Aurie regarded Adrian thoughtfully as he stepped into Draka’s house. His head and eyes moved over the inside with open mouthed wonder. He looked across the beams of the ceiling, at the dampness of the thatch underbelly, the dark ashen logs in the hearth beneath the empty pot hanging in it opposite the door.

  He bumped the table, set his pack on it and continued on with his wandering steps and gaze. No separate rooms, no walls of portraits or ornate adornments, yet he looked excited.

  “You have a lovely horse, what kind is it?” Aurie shifted along the wall, allowing him to move across the room as she watched.

  “She’s an Arabian, just like Vigora,” he glanced sideways at her, “Draka’s horse, I mean. It’s her foal.”

  Aurie’s eyes widened. That beast was actually bred? “If your horse eats a single thing out of my garden…”

  His eyes twinkled at her, “She’s much better behaved than her mother. If she steals any of your harvest, I will skin her myself.” He began doing circles across the room.

  It was baffling that this was a prince Aurie was looking at. A prince who looked upon this simple place like it was a treasure in and of itself. He nearly had the same look Balor had when he first saw his children in his arms. She grinned at the memory as much as she was grinning at this young man moving through Draka’s house. The way he touched the backs of the chairs and the table while looking over Draka’s flattened mattress—with its straw spilling through loosened stitches—as if he were walking through the sanctum of a church.

  “This is how I always imagined him wanting to live,” Adrian grinned.

  He turned toward the opposite wall of Draka’s bed, where a pile of hay had been smushed against the wall with a candle on a plate. There was still a pelt lying across it, disheveled as it was when she and Balor woke from sleeping in it their last night together. He pointed with a questioning look to her. Without an answer, he brought his pack to it and plopped it there.

  “My husband slept there when he spent the night during one of our arguments,” Aurie found herself grinning at it. Both from the memory of Balor and that Draka never removed it.

  Adrian began unbuckling his wrapped blanket. “I hope he doesn’t spend many nights here. I tend to drool. Pearl often shoves me because of it.”

  Aurie rolled her eyes at that. Of course he sleeps with his horse. Everyone sleeps with their horse after they spend enough time with Draka. She sat in one of the chairs at the table after turning it to watch him. “You won’t have to worry about that.”

  Adrian whipped the blanket to unravel it and pulled it over the pelt. “That’s good. Terrible thing when couples argue. My parents argued more often than not.” He sat on his legs in thought, staring at nothing in front of him. “I suppose that is to be expected. Can’t escape it. Live long enough with someone, something is bound to make you want to flick their nose.”

  Aurie chuckled at that. She wondered how long he had been around his horse and only his horse. “My husband died just before spring. Draka tried to save him. My son, too. He was only able to save my daughter—now Princess Maud—and myself.”

  Adrian was pulling things from his pack and setting them beside the blanket in a row. Every so often, he would stop and count. As if there were a list or something in his head he was trying to fulfill, he would shake at himself and do it again.

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” he looked up to her with the most heartfelt expression on his face she had ever seen on anyone’s when they said the same. “I wish that I could say I understood what that feels like, but I cannot. I just know that it must be a truly devastating pain to endure in a way that is unimaginable for those who have yet to experience it.”

  Aurie’s eyes fluttered with water as her mouth gaped.

  Adrian returned to lifting things from his pack. There was a folded cloth creased from small tools inside, bottles of unlabeled liquids in different colors, canisters of powders, and small tools she had never seen before. Aurie tried to catch her breath in the silence, tried to distract her thoughts by watching him. Somehow, she could tell by the way he was placing everything, she knew that he, too, was doing the same.

  Finally, Adrian looked up to her with a warm grin, “Draka lost his wife and son long ago, I don’t know if he told you or not—what with his Vow of Silence—and if he hasn’t, then please keep this to yourself, but it might help.”

  “I know of it.” Aurie was still trying to steady herself.

  “I asked him, when we were wintering in Rostov—oh, eight, maybe nine years ago? I don’t remember, but it was some time ago—why he refused to marry my mother,” Adrian sat in the chair beside Aurie. He paused for a moment, his eyes on the neatly spread blanket and the line of his belongings beside it. He nudged his shoulder against Aurie’s—the very same way Draka does to Maud—and said, “He told me that being in love is like having a part of yourself filled that you never knew needed to be full.”

  Aurie turned to him, her brows pressed together. He turned back and all she could see was a young Draka staring at her.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  “He said that just knowing they were alive made you feel whole. That they exist,” he turned from her, his eyes in a haze in thought. “And when they’re gone, there is an emptiness left from it. You know that there is something that should be there, that there are substitutes, but your body, your soul, remembers what was there, and is always bewildered when it finds that it is gone.”

  When he took a breath and let silence linger a moment, Aurie felt her own stick in her throat. Her heart felt like it had stopped to those words. Those were not the words of a barbarian.

  “I never asked about it again. Funny,” Adrian tried to grin through the irony, “You often hear amputees talk about their lost limbs the same way.”

