1
The late afternoon sun hung heavy over the fields, casting long shadows that stretched across the tall, brittle grass.
Justin shifted the weight of his armor with practiced ease. The slow burn of another day’s march settled across his shoulders.
Each step sank a little deeper into the earth than it should have.
The rains had softened the ground here—just the kind of detail soldiers noticed without thinking.
The southern front wasn’t far.
Dragons had been spotted near the foothills—real ones, not just smoke on the horizon or rumors passed by trembling farmers.
Patrols were thin this deep past the garrison roads. Still, someone had to sweep the fringes to make sure no village burned without warning.
Justin exhaled slowly, scanning the open land ahead.
No campfires. No movement.
Only the slow gleam of a river unwinding across the meadow, its banks lined with low stones and wiry trees half-drowned in sunlight.
He didn’t like the emptiness—the hush of it all—but then, he rarely liked anything about the frontier.
Places like this bred stories—cursed woods, spirits that wore the faces of the lost. He had heard them all and believed none.
Still, he slowed as he neared the river, letting his senses stretch wider.
That was when he saw her.
At first, he thought it might be a trick of the light—a crimson flash among the grasses, catching the sunlight.
But as he moved closer, the shape sharpened into something living.
Someone was sitting by the water, knees tucked beneath her, fingers drifting through the river’s surface.
A girl.
Alone.
Her hair caught the sun’s low angles—too rich a color to be anything but fire or blood. For a moment, he stood there, frowning.
No common folk wandered this far.
Not this close to the southern border.
He set his jaw and approached, boots dragging through the grass.
He wasn’t foolish enough to call out across open ground. Better to get closer first and check for anyone hiding nearby.
The girl didn’t turn at the sound of his steps.
Only when he was a few strides away did she look up, blinking slow and unafraid.
Justin’s hand brushed against the hilt of his sword—instinct, nothing more—and then fell away.
She didn’t look like a threat.
She didn’t look like someone who even understood the word.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he said, pitching his voice low, careful. “The southern patrols can’t guarantee the frontier is safe anymore. Dragons have been sighted this side of the river.”
She tilted her head slightly, considering him the way one might consider a passing cloud. Then she smiled—small and sincere. The unexpected softness of it made him pause.
“Not all fires are meant to destroy, Sir Knight,” she said.
Her voice was clear, carrying across the few steps of open air between them, without a hint of mockery.
No fear, either.
Justin frowned.
He was used to villagers who begged for protection, who recoiled at the sight of blood-stained armor.
She did neither.
Glancing over her shoulder, he scanned the far banks for hidden companions, traps, or scouts.
Nothing.
Only the river, the steady push of warm wind, and the girl sitting at its edge like she had been there forever.
He shifted, uncertain for the first time that day.
“If you’re waiting for an escort back to the main road,” he offered, a little stiffly, “I can see you safely there. There’s an outpost three leagues east.”
The girl dipped her fingers into the water again, watching the ripples spread outward in gentle rings.
When she spoke, it was almost to herself.
“I’m not waiting,” she said. “But if you wish to stay a while, I wouldn’t mind.”
Justin hesitated.
Every lesson he’d been taught clawed at him—duty, caution. The need to keep moving. Keep guarding. Keep fighting.
The frontier wasn’t a place for lingering.
But the sun dipped low, and the river sang against the stones. The girl’s smile felt less like an invitation and more like a truth he’d always known.
He let out a slow breath, loosening the strap across his shoulder, and lowered himself carefully to the grass beside her.
The armor groaned in protest, but for the first time in longer than he cared to measure, Justin didn’t feel its weight.
The two of them sat in silence as the sky turned copper and then deeper, darker shades of blue.
Somewhere far away, there were wars and dragons and duties undone.
Here, there was only the water, the warmth, and a girl with ruby-red hair who smiled like the world had already been saved.
The air in the chamber was cold—the kind of deep, stone-soaked chill that clung to the halls in winter—but it rolled off Sir Justin as if he lay at the heart of a forge.
