Chapter 628: I Will Accept It All

Percy did not answer immediately. He stood before Sheila with his arms at his side as his gaze were fixed on her but seemed like he was looking pass her and even beyond the academy gardens. Looking at him fully now, he looked exactly as he had the day he left—straight-backed, composed, the embodiment of deliberate distance. The wind tugged faintly at his hair, but he did not move to smooth it back.

The silence stretched too long.

Sheila felt it in her lungs first. Each breath came shallower than the last, as though the air between them had thickened into something resistant and heavy.

“You knew,” she said again, her voice trembling despite her effort to steady it. “You knew I would follow you if I could. You knew I would beg. You knew I would wait for you to look back.”

He did not turn.

Her composure splintered. “You knew,” she pressed, louder now, the words scraping on their way out, “that if you hesitated for even a second, I would have run to you.”

A pause.

“And you still walked away.”

His fingers tightened at his side before loosening again.

“I did,” he said.

There was no excuse in it. No softening. Just fact.

Something fragile inside her gave way.

A brittle laugh escaped her, sharp and disbelieving. “That’s it?” she demanded, stepping closer. “You say it like you’re confirming a detail in a report.”

He flinched at that, barely perceptible but real.

“Do you know what that did to me?” she continued, the words gaining speed as restraint dissolved. “Every time I tried to talk to you before you left, you were already gone. You would look at me like you were memorizing the outline of someone you planned to forget.” Her voice cracked. “When I reached for you, you pulled back like I was something that would complicate you.”

She swallowed hard with visible effort.

“I thought I was the complication,” she whispered. “I thought I was the weakness you were trying to cut out.”

Percy’s jaw tightened.

“You say you left to protect me,” she went on, tears sliding freely now though her chin remained lifted in stubborn defiance. “But from where I stood, you abandoned me. You made a choice and didn’t even let me argue. You didn’t trust me enough to stand beside you.”

Her breath hitched painfully.

“Do you know how many nights I lay awake trying to figure out what I did wrong? I trained until my hands bled because I thought if I was strong enough, sharp enough, useful enough, you would stop looking through me.” Her fingers curled against her chest as if she could physically hold herself together. “I smiled when they praised me for my affinities even when it made my skin crawl, because I thought maybe if I played the role perfectly, you would decide I was worth staying for.”

She took another step toward him.

“You weren’t protecting me,” she said, her voice breaking open entirely. “You were hurting me. You were hurting me in a way they never could. They expected things from me. You were the only one who was supposed to just… be there.”

The last words unraveled.

Percy drew in a breath, and this time it was unsteady enough that she heard it. The sound seemed to cost him.

“I did not leave because you were weak,” he said at last. His tone was controlled, but there was strain beneath it now, something tight and thinning. “I left because you were the only thing they could reach me through.”

She let out a hollow sound of disbelief. “So I was leverage.”

His head lowered slightly.

“I told myself I was removing you from the board,” he said carefully, as though assembling the thought piece by piece. “If I became the problem, if I became the unpredictable one, their attention would shift. They would tighten their hold on you out of fear of losing both children. I thought their fear would force them to be better.”

She wiped angrily at her tears. “You speak about me like I was a variable.”

“I am not proud of that,” he replied, the words quieter now.

“But I was,” she insisted. “A variable. A piece you moved without asking.”

“Yes.”

The admission did not hesitate.

It settled between them heavily, undeniable.

She shook her head, stepping back as if the honesty itself stung. “You accuse them of seeing me as a weapon,” she whispered, her voice thinning into something brittle. “But you used me too. You used my attachment to you. You used my loyalty.”

Percy’s breath faltered, sharper this time.

Slowly, he forced himself to look at her.

The composure remained in the set of his shoulders, but it no longer felt invincible. Up close, the control in his expression was fraying at the edges. His eyes met hers fully, and there was something there that had not been present before—not calculation, not detachment, but a rawness he did not know how to disguise.

“I did not leave because I did not care,” he said, more firmly than before, though his voice was lower. “I left because I cared too much and did not know how to do it without turning you into my weakness.”

The words were not polished. They were imperfect.

“I knew if you stood beside me,” he continued, swallowing once, “I would never be able to take the risks I needed to take. I would hesitate. I would bargain. I would compromise. And they would see it.”

