✧ Chapter Fourteen ✧
Folded Between the Pages
from Have You Someone to Protect?
by ©Amer
The garden was a cathedral of shadows and jasmine. Moonlight spilled through the trellis in fractured ribbons, painting silver across the worn cobblestones. Lhady inhaled deeply—the night air crisp, cool, and mercifully quiet. Laughter drifted from the ballroom behind her, softened by distance and roses.
She sat on the stone bench near the fountain, fingertips grazing its edge as water trickled in time with her pulse. Her shawl had slipped down one shoulder, unnoticed.
This garden... it had once been theirs.
A sanctuary of laughter and secrets—where she, Alen, and Silas spun childhoods into legend beneath the trees.
The bench, the ivy-covered walls, even the chipped marble lion's head that dribbled water into the pool—
All of it still remembered.
She hadn't let herself think of him here in years.
Silas.
His name moved through her like a breath too sharp to hold.
She had once believed him dead. Mourned him with the fury of a girl betrayed not by death, but by the silence of goodbye.
And when the truth came—alive, stationed in the North, decorated and distant—
It hadn't been relief she felt.
It had been the quiet, devastating unraveling of something tender.
A branch snapped. Deliberate.
She didn't startle. She simply rose.
"It's you," she said quietly. "You never did learn to step lightly."
Silas emerged between columns of ivy, moonlight catching on the silver trim of his formal coat. His mask stayed on—shadowing all but his lips. But there was something different about him. Something heavier.
He moved like a man carrying years in his chest.
He paused. His breath hitched when he saw her.
And then, slowly, with trembling fingers, Silas lifted his hand.
The mask came off.
He peeled it away like a confession, like a wound laid bare.
It dropped to the stones with the faintest sound—an echo, a letting go.
For a heartbeat, Lhady said nothing. She studied the man before her—the lines time had carved into him, the quiet fatigue behind his eyes, the weight of unspoken things.
And yet...
That rawness remained.
The part of him that had always, somehow, belonged to her.
Her throat tightened.
A memory rose like scent from a page—him laughing in this garden, sunlight caught in his lashes, the jasmine between them thick and sweet.
She had promised herself she would never let him see her break.
Not again.
His eyes found hers—unguarded now. He was no longer hiding.
"You still remember," he said, voice low and gravelled by time. Its edges were cut from wind and regret.
She turned away slightly, arms crossing—not in defiance, but to stay upright.
"Only what mattered."
Silas took one step closer. "Then you must remember I never would've left unless—"
"Unless what?" she interrupted, her voice a taut wire.
"You thought I would hold you back? That I wouldn't understand?"
His mouth parted, closed.
A breath escaped him, fractured.
"I thought I'd endanger you," he said.
"Someone once told me… long ago… that if I stayed close to you, you'd suffer for it."
His gaze drifted past her, toward something distant and aching.
"I didn't understand it then. But when the cracks came—when people I trusted began to fall—I believed it had to be true."
He met her eyes again.
"I left because I thought it was the only way to keep you safe."
"So you left."
"I ran," he admitted. "I said I'd taken the military scholarship. I boarded the train alone. I asked the conductor not to announce me. I gave my coat to a freezing child…"
Lhady's voice broke in. "The coat they found. On the train that exploded."
He nodded—his jaw clenched with guilt. "I didn't know. Not until much later. By then, I was stationed in the North. No letters. No contact. I thought…"
"That we'd move on?" she whispered. "I mourned you, Silas. I buried you in my heart. I forgave you for dying—not for leaving."
His breath caught. "I hated myself for that. For letting you believe it. But if I'd told you—"
"I would've followed," she said.
"You knew I would've. You were afraid I'd make you question everything. That I wouldn't let you believe you were the one destined to ruin me."
Silence stretched between them.
Heavy. Honest.
"You wore that mask all night," she said, voice trembling. "Watching me. Why now?"
Silas stepped forward, the garden holding its breath.
"Because tonight was the last time I could lie to myself. The last time I could pretend you didn't still matter."
Lhady's lips quivered. Her voice came as barely a whisper.
"You think that's enough?"
"No," he said. "I don't think I deserve your forgiveness. I've hurt you in ways I can't undo. But I need you to know… every step I took, every rank they gave me, every medal they pinned—I wore it all with a chest that felt empty without you in it."
"You were always there, even when I didn't know I was carrying you with me."
The night hushed. Even the fountain seemed to pause.
Then—without warning—Lhady stepped forward and struck him.
Not hard. But hard enough.
"That," she breathed, eyes glassy, "was for every letter I wrote and never sent. For every morning I waited to wake up from the lie of your death."
He didn't move.
But tears spilled from Silas—quiet, unguarded. Not from pain. But from her voice. From her trembling shoulders.
And then—so softly it broke the night—Lhady lifted her hand again.
She touched the cheek she'd just struck, her fingers brushing lightly down the path of his tear.
"And this," she whispered, "is for the boy who once gave me a ring of wildflowers. In front of the whole town."
Her fingers lingered. Just long enough to wipe away his tears.
A mercy. A memory.
His breath hitched. But this time, it wasn't guilt.
It was grief. Hope. The ache of something remembered.
"I meant it," he said, voice fraying.
"I know," she replied. "I kept it, you know. Pressed in a book. Hidden like a memory too fragile to name."
She turned. Lifted her shawl to blot her own tears. Straightened.
"I have to go back inside," she said, barely looking back.
His hand reached out—not to stop her, just to ask her to stay a little longer.
She paused, then slipped free with a soft smile.
Sad. Final.
Lhady walked into the night, toward music and masks and a world still dancing.
Silas didn't follow.
He stood alone in the garden where their past still lived, where shadows held their laughter and moonlight whispered their names.
And behind her, Silas remained—motionless, eyes tracing the slow, steady path she took back toward the ballroom.
He watched until her violet shawl melted into the dark, until the laughter swallowed her.
As if something unsaid still lingered in the air.
Not in words.
But folded between the pages of time.
Waiting to be read again.