5000

Two days had passed. Since that day the dark-clad soldiers had arrived from Doroth, theyâd now spent two more days on these Daerian shores.

It may as well have been two minutes, or two moons, or two millennia. In light of all that had happenedâand all that had been set in motion, set to happen soonâthe fine line between never and forever was reduced to a dream.

On the morn of this third day, there came a knock at Learaâs door. The sun had not even yet risen, she silently complained; it was too early for a knock upon her door. She felt lucky, leastwise, that that soft knock hadnât interrupted anything. Mere moments ago, sheâd been quite busily and happily engaged.

She threw on a silken shift and hastened to the door, cracking it hardly a hairsbreadth ajar.

Her brotherâs raven eyes peered through the slender sliver she had opened. âMother wants to speak with us,â he relayed, âout on the front veranda.â

Leara bit her lip lightly. âAt this hour?â

Kevriel shrugged through a wide-mouthed yawn. âApparently.â

She gestured to him to wait a moment, turning back into her room. She kissed Eldor good morning, bidding him fall back asleepâshe somehow inferred that he was not invitedâand draped a light mantle over her shoulders before stepping out and shutting the door softly behind her.

âTrust me,â Kevriel wryly assured her as they traversed the hallway, âCaliphria and I were no happier for the ill-timed interruption.â

âOh, but nothing was interrupted,â Leara blithely replied, ânot for us, at least. Just an innocent morningâs embrace.â

âAh. How sweet.â

âWe had just finished besidesââ

âOh, do spare me the details,â Kevriel cut in with an exaggerated grimace. âI donât much like to think of my dear little sister doing anything un-innocent.â

âI was hardly about to share details!â she laughed as they ascended a wide spiral stair. âIn my big brotherâs eyes, I hope to stay forever an innocent and untouched little angel.â

He echoed her laugh as they reached the landing. âWell,â he uttered, grinning with the genuine affection of a brother, âan angel whose eyes have lately been shining and smiling more brightly than ever.â

She and her blue eyes smiled deeply.

âI am glad for you, Leara. To see you so happy.â

âAs Iâve been for you, ever since the turn of the millennium!â

Kevrielâs eyes smiled as well, as he and Leara neared the veranda. âAnd he must be an extraordinary man, to have won the heart of my extraordinary sister.â

âOh,â she breathed, shaking her head in fierce confirmation, âyouâve no idea.â

They approached the table and claimed two open seats, bidding everyone a tame but somewhat tense good morning. Already they could sense that something serious lay at hand.

After their arrival, there were seven Glorians gathered here in total. The Zoll Zorans had not been invited to this peculiar predawn meal of oaten cakes and pears.

âSo,â Leara sighed as she poured herself a half-full glass of water, âwhat is this about?â

Anorrah looked levelly at her daughter across the table. âDid you sleep well, love?â

âPeachily,â Leara responded with a peachy smile.

Lincia absently tore her cake into a mess of scattered oats upon her plate.

âAnd what have we gathered to speak about, Mother?â Leara asked simply.

Gorovan cleared his throat gently. âI called the gathering,â he claimed. âIâ€Â¦ I was hoping that we all might speak of the obvious matter at hand.”

“Obvious?” Caliphria parroted, wiping a driblet of pear juice from her lip.

“Our… visitors,” her father clarified.

“In their absence,” Leara sharply reckoned, “ere they’ve even woken up.”

Gorovan considered his birth daughter and his adoptive, both of whom he wished he could shelter in the strongholds that he’d built up in his soul. “Yes,” he confirmed. “In their absence.”

Leara swallowed a small sip of water. “Eldor deserves to—”

“Eldor,” Gorovan intervened, “is one of them.”

“Then so am I,” Leara contended.

“Leara,” Anorrah admonished her daughter urgently, though lovingly, and with more understanding in her voice than Gorovan, or anyone else, could discern.

“Them,” Leara continued. “And who are they? What are these lines that divide us?”

Gorovan lowered his face in a humorless smirk. “There is a whole ocean, for one thing.”

“Water. So water defines the divides among men?”

“It defines the divides between countries.”

“Well, in case you’ve not noticed,” Leara demurred, “those divides have been crossed.”

