Ghislain spent most of the evening talking to his officers. They would be out of the forest tomorrow and arrive at Brackith by evening, and there were some preparations to be made.

He sent a small troop ahead to notify the dukedom. If there was anything he had learned during his time as a prince, it was that festivities were an important part of governance; it signaled the citizens on how to feel. The homecoming of the prince had to be met with joyful extravagance.

It was true that his late father had been bloodthirsty and merciless, but he also knew how to put on a show. Most of the lessons that Ghislain had learned in the royal palace were just things that his brother had repeated verbatim from their father. One such phrase was “you could feed an army with stale bread and watery soup, but their morale must be fed by the occasional banquets of meat and alcohol.”

Caught up in his preparations, he didn’t realize how late it was until it was just him and Joseph alone in his tent.

He frowned. “Where could that paladin be?”

“Patience,” Joseph said, his attention focused on drafting the speech for his homecoming tomorrow. “You’re asking a lot from a man whose allegiance is to Calorin.”

“Any true citizen of Calorin would want to get away from it as soon as possible,” he said dryly.

Instead of answering him, Joseph gave him a sympathetic look. If it were anyone else, he would find their sympathy demeaning, but Joseph was the one exception. It was harder to sleep on certain nights, and during those nights Joseph would stay awake in bed with him and listen to him recount tales from his childhood.

It was so palpable sometimes, his bitterness. They could call him a coward all they want, but he had never wanted to lead. He hadn’t inherited the same ambition that his siblings had, and even as a child, he had insisted that he had no intention of seizing the throne. All he wanted was for everyone to be at peace with each other. The only one who believed him was Mathieu.

Over the years, Mathieu had grown colder. More celestial, he had said wryly to Joseph once. The only time he had seen Mathieu since he had taken the throne was when he had made an impromptu visit to the palace. Mathieu had been furious by his sudden appearance, but it had been funny to finally see a crack in his polished composure after Charlie, his nephew, had popped out of Ghislain’s closet and hit him below the waist with a wooden stick.

That had been quite the scene – his brother, a tinge of red creeping up his neck as he reprimanded his son, and Charlie, who always seemed so bright and vivacious that he had difficulty looking at the boy because it made him despair over his own murky childhood, insisting that he was ridding the world of heresy. Ghislain had pretended to be upset, but that was just because he enjoyed seeing the apologetic look on his older brother’s face.

He suspected that his older brother didn’t want to see him; when Mathieu had become king, Ghislain had been immediately assigned to the distant dukedom of Brackith, which was to the far southwest of the palace. It was likely that throughout the years, Mathieu’s trust and fondness of him had devolved into suspicion and paranoia. Ghislain didn’t want to admit it, but a part of him had been slightly eager to bring the prisoners back to the palace so that he could see his brother.

So, when Sir Roel had shown up with the royal decree, his anger had spiked because he felt like his brother had lost interest in him. Or, at least, that was Joseph’s interpretation. Ghislain had scoffed at him when he said that, but he knew he was right. He didn’t know what his brother was planning nor did he care honestly. But…well, it would’ve been “pleasant” (was that the right word?) to see his brother once before he left Calorin forever.

“Do you hear that?” Joseph said, pulling him from his thoughts.

“Hear what?”

“Sounds like shouting.”

“Could just be the men –” He stopped talking and listened intently. He still couldn’t hear anything well enough, but there was a nagging feeling in his chest. He motioned to Joseph and they walked outside the tent.

What they saw and heard silenced them. A blazing fire had swallowed up some tents at the far end of the camp. Then, there were the howls and the screams. He knew these howls well. Brackith was a mountainous area, and hunting was a common pastime.

“What happened?” he asked his guards.

“Berine wolves,” one man said breathlessly, confirming his suspicions. Every hunter knew a fight with a pack wasn’t worth it. Bold and prideful, they would hunt down anyone who took their prey. But to go after an army of a few thousand was ridiculous.

“And a fire, too?” he muttered.

Then, maybe because he had been thinking about his brother, it dawned on him. The current situation and the circumstances surrounding the death of his eldest brother, David, weren’t too similar, but there was a chill that crawled down his spine as he thought about it.

The only reason Ghislain knew about the details of David’s death was because when Berthe had been poisoned, Mathieu had sat down with him and explained why Adele had been trying to poison him.

