Chapter 6: The Fear of Being Seen
The moon was a cold white eye, watching him.
Briv walked beneath it, his boots sinking into earth that felt too soft, too yielding, like the ground itself was trying to swallow him whole. The trees around him were familiar—the twisted pines of Naaran Forest, the gnarled oaks with their moss-draped branches—but they were wrong somehow. Their shadows stretched in directions that made no sense, pooling away from the moonlight as if they were trying to escape it. The air was still. Too still. There was no wind, no birdsong, no rustle of unseen creatures in the underbrush.
Just the moon. Just the silence. Just the feeling of being watched.
Briv walked faster, though he couldn't say why. There was no sound behind him, no visible threat, nothing but the nagging certainty that something was tracking his movements from the darkness between the trees. He could feel it in his bones, that primal animal awareness that came before danger, the electric prickle along his scarred back that made his skin crawl beneath his shirt. His left arm ached, the way it always did when the weather turned or when his thoughts spiraled into darker places. He rubbed at the lattice of scars through his sleeve, but the ache didn't fade. It never did.
The forest stretched on, endless and patient, and Briv began to realize that he didn't know where he was going. He'd been walking for what felt like hours, but the landscape hadn't changed. Same trees. Same shadows. Same moon staring down at him with that terrible, knowing stillness. He tried to turn back, but there was no path behind him—just more trees, more darkness, more of the same suffocating silence.
Panic began to build in his chest, a slow, creeping thing that made his breath come faster and his steps grow longer. He was lost. He was alone. He was—
The house appeared between one blink and the next.
It was his house. Chris's house. The cottage where he'd grown up, with its crooked chimney and its sun-bleached shutters and the garden that never quite grew what it was supposed to. Warm light spilled from the windows, golden and inviting, and Briv felt a surge of relief so profound it made his knees weak. Home. He was home. He didn't know how he'd gotten here, but it didn't matter. He just needed to get inside.
The door was unlocked. It swung open at his touch, and the warmth of the hearth rushed out to greet him, chasing away the chill that had settled into his bones. The kitchen was exactly as he remembered it—the worn wooden table, the cast-iron pots hanging from their hooks, the faint smell of bread and wood smoke. Peaches was curled on the windowsill, his orange fur bright in the firelight. Spot lifted his head from the rug by the hearth, thumped his tail once, and went back to sleep.
Briv let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. Safe. He was safe now. The forest and the moon and the watching darkness were all behind him, locked out by walls and warmth and the familiar comfort of home.
He walked through the kitchen, past the table where he'd shared a thousand meals with his father, past the worn armchair where Chris liked to sit and read by the fire. The hallway was dim, but he knew every shadow, every creak in the floorboards. He climbed the stairs to his old bedroom, his hand trailing along the wall for comfort, and pushed open the door.
The room was dark. Not the comfortable darkness of sleep, but something thicker, heavier, a darkness that seemed to press against his skin.
Briv frowned. He could have sworn he'd left a candle burning. He reached for the lamp on the nightstand, his fingers fumbling for the striker, and that was when he saw it.
The wardrobe door was open.
It shouldn't have been. He always closed it. He'd been closing it since he was a child, after his mother had once left it ajar and he'd spent a sleepless night convinced something was breathing in the dark between his coats. It was a habit, a superstition, a small ritual of control that he never broke.
But it was open now. Open wide, like a mouth waiting to speak.
Briv's heart began to pound. He took a step closer, his body moving against his will, his eyes straining to see through the shadows that pooled inside the wardrobe. And then the moonlight shifted, slanting through the window at just the right angle, and he saw what was inside.
An arrow. Black-tipped, fletched with dark feathers that seemed to drink the light. It lay on the floor of the wardrobe, nestled in a pool of something that glistened wet and red.
Blood.
Briv's breath caught in his throat. He looked down at himself, at his hands, and saw that they were stained—dark crimson smeared across his palms, seeping through the fabric of his shirt. He touched his chest, his fingers finding the place where his heart beat beneath his ribs, and there it was: a wound. A puncture, clean and deep, with a black arrowhead buried in his flesh and blood welling up around it.
No. No, that wasn't right. He hadn't been shot. He hadn't—
The windows slammed shut.
The sound was deafening, a crack like thunder that made the walls shake. Briv spun toward them, but it was too late. The glass shattered, not outward but inward, a spray of glittering shards that caught the moonlight for a single terrible second before everything went dark.
The candle on the nightstand guttered and died. The fire in the hearth below vanished with a sound like a sigh. The moon itself seemed to retreat, as if the sky had closed its eye, and Briv was plunged into absolute, suffocating blackness.
