When morning comes, Nathis seats himself at the end of the Guard table in the mess hall. He’d awoken with more energy than the previous month, the ache in his stomach mild, and spent the dark early hours cleaning his armor by candlelight, scowling down at the metal. A great unease had settled into the place where his pain had waned.

  In the hall, Lark, bright-eyed and animated, sits across from him, folding her legs underneath her. Her usual rant is already tumbling from her mouth.

  “Those damned cats stole the last of the leftovers. They’re a real nuisance, I tell you.”

  Fire crackles fiercely in the northern hearth, its warmth chasing away the cold of a desert morning. The other tables are empty save for the second to the last, where all the Guardsmen break their fast together before the king and the sun wake.

  “What were you doing snooping in the kitchens anyhow?” Anarah smiles at the younger girl from the seat next to her, spreading butter on her bread. The table in front of them is laden with food. Salty smoked fish lay in strips on a wood platter next to a pitcher of light ale that Nathis and Lark pour their drink from. Fresh-sliced oat bread steams hot from the oven.

  Lark plucks a fig from the bowl of fruit next to her and pops it in her mouth, chewing as she speaks.

  “I get hungry at night,” she huffs. “It’s all this muscle I’ve got to maintain.” She grins mischievously, drinking from her mug of beer.

  Tygoh chuckles into his plate, pushing around his fried egg. “I knew you were up to something when I saw you slipping into the wine cellar after sundown. Nathis seemed unconcerned when I told him.”

  Nathis leans comfortably back in his seat, fiddling with the handle of his drink. “I know my recruits.” His eyes meet Lark’s. “She was harmless, no matter the show she put on.” He bares his teeth at her scowl. The candles on the table in front of him highlight the creases that grace his weathered forehead. This morning, he is stripped of his armor, wearing only a tawny long-sleeve tunic, the ties at the neck left open, airing his pale, hairy chest.

  Lark leans forward in protest, shaking her link of sausage in one hand. She wears a quilted navy-blue vest over her tunic. “Now that I have the Crown Mark, that show is a little more credible. I’m close to getting a hold on its abilities. It’s an odd sensation,” she muses, crinkling her nose. “The physician never mentioned anything about the… bodily sensation that comes with inoculation.”

  Anarah nods her head as she chews on a piece of buttered bread. “Tygoh and I find that it helps with concentration. He was in the process of learning to fight on horseback and nearly drove Father into the ground that night. I transcribed an entire section of the library by the end of the fortnight.”

  “Wonderful,” Tygoh interjects. “Just what we need, a concentrated Lark.”

  Lark reddens.

  Nathis stirs at the end of the table, tapping his fingernail steadily on the table. “I wonder how our fellow Guardsman is doing?” Silence follows his question, save for the clinking of silverware, and he stares directly at the others. Anarah is the first to recover.

  “She’s still weak, but her fever has broken. The High Priest believes that her blood itself may have been cause for the reaction. We’re not sure where the Lynac originates in the body, however, so it’s a knife in the dark. Without a doubt, though, the serum was the catalyst.”

  Nathis presses further. “Will she be able to use her Mark? She’s a valuable asset to the team even without it, but we would like to see our full force available should the king call us against Denand. I didn’t handpick each one of you to sit in a holding cell.” He chuckles dryly into his drink.

  “I believe so,” Anarah mumbles, sipping sage tea.

  Tygoh slams his silverware on the table next to his plate, rattling the dishes. He leans his forearms on the mottled wooden table, glaring at Nathis. His tanned skin is flush with frustration, his ponytail whipped over his shoulder.

  “Who cares about the Xelinite!” he fumes, flinging his hand into the air. “She betrayed the Crown. Taeg should hang her for treason. She was aware of her ability and she chose to make her bed here, in the capitol of all places.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong, Dacre. She committed neither treason, nor did she betray our cause.” Nathis’s voice is laden with mockery, lips curled upwards at the corners. He feels a rising warmth in his chest as the cavalry general’s dark eyes bore into him. “I did.”

  A moment passes, the crackling of the fire an overture to the tension in the room.

  Lark’s eyes narrow, crinkling the scar over her eye. “What do you mean?” she says slowly, her spoon stopped short of a steaming bowl of red oats.