“David was Adele’s favorite and an overconfident fool,” Mathieu had said. It had shocked Ghislain, who had only been twelve at the time, to hear his brother speak with such contempt towards his own sibling. “He thinks that he can solve anything with his spear. And, to some extent, he can. So, how do you beat him? It’s simple. Just overwhelm him. Disorient him. Leave him so confused that by the time he can react, there’s already a sword sticking through him.

“I obtained the help of the 89th Paladin who was eager to earn my favor. Then, while David was out on a hunt, the paladin would set fire to the forest. As David and his men are caught in the inferno, the paladin would start his attack.

“But, of course, he’s only the 89th for a reason. David often spars with paladins. He wouldn’t die that easily. So, using a proxy, I hired two small mercenary troops. Neither troop knew of the other’s existence. All they knew was that they were to kill a small group of peasant hunters who were trespassing on the nobility’s section of the forest and that the fire would be the signal to attack. The result was chaos as no one knew who was fighting whom, and David didn’t stand a chance.”

The entire time, his brother, who had just turned eighteen, had spoken calmly and evenly. He had the same steely-eyed look as their father did, but he wore it differently. King Maxime would have this wide, madly confident grin; Mathieu’s mouth was a somber line, and there was a slight furrow in his brow that would deepen as the years passed.

There was a little more to that memory. It was something that he never shared with Joseph because he didn’t want anyone else to have it.

Then, Mathieu had hugged him. It was a tight, warm hug. “I’m sorry about Berthe, but you understand, right?” his older brother whispered in his ear. “You understand that I have to do all of this to protect us, right?”

Now he felt a cold dread that that memory couldn’t thaw. “Joseph! They’re coming for me!” He didn’t know who it was or why, but he was certain of it. “I have to go. When everything looks clear, I’ll be back.”

“What? Who?” Joseph was disoriented, possibly from the sight of the fire. “What do you mean?”

But he didn’t have time to explain it all or comfort him. He left Joseph behind – if they were after him, he reasoned, Joseph would be safer here – and ran to the west side of the camp where the horses were kept. He passed by other soldiers who were on their way to either deal with the fire or the wolves, but he kept his head down. His frantic mind latched onto small details of David’s death, like how when they went in to recover his body, they had discovered that the sword that had gone through his throat belonged to someone in his own group.

Would one of his soldiers, overwhelmed and disoriented, be the one to kill him? Or was there a traitor watching him right now, waiting for his chance to strike in the chaos? He had to escape, create some distance between him and the camp.

The horses were spooked by the commotion, but he pulled himself up on one and untied it. And he was off! The darkness of the forest swallowed him up, the screams of his soldiers and the glow of the blazing fire fading in the distance. It was cowardly to run away, but he couldn’t die. Not yet.

“You must want something for yourself, right? Joseph had once asked him eight years ago when they were still getting to know each other. Ghislain had ignored his question at the time, but he did have an answer. And his answer had remained the same for all these years, with the sole inclusion being that he wanted Joseph by his side for it.

But life was cruel and violent and merciless. There was a low whistling sound, like something cutting through the wind. His horse let out a shrill cry, and he felt its body shift under him. On the right side of the horse’s neck, he spotted something gleaming in the dark. Then there was another whistling sound, another shrill cry from the horse, and he was thrown off the saddle. He tucked his body into a ball and landed on some large ferns, but it still knocked the wind out of him.

“I didn’t know you were so skilled at throwing knives,” he heard someone say. The voice was feminine and unfamiliar.

“It’s useful for chases.” This voice was much lower and one that he thought he recognized. “You should go back. Make sure Joseph stays alive.”

The mention of Joseph’s name brought back his courage. “You fuckers! Where are you?!”

There was no answer, but he heard a low muttering. Then, he heard the man speak again – something that sounded like “I’ll be fine” – followed by the crackling of leaves.

“Show yourself!” he yelled. If it were just one assailant, maybe he could handle him. In his haste, he had forgotten to grab a weapon, so he picked up a long, spindly tree branch from beside him. It would have to do.

The assailant stepped out from behind a wide tree trunk. Almost as tall as Ghislain, the man was lean and muscular. He was dressed in a dark garb, and several leather pouches hung from his belt. There was just enough moonlight dappling through the tree branches to make out his face.

“You…you…fucking…” He might look a bit different without the armor, but it was impossible to not recognize that self-deprecating smile and those downcast eyes.

“I’m sorry,” Sir Roel said, and his words were so quiet that they were almost swallowed up by the overwhelming silence of the forest. “There’s never another choice.”