“I’m sorry, sir,” said Landi. “I was just taking him through the standard training protocols, as instructed. I had no idea he’d react this way.”

“It’s not your fault,” said Elyon, his tone grim. He stood, helping Prince Sebastian to his feet—he stood, but he was shaking and still seemed dazed. “We should get him back to camp.”

“Of course,” said Landi. “He may not be able to ride on his own in this state, but he can ride with me and—“

“No,” said Elyon. “He’ll ride with me. In fact, you stay here and finish the hunt on your own. Someone needs to. We can’t leave that poor rabbit dangling there forever.”

Landi saluted. “Sir.”

Elyon knew he shouldn’t take it out on Landi, and he would apologize to her for his shortness later. But right now he was angry—at himself, mostly, for not having taken the time to get to know Sebastian better before foolishly assuming he’d respond to training the same way as his new recruits. Obviously he was different from the elven recruits. He had different life experiences, different traumas, and Elyon knew nothing about any of it. Of course something had gone horribly wrong. He hadn’t done his due diligence.

Elyon helped Sebastian up onto his horse and then climbed up behind him, reaching around him to take the reins. This position was slightly awkward, but in the eventuality that Prince Sebastian passed out, Elyon would be able to catch him this way. If Sebastian rode behind there was a chance he might slip off the horse, and that could be a disaster.

Sebastian started to calm down slightly as they rode, shaking a bit less and seeming more alert. But his breathing was still ragged.

“In and out,” Elyon mumbled in his ear. “Deep breaths.”

“I know how to breathe,” snapped Sebastian.

“Ah, I see your conscious mind has rejoined us,” replied Elyon. “Welcome back. Would you care to explain what happened?”

“No,” said Sebastian. His tone was harsh, almost angry, but Elyon could see his skin starting to turn red around his ears—he was embarrassed.

Elyon decided not to push it any further, for now.

But there would be some changes when they got back to camp. Elyon couldn’t allow something like this to happen again. He had truly hated the sight of Prince Sebastian suffering like that. Seeing the usually cheerful prince shivering with such intense fear and pain had frightened Elyon, not just because of the potential diplomatic ramifications, but on a personal level. That feeling would warrant further investigation later, but for now Elyon was planning immediate preventive measures to protect Sebastian from any further incidents.

He’s going to abandon me now, thought Sebastian, laying face-down on his bedroll in his private tent. Best case scenario, he’ll stop trusting me to do any jobs for the camp at all and just leave me alone until it’s time for me to go home.

Worst case scenario, he won’t even let me stay. He’ll force me to go back to the capital and I’ll get murdered in this shadow-war or whatever. Or he’ll just abandon me in the woods and I’ll die of starvation instead.

All of Sebastian’s past life experience had taught him to expect judgment, censure, and exclusion from authority figures. Except… Prince Elyon had been surprisingly kind in the immediate aftermath of everything. Instead of yelling at him or punishing him, Elyon had just held him and helped him calm down. Elyon hadn’t even insisted on Sebastian explaining himself.

Of course, Sebastian felt embarrassed about that, too, but part of him couldn’t stop thinking about how warm Elyon’s embrace had felt…

Sebastian groaned and turned over so he was staring at the roof of his tent—not that he could make out much of the canvas in the darkness of the evening.

Is it too much to hope that all of this might just… blow over?

“Excuse me,” Sebastian sat up straight to see—surprisingly, not Landi, but some other elven officer poking his head through the entrance of the tent. “It’s time for supper. Would you like to join the rest of us, or should we bring you a meal here?”

Sebastian didn’t really want to talk to anyone right now. Especially if there was a chance that any of them had heard about what happened. But if he just ate alone in his tent he knew he’d end up feeling even more pathetic.

“I’ll go,” said Sebastian. “Just a moment.”

When he arrived at the big campfire, the elven soldiers greeted him warmly, as usual. A young scout named Malon clapped him on the back.

