She's no' fer ye.

[iSmooch 133]

Spoiler

 

"She's no' fer ye."

 

Garen Baruch reading over letters

 

"Ah don' kno' why she won' listen tae me," - "Ah'm nae bein' lazy... ah'm tryin'!" 

 

"Yer no' those things. Anehone who claims such deserves tae find themselves withou' eh tongue. Nae tutor shall enter this keep tha' would ever wrap yer knuckles, er call ye names. Ah cannae promise ets easeh.... Bu' Ah promise tha ye'll be respected."

 

Faint red marked her knuckles. Her face was wet with tears, her breath broken by hiccups and sobs she could not command into silence. She had tried, of course. Briana always tried.

 

He had no authority to fire Miss Reed.

 

That was the trouble of it. He was no Duke. No master of the household. No keeper of seals and salaries. In the language that governed tutors, stewards, and all the polished little mechanisms of a noble house, Garen Baruch was only a son returned late.

 

Only a brother.

 

So he found Miss Reed in the room where she kept her papers, her quill, and the brass-lined ruler that had taught Briana pain before letters.

 

"How maneh times did ye strike meh sister with tha'?"

 

Miss Reed called it correction.

 

He called it what it was.

 

He did not shout. He did not touch her. He did not break the ruler, though power and desire to do so rested so willingly in his fingertips. He only explained, softly, that he could write. Enough to send letters. Enough to tell every courtly mother, every steward, every respectable house from Adria to Alba what Miss Alma Reed did when a child did not learn quickly enough.

 

"You would ruin my livelihood over childish complaints?"

 

"Nae, Ah would ruin yer livelihood over meh sister's blood."

 

He left her there with the ruler untouched upon the desk.

 

“She's no' fer ye.”

 

Briana was not for Miss Reed's pride. Not her record. Not her little empire of correction. Not a lesson to be struck until it behaved.

 

She was his sister.

 

"She's no' fer ye."

 

Alek had asked for bluntness.

 

Garen gave him cruelty.

 

"Briana will be married tae eh Lord ef some such. As es her duteh. 'Er value..." his face contorted hearing himself speak of his sister this way. "...can be impacted simpleh by association with ye."

 

"Cruel, so yer gonna sell ya own sistah fur a favour like a cattle?"

 

"We all must sacrifice fer duteh, Alek."

 

"So where's duty t'yer own sistah? Where's duty t'yer own conscience?"

 

Garen did not stop. That was the worst of it. He heard the ugliness in his own mouth and kept dressing it in honor, family, duchy, purity, strategy. He made Alek stand for every imagined future insult, every whisper, every man who might someday call Briana lesser because she had dared to be happy where others could see it.

 

He angered an enemy who was not real by wounding the boy in front of him.

 

"Gott would be disgusted fur such a slave trade wrapped in silks," Alek spat.

“She’s no’ fer ye, Alek”

 

The words followed Garen home. Not because they were elegant. Because they were true enough to draw blood.

 

Duncan's voice had long since become a whisper in the house, but somehow, on Garen's worst days, it still knew where to stand. At his shoulder. Behind his teeth. In the careful cruelty of inherited duty.

 

Garen had protected Briana from Miss Reed because someone had made her small with cruel words and a ruler. Then he stood before Alek and made Briana small with careful words and a family name.

 

Not with a slap.

 

With love.

 

That made it worse.

 

When he told Alek she was not his, some hidden part of him had meant that she was theirs. The family's. The duchy's. A bargaining chip in a game where everyone called the board sacred so no one had to admit there were people beneath the pieces.

 

That was the betrayal.

 

Briana was not a lesson.

 

Briana was not a bargain.

 

Briana was not a family's breathing coin.

 

Briana was Briana.

 

And Garen had known the cost of his words while he spoke them.

 

He spoke them anyway.

 

"She's no' fer ye."

 

"Endure and Prevail. That must be a lot of responsibility."

 

Then, gently:

 

"Are you scared?"

 

Anger crossed his face first.

 

It was easier than fear.

 

"Ah'm so scared. Ah'm scared Ah'll dae eh bad job. Ah'm scared Ah'll fail. Ah'm scared ef wha' Ah 'ave tae dae, what Ah'll 'ave tae sacrifice."

 

For one honest moment, he was only a frightened boy on a wall with someone kind enough to ask. Then he killed the moment before it could ask anything of him.

 

"Ah cannae... Ah cannae see ye anehmore."

 

She laughed at first, as if waiting for him to join her, as if this were some cruel joke. It was not.

 

"What? W-why?"

 

Then realization. Then coldness.

 

"I see. Well, Mr. Baruch. Good luck with your Duchy."

 

Her answer came through muffled sobs.

 

"Go, just please go."

 

It would have been simpler if this were repentance.

 

It was not.

 

Briana had not asked him to bleed. Briana had not asked him to make her cry. Briana had not asked for another girl's heart to be spent proving that her brother had learned what sacrifice meant.

 

No, this was uglier than repentance.

 

It was a test.

 

If duty mattered enough that Briana's heart could be threatened for it, then duty had to matter enough to threaten his own. If the family name could stand above his sister, then it had to stand above him. Above her. If sacrifice was more than a weapon he used when someone else paid the price, then he had to be willing to burn, too.

 

That was what he told himself.

 

It sounded almost noble.

 

It sounded like a boy trying to prove he was not a hypocrite by becoming something worse.

 

Garen wished the lesson had arrived kinder.

 

He wished he had learned it before Briana's trust broke in his hands, before Alek's and his family’s disgust was earned, before her last words to him came muffled through sobs.

 

But wishes were easy.

 

The work was in what came after.

 

To protect Briana without owning her.

 

To honor duty without hiding cowardice inside it.

 

To become the sort of man whose sacrifices were not merely cruelties with noble names.

 

And, someday perhaps, to know the difference before he spoke.

 

[MotherLay 974]

 

Ugh, I love battering the reputation of NPCs <3