Tomas dabbed at the sweat pooling near his brow, mindful of the raw patches, dreading how the man winced even in unconsciousness.
This close, it was impossible to pretend he was simply sleeping. He looked like a soldier abandoned on the field—and worse, like no one intended to bring him home.
The boy wrung out the cloth again, the water turning pink with the stains of old blood.
He hated lifting it and seeing what lay underneath, but duty made his hands steady. He laid the cool cloth on his lord’s forehead, resisting the urge to look away from what his face had become.
The handsome First Knight—once the pride of every courtly song—was a ruin now. Three deep scars raked from temple to jaw, ridged and uneven. Burns twisted the skin across his right cheek, creeping toward the neck. Only the left side, untouched, bore a faint ghost of the man Tomas remembered.
Bandages clung to his ribs, his hips, and across what remained of his right shoulder. A thin chain crossed his chest, the small weight of an amulet nestled just above his heart—strange, out of place, yet untouched amid the wreckage.
The right side of his torso was scorched—patches of skin burned, peeled, and tightened wrong. The missing arm left a brutal scar at the shoulder, puckered and sealed, neither bleeding nor healing, as if the wound had simply closed itself without care.
Under the loose linen draped for modesty, Tomas caught glimpses of the crushed right leg—swollen, twisted unnaturally under rough splints. The healers had bound it badly, not even trying to set it properly.
Maybe they hadn’t expected him to last the night.
Maybe they weren’t wrong.
The cloth withered dry under the fever’s breath.
Tomas dipped it again, forcing himself to keep moving.
Behind him, voices slipped through the half-open door.
“Behold the First Knight of the Golden Pride,” someone muttered, the words dripping with contempt. “Couldn’t even lift a sword when they dragged him back.”
“Crawled back half-dead,” another said. “Maybe dragon-bit, maybe just too coward to stand.”
“Heard he fled,” another answered, voice low and sharp. “Didn’t fall fighting. Crawled away from the dragons. Crawled right into a curse.”
“Should’ve died out there,” the first finished. “Would’ve been cleaner.”
Tomas gritted his teeth. He stayed silent, blinking down at the man on the cot.
Sir Justin stirred, a pained breath rattling from his lungs.
He leaned closer, cloth forgotten.
The knight’s only remaining hand twitched, fingers curling toward something that wasn’t there.
“...Castella...” The broken whisper slipped out, so faint it barely stirred the air.
Tomas didn’t recognize the name. Probably some fair lady he hadn’t heard of—there had always been plenty, trailing after his lord in better days.
Not that it mattered now. None of them came at all. No one wanted to be seen near him.
He dipped the cloth again, running it lightly across the knight’s brow, the fever burning on without mercy.
The healers moved away, their whispers fading into the stone halls beyond the door.
“Shouldn’t even be breathing,” one of them said. “Rot like that... it just eats what’s left.”
Tomas stayed.
He wasn’t a knight, nor a healer. He couldn’t drive out the fever or bind broken bones with a whispered spell.
But he could keep vigil.
He could sit in the silence everyone else feared to enter, and wait—as long as it took—for the man once clad in golden armor to find his way back.
Or until the fever claimed him entirely.
Whichever came first.
The audience chamber was stifling despite the winter chill beyond its marble doors.
Light spilled from the high windows in pale, weary shafts, catching on the gold embroidery of the gathered cloaks—staining their finery with a harsh, sickly glare.
King Leonard sat the throne easily, but his jaw was set a fraction too tight.
He listened as Lord Verdan—one of the older southern lords—finished his polished appeal.
“...and while we all grieve for the loss of so many brave souls at the southern front,” Verdan said, bowing just enough to flatter, “it is clear that unfortunate choices have led us here.”
The court shifted, a slow ripple of silk and armor. No one said Justin’s name, but it hovered there, unspoken and heavy.
Leonard steepled his fingers together, pressing them lightly against his chin.
“And what ‘choices,’” he said evenly, “would you have us unmake, my lord?”
Verdan wore the careful smile of men who had already counted their winnings.