He couldn't see. He couldn't breathe. The air was gone, stolen from his lungs by the weight of the darkness pressing down on him. He could feel his heart stuttering in his chest, feel the blood still seeping from the wound, feel the cold creeping into his bones. He tried to call out, but no sound came. He tried to move, but his legs wouldn't obey.
He was alone. Wounded and breathless and completely alone in the dark, with the arrow still buried in his chest and the certainty that no one was coming for him.
And then, from somewhere far away, he heard a voice.
"Briv. Briv, wake up."
The voice was familiar. Warm. It cut through the darkness like a thread of light, thin but unbreakable.
"Come on, wake up. You're having a bad dream."
Chris. It was Chris. His father was calling to him, pulling him up from the depths of the nightmare, and Briv clung to that voice like a drowning man clinging to a rope. He reached for it, straining toward the sound, feeling the darkness begin to fray around the edges.
"Briv. Open your eyes, son."
His eyes opened.
The world rushed back in a jumble of sensations—the rough wool of his blanket, the cool air on his sweat-drenched skin, the faint glow of a candle flickering on the nightstand. He was in his bedroom. His actual bedroom, in his actual house, the same one he'd walked into hours ago after leaving Tyro, Kwig, and the others at the edge of Naaran Forest. The wardrobe was closed. The windows were intact. The only blood in the room was the blood in his veins, still safely contained within his body.
Briv sucked in a breath, then another, then another. His heart was pounding so hard he could feel it in his temples, in his throat, in the tips of his fingers. His shirt was plastered to his skin, soaked through with sweat, and his hands were shaking as he pressed them against the mattress.
"Easy. Easy, you're all right."
Chris was sitting on the edge of the bed, his broad frame blocking out the candlelight, his rough hands reaching out to grip Briv's shoulders. There was concern in his voice, carefully tucked beneath layers of calm, the same way he'd always done when Briv was small and afraid of the monsters under his bed.
"You're in your room," Chris said, his voice low and steady. "You're safe. There's nothing here that's going to hurt you."
Briv tried to speak, but his throat was dry and his tongue felt thick. He swallowed, tried again, and managed to force out a single word. "Dream."
"Yeah." Chris's hands tightened on his shoulders briefly, then released. "Nightmare, looks like. A bad one, from the sound of it."
"I—" Briv stopped. Ran a hand through his sweat-matted hair. Tried to steady his breathing, to slow the frantic hammering of his heart. "What time is it?"
"Past midnight. You've been asleep for a few hours." Chris paused, his weathered face half-hidden in the candle's flickering light. "You were shouting. Not loud, but... I could hear you from the kitchen. Thought I'd come check on you."
Briv looked at his hands. They were clean. Of course they were clean. The blood had been a dream. The arrow had been a dream. The darkness pressing in on him, suffocating him, that had been a dream too.
But it felt real. It always felt real.
"Sorry," he said, his voice rough. "Didn't mean to wake you."
"You didn't. I was already up." Chris shifted on the bed, settling into a more comfortable position. He didn't leave, which Briv noticed but didn't comment on. "You want to talk about it?"
No. Briv didn't want to talk about it. He never wanted to talk about it. The dreams, the fears, the endless spiral of thoughts that chased themselves around his head in the small hours of the night—those were his. Private. Burdens he'd carried alone for so long that he'd forgotten what it felt like to set them down.
But something was different tonight. Maybe it was the lingering aftershock of the nightmare, the way his heart was still beating too fast and his skin was still too cold. Maybe it was the sight of his father sitting on the edge of his bed, not leaving, not dismissing, just... waiting. Maybe it was the exhaustion, the bone-deep weariness that came from years of pretending everything was fine when it so clearly wasn't.
"Actually," Briv said slowly, the word surprising even himself, "maybe I do."
Chris's eyebrows rose. "Oh?"
"You asked. I'm saying yes." Briv pulled his knees up to his chest, wrapping his arms around them, making himself small. Defensive. He could feel the words building in his throat and hated himself for it. Hated the way his voice was already starting to shake, hated the way he couldn't seem to control any of it.
Chris waited. He was good at waiting. It was one of the things Briv had always admired about him, the way he could sit in silence without feeling the need to fill it.
"I've been having dreams like that for a while now," Briv said, his eyes fixed on a point somewhere in the middle distance. "Not exactly like that, but... similar. The darkness. The feeling of being trapped. The sense that something is hunting me and I can't run fast enough, can't hide well enough, can't—" He stopped, swallowed. "I always wake up feeling like I'm still in it. Like the dark is waiting for me to close my eyes again so it can pull me back under."
Chris was quiet for a long moment. Then he said, "How long is 'a while'?"
"Years."
The word hung in the air between them, heavy and unwelcome. Chris's expression shifted, a flicker of something that might have been concern, might have been surprise, might have been both.
"Years," he repeated.
