Long after Derek had settled Kira into a deep sleep, he slipped away to his study. He sat hunched over his tablet, scrolling through files, his brows drawn tight in thought. A soft knock broke his concentration.
He glanced up to find Nana already stepping inside, a weary smile tugging at her lips. Derek straightened in his seat, watching her with a furrowed brow.
"Nana," he said. "Still up at this hour?"
She let out a sigh and crossed the room, lowering herself into the chair across from him. "Couldn’t sleep," she admitted quietly.
Derek leaned back, one eyebrow lifting. "What’s troubling you?"
Nana held his gaze for a long moment before she spoke. "It’s about your cousin. Brian."
"What about him?" Derek asked, though he already sensed where this was going.
"I’ve been wondering what you mean to do with him."
Derek’s eyes dropped back to his tablet. "Nothing’s decided yet. And it isn’t something you need to worry over."
"I know, dear." Nana folded her hands in her lap. "But... look, I’ve been thinking a lot after visiting Brian today, and I realised that we might have all failed him in one way or the other, Derek."
Derek said nothing, only watched her.
Taking his silence as room to continue, Nana pressed on. "He may have turned into someone hard to recognise, but he wasn’t always like this. You know that better than anyone, Derek."
His expression gave nothing away, though his thoughts had already slipped backwards, to years before any of them understood the difference between right and wrong.
"I know you want Crane to pay for what he did to this family, and Brian played his part in it. But has it crossed your mind that he might simply have been afraid of his own father? Crane raised that boy alone, and from what we now know of him, Brian likely had the worst of it."
Derek exhaled and dragged a hand down his face. Nana wasn’t wrong, but the possessive, jagged part of him still wanted Brian to suffer for every moment he’d touched Kira’s life. Letting him walk free wasn’t something he could stomach, not yet.
When the silence stretched too long, Nana reached across the desk and covered his hand with hers. Derek lifted his eyes to hers, found them soft and imploring, and after a beat, shook his head.
"I’m not letting him off, Nana."
She sighed, resigned. She’d raised him well enough to know how stubborn he could be, how easily his temper clouded his judgement. But she also knew better than to push a man like Derek. He’d sit with it. That would have to be enough for tonight.
She slowly released his hand and rose to her feet. "I’ll leave you to think about it."
With that, she turned and left him alone in the study, his gaze fixed on nothing at all.
***
Kira stirred in her sleep, feeling a thin chill nagging at her skin. She turned and tried to snuggle up to the warmth of Derek’s body, but she found the other side of the bed empty.
She blinked awake and pressed her palm to his side of the bed. It was cold, as if he had not been lying there for a long time.
She lay there staring at the space where he should have been, then reached for her phone on the nightstand. Just gone 2 a.m. She frowned, set it back down, and wondered where he’d wandered off to at this hour.
She lay there for a few more minutes, waiting for him to come back, when she heard a soft noise at the balcony door. She looked over and saw Derek pacing the balcony with a glass of drink in his hand.
She sat up in bed and watched him for a while, noticing the stiff set of his shoulders. A drink at this time of night never meant anything good.
Kira pulled her robe on, slid out of bed and padded out to join him. He stood with his back to her, tipping the last of the glass back. She came up quietly behind him and wrapped her arms around his waist.
"Penny for your thoughts?" she murmured.
He tensed under her touch, just briefly, before the tightness eased out of him. He turned in her arms to face her, and whatever had been sitting heavy on him seemed to lift as his mouth curved into a smile. He bent and kissed her, slow and unhurried.
"Did I wake you?" he asked against her lips.
She shook her head and drew back just enough to study his face. For a moment neither of them said anything.
"What’s going on?" she finally asked.
He hesitated, weighing whether it was worth bringing her into it, then gave a small shrug. "Just caught up in old memories."
Kira arched an eyebrow but didn’t say a word.
Derek crossed to the egg-shaped swing chair he’d had installed for her and lowered himself into it, pulling Kira down with him. She curled into the space beside him, her head finding his chest, and he pressed his lips to her hair.
"I’ve been thinking about Brian," he said, running a hand along her arm. "About what I want done with him. I keep coming up empty."
"Why empty?" she asked.
He remained silent for a moment, looking at nothing as memories of his childhood with Brian replayed in his head.
Brian, the one who’d always played the older brother. The one who’d stood between them and trouble at school. The one who’d squared up to bullies from rival packs without a second thought.
"Nana came to see me tonight. Talking to her, I remembered who he used to be, before everything went wrong. He was the brother we all looked up to. He had my back, every time. Then something shifted, and all he wanted was what I had. A fight, not a friendship. I’d let myself forget how close we were as boys. Nana thinks we all had a hand in losing him."
Kira breathed out slowly. "She might be right. Everyone got so caught up in what he became that they stopped asking why. I haven’t known him the way you have, so I won’t pretend I can speak for him. But people don’t turn out cruel in a vacuum. Maybe what he needed most was somebody to help him, and nobody ever did."
"So you’re telling me to just let it go?" Derek asked. "Kidnapping the Queen isn’t a small crime. Have you forgiven him already?"
She laughed softly. "You know me better than that. I forgave him a while back, once I understood what he’d actually been missing his whole life. Spending time with him, I could see it. Nobody ever really loved that guy."
She pushed herself up to look him properly in the eye. "I’m not saying let him walk free. I’m saying let justice come with a bit of mercy attached, Your Grace."
Derek held her gaze, then let out a slow breath. "Come here." He drew her back against him, one hand smoothing over her back as she settled her head on his chest. "I love you," he said quietly.
"I love you more," she answered, and pressed her lips to his chest.