Gorovan paused and looked down at the circular cake on his plate, which was divided into two clean halves of roughly equal size.

Leara meanwhile had drained her drink. She set her waterless glass down on the table with a thud that very purposely resounded.

Lincia had realized that her cake was good and shredded. She started to pick at the strewn oats and chew them timidly. “He is not like them,” she put in softly. “He is nothing like them, really.”

Brontus glared at the strewn shredded oats on her plate.

Leara nodded. “And indeed,” she added, “a great many of ‘them’ are nothing like ‘them.’ Some harbor sympathy in their hearts. Not every soldier in that army is a warrior.”

Caliphria creased her brow. “Isn’t a soldier the same thing as a warrior?”

Leara looked at her in good-natured vexation.

“Oh. Well… if you mean to say that they’re not all bloodthirsty and belligerent,” Caliphria revised, turning to face her father, “then I would certainly agree. Father, many of them do not hunger for war.”

“Your daughters are right,” Kevriel corroborated. “I have met many of these men in these past days, and I can tell you that, for every cold-blooded brute out on that beach, there are a solid handful of good men whom I am proud to call my brothers. Many of these soldiers show no loyalty to Zoll Zora.”

“They all wear the same armor,” Gorovan protested.

“I would remind you, Gorovan, that Eldor gave his up,” Leara disputed. “And several of his closest soldiers, too, have shed their armor. Watch them walk upon the beach today, and you will see that they are not all clad in black. If you are not too scared to look.”

“Leara,” Anorrah objected, this time expressing real disapprobation.

Leara knew that her words had not been kind. But Eldor’s honor was at stake, his very humanity being called into question. And this was not like her adoptive father to so quickly judge a man by the distance of his home or by the color of his armor. “But whence this fear, Gorovan? When was it planted in you?” she asked him earnestly. “Glorion knows no fear. That is so much of what defines us. That is part of what makes Eldor one of us; there is no fear in his heart.”

Gorovan shuddered at the thought of ever telling Leara just when and how, and just how deeply, the seeds of this fear had been planted.

Leara looked intently at him, though he would not meet her gaze. “Nor anything fearsome. There is nothing fearsome, nothing fiendish, in that heart of his,” she furthered sincerely. “He would fearlessly defend us, Gorovan. Fearlessly stand behind us. And we should do the same for him.”

“But how can you know that foreign heart of his so well?” Brontus queried.

Leara turned a hard blue eye on him. “Because his heart is open,” she answered simply. “As open as the heart of any Glorian. And so I can read it. Like an open book.”

“Well,” Anorrah spoke, “surely you’ve not had time to read all of their hearts so well. Even if all of them were so open.”

“Naturally,” Leara granted, nodding faintly at her mother. “By no means all of them. But many. For many of those ‘foreign’ hearts are open to be read. And… and it is true that some of those Zoll Zoran hearts are closed. But I have tried to read those hearts, too, just the same.”

“Have you, now?” Gorovan asked, his voice not rising with the question. “And how has that been faring for you, love?”

Leara paused. She looked out at the sun, which was now more than half risen from the great expanse of sea. “The general, Garendor,” she quietly began, “he, for one, does have his heart set on destroying us. He thirsts for conquest and bloodshed and war. I have tried to sway his heart, but…”

“…but you have failed?” Brontus finished in the wake of her ellipsis.

Leara cast another hard, almost hostile look at him.

But then she noticed just how he was positioned in his seat—practically sliding off the edge of it that was nearest to Lincia, who sat beside him, the both of them oblivious to his off-kilter placement in his chair. She understood, then, the magnet that held claim over Brontus’s heart, and she was able to forgive him. She had long since recognized the pull with which Lincia looked upon Eldor; and she now saw the pull with which Brontus in turn slid toward her.

Garendor had displayed to Leara, just days ago, all the effects of lovelorn envy. That same envy, Leara gathered, was the source of all the bitter fear that Brontus harbored in his heart.

And so she could forgive him. So long as he never moved to lift a hand against the man he envied, Leara could forgive him.

“Yes,” Leara readily admitted, “in that, I have failed.”