"They come and go. Some months are worse than others. But they've never really stopped." Briv laughed, a short, bitter sound. "Guess I'm just broken that way."
"Don't say that."
"Why not? It's true." Briv looked up, meeting his father's eyes for the first time since he'd woken. "I'm defective, Dad. I've known that since I was a kid, since the ritual failed and the elders looked at me like I was a piece of scrap they couldn't figure out what to do with. They didn't say it out loud, but I saw it. I saw it in their eyes, in the way they talked to me, in the way they looked at the scars on my back and shook their heads like I'd done something wrong."
"You didn't do anything wrong."
"I know that. Now. But knowing something and feeling it are two different things." Briv's voice was getting stronger, more certain, as if saying the words out loud was giving them a kind of power he hadn't expected. "I've been carrying this weight for as long as I can remember. This sense that there's something fundamentally wrong with me, something that makes me unworthy of the things other people get so easily. And I'm so tired, Dad. I'm so tired of carrying it alone."
Chris's jaw tightened. "You're not alone. You have me. You have Tyro, Kwig, the others. You have—"
"People who like me," Briv interrupted. "People who enjoy spending time with me. People who think I'm funny and clever and maybe a little bit strange, but in a charming way. I know. I know they care about me. But that's not the same thing."
"The same thing as what?"
Briv took a breath. This was the part he hadn't said out loud. The part he'd guarded so carefully, so fiercely, that it had become almost sacred. He could feel his hands shaking, feel the heat rising in his face, but he pushed forward anyway.
"The same thing as being truly known," he said. "I want someone to look at me and see all of it—the good parts and the bad parts, the scars and the secrets, the fear and the doubt—and still choose to stay. I want someone who knows the real me, the me that doesn't come out when there are people around, the me that lies awake at night wondering if I'm ever going to be enough for someone. And I want them to love me anyway."
He paused, his throat tight. "I don't want to be liked, Dad. I want to be loved. Deeply, completely, the kind of love that makes you feel safe just because the other person is there. And I'm so afraid I'm never going to find it. I'm so afraid that the reason no one's ever gotten that close to me is because there's something in me that's too broken to hold onto."
Chris was staring at him, his expression unreadable. For a long moment, he said nothing. Then he let out a breath and shook his head.
"Briv," he said, "you're overthinking this."
"What?"
"You're overthinking it. You're so caught up in your own head that you can't see what's right in front of you. You've had plenty of girls interested in you over the years—I've seen them, I've seen the way they look at you. Meribel, last spring. That girl from the mill, what was her name... Lita. Even the baker's daughter, when you were younger. You just never gave them a chance."
Briv stared at him. "You think that's the problem? That I haven't given them a chance?"
"Well, isn't it? You're so busy worrying about whether you're good enough that you never actually bother to try."
"That's not—" Briv stopped, his hands clenching in his lap. "That's not the same thing. Those girls, they liked the idea of me. The funny guy, the easygoing one, the one who always has a joke ready. They didn't know me. They didn't want to know me. They just wanted someone to fill a role, and I was convenient."
"You don't know that."
"I do know it. Because every time I've let someone get close, every time I've let them see past the jokes and the smiles, they leave. They always leave." Briv's voice was rising now, cracking at the edges. "And I'm scared that means something. I'm scared it means I'm not worth staying for. I'm scared that if someone ever really saw me, truly saw me, they'd be disgusted by what they found."
Chris shifted forward, his voice still aggravatingly calm. "You're being dramatic. You're young, you have plenty of time, there's no reason to—"
"Stop." The word came out sharper than Briv intended, and he saw Chris flinch. "Please, just stop. I don't need you to tell me I'm being dramatic. I don't need you to minimize what I'm feeling or tell me to look on the bright side. I need you to listen."
The room fell silent. Chris stared at him, and Briv could see the conflict playing out behind his eyes—the instinct to comfort, to deflect, to make light of something that felt too heavy to hold.
"Look, son—"
"Every time I close my eyes," Briv said, pushing through before he lost his nerve, "I feel like I'm walking through the dark. Alone. Every time I'm around people, I'm performing. I'm trying to be the version of myself that everyone expects, because I'm terrified that if I stop, if I let them see what's really underneath, they'll walk away. And some nights—some nights, when it gets really bad, when I can't sleep and I can't stop thinking and the dark just keeps pressing in—I wish I'd never been born."
Chris went very still.
"Not because I want to die," Briv added quickly, watching his father's face. "I don't. I'm not going to hurt myself, I just—" He pressed his palms against his eyes, hard, as if he could push the words back inside. "Sometimes it feels like it would be easier. If I'd never existed, no one would have to deal with all of my... all of me. I wouldn't have to keep pretending to be something I'm not. I wouldn't have to keep carrying the weight."