“We heard you weren’t feeling well,” said Malon with a grin. “Not used to all that hard labor, eh?”

“Oh… uh… yeah,” said Sebastian. “I’ve never actually peeled potatoes before.”

“Well, don’t worry too much about it,” said Malon. “You’ll get used to it eventually.”

“That’s what you say now,” called another elf from the other side of the fire, “But we all know you’ll be whining your ass off the next time you’re on kitchen duty, Malon!”

“Oh, shut your face, Sontar!” said Malon, going to punch Sontar on the arm.

Sebastian smiled. It was a relief to be treated normally after all.

Sebastian was also relieved when he saw that dinner wasn’t rabbit. It was a chicken stew, no doubt made from a few of the chickens that were always running around camp. Sebastian still tried not to think too much about that whole… process. There were a lot of thoughts he had to push from his mind any time he ate meat. But at least with chicken he wouldn’t be haunted by images of that poor shaking rabbit.

But when he got up to the front of the line, Feno the chef didn’t serve him any of the chicken stew.

“Hang on,” Feno said, reaching down to pull out a smaller pot that had been nestled into some of the coals near the edge of the fire. He poured the contents of that pot into a bowl and handed that to Sebastian along with a slice of bread. “There you go.”

“What is this?” asked Sebastian.

“It’s a vegetable stew,” said Feno. “Same thing we’re having, but without any of the meat in it. Plus some extra lentils, so it’s a little more robust. Commander Elyon said we shouldn’t serve you any meat from now on. Sorry we’ve been feeding you the wrong stuff all this time. We didn’t know your preference. But we’ve got you covered now. And don’t worry, it’s not too much trouble for us. You’re our guest after all.”

“Oh,” said Sebastian. “Thank you.”

Sebastian sat down in a daze, staring down at his vegetable stew.

He was being punished after all—not just privately yelled at, but publicly shamed in front of everyone. Elyon might not have told them the reason, but after his failed hunting trip this afternoon, surely they’d all be able to guess. Or maybe Elyon had told them, but also told them to pretend they didn’t know. But why would he do that? Just to make Sebastian feel insane? Just to make the humiliation that much more intense?

Sebastian was certain they all must be staring at him, maybe even whispering to each other about him. Just when he’d started to make friends, too… surely they’d all keep their distance from him now. The stupid, useless, human prince who couldn’t even earn chicken or his stew.

But why had Elyon pretended to be so kind and so reasonable, just to turn around and do this? At least Sebastian’s father never pretended to be anything other than cruel. Sebastian could steel himself for the hurt if he knew it was coming, but this was something he didn’t know how to protect himself against.

Somewhere deep inside Sebastian all of the embarrassment, shame, and self-hatred that had been building up over the years finally boiled over into pure, blind rage.

Sebastian set down his stew. “Excuse me for a moment,” he said, to no one in particular. Then he marched straight towards the command tent where Prince Elyon was silently working on some paperwork by candle-light.

“If you have a problem with me, just tell me!” shouted Sebastian. “You don’t need to play these damn games, I know I messed up, so just yell at me and get it over with!”

“What do you mean?” asked Elyon, looking a bit stunned, pen still in hand.

“This vegetable stew thing!” said Sebastian. “I couldn’t kill a rabbit, so I don’t deserve to eat meat, right? You’re singling me out so everyone can see what a soft-hearted, useless weakling I am, right? ”

Elyon set down his pen. “That… was not my intention,” he said, with infuriating calm. “Would you like to eat meat, then?”

“What!?” said Sebastian, more certain than ever that Elyon was intentionally messing with him. “Do I like to eat meat? What kind of question is that?”

