"I told her that men like him don't 'calm down.' That the court would keep making excuses so they could keep their heads and that her existence outside his control would be a wound that he would never let heal."
"What a romantic tosser..." Maeve observed dryly.
"I gave her two options. We make them all disappear in that house, cut all ties, and hope that them blending into a human village is enough, or we split the targets. She and the toddler go to ground in the house with a protection detail provided by the Enclave and Greyson comes with me. He would grow to become a problem that the king couldn't predict, he would be educated, trained and most importantly, he would be a moving target. If the king wanted to end their line by making them appear weak, then we'd deny him that opportunity."
Ann's eyes softened very slightly.
"And she chose the second."
"She did," Bartholomew said. "Not easily. She loved that boy like air itself. She argued that she could keep all three of them safe if we just gave her time, but she also knew Greyson inside and out. She knew that if we hid him with her and his brother in a cottage without an outlet for all that frustration and rage, he'd start hunting at twelve with nothing but that same rage and frustration to guide him."
"And you took him," Adam said.
"Yes. I took him as my apprentice," Bartholomew answered. "Put him in school under a false name. Put a sword in his hand, yes, but also books. Tactics, yes, but also ethics. Languages, gate protocols, you name it and I made sure he studied it .Out of all of his lessons, he resented the last one the most," HE chuckled softly as he reminisced, "Standing watch teaches patience, and patience is a muscle that hurts when you haven't used it, especially in a child as young as him."
Ann's mouth twitched in amusement at the thought of an impatient Greyson, rolling his eyes at the ever patience Bartholomew.
"How did he do?"
"He excelled," Bartholomew said simply although his eyes shone with pride. "Give him a wall and he finds the angle best to defend or attack from. Give him a map and he sees all of the routes that no one else even notices.When he was sparring in the training field, he learned to come out on top by the fourth beating because he hated wasting hours in the infirmary when he could be on the practice field. When it came to teamwork, he stopped trying to be the point of the spear that raced to attack first, and learned that he needed to to be the hand that guided it."
"That's why he's done so well in the special assignments," Adam observed, nodding his head.
"He still hated his father though, he held onto that like his life depended on it. As he got older he got better at hiding it though…and better at not lashing out at people."
Ann hummed thoughtfully impressed despite herself.
"And what about the political fallout? Surely none of this passed by unnoticed. The walls have always had ears in the Enclave."
"Oh the rumours started almost immediately," Bartholomew said, waving his hand dismissively, "There were whispers once people realized I'd petitioned to increase the protection allotment on a 'rural test site.' of no particular significance. There were questions when a boy with new scars and different eyes appeared in training rotations with no recorded lineage. Thankfully I was able to stall until I was able to produce papers but everything else I buried under the committee."
"It was really that easy?" Adam asked curiously but Bartholomew sighed heavily and shook his head.
"No…not by a long shot. Eventually, our spy at court sent another message. The Lycan King had renewed the assasination order for 'the traitor queen and her defectors.'" Bartholomew snorted, "He assumed the elder councils of the Enclave would hand them over if pressured hard enough."
"And did they try to pressure you?" Adam asked.
"They did," Bartholomew said. "A delegation came to remind me of our treaties with the Lycan crown. I reminded them of our treaties with our own conscience. Some of them didn't like that answer, but they lacked a majority to overrule the protections I had put in place once I argued that the queen's testimony about the breeder's execution could undermine the king if it ever saw daylight. They've always preferred a delicate balance of power where everyone involved is slightly unhappy, but still alive."
Ann blew out an impressed breath.
"So you made her into a witness you never intended to call."
"I made her into someone they couldn't afford to lose," Bartholomew said. "It kept her breathing."
"What about contact?" Ann pressed, "Between Greyson and his mother."
"Limited," Bartholomew said. "A letter twice a year at first, carried by hand. It was safer that way. Eventually though, he asked for more but his mother didn't want that. If anything she wanted less contact with him if you can believe it. Not because she didn't want to see him, but because every time we moved him and handled correspondence between them, we risked being discovered, so eventually…we stopped it..."
"And his brother?" Ann asked quietly.
"He grew," Bartholomew said, and his expression eased. "Healthy. Bright. A little wild when he's free in the woods behind the house. He has his mother's patience. He learned to spot our guards when they thought they were invisible. It made him happy, and for a time he thought that the bakery was magic because fresh rolls appeared whenever he left drawings on their back step. The baker had a soft spot for him."
Ann's eyes flickered to the side to gauge Adam's reaction, but it was obvious that he was feeling the same things that she was.
"And the king?" Adam asked, bringing them back to the threat that hung over them now.
"He never stopped looking," Bartholomew said. "But he lost interest in the town after a year when nothing surfaced. His hunters began to assume she had died in the wild. That suited us and we didn't correct the rumours when they reached Greyson's ears." He said softly, "IT was safer that way…for everyone."
Ann could feel the unfairness of it all wash over her and her heart stung with pity for the little boy that Greyson had been.
"The fact that he had lost his main source of ire meant that he refocused on consolidating power inside his court, which was bleeding loyalty after a string of punishments that made people nervous about standing too close to him. It kept him occupied and life at the Enclave went on without interference."
"You kept the file sealed," Ann said, glancing at the folder once more.
"I did," Bartholomew said. "I kept it sealed when the council changed, when two elders retired, and when one who wanted a favor tried to open it to use as leverage. The names of the builders are stored separately. The tunnel route was known only to five people that were alive during its construction and two of those are already gone. The guards rotate on patterns I designed so no one set of eyes ever sees a full picture."
Adam nodded once, satisfied with the explanation that he had given.
"So you built a house and a story around it."
"I built a life that someone could survive in," Bartholomew said. "It isn't the same thing as living freely, but at the time, it was all that I could manage. His threat never really went away."
Ann smiled, a humorless tilt of her lips as she nodded in agreement.
"You're right, he hasn't gone away, he's still around and poking his nose into our affairs. Somehow it feels like he's testing us for weakness, or a way in. I just haven't decided which it is yet."