To Protect.

Pressing silence hung in the room, the thoughts were cycling in Armand's head and he tried to look wherever he could, but not at the girl. Resentment, anger, disappointment, rage, sadness, hopelessness. There were so many emotions inside him, Armand's fists clenched so tightly that his fingers turned white and his nails digged into his palm, leaving deep red marks on his skin.

"How is it that you are grateful for the help of the person who killed you, but the one who loved you all these years looks like an extra link in this situation, eh, Polina?"

"What do you mean, 'who killed me'? Armand, who are you talking about now?"

"Who else can I be talking about in this situation?! About Marcus, of course! So, for the last forty years, you could keep in touch with Marcus, but it was not possible to tell me about your existence?! Do you even know what I felt all this time? Do you have any clue how I lived all these years?!

And suddenly, out of nowhere, a beautiful stranger appears and I, like the last fool, am happy that I was able to let go of the past and again feel like a living person. So no! What an irony! Even here I managed to fall in love with the same person! Well, have you had a good time? You know, I won't be surprised if all this time you and Marcus had fun behind my back and discussed options for making me an idiot more effectively."

SLAP!

Lina squeezed her palm from aching pain, a red mark on Armand's cheek testified that the girl had spared no strength for this slap,

"Don't you dare to utter words that you will later regret," she looked at him reproachfully, but the strong resentment in her voice was obvious, "You don't know much about Marcus," Lina went to the table, took a bottle of water, poured herself a glass and took a few sips.

"Hah, are you defending him?" Armand grinned and rubbed his cheek; on the one hand, he was grateful to the girl who had cooled his stormy emotions. Apparently, over many years, so many of them have accumulated that he could not restrain them anymore.

On the other hand, her reaction only added even more pain to his broken heart, because he realized that so many years later her relationship with Marcus was stronger than with him as if in this relationship he was the only one who wholeheartedly loved all this time.

"I don't know why think so, but the one who shot me was not Marcus, it was one of the castle's guards," the girl added, and her words made the man completely at a loss.

"Wh-what?"

"Marcus did not kill me."

Armand stared at Lina, trying to find confirmation of the words she just said in her eyes. For too long, he had lived with the thought that his sibling was to blame for Polina's death that day. And this thought gave him an incentive to move on, because if he didn't have love, then there would be at least revenge, for which his life acquired at least some sense.

Every day he got up with a desire to avenge her death and, at the same time, every day put off this revenge, unable to force himself to take the last step. No matter how much he loved Polina, just as deeply deep in his soul was a small hope that Marcus was not involved in the death of the girl, and all this was only a big misunderstanding.

This hope restrained him every time he wanted to find his brother and clarify everything once and for all, this hope forced him to keep his distance from Marcus, because at heart Armand was most afraid that this hope was false.

The man walked forward and sat on the edge of the bed, he leaned his elbows on his knees and bowed his head, it was ready to burst from tension.

Marcus did not kill her.

"But why? Why did he make everything look like it were him? Why did he do this?" Armand's gaze was directed to the floor as if he was trying to find some kind of clue among the plain drawings on the carpet to get answers to these questions.

Lina went to the bed and sat silently beside it. The electronic clock on the wall was blinking in the twilight of the room, moonlight breaking through the open curtains illuminated the part of the wall where the door to the bathroom was half open and water was barely audible.

The girl had already forgotten that she was going to take a bath, and only now she noticed that while they were talking, the sun managed to set over the horizon.

Golden hair slipped forward and touched her palms, she took a few strands and began to sort their ends between her fingers. This reminded the girl as in childhood, Marcus and Armand liked to measure the length of her hair, marking every inch on the door jamb in the kitchen when her hair grew longer and longer.

It was so long ago, but this time was one of the happiest in her life.

"Marcus did it because he wanted to protect you."