserve choice, and let myself love her in the only way she's ready to accept—without condition, without pressure, without promise of anything beyond what she's willing to offer in return.
15
LENNY