“Well, it’s useful, though. It’s certainly helpful,” Caliphria suggested, “that you’ve been able to learn so much about these men, especially these two leaders. To learn of each of their intentions.”

“Indeed. It seems that my little sister,” Kevriel agreed, reclining thoughtfully in his chair, eyes locked on Leara as he idly spun the stem of an eaten pear between his fingers, “has gotten into the heads and hearts of both Zoll Zoran princes.”

Leara ventured a halfhearted smile.

A while’s silence ensued.

“There are the two princes,” Gorovan broke it shortly, “but, too, there is the king across the sea. Imagine what kind of man their father must be. The king of an entire empire built on blood.”

“Well, it’s not built entirely on blood,” Caliphria objected. “They’ve told me that they take mercy sometimes on their conquests.”

“By taking them as slaves,” Gorovan specified.

Caliphria pursed her lips and lightly shrugged. “Well, it’s still mercy. Of a sort. And many of them are against all sorts of conquest and slavery anyhow, despite the orders of their king. Besides,” she noted, “that emperor-king is not here. He is still far across the sea, so we need only worry over the two princes, really.”

Gorovan heaved a deep fatherly sigh in his heart. He stared hard at the clear, still water in his half-empty glass.

Anorrah had been mindlessly rolling the same lump of oats between her thumb and forefinger for longer now than she had realized. “But we do need to worry over him, love,” she urged Caliphria and everyone assembled at the table. “The king may sit now in his throne across the sea, but he wields great, far-reaching power from that throne. And as for the high prince Eldor, as good a man as he may be, we must remember that… that same dark throne will soon be his.”

“But Eldor does not want that throne,” Leara ardently protested. “When he comes into his kingship, he will wield no such dark power.”

“That is not his choice to make!” Gorovan countered.

“Yes,” Leara insisted, the sea in her eyes set afire, “it is. He has sworn to spare Glorion, and to save us if it comes to that. And I trust him. With every fiber of my open heart, I trust him.”

Gorovan shook his head. “Please, Leara,” he exhorted her, “I hope that you would not be so quick to misplace your trust.” So like your mother before you, he dourly reflected.

True to form, Anorrah spoke her trusting mind. “Not all trust, Gorovan, is misplaced.”

“And whose side are you on after all, Anorrah?” he erupted.

A brief hushed pause befell the table.

Leara wagged her head in dismal, almost disbelieving disapproval. “Whose side,” she echoed bleakly. “Perfect. So there are divides, now, even among us.”

She rose to leave.

“Leara, where—” Gorovan started.

“Back to bed,” she blatantly rejoined, “with one of them.”

No one, now, motioned to stop her.

The rest of them ate, for the most part, in silence. Caliphria and Kevriel soon returned to bed as well. Anorrah said she was going to market; Lincia brightly volunteered to accompany her; Brontus took it brightly upon himself to go as well. Gorovan was then left staring at the water in his still half-empty glass, and at the two halves of the oatcake, still untouched upon his plate.

A while later in the day, in the hours between midmorning and high noon, the Zoll Zorans gathered to hold council on the beach.

Garendor had called the gathering. He’d notified everyone save Eldor. Upon realizing that, Claron had darted inland to the villa, as the council was about to begin, and knocked reluctantly on Leara’s rosewood door.

This time, something was interrupted—but the cause for interruption was apparently important, so Eldor allowed himself to be summoned away. Claron effused an outpour of apologies, but Leara smiled warmly and assured him there was nothing to forgive, that they in fact should thank him for keeping them from whiling away the whole day in this room.

Eldor hurried with Claron down the beach and toward the gathered soldiers.

“Mayhap if you remind your brother how you spend your time,” Claron put forward as they drew near the shoreline, “he would be happy to invite you to these councils in the future. If only to tear you away from her bedroom.”

In the past couple of days, Claron’s keen brown eyes had easily perceived the tense, triangulated love that bound both brothers to the beauteous blue-eyed Daerian.

Eldor laughed, widely and deeply, though quietly—for they had by now approached the gathered warriors, and the discussion at hand was evidently quite a mirthless matter.