  “He still mourned his wife,” Aurie said through a long sigh.

  Adrian nodded. “Didn’t stop my mother, though. She tried everything.”

  Aurie cocked a brow at him. “You look and act a lot like him.”

  “Oh, that’s not where the similarities end, I assure you,” Adrian chuckled. “I have my questions, too. But, I also look a lot like my father, so we’ll leave it at that.” He started laughing, “Draka figured if she had figured out how to have his child without him knowing, he’d be the king of the Holy Lands instead of my father for certain.”

  Aurie laughed. “She loved him that much?”

  Adrian shrugged. “Probably still does. He has this way about him. Women always seem to see what they want in him at first and others, well…He never gives everyone the whole picture. He lets you paint in your mind what you want to see. You want him to be a scholar, he’s a scholar. You want him to be a soldier, he’s a soldier. A monk, he’s a monk. But when the fighting comes, when the real battles start, that’s when Draka comes out. Or in the hunt.”

  “So he deceives people?”

  Adrian chuckled, “I guess that’s one way of putting it. He said that it is not deception because it is not that he lies or shows anything that is untrue. He just doesn’t reveal all of who he is, because he is all those things. He is a scholar who has read philosophy, mathematics, history—even of the world before the Great Fires. He is a soldier who has fought in great battles across the world, and he is a devout follower of Christ. But, if you see that he’s living like this and is returning from a hunt and treat him like a common peasant—which he was until father stole the Finger of St. John—then, he’ll let you treat him like a common peasant until he needs to reveal to you that he is the King. If that never happens, he will always be ‘Peasant Draka’ to you and won’t disprove it because why would he?”

  Aurie shook her head at that. That was exactly what he did to her and her family. How differently everything would have been if he had told them, somehow, that he was a Paladin, that he was a…Cathol. They knew he was a Cathol. And no one understood what a Paladin was. It wouldn’t have mattered. Prince? She wondered if he knew when he first arrived that he was a Prince. They would have still risen against him, she was sure of that. Only, Balor would likely have been with them instead. And then, what? Was this better?

  “Why does he do that?” Aurie asked finally.

  Adrian shrugged. “I never asked or if I did, I was too young to remember his exact answer. But, I do remember him telling me about when he first arrived to Heblem and how he kept getting taken advantage of and being robbed and beaten. ‘You’re always going to be stupid,’ another of Draka’s famous words of wisdom, ‘so be cautious more often.’ My favorite one of his will always be, ‘You cannot tally your good deeds against the marks of your bad. You ask for forgiveness from God for those, but the world will always remember them. They will forget the good you do, but God will always remember those. Therefore, do as little harm to all as you can. Prevent as much harm to all as you can. And do good for goodness sake. Never ask for reward. But when it is given, never give it back. A gift horse might only have one tooth, but that means it can still take you to the next town.”

  Aurie was awestruck. She stood, blinking and nodding. “I…well, this is Draka’s home,” she motioned around her, then slapped her hands on her thighs. “I guess, when he gets back, he’ll be glad to see you. I’ll let him know you’re here before he comes. And…it was a pleasure. I must get back to training, though.”

  She nearly sprinted all the way back to the tree. The thought of putting the salve on her face didn’t even strike her until she was heaving for air in front of Enya, bracing herself on her knees. Her face didn’t feel like it was actually swollen anyway. She hadn’t looked and Adrian didn’t say anything. He was probably too polite. Too polite!

  Aurie started laughing with a thumb over her shoulder. He’s probably an assassin. She put an assassin in Draka’s house. There’s an imposter in Draka’s house who danced with his horse. His horse! Vigora’s daughter? Draka bred Vigora? So much. Too much.

  Enya was in front of her, waving her hands. “What?”

  “I,” Aurie swallowed to breathe, “I don’t think…I don’t…you have no idea. I don’t think any of us do. That man,” Aurie pointed with a thumb over her shoulder, “Is riding Vigora’s foal…Was practically raised by Draka…who—get this—is a scholar,” she counted on her thumb, still huffing, “a wise teacher who says things like you should only let people see a small part of you and imagine the rest so that you protect yourself and if a gift horse only has one tooth, at least it will get you to the next town?” She counted on a finger, heaving for her lungs to expand, “and said something about love that made my heart ache because I…know…how that feels and it has never been put into words for me. So, I don’t know if it was him or if it was that Draka actually told him, but…or maybe both…I don’t know.”

  “Wait, what? If a gift horse only has one tooth?” Enya was still trying to think on that one.

  Aurie straightened, finally able to breathe. “Either way, I don’t think either of us know Draka as well as we think.” Then, as an afterthought. “Except Maud. I think Maud does.” She shook that away, “I hope he is who he says he is. I want to wait a bit and then send Gerard in as Draka to test his mettle. Gerard should know him. Just because someone says they’re Prince Adrian, doesn’t mean they are.”

  “Good idea.”