“And that was unacceptable?” she shot back.

“It was dangerous,” he corrected, though the certainty wavered. “For you.”

She stared at him, incredulous. “You never even asked if I wanted that choice.”

“No,” he admitted. “I did not.”

Silence fell again, but this time it was different—denser, more fragile.

“When I left,” Percy said slowly, as though forcing himself to stay with the memory rather than retreat from it, “I believed I was removing the one vulnerability they could exploit. I thought if I made myself distant enough, unapproachable enough, they would stop trying to manipulate me through you.”

His gaze flickered, not away from her but inward.

“I watched from afar,” he continued, the words more difficult now. “I saw them attend your training. I saw them temper their criticism. I saw them listen when you spoke in council. I told myself it was working. That the shock of my departure had forced them to see what they stood to lose.”

“And was it?” she demanded again, tears still falling though her voice steadied with anger. “Was it truly working like you say?”

“Yes,” he said, without embellishment. “It changed them.”

Her laugh was broken. “It didn’t change the nights I felt alone.”

That struck.

His shoulders dipped—not dramatically, but enough that she noticed.

“That,” he said after a long pause, “is what I did not measure.”

The wind shifted, brushing her hair across her face, and she did not move to clear it.

“I understood politics,” he went on quietly. “I understood pride and fear and consequence. I understood how to corner them into reflection.” His hand lifted faintly, then fell again, as if even that small motion required deliberation. “I did not understand the cost of becoming someone you could no longer reach.”

Her throat tightened.

“I told myself you were resilient,” he continued. “You had always endured. I mistook endurance for absence of pain. I convinced myself that if you were quiet, you were coping. I did not consider that you were quiet because I had taught you not to burden me.”

Her breath hitched sharply at that.

“I believed,” Percy said, his voice roughening despite his effort to steady it, “that I could withstand your anger if it meant you would grow in a safer environment. I told myself your resentment would be temporary. I did not anticipate that your loneliness would not.”

He finally manage to close some of the distance but not all of it.

“I was so intent on correcting their neglect,” he said, the words slower now, more deliberate, “that I did not see I was replicating it in another form. I removed myself and called it strategy. I called it sacrifice. I did not call it what it was.”

“And what was it?” she whispered.

“Arrogance,” he answered, without hesitation. “I assumed I knew what you needed better than you did.”

The honesty in that was unvarnished.

“I thought my plan accounted for every outcome,” he continued, a faint bitterness threading through his voice. “Political shifts. Succession tensions. Public perception. Their pride. Their fear.” His gaze did not leave hers. “I did not account for the fact that you would interpret my distance as rejection.”

Tears blurred her vision.

“I hurt you,” he said, and there was no structure left in the words now, no careful cadence. “Not because I wanted to. Not because I did not value you. But because I believed I could endure being misunderstood if it meant protecting you from something worse.” His jaw tightened briefly. “I never considered that being misunderstood by me would be the worst thing.”

Her composure cracked fully then.

“You don’t get to decide my pain,” she whispered.

“I know,” he said, and this time it was immediate.

He did not defend himself. He did not step forward to comfort her. He stood where he was, absorbing the weight of her grief without retreat.

“I cannot undo the years you questioned your worth,” he continued softly. “I cannot return the nights you trained yourself into exhaustion because you thought you were lacking. I cannot give you back the certainty you had in me before I left.”

His voice lowered further.

“But I can stop pretending that what I did was flawless.”

She stared at him, anger and sorrow warring in her expression.

“I was wrong,” Percy said, the words steady but stripped of pride. “Not because the outcome failed. The outcome, in many ways, succeeded. They changed.” A beat passed. “I was wrong because I decided that your heart was an acceptable cost.”

The admission hung between them like something sacred and terrible.

“I will not run from this,” he added quietly. “Not from you. Not again. If you are angry, be angry. If you hate me for what I did, I will endure that. But I will not choose distance for you a second time.”

The wind stilled suddenly, and for the first time since they arrived at the garden, there was no strategist standing before her. No distant prodigy calculating outcomes from afar.

Standing before Sheila was only her brother—flawed, resolute, and finally willing to remain where it hurt.

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