Chapter Four

"Woah!" I said hurriedly, dropping the bucket I was carrying and leaping forward to catch the back of the boy's shirt before he could throw himself into the rose bushes. "Don't you see the thorns?"

The child spun, entreating me to an irritated expression and an angry set to his shoulders. He was barely half my age but certainly more than half my size.

I let go of him and grinned before putting my hands up, palms out, to show him I meant no harm. His attitude fizzled out into shame.

"I wasn't gunna damage them," he muttered sullenly.

"I was more worried about them damaging you ," I retorted, eyeing the long, wicked thorns on the plants and spotting a flash of pale brown nestled among the soil deep within the bushes. "Is that your ball?"

The boy nodded.

"It was a gift he daren't lose, se?or," came another voice behind me, and I glanced over my shoulder to find a girl a little older than he was standing with her hands on her hips. Seeing them together made me realise I recognised them as two of the palace kitchen servants, part of the group the king had brought with him when he relocated from the smaller palace of la Cortina in the north east.

The smart thing to do would be to go and get one of the long sticks we kept near the shed for exactly this purpose – that and dislodging kites from tree branches too high to reach. But the determination on these two children's faces suggested that they'd be scratching up their little hands and faces trying to recover the ball the moment I turned my back, and I wasn't about to let that happen.

Ah, I hadn't had any excitement since Mac had tried to tear my hair out by the roots a couple of hours ago, so I was overdue a little more risk of bodily evisceration before lunchtime.

"Wait here," I said, yanking my shirt over my head and letting it drop to the grass. The thin fabric would give me no protection from the thorns, and I didn't want it ruined.

I dropped to my stomach and crawled carefully into the shrubbery, keeping my head lowered and eyes mostly closed to protect them. My fingertips impatiently brushed the surface of the inflated bladder but I couldn't properly grab the ball from this position. So I wriggled deeper, moving with the lines of the stalks instead of against them, and keeping my movements slow.

Plants can sense your intentions just like animals can , Zovisasha liked to tell us junior gardeners in that northern accent of hers, and while I wasn't sure I entirely believed that, I did know that rushing got you nowhere with flora. Flowers, weeds, grasses and trees alike all responded best to thoughtful tenderness: careful pruning, precise watering, and in this case, a gentle ushering to the side so I could sneak my arm between the threatening thorns and flick the ball out from its dank resting place.

Two excited shrieks told me I'd batted it clear of the bushes, and although my instincts encouraged wrenching myself free, I ignored loud, excitable Wyatt for the version of me that would escape unscathed. It took an age to crawl backwards, but when my palms transitioned from cool dirt to soft grass, I allowed myself to raise my head, not surprised to find I was alone. The two children were long gone.

I reached for my shirt, and paused.

Not entirely alone.

A tabby cat was curled up in the discarded fabric, paws tucked away and tail wrapped around its body. Perhaps sensing I'd been attempting to steal its impromptu bed, one eye opened to a warning slit.

I held up my hands in surrender for the second time in five minutes. "Hey, if you're comfortable there..."

The cat yawned in contented satisfaction, tucking its head back in and settling down for a snooze.

I shrugged. Many of the male gardeners went shirtless while working, and even if it did mean I was down to only one shirt that I'd have preferred to keep clean for Sunday mass, so what? That little creature deserved somewhere warm and soft to nestle up, starved and abandoned as it was...okay, it was extremely well-fed from the look of its clean fur and copious fat rolls, but all the same.

That same watchful eye opened again.

"I'm going!" I promised, and received a half-hearted swipe at my boot with its paw as I stepped past.

The cat turned to watch me go, the colour of its eye drawing me in. Deep amber; a dark orange glow that held a quiet vigilance. Exactly like those of a certain someone – human-shaped, this time – who tended to occupy my thoughts ever so often these days. He had a powerfully muscular body, a calm serenity, and a presence so reassuring that everything felt right in his company, even from the very first time we'd met.

I'd been at work. Pruning the hedge maze only a few feet away from me now, in fact, and so busy apologising to the perfectly healthy evergreen that I'd been ordered to cut just because some royal or noble thought it would look sophisticated – despite nature holding sophistication over humans to a degree our minds couldn't even fathom – that I'd almost tripped over the giant of a man sitting cross-legged on the ground inside the maze with his naked sword laid across his lap, his head bowed to his chest.

"Sorry, sir," I said, recognising his guard uniform. "I...wouldn't you prefer to sit on the bench?" I gestured to the seat a few feet away and then let my arm fall back to my side when he didn't even lift his head.

"No," the man said softly, and that single syllable held so much pain, so much anguish , that it cracked my heart open.

I'd dropped the pruning shears and was seated on the ground next to him before I could think, holding out a tentative hand to pat his shoulder.

The guard immediately tensed and I jerked away.

"Sorry," I muttered again, trying to scramble back to my feet and leave the poor soul alone like he clearly wanted, Wyatt , but froze in place when he finally raised his head and his eyes locked onto mine.

Amber. Practically jewels with the way they shone with an inner light: the colour of fire and treasure and the heart of molten steel.

"It's fine," he whispered. "I just...it's fine. Don't go."

I eased back down onto the gravelly soil we were sitting on, but didn't try to touch him again. "I'm Wyatt."

"Jiron."

It sounded soft and hard all at once. Here-on. The name suited him.