“…and why, men, do we wait?” Garendor was presently inquiring of the gathered crowd, of which he stood at the far forefront. “I ask you: would your king order you to wait? To feast on bread and berries night after bloodless night, in our pathetic camp, on this pathetic continent, your swords pathetically still and stainless in their sheaths?”

Garendor was so deeply absorbed in his tirade that he had not even seen his brother arrive. Eldor and Claron stayed near the back of the mob. Hark and Osus saw, and turned to smile at them.

The general continued ranting in his raised voice about pathetic things.

“…and there are those of you who had suggested that we ought to learn these lands before we conquer them,” he recalled. “And to you I say, that we have learned enough. What more need we see? We have seen that this land has no weaponry, no defenses whatsoever, not so much as the slimmest hope of surviving our onslaught. We could topple this entire continent in a day. Never in all the history of the empire has the promise of victory been as effortless and Glorious as now.”

From the back of the crowd, Claron raised his two hands and began to clap them slowly, in loud and sardonic applause.

A horde of Zoll Zoran heads turned to face him.

Garendor’s pale eyes narrowed darkly. “Claron,” he called. “And you are one of those that I had mentioned. One of those who hoped to learn. Have you not now learned enough?”

“Oh, quite enough!” Claron proclaimed. “I have learned that our general is a vampire.”

Garendor furrowed his brows and flared his nose. “Excuse me?” he snarled. “You would dare compare your general to a monster from a storybook?”

“Nothing more, and nothing less,” Claron affirmed. “Governed wholly by bloodlust. No heart, no soul, no brains—just blood.”

“Oh, but that’s hardly fair! Vampires have brains!” Mohrdon quipped from near the middle of the crowd. A susurrus of laughs came on the heels of his remark, and Claron caught his eye as they exchanged wide smiles.

“Not this one!” Hark called out.

More laughter, a bit louder and braver this time.

Garendor was absolutely seething—the steam seemed to visibly spew from his ears. “Enough!” he barked. “I will not tolerate such defiance and disrespect from my own soldiers!”

“And what, then, would you do to us?” Claron provoked. “Slit our throats and fatten up on our defiant blood?”

“You know that it is against the king’s code to slay a man of your own army, without due cause,” Osus reminded him, his honeyed voice taking on new hardness.

“And you rebels have provided that cause,” Garendor indicted them.

“What, by poking fun at you?” Claron questioned with arched brows. “Surely as general, you ought to have a thicker skin. We’re only teasing.”

“I will dismiss you from my army!”

“Perfect,” Eldor presently put in. “Then they can join mine.”

Garendor now finally noticed his brother’s uninvited presence. The steam shot more violently out of his ears, and fulsome foam was gathering at his mouth.

“And what army of yours, O Prince, is this?” he demanded.

“A Glorious army,” Eldor answered.

“Of five measly men,” Garendor sneered.

“Come, General; use your brains,” Claron coaxed him. “You honestly think that we five who have spoken are the only ones against you? There is more defiance in your army than you know.”

“Is there? You tell me, men,” he now addressed the gathered crowd at large, “tell me who among you has been speaking defiance. I have heard none of it.”

“That is because you, brother,” Eldor advised him, “mistake whispers for silence.”

“Then raise your voices, men!” he ordered. “Raise your voices, that your general may hear them. No more whispers of sedition. Choose your army. Choose your side.”

Silence followed, broken only by the whisper of the wind upon the sands.

“As I had thought,” Garendor sniggered at length. “These men would not dare go against their general and their king. Against their empire. An empire to which the high prince clearly feels no allegiance.”

“None at all,” Eldor avowed.

“Then leave us,” Garendor commanded. “Leave us be, we faithful servants of the empire. Whisper your sedition elsewhere. You, Prince, and all your slavish renegades.”

Eldor smiled, canting his head in a slight bow, then turned to leave. Claron was close by his side, along with Hark and Osus, and Mohrdon wove through the throng to accompany them.

Then, to his horror, Garendor saw the throng start to dissolve before his eyes. Men from every corner of the small crowd turned to follow the high prince away from the general’s council. Some moved with timorous fear and reluctance, others with decisive dedication and resolve.