“A relevant one,” said Elyon. He stared at Sebastian for a moment and then sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “You’re a nobleman, so I assumed you’d have plenty of experience with hunting, and clearly I was wrong about that. I knew you would likely struggle a little with manual labor because of your upbringing, but I didn’t think you’d… Well, that was my mistake. And you didn’t want to talk to me about it, but I didn’t want to cause you that level of distress again, so I thought that it was safer to assume that, since you didn’t want to kill animals, you most likely didn’t want to consume them, either. I tried to instruct Corporal Feno not to make a big deal out of the change, to minimize any embarrassment you might feel. I’m truly sorry that you felt you were being punished. I just didn’t know what else to do.”

Sebastian sat down heavily in a chair across from Elyon, feeling rather stunned. That was an awful lot of thought for Elyon to put into—not how to use Sebastian, or how to punish him, but just… how he was feeling. That was unexpected.

Elyon shook his head and shrugged a little and suddenly Sebastian could see how tired and frustrated he looked. “I have spent countless years learning about people’s feelings and behavior through trial-and-error, and every time I feel like I’ve finally got it all figured out, I mess it up again. I can keep trying to analyze your behavior all I want, but I’m sure it will just lead to more mistakes. You’re too different from anyone I’ve ever known—and that was not meant as an insult, in case you were about to take it that way. It’s simply a fact. Despite all my experience, I can’t actually know how you feel or what you’ve been through unless you tell me. So will you not just talk to me? So I can stop making so many mistakes? I don’t want you to keep getting hurt because of me.”

Sebastian could tell what a large admission that had been. From the moment they met, Sebastian had seen how self-assured and competent Elyon was. But now he could also see in Elyon some of that same shame and sense of inadequacy that he’d always felt.

The anger had melted away entirely now, but Sebastian still didn’t know where to start, really. “I do go hunting…” he said, finally. “Sometimes. Sort of. For social events. But usually I just ride around the woods for a while before heading back. Sometimes a servant will give me something they caught to claim as my prize. My father makes them do that. He’d be too embarrassed of me otherwise.”

“But you do eat meat?” asked Elyon.

“Yes…” said Sebastian. “I mean, everyone eats meat, don’t they? At least sometimes? And I’m a prince. They serve me meat with every meal. I can’t turn it down. It would be ungrateful. And unworthy of my position.”

“So you’ve thought about turning it down before,” said Elyon.

Sebastian shrugged. He was surprised again again at how much thought Elyon put into interpreting his words—how good he was at picking up on what was left unsaid. Clearly all those years of ‘trial-and-error,’ as he put it, had made Elyon more socially insightful than he thought he was. But some things were still hard for Sebastian to say out loud.

“Is it just squeamishness, then?” asked Elyon. He looked at Sebastian momentarily with a calculating expression, and then seemed to come to a conclusion, but when he finally spoke again, he seemed slightly embarrassed about it. “Forgive me for putting it this way, I mean nothing by it, but is the problem merely that you’re a naive, pampered prince who can’t handle the reality of how people live day-to-day? Or is there something deeper going on?”

“I’m not naive!” snapped Sebastian, jumping to his feet as the shame and anger flared inside him again. “I’m not that naive, anyway. I understand the circle of life. I understand why people need to kill and eat animals to survive. I know there’s nothing wrong with that, morally. I know what reality is. It’s just—”

Sebastian looked at Elyon’s face and realized something.

“—you don’t actually think that about me, do you?” said Sebastain, sitting back down. “You were intentionally trying to provoke me.”

“Forgive me,” said Elyon. “I wasn’t sure how else to convince you to say the thing you don’t want to say.”

Elyon was watching Sebastian with a clear, straightforward gaze. His expression wasn’t judgmental—it wasn’t pitying either, or disgusted, or mocking, it was just… sincerely interested. Sympathetic, even.

Elyon folded his arms and stared down at the ground, preparing himself to tear his own heart open for this strange, kind, and surprisingly disarming man.

“If I kill anything, personally, with my own hands… it will be like my mother died for nothing,” said Sebastian.

And he told Elyon the full story of the little children and the little birds and the violence that was demanded of them, and the terrible retaliation that awaited a too-soft-hearted prince and his mother.