"You're one of the king's own guards?" I asked, having noticed the three gold bands on his collar. One denoted general palace security, two were for the guards of any princes or princesses – not that we had any of those left, Dios save their immortal souls – but three stripes represented the highest honour. The personal retinue of King Renato Aratorre and his consort.

"I am," the man said, and although he didn't sound as lost as earlier, the words still held enough emotion to steal my breath. Pride, so much pride, but there was also something of great sadness in them, too.

"Then you must be good with that thing," I ventured, nodding at the sword balanced across his folded legs. And it was only upon realising how massive the blade was that it dawned on me how Blessed huge Jiron himself was, each of his hands the size of my whole head and his muscular thighs thicker than my waist. I hurriedly averted my eyes, feeling heat flush run down my neck.

"Not good enough," he said bitterly, discarding the sword to the opposite side of where I sat, although he still handled it carefully despite his evident anger. "I should have been better."

"What happened?" I asked, my voice low. I sensed it was all related: this surprising fury, the reason he was sitting all alone in the middle of the garden maze, why he'd flinched from my touch.

Jiron glanced at me sharply, his brows furrowed, but his face began to soften as he searched my own. "You're not...are you telling me the gossip hasn't yet made its way to the gardens?"

I shrugged, leaning back on my hands. "The elms aren't a particularly talkative bunch, and the carnations prefer to brag about themselves, you know?"

He laughed, startling me with both the unexpected sound and the genuine humour in it, and I longed to hear it again as soon as the air fell silent once more.

And then he sobered. "I do not know how to speak it," he whispered. "I fear I cannot."

"You could tell it backwards," I suggested, rewarded by a chuckle this time. My heart and body both warmed, pleased I'd been able to draw such responses from him.

"Backwards, little one? How would that work?"

"Well," I coaxed. "At the end of the story, you're..."

"Here," said Jiron, catching on. "With you."

"An excellent place to start." I paused and then dared myself to continue, unable to believe I was being this forward with a man I'd just met. "And finish."

The guard immediately looked away and I silently cursed myself.

"I do not have to burden you with my tale."

"That's not...really not what I meant," I said hurriedly. "Please continue. ?Por favor? "

"I was captured," Jiron began. "It was not a...pleasant experience."

I swallowed. He didn't elaborate, which I was thankful for, but my imagination still ran wild with the horrors of what he must have endured. And I was well aware that I'd lived a relatively sheltered life: not well off, but hardly in the depths of poverty that others were, born to a good family with a father who respected my mother and had only taken his belt to me when I'd seriously fucked up. To be subjected to the deliberate cruelty of another...

"Time did not hold meaning under their hands, but I'm told it was a few weeks." Jiron's thumb brushed against mine as he copied my pose, but he did not seem to react at the contact, staring up at the sky instead. I bit my tongue to hold in the gasp that wanted to escape, because the warmth of his skin was a sharp yet welcome shock to my system.

"Before that...well. My failure, I suppose." Jiron's chin lowered and he gave me a rueful look. "A group of rebels were hunting His Majesty. I was neither fast nor strong enough to kill them all like they deserved."

I frowned. If the king had been captured, I was sure that gossip would have reached even my ears.

"But he got away," I said, becoming surer of that fact when Jiron did not correct me. "You protected him."

"I kept him – and his husband – from the rebels," he admitted. "But left them both exposed to a whole host of other dangers when I fell to the enemy's greater numbers."

"Doesn't sound like failure to me. You're one man, Jiron. Even as..."

Deliciously fit...perfectly muscular...

"…well-trained as you undoubtedly are, no one can take on half a dozen men on their own and win."

His mouth curled into the slightest of smiles at that, but he said nothing.

"Oh-hoh!" I cried excitedly, squirming around in the dirt to face him. "It was more than half a dozen, right?"

Jiron stared back silently, attempting to be impassive and professional, but I saw right through him.

"Ten?" I guessed, shaking my head as soon as I said it when his expression didn't change. "No. Twelve? Fifteen?" His cheek twitched. "Dios, you took down fifteen men ?"

"Fourteen, little one," he said, shaking his head at me. The smile had widened now, clearly begrudgingly but quickly consuming his entire face. He was fucking gorgeous.

"Fourteen," I breathed in awe. "By the Blessed Five, you must have been unstoppable."

"Not to the fifteenth," Jiron said dryly. I snickered, even though my insides ran cold at the image that conjured itself in my head: the brave guard on his knees, blades at his neck, exhausted and yet still so fierce. His enemy crowing their victory even as they stood among over a dozen of their own dead.

"Further," I encouraged as Jiron's face bled of all amusement and began to mirror the same horror. "Further back. What was before that?"

"Finding my king...or prince, as he was then. Serving him. Watching over him. Originally being appointed with the honour and responsibility of his protection."

I smiled, nudging my shoulder with his. "Tell me more about those times," I said, sensing they were happier memories for him. When he didn't shift away from my touch, I let my shoulder stay there, pressed to his in silent comfort as he spoke.

Jiron had talked for hours about childish pranks and terrifying foes. Perilous journeys and dull political events. Princes and princesses and nobles and courtiers and a whirlwind of different adventures. And when we'd said goodbye to each other that evening and all I could think about was that steady, even voice, the gentle way he moved, the way he looked like he wanted to reach for my hand but never did…I'd known then that my heart was entwined with his.

*