The band of renegades moved toward the opposite end of the camp. Once the slow disintegration was completed, Garendor saw that the company had been divided into two brigades of roughly equal size. Roughly two scores of men, perhaps a bit less, remained behind and looked expectantly up at their general.

Garendor coughed. It was a feeble cough, though he had tried to sound it proudly. “Well, men,” he spoke to them, “we are then all that is left of the Zoll Zoran army on Glorion. We will have to wield our swords with twice the fury, and spill blood at twice the speed.”

“My lord,” one of the soldiers interposed, “there are many soldiers, still, left by the village down the shore. Surely we would be wise to gather their forces before we wage war.”

Garendor blinked; in these past days in Daerion, he’d nearly forgotten. “Ah. Of course.”

“I, for one, would hazard,” another warrior proposed, “that it’d be best to gather yet more forces from Zoll Zora. To return home first. For one thing, to inform the king of what we’ve found, and what we plan to do. And for another, to muster an army that would be large enough and strong enough to bring this entire continent to its knees in the blink of an eye.”

This thought was met with a great many shouts of approval. Garendor himself was quick to realize that the plan was wise. He had hoped to start the war today, if not this very second. But he bade the impatient beast caged in his heart to wait for just a while longer. He suppressed his violent and vampiric impulses and reminded himself that the payoff of quick victory—and the look of fear and known defeat on his pathetic brother’s face, when he saw the great fleet of black ships coming to destroy him—would be worth the wait.

Besides, Ghergol would certainly be proud to hear about his progress.

Garendor agreed. He and his army came to a decision that, on this night, they would return to Doroth, gather up the loyal men left on that beach, and set sail from there for the city of darkness.

They decided that it would not be wise to slay the soldiers of the new, opposing army. Leastwise not yet. As matters stood, the two camps were evenly matched in size and prowess, and both sides would thus be doomed to suffer great loss at little gain. Besides, some of Garendor’s men reminded him, the king would not take well to anyone who raised arms against Eldor. Despite his obvious disloyalty to the empire, he was still the well-beloved firstborn prince, and the king would at least want to speak with him before he let any lower soldiers harm the high prince of Zoll Zora.

Garendor saw that it was true. It was a truth that he deeply detested, but could not deny.

Eldor sat with his newborn army further down the beach and spoke to them of few things; there was little to be spoken. Words, with their many and measly meanings, could do no justice to the matters that lay at stake upon these shores. What might have needed to be said was known already in the hearts of all these soldiers who had chosen Eldor’s side. Theirs was a slender hope, but one built up on sympathy and strength, which beat in all their steadfast human hearts the same.

The divide, of course, between these two new factions was a slippery one. It was not a clean distinction. It was the messiest thing these warriors had ever had to tackle. Over the course of the hours that remained in the day, soldiers from each brigade had second thoughts and defected to the other—quietly, and shamefully, no matter the direction of their desertion. Each side held its share of shame. The very birth of the divide, indeed, seemed shameful in itself.

Eldor alone saw nothing shameful in this divide. Eldor knew no such thing as shame.

And what was more, he knew that the divide, at bottom, was no more than an illusion. This was what he reflected, as he dismissed the gathering of his men and sat alone awhile at the shoreline. The differences between him and his brother, between the two small armies that they led, were not as deep as they might seem. Within the heart of every would-be monster lay a man, and in the heart of every man there lurked a monster.

And in the heart of every woman, and even every Glorian, lurked the same. Some monsters were caged; some were tamed; some forgotten. Every heart hosted its monster in its own way, and some ways might seem better than others. But the truth was that some hearts were simply luckier; some hearts were better equipped. Nature and nurture—which of course bottomed out to be one in the same—bred each monster and each heart in its own way. And on top of everything, it left men with some illusion that they were to blame for the monsters they failed to subdue. As if they were the ones who’d bred the monsters and the weak hearts in the first place.

Nothing was his brother’s fault. If Eldor had been born with Garendor’s genetic monster in his heart, and with a heart just as genetically weakly equipped as his brother’s; then raised in such a way that fueled that monster’s fury with the flames of childhood pain and wounded pride, and with an utter lack of love; he knew that he would have turned out no different.

