The next day came way too soon.

Last night, Petyr had decided that it would be the first day of the rest of his life.

As he sat up in bed, his whole temple throbbed. He reached up to feel the side of his head and noticed the bump was mostly gone, though the spot hurt even more somehow.

He slid over towards the edge of the bed and dropped his feet on the floor. How exactly was this supposed to be the start of his life? What was he supposed to do differently?

All I want right now is to sleep…

He put on his shirt and trousers, then headed downstairs. Splashing on some cold water would help clear his head, or so he hoped.

When he reached the ground floor, he noticed his father.

Gregory stood in the shadowy corner of the hallway, gazing furtively out the window. His father hadn’t even noticed him coming down at all.

Has he lost his mind? “What are you doing?”

Petyr’s voice cut through the silence like a slap, and Gregory flinched so sharply that he bumped his head against the wall. “Gods’ asses!” he sputtered. “W-What are you doing there? You scared me halfway to death!”

“I woke up. It’s morning.”

As he gazed at his father, Petyr noticed his bloodshot eyes and heavy eyebags. “Have you even slept?”

Gregory glanced at the window with the tail of his eye. “I tried… but in the end I just couldn’t so I went back to work.”

“Seriously, what do you keep looking at that window for?”

“Nothing!” Gregory breathed in deeply calm to himself and then firmly added, “It’s nothing.”

It was strange to see the old man act this way. Petyr could’ve gone through entire lists of complaints when it came to his father, but being a coward wasn’t among them. Seeing him rattled for any reason was exceedingly rare.

“Whatever you’re trying to hide is just freaking me out more. So tell me. Or I’ll ask Alis.”

“What—no, don’t!” Gregory ran a hand down his face with exhaustion and sighed again. “Look… I think I saw someone out there. That’s all.”

“Like a person?”

Gregory clicked his tongue. “Well, what the hell else is it going to be? It wasn’t a ghost.”

Petyr padded over to the window and gazed out. He could see the small garden patch that extended over to the treeline where the forest started, some fifty meters away, but nothing else. The day was warm and sunny, quite nice really.

“I think you’re losing it,” he said. “Get some sleep.”

Part of him did mean that advice; but the other part knew that nothing annoyed his father so much as being doubted, and that Gregory would quickly open up if doubted in such a way. The man prided himself on his rationality, so being called a liar or delusional always made him bristle.

“I know what I saw.” Gregory tapped his finger against the window, pointing to the corner of the garden, which stood right in the shadow of the forest. “There. That’s where I saw her.”

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Her? In an instant, Petyr had gone from believing none of what he heard to having his interest piqued. “It was a woman?”

“Blonde and wearing some stange silver-white outfit. At first I thought it was one of your girls. You remember how that girlfriend you had used to stalk the house.”

How could Petyr forget? Ah, Larisa. At first he’d been impressed by how quickly he charmed her, which was why he was so surprised by how well she took it when he he informed her that they were over.

It had only lasted four days, but Klara had finally warmed up to his flirtations, and she was hotter.

Even without that, though a quiet girl and average girl like Larisa could never hold Petyr’s interest for very long. It surprised him when he was informed by Alis that she’d started camping in the forest outside the house, trying to catch glimpses of him from a distance.

In the end, it had taken parental intervention to get her to go away.

Petyr snapped out of the dreadful memory and shook his head, at a loss. “Why would some strange woman be watching our house, then?”

At that, Gregory gave him a strangely intense look that only lasted a second. He broke it off and straightened a moment. “Who knows. Just be careful.”

The avoidant way he treated the topic was alarming. “Dad,” said Petyr, not even remember the last time he invoked that word so solemnly.

Gregory clicked his tongue again, annoyed. “It’s nothing, Petyr. It’s nothing!”

“Do you know this person?”

“No!” he shouted. And a little too loudly: his glanced up at the ceiling right after, hoping he hadn’t woken Alis in the process. “Look, Petyr, I have no idea who this person is. For all I know, she could be a thief—my lab equipment and everything I’ve got down there is valuable.”

“I’m gonna go into town soon. I could tell Nik to send someone.”

Nik was among the leaders of the bandits, and the one that directly oversaw the business in the tavern, and that could reliably be called upon to settle any issue. He had always been protective of Petyr as well, and by this point was considered a friend of the family.

“No, no, no, not yet. I don’t want to overreact if it’s nothing. Just keep your eyes peeled.”

Petyr traced a line down his father’s back as he moved back towards the basement door. For the first time, he noticed the sluggish movements and the slouch in his posture.

He’s getting old. He’d always thought of him as his old man, but it was scary to think he was just a few years away from being a grandpa.

Gregory stopped by the door and glacend at Petyr over his shoulder. “I’ll go get to work.”

“You should take it easy,” warned Petyr, his voice surprisingly soft.

“Just a little more for the day and I’ll be done.”

His father entered and shut the door. He stayed there for a few moments, feeling oddly out of place in his own home.

Though he had never looked back fondly on those days when he was a kid and completely under his father’s care, the knowledge that they were never coming back and that neither of them were getting any younger filled him with a strange sense of dread.

He’s just going to get older. And then he’ll die.

The idea should’ve been liberating; but combined with the revelation of the previous night it just served to fill him with a sense of total despair about the future.

Petyr didn’t want to live to see the old man die. It was unimaginable that such a thing could happen.

The staircase groaned as Alis came down. She stopped when she noticed him, smiling sheepishly. “You’re up early. Is your father still down there?”

Petyr chuckled darkly. “You bet.”

“Have you eaten?”

He shook his head.

“Come on, I’ll make us some breakfast.”

As they moved together towards the kitchen, she reached out and ruffled his hair. “Everything okay?”

A surge of worry passed through him as the thoughts from before flooded in at once: the mortality of everyone he knew, the inevitable passage of time, and the hopelessness of his situation.

“I think so,” he said calmly, sitting at the table. No reason to worry poor Alis further.

As she bent over to get something out of the pantry, Petyr realized glumly that he didn’t even have the drive to look over and get a good look at her ass. Usually, that would’ve been a great way to start the morning.

Instead, he considered what his father had said. A woman watching the house.

The mention of a strange woman typically would’ve ignited some nascent feelings of lust—even if they were based in pure fantasy.

This time, though, Petyr thought of how tired his father looked, he thought of Alis and how good she’d always been to him, and how he was at a point in his life where he was probably going to have to protect them rather than the other way around.

If anyone tries anything, I’ll kill them.

The image of the destroyed galleon flashed in his mind, and he imagined a similar fate for his own potential enemies.

If that woman’s real, she better stay away.