  Tygoh opens his mouth to speak, but a slender hand on his arm stops him. Anarah shoots him a look, nodding toward her father at the end of the table.

  “Father,” she says softly. “How have you possibly committed treason?”

  “I went under the King and Queen’s nose, my dear, to grant each one of you protection under the Crown.”

  Anarah shakes her head at him, her lips a tight line. Lark’s eyes snap down to her bowl. She shovels creamed oats into her mouth, a red tinge creeping into the scar over her eye.

  Tygoh’s anger blooms, and his chest expands. “The Xelinite was your doing?” he growls.

  A look of betrayal crosses Anarah’s face as she looks down at her hands.

  “Yes,” Nathis hums, shrugging his shoulders. “As well as the young lady across the table from me. And you, my lord.” He nods to Tygoh, biting into a piece of bread. Nathis looks at his daughter apologetically, and she does not meet his gaze.

  Tygoh turns to Lark, whose mouth is full, her eyes searching the corners of the room. The cavalry general whips his eyes back to Nathis, his copper skin shining in the candlelight. His food lies abandoned below him.

  “I am not here for anything other than the desire to serve my kingdom. I cannot speak for the others.”

  Nathis nods, swallowing. “Tygoh, you are correct. However, you are also here because of my personal decision.”

  Tygoh furrows his brow, tilting his head. “I’m here because my father wanted the family name to be represented to the fullest. He believes the lords should be by the Kerrich family’s side, just as you have been, Nathis. This castle helped raise me and my father before me. Don’t pretend it was your decision to bring me here. I came here to defend our king.” Malice turns his voice cold.

  Anarah’s eyes bounce from Nathis to her fiancé, her hands folded delicately in her lap.

  Nathis chuckles darkly. “Tygoh, you’re like a son to me. I know more about your origins than even you are aware of. Your father has secrets, son. Lark, however, knows who she is,” he nods in the girl’s direction. She ignores him, pretending to sip from her beer, her eyes shining terrified from behind the cup. Nathis continues. “I believe each one of you, including the assassin, is important to the fate of this country, and I know each one of you is pure of heart. Your pasts do not reflect on your futures.”

  Tygoh fumes. “Bullshit, Nathis.” He struggles with the next words, his lips agape. “I’ve always looked up to you. Always. You were a guiding force for every one of us. You trained us from the ground up, watched us fail. Watched us cry, for Sun’s sake. And now you’re telling me that ‘my father has secrets’ and that you’ve betrayed the king, that you’ve singlehandedly put this kingdom in greater danger than it was before the scouts began showing up? I don’t believe it.” He shakes his head, the fury in his body pulsing through a neck vein.

  “Would you like to know why each one of you is here?” Nathis asks simply.

  “Father...” Anarah whispers, her blue eyes pleading.

  Anger rises in Nathis’s throat, a sensation he hadn’t felt in years. It startles him, and he sits his slice of bread on the platter below him, a bitter taste on the back of his tongue.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  “Tygoh Dacre is the child of a nobleman, yes. But the woman you know as your mother is not your birth mother. Your true blood is a woman of Xelinac, a woman smuggled out of the fray and into your father’s arms. By Sun’s grace, you were not given the powers of the Lynac, and your poor father’s grievous mistake was well hidden. Your tanned skin and black hair is not simply the desert sun on your face, General, but the Xelinite blood in your veins.”

  As Nathis speaks, Tygoh’s eyes grow wide, their hazel orbs betraying his disgust. His mouth opens as if to speak, yet nothing comes of it. His hands float to his face where they take rest at his temples, elbows planted, his head dropping to stare mortified at the plate below his chin. Anarah lifts a hand to lay it on her fiance’s shoulder, but the swordsman jerks away, shoving his chair out noisily. Nathis watches the shock ripple through his daughter’s features as Tygoh stalks to the exit, his hand dragging restlessly over his face.

  The others do not move. Lark sits motionless, her back unnaturally straight against the back of her perch.

  Nathis sighs, setting his mug on the table. “There was never a right time to tell him,” he murmurs. “I could have written his very reaction out on paper before I ever told him.” He closes his eyes, rubbing the short hair along his scalp, letting it tickle his palm.