“Perhaps, Your Majesty,” he said, “it is time to reconsider placing so much trust in those... untested by bloodline. By tradition.”
A few heads bowed in faint agreement. Others simply watched, silent.
Leonard let the pause stretch.
“Sir Justin de Laurant earned his command through valor, not lineage,” he said at last. “No battle ever asks who your father was.”
The younger knights kept their eyes forward. The elder houses glanced at one another—small, sharp looks that spoke louder than any words.
Verdan inclined his head, as if conceding the point.
“Of course, Your Majesty. None would question the bravery of your First Knight.” He let the words hang a heartbeat too long. “But bravery alone cannot shield the kingdom from fire.”
A murmur stirred at the court’s edges—not loud, not open, but real.
Leonard caught the glances passed between Verdan, the Duke of Caerlyne, and Baron Arlath.
Lines drawn. Not against dragons.
He thought of Justin—fevered, broken, buried in the hospice wing beyond these gilded halls. The boy he’d grown up with. The friend he’d trusted with the kingdom’s pride.
And he thought, careful not to show it, of how little a king could do when the court smelled blood.
He rose.
The lords bowed low, but the air was thick with what remained unsaid.
“The dragons of Ignivar have pressed our borders for decades,” Leonard said. “And they will press harder still, whether our defenders come from old blood or new.”
The court bowed again, a tide of velvet and iron.
“This council is adjourned,” he said.
Leonard passed through them without haste, the weight of every silence following him down the marble steps.
No swords drawn. No voices raised.
But the battle had begun all the same.
The doors to the council chamber slammed open with a crack that echoed against stone and vaulted ceilings.
Leonard didn’t look up from the sheaf of reports spread out before him. He didn’t need to.
Only one person still carried enough fury—and enough love—to stride through the king’s private hall without permission.
Eliane’s boots struck the marble floor in clipped steps. No trailing skirts today, no courtly grace—only the grim weight of anger.
“You’re letting them kill him,” she said, her voice low but cutting—sharper than any shouted accusation.
Leonard set his quill down with deliberate care, the parchment blotting beneath his hand.
He looked up slowly.
His sister stood rigid across the long table, hands clenched at her sides. Her eyes flared with fury.
“They’ve locked him in a room and called it mercy,” she said. “No real healers. No real magic. Just scraps and prayers and whispers waiting for him to die.”
Leonard watched her.
He remembered a different Eliane—a girl trailing in Justin’s shadow across the practice yards, laughing too loudly at his jokes, demanding lessons with a wooden sword too large for her arms.
He remembered the way she had looked at Justin even then—with the kind of fierce, unshakable loyalty that no throne or bloodline could teach.
She had admired him before she had admired anything else in the world. Long before duty, before crown, before the bloody politics that now strangled them all.
And now—now she stood here, a princess grown, willing to tear through the court’s polished lies for him.
“If you can’t take care of him,” Eliane said, voice trembling not with weakness but with barely contained rage, “then I will.”
Leonard leaned back slightly in his chair, studying her.
The weight of rule pressed harder than the crown itself—every decision measured not in what was right, but in what could be survived.
He could not save Justin without cutting out his own throne from under him. He could not defend him openly without inviting civil war within his own court.
But Eliane... she had no such chains.
Leonard exhaled slowly, his voice quieter when it finally came.
“Then do it,” he said.
For a moment, she faltered—surprise breaking through her resolve.
Leonard gave her a tired, ghostly smile—a thing that barely touched his eyes.
“No one else will fight for him now,” he added. “Take whoever you trust. Take whatever you need.”
Eliane’s mouth pressed into a tight, bloodless line. She bowed—a soldier’s bow, not a princess’s—and turned sharply on her heel.
The heavy door thudded shut behind her, its echoes outlasting her footsteps.
Leonard sat back slowly, the silence of the empty council hall pressing down like snow.
He bowed his head over the empty reports.
The war in the south still burned. The court still sharpened its knives. The kingdom still demanded victories he no longer had the strength to promise.
But tonight, at least tonight—someone still fought for the man the kingdom had already forgotten.
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Chapter 2