And yet, as Eldor was, their father had loved him. Everyone had loved him. Leara loved him. And so he was strong. His heart was strong against whatever monster therein dwelt. He did not know how much of his strength was naturally inborn in him, and how much was due entirely to the nurturing love with which he’d always been surrounded in his life.

But either way, Eldor had been lucky.

It was not Garendor’s fault that he had been unlucky, born and raised the way he was, with every moment of his life now further hardening the natural, nurtured mold that had already been created. A mold that only a superhuman force could break.

At any rate, Eldor knew, monstrosity was not the opposite of humanity—it was a part of it, if not the very heart of it.

These were the thoughts that had been swarming in his mind, when Kevriel came up to him.

Eldor thoughtfully paused in these thoughts, then brought them to a close. These were deep and distant musings. Deeply true, but true only in theory. And theory felt quite distant, and altogether unimportant, when the fate of this good Glorian man beside him, and of his beloved navy-eyed sister, and of their family and their country, was at stake.

In this active world where theory did not matter, Garendor was every ounce the guilty and blameworthy monster that he seemed. He had to be. He had to be seen, feared, and challenged as such. Nothing more, and nothing less.

Eldor blinked away his theory, his sympathy for his blameless brother, in the name of all his sympathy for Glorion and his love for Kevriel’s sister.

He was sitting at the edge of the tide when Kevriel approached and asked if he might join. Eldor gladly assented, grateful that this man had come and pulled him from his thoughts and his theory, as deeply—and dangerously—true as they were.

They sat and spoke for quite some time of much less deep and dangerous things.

Between the two of them, in these past days, a close and brotherly friendship had formed. Each understood the other well. Their hearts, though one may have been Zoll Zoran and one Glorian, beat with all the same passion, in all the same ways. The compasses of both their hearts were fixed on precisely the same kinds of poles. That was enough to make them brothers.

It helped, of course, that in both of their cases, the magnetic pull was mutual, the gravity bilateral. That certainly helped to keep their compasses set straight and strong and steady. It helped to keep both their worlds spinning on one stable axis.

“Well,” Kevriel sighed later, as they watched afternoon shift softly into evening, “some would call you and your soldiers a breed of beasts. But I know you are a man. Only a man could have made my sister into the woman she’s become.”

Eldor smiled faintly. These words, these notions of monsters and men, brought to mind the thoughts and theories that he had earlier dismissed. The truths that were too dangerous to believe, at least in actuality, at least for now.

In the face of these deep, dangerous truths, in an effort to dismiss them once again, Eldor took up a lighthearted tenor. “And what way do you mean?” he asked with a wider smile. “In what way have I made her a woman?”

Kevriel rolled his eyes with a grimacing grin. “Oh, I’d spare you the details,” he demurred. “Those details, you already know full well. And as for me, I’d really rather not think on them at all.”

Eldor nodded, laughing silently.

Kevriel turned to face this man, his raven eyes now serious, though his grin was no less bright. “Though that was not the way I meant, you know,” he noted. “I meant in many other ways.”

“Yes. I know,” Eldor recognized. “Though I’d guess she was a woman in her own right, well before I ever met her.”

“Mayhap. In my eyes she was still a little girl, till you arrived,” Kevriel opined as he rose and brushed some sand from off his shins. “But in any event, for having met you, she’s become a better woman. She’s become her best.”

Eldor looked at the ripe sun on its throne of roseate cloud.

Kevriel followed that gaze from where he stood, and spoke in a voice that seemed about to utter a truth that was deep, but not dangerous. “Love has a way of doing that to people.”

It was a simple truth, but no less deep because of it. And it meant a great deal more than it might seem, at first, to mean. At the level of theory, it meant everything. At the level of theory, this human truth might mayhap take on superhuman force.

Mayhap. Or mayhap not.

Dinner that evening was the last that these Glorian hosts and their guests would share in peace. The peace indeed had already been broken, but dinner went on under the illusion that it hadn’t. That was an illusion nearly everyone, no matter his or her position or commitments, struggled fiercely to maintain.

Leara was on her way to fetch some water for the guests when she felt a familiar hand at her elbow. The grip was cold but warm, animally harsh though it strove to be humanly gentle.