  “How do you know?” Anarah says, turning on him. Her eyes are on fire. “How long have you known?”

  “I made Tygoh a ward of the castle as a child. His father was a piteous fool that betrayed his misdeeds to the first man he deemed honorable. He came to me as the commander of the Guard and begged I give young Tygoh sanctuary under the guise of his busy schedule, as he was incapable of facing his own contrition.”

  His daughter shakes her head slowly, staring at the table. “I can’t believe it. Two Xelinites under our roof,” she whispers. “I need to help him.”

  “Leave him,” Nathis releases a heavy breath into the air of the room. “He will return when he has come to terms with this. I believe he may be gone for some time, as he undoubtedly feels responsible for the uncovering of the Lynac in Larynth. This is not his burden to bear, yet bear it he will, as Tygoh is apt to do.”

  There is silence before Anarah speaks again. “Lark?”

  The blonde jerks as if startled from sleep. “I’m...” she fingers her braid.

  “Would you like me to tell her?” Nathis asks the girl. “I know you’re embarrassed of your origins.”

  A small sound of exasperation comes from Lark’s throat.

  “Lark is the daughter of a nobleman as well. She is a lady.” Nathis chuckles, his gray eyes widening with the word. “Her family has ties to the oldest bloodlines in the country. She will marry Taeg when the time comes, as her father was quite adamant that she be delivered to the castle.”

  “What!?”

  The word explodes from the end of the table.

  “My father said what?!”

  Lark slams her wooden mug down with such force that the beer comes spraying out in all directions, droplets landing on her face. She glares poisonously in the direction of Nathis, who stares back in resolution. “You mean to tell me my father—damn him to hell,” she snarls, “sent me here deliberately to wed the king without actually telling me? To… to manipulate me into believing it was of my own volition?” Her left eye is twitching. Her face turns a fierce red and strands of hair work their way out of her braid.

  Anarah, startled by the girl’s outburst, sits back in her chair, lips parted. Her eyes meet Lark’s, and the blonde moves to spit fire in her direction.

  “Stop looking at me as if I mean something to you! I’ve never been anything more than a blacksmith. I never want to hear ‘m’lady’ for as long as I hold a place in this Guard.”

  “You’re going to marry the king, Lark,” Anarah smiles.

  “I’ll kill him!” Lark screams, throwing her voice to the ceiling and stumbling from her chair. “I’ll bloody kill him! With his own sword, I’ll slit his sodding throat!” She whips her head toward Nathis, her braid flying. She points a finger in his direction, nail black with coal dust. “And you!” She jabs it at his chest. “You are responsible for this! You knew what I wanted, you knew what I was after, and you still brought me here under false pretenses!”

  Her eyes pierce him for a moment, then she stalks from the room, ripping her hair from its tie and unraveling the braid. Her blonde hair, long and sleek, unfurls from its prison. She flees through the doorway, screeching curses. Nathis watches Anarah flinch as the doors slam behind her.

  “She’s a noblewoman…” she says, blinking at him.

  “Yes. Viet is a surname she picked as her own. Her true family name is Bennet.”

  “Bennet?” She blinks. “Her family is one of the few that built this kingdom alongside the Kerrichs.”

  “Correct,” Nathis shifts in his seat uncomfortably. The weight lifted from his shoulders feels foreign, empty.

  “And me?” Anarah asks.

  Nathis drops his eyes away from hers to gaze at the weathered hand grasping his beer mug. He does not speak for some time, knowing that the answer will unsettle her just as it had the others.

  “You, my dear,” he laments, “are an orphan made from my own hand.”

  She takes a shuddering breath in through her blush lips. “How so?”

  He stares down at his hands, seeing the blood under his nails only visible to him. “I killed your father. I murdered my best friend.”

  In the silence, he waits for her resentment, her disappointment. It does not come. She waits quietly, and he can feel her eyes on his face, burning a hole in the coarsened skin of his forehead.

  “I’m so sorry,” he continues, bobbing his head at the tabletop. “You looked so much like your father, I felt it was my duty to care for you, to raise you to be the warrior he was.” He looks up at her. “But you came to me with so much more than that. You were smart, stubborn. You knew your way before I could show you the way.” One corner of his lips turns up, then flips into a frown again. “Richal did not understand the beautiful soul he was destroying.”