"Don't say that." Chris's voice was rough, and when Briv lowered his hands, he saw that his father's face had gone pale, the lines around his eyes deepened, etched by something that looked a lot like fear. "You understand me? Don't say that. Not even jokingly."
"It's not a joke."
"Then don't say it at all."
"Dad—"
"I mean it, Briv." Chris leaned forward, grabbing his shoulders, his grip too tight, desperate. "I never want to hear you say that again. Do you understand me? Whatever is going on in that head of yours, whatever dark places you're walking through—I need you to keep walking. I need you to keep going. Because if something ever happened to you—" His voice cracked, and he stopped, swallowing hard.
Briv stared at him. He'd never seen his father like this. Chris Bolgrey was always the steady one, the calm one, the man who could joke his way through any crisis and come out smiling on the other side. But this wasn't a joke. This was raw, real, exposed.
"I'm sorry," Briv said quietly. "I didn't mean to scare you."
"You didn't mean to—" Chris let out a shaky laugh, releasing his grip and running a hand through his hair. "You just told me you wished you'd never been born. Of course you scared me."
"I'm not going to hurt myself. I promise."
"I know. I know you're not." Chris was quiet for a moment, his gaze fixed somewhere off to the side, and Briv noticed something strange. His father's eyes were distant. Pained. Like he was remembering something he didn't want to remember.
"Dad?"
"Give me a second." Chris breathed in, held it, let it out. Then he looked at Briv, and the mask was back—partially, at least. "Listen. I'm not going to sit here and pretend I understand exactly what you're going through. I don't. I can't. But I can see that it's real, and I can see that it's hurting you, and I can see that I haven't been paying as much attention as I should."
Briv opened his mouth to protest, and Chris held up a hand.
"You're an adult. You don't live here anymore. You've got your own life, your own friends, your own way of doing things. I figured you were fine. I figured if something was wrong, you'd tell me." He paused. "I guess I figured wrong."
"It's not your fault."
"Maybe not. But that doesn't mean I can't do something about it." Chris stood up, moving toward the door. "There's a healer I know. Niek. She lives on the other side of the island, but she's the best there is—people come from all over to see her, for all kinds of problems. Not just..." He waved a hand vaguely. "Not just physical ones."
"Niek."
"She's helped a lot of people. People with minds that don't work the way they're supposed to. People who carry too much weight." Chris turned back to face him, and his expression was softer now, more vulnerable than Briv could ever remember seeing it. "I think she could help you. If you're willing to try."
Briv felt something loosen in his chest. Not much. Just a little. Just enough to breathe.
"You think she could?"
"I think it's worth a try." Chris's voice was gentle, steady. "We'll go tomorrow morning, first thing. Just the two of us. We'll go see Niek, and we'll figure this out together."
Together.
The word echoed in Briv's mind, warm and unfamiliar. He'd spent so long feeling like he was fighting his battles alone that he'd almost forgotten what it felt like to have someone on his side.
"Okay," he said softly. "Tomorrow. We'll go see Niek."
Chris nodded, and a ghost of a smile crossed his weathered face. "Good. Get some sleep, little bird. You've got a long day ahead of you tomorrow."
"Little bird" He pulled a face. "Did you just call me little bird?"
"Old habit. From when you were small." Chris's smile widened, and for a moment, just a moment, the tension between them eased. "You were always flapping your arms around, trying to get people to notice you. Wouldn't shut up about wanting to fly."
"I was six."
"Still true."
Briv snorted despite himself. "You're terrible."
"That's what fathers are for." Chris moved to the door, pausing with his hand on the frame. "Try to get some rest. I'll wake you when it's time to go."
He was almost out the door when Briv noticed it.
His father was wearing his boots.
Not slippers. Not bare feet. His heavy leather boots, the ones he wore when he went out into the forest, dark and scuffed from years of walking. And his clothes—his weather-beaten jacket, his sturdy trousers, everything he'd been wearing earlier that evening when Briv had come home.
Everything he'd been wearing when he'd left the council chamber.
"Dad?" Briv said, and Chris paused, looking back.
"Yeah?"
"You're... you're still wearing your boots."
Chris glanced down at his feet, then back up at Briv. For a moment, something flickered in his eyes—surprise, maybe, or discomfort. Then he smiled, and the expression was easy, casual, practiced.
"Was just stepping outside for a moment. Needed some air."
"At midnight?"
"Couldn't sleep. You know how it is." Chris shrugged, his smile widening. "Try not to overthink it, all right? You've got enough to worry about already."
He closed the door behind him, leaving Briv alone in the darkness.
The candle flickered on the nightstand, casting long shadows across the walls. Briv lay back against his pillow, staring at the ceiling, his mind still churning with everything that had been said.
But underneath all of it, one thought kept rising to the surface.
His father had been wearing his boots.
And they were still wet.