Garendor had pulled her in to his side, swiftly and closely, his lips barely grazing her ear. “If you believe in me, my lady,” he breathed, “if any part of you believes in any part of me—then midnight. At the shore.”

She turned to face him, her cheek inadvertently brushing his lips as she swiveled her head.

“It may well be the last you’ll ever see of me,” he murmured, the blue ice in his eyes melting.

And with that, he was gone.

She saw no more of him that evening. But an afterimage of molten blue was left imprinted on her mind, the touch of chapped but moistened lips against her cheek.

Leara lay that night with Eldor, whose ebon eyes and warm lips easily effaced all thought of Garendor from her mind. This was the brother she loved; this was the brother in whom she believed.

They spoke awhile ere they fell asleep. He told her of the division that had been born today among his men.

“Well, it was not the only one,” Leara morosely reflected at length. “It seems that my own family, too, is divided.”

“Along what lines?”

She sighed and nestled more deeply into the niche of his neck and his shoulder. “Along the lines of fear and trust,” she stated. “Some of their hearts are closed in fear against you. Against your men, your home, and everything you seem to stand for.”

“Seem to?” he echoed as he ran his hand up and down along the line of her spine.

“I know you stand for none of it,” she asserted, her hand upon his chest, wherein she felt the throb of life that echoed hers so perfectly. “None of what they would assume. They would assume that you’re a monster, but there’s nothing foreign or fearsome about you.”

She pressed her palm against the firm ridge of his jaw, angling his head down slightly so it met her upturned face.

“You are home for me,” she told him, her smile soft but avidly sincere, “and the only thing I fear is ever losing you.”

He drew in more closely, all distance vanishing between them. “How could you ever lose me,” he whispered, “when I’m yours.”

She melted into him, and that imprint of those melting ice-blue eyes could not have been more distant from her mind than in that moment. “I wish that they would all believe in you, as I do.”

“Your believing in me, Leara,” he spoke, “is all I need. It’s all that any man, or any monster, could ever ask for.”

Leara blinked into the ebon shade of night that filled the room, though broken by the pale beams of a monstrous midnight moon.

She gingerly disengaged herself from Eldor’s arms as the hush of sleep fell over him. He stirred and woke to feel her leave, but she bade him stay in bed and undisturbed, assuring him that she would soon return. She slipped into a dress and threw a cloak about her shoulders as she left.

The sands were soft but starkly cold against her soles. They caressed her bare feet with the soft, cold kiss of lovelorn, loving lips.

The general stood at the shore, looking out on the inky black sea as his lady approached.

As she traversed the beach, Leara noticed that a number of the soldiers were busily taking down their tents, exchanging urgent whispers over the whispering midnight winds. None of them noticed her, as busy as they were.

She did not ask him what this meant; she could easily infer it.

He turned when she was several steps behind him. “So you believe in me?” he gathered with a fragile smile.

Her own smile was faint and flat, though not as fragile. “Some part of me,” she tentatively answered. “In some part of you.”

He nodded with a lowered gaze.

Both of their smiles then faded as she crossed the last few steps toward him, drawing up beside him and looking at the mirrored moon upon the sea.

He lifted his gaze toward her steady and unsmiling face. Her profile, he thought, was so perfect. Too perfect to be merely human. “So do you believe, then, Leara,” he asked her, “that I am more than just a monster? That there is the potential in me to… to be a good man?”

She met his eyes now, glad to see they were still molten; they had not yet frozen over since she last had looked upon them. And what was more, this was the first time he’d addressed her by her name, not as his lady. “I do believe it, Garendor,” she wholeheartedly affirmed. “I know it.”

His heart beat faster and more fiercely just to hear it. But it then stopped and slowed once again—there were things she did not know. Things that rendered him more monstrous than she could imagine. The beast caged in his heart had been let loose, mere days ago, upon a mop of chestnut curls. Upon a victim who could not have been more vulnerable, more innocent. Surely, if Leara were to know of that, she would not be so quick to believe in him. Surely she would no longer see the potential in him for anything good at all.

He surely saw no such potential. Whatever slim potential for himself that he could see lay not in his heart, but in hers.

“What if… what if I can be good,” he timorously ventured, “but only on one condition.”

“I’m not sure goodness works that way.”

His gaze on her was melting more rapidly and deeply by the second. “On condition that I am happy,” he pressed on, suddenly placing a hard hand upon her shoulder. All traces of timorousness vanished from his voice; that voice now took on an earnest, violent passion. “You, Leara, would make me happy. To have you as my queen—”

“Your queen?” she gasped, shuddering beneath his heavy hand. “Garendor, the… the throne is not yours. You are not even first in line for it.”

“Eldor does not want it. I can take it,” he contended. “I would rein over all of Zoll Zora, with you by my side, and I would try my very hardest to be good. I would try not to be so bloodthirsty. I would leave Glorion unharmed. I would try to rule with wisdom, and with mercy in my heart—”

“Garendor, this—”

“I just want to be happy, Leara,” he told her desperately. “I just want to be loved.”

She stared up at him, dark eyes wide beneath brows drawn in heartfelt pity. He was loved; she did love him. Her heart bled for him, more than it had ever bled for anyone. It was not out of loveless pity. She loved him, as a man and as a monster, as a friend and as a foe.

She did believe in him. She did believe that there were untapped depths of goodness in his soul. But whereas that belief was more than enough for Eldor, and all that he could ever ask for, Garendor would rather ask for more.

Love, she could give him. But not the kind of love he wanted. And if she could not give him that, then she would have to give him honesty—even if it was an honesty she knew he did not want.

“Even if I could make you happy, Garendor,” she choked through unwept tears that welled now in her eyes, “I cannot love you. Not the way you want me to.”

The beast within him needed hear no more. It now emerged, enraged, turning Garendor’s wounded heart to stone, recasting all the molten waters in his eyes beneath a sheet of ice that was thicker and harder than ever.

The change in his face had been sudden. She had expected it, but that did not make it any less alarming, any less horrifying.

Ere she could so much as utter a sound, he had her clenched in the curve of his arm, one hand clamped over her mouth, the other hitched about her waist as he started to drag her away.

He had not meant to do this. But in the moment, as it came, he did it nonetheless.

“Then I will do without love,” he declared as he found bonds to tie her up. As I always have, he added silently. “You will make me happy. The way I want you to. And that will be enough.”

Garendor knew well that it would never be enough. But he hoped that, at the very least, it would be better than nothing.

Eldor rose well before the sun. He found that there was nothing in his arms, and cursed himself for having fallen back asleep before she had returned. He had trusted her to look after herself, the woman she was, in whatever it was that she’d needed to do—but even if she was a woman in her own right, that did not mean she might not sometimes need her man. He sensed that she needed him now.

He headed for the atrium and looked out the wide glass window. The moon had not yet set, but it was well past midnight. More than half of the tents on the coast had been taken down, at some point in the deep of the night. He easily inferred what that meant. And in the pit of his heart, he also inferred what that meant about the whereabouts of Leara.

He should have known better than to trust her to look after herself, when Garendor was out upon that beach.

He hurried out into the remainder of the camp, rousing all his men.

“What is it?” Claron asked, his voice thick with broken sleep.

“The other camp has left,” Eldor explained. “I reckon they’ve returned to Doroth, whence they plan to set sail for Zoll Zora and muster more forces.”

“And you want to stop them?” Claron queried as he rose from where he lay, Hark and Mohrdon also raising themselves up on their elbows in this tent that they all shared.

“No. There is no stopping that, nor any reason to,” Eldor answered. “But they have Leara.”

Claron’s walnut eyes widened. “Well, that,” he uttered as he reached for his armor and sword. “Now that must be stopped.”

Soon all the men were ready and up in arms. As they assembled, Osus scurried over to Eldor’s side and asked what was afoot. Eldor apprised him.

Osus rolled his olive eyes. “For love of women,” he grumbled. “Love of men, you know, keeps life much simpler. Men don’t run off and get stolen away.”

Eldor jabbed Osus playfully in the rib. “As I recall,” he riposted, “you, Osus, ran away from your own lover back at home.”

Osus bowed his head in smiling concession. Eldor was one of the few who knew about Osus’s secret, and he was proud of Osus for having shared that truth with anyone at all