  The honey-haired girl he’d raised – now a woman – watches him as he speaks, her dark blue eyes filling with tears. She wipes away the moisture building in her lashes and clears her throat gently.

  “Why did you kill him?” she says, readjusting herself.

  Another heavy sigh expels from his chest. “We were both young men, drunk. He had confided in me something that I did not take well, and which to this day I will not stand for. But I hold a great deal of regret for my actions. Death is never a remedy for misdeeds born from sickness.”

  Anarah’s lips purse. “And lifelong regret isn’t the same as recompense,” she says.

  Nathis shakes his head. “I believe it was you – and the others,” he waves a hand, “that I used as tools to help me gain consolation for my sin.”

  He stands, dragging his weakened body from the chair, his hands planted on the table. He trudges to the fire at the end of the hall, rubbing his fingers over the gray stubble on his chin, gazing at the flames.

  “Your father was an adventurer of sorts. With women, mostly. I never wanted you to know that. Old, young, whores; it did not matter. I was disgusted by it, but I loved him for one reason or another. I suppose I saw myself in him. When he told me what he’d done, I nearly lost my mind.” He stops. The heat of the fire burns into his chest.

  Anarah remains seated, hunched forward, her arms crossed on the edge of the table. She brushes a strand of hair into the crook behind her ear, her eyes staring blankly at the food left cold.

  “I know,” she whispers. Her voice is cold, distant. Detached. Nathis winces.

  He turns to her and walks back to the table to take the seat next to his daughter. Anarah is silent. Her eyes do not move. When she finally speaks, it is with a small voice, wracked with pain.

  “He raped me.”

  An exhale escapes from Nathis’s nostrils, musty air that had been camping in his chest for the past twenty years. He reaches a shaking hand up to cradle his daughter’s chin, turning her face to him.

  “I forgive you,” she chokes when their eyes meet. Tears spill over her reddened cheeks.

  Nathis wipes a salty tear from the corner of her nose and reaches his grizzled arms around her, the center of his chest a gaping hole. He fights the saltwater brimming in his own irises, eyes burning.

  Anarah’s grief overtakes her, forcing ragged breaths from her lungs. Behind her, Nathis peers into the flames licking up around the stone mantlepiece, listening to the sobbing of the young woman in his arms. The abandoned food grows cold, greasy sausages congealing on their platter. From the courtyard, he hears Lark cursing, the jarring clatter of steel ringing off stone, what he can only assume is her casting blows on the castle itself. As the fire in the mantlepiece begins to die, Anarah’s sobbing quiets.

  The stifling heat of the room is broken by the door bursting open, letting the desert breeze carry in a flustered young acolyte reorganizing his messy dark curls. Nathis turns as Anarah unfolds herself from his arms.

  “Yes?” He questions, shielding his daughter from the boy.

  “My lord,” the monk bows. His breathing is rushed. “I’m sorry to interrupt. You were the first officer I could find. Please inform the king that the Xelinite is missing. The assassin. Her cell was wide open when we awoke this morning.”

  Nathis sighs. “Did she escape?”

  “I’m not sure, my lord.”

  “I assume the High Priest has been notified?”

  “Yes, General. We are conducting an investigation.”

  “Thank you.” Nathis extricates himself from his daughter, pushing his chair out behind him. He moves deftly, his pain forgotten. The acolyte bows again, slipping from the room.

  “Anarah, is the corpse boy still in the cells?”

  She looks up, wiping red from her eyes. “I…I believe so.”

  “Good. We’ll need his aid.” Nathis kisses her gently on the forehead. “You are wonderful, my daughter. Please tell Tygoh that I apologize for keeping his past from him. He should know that I do not think any less of him.”

  “I will,” she whispers.

  “We move toward Denand this day,” Nathis announces. “I will not have Drair fighting for the enemy, whether it was her choice or not. I must inform Argos and the king. Forgive me.”

  He smiles, grabbing his wooden mug and downing the rest of the warm ale inside before turning to leave. “I love you,” he calls back into the mess hall, shaking himself free of the weight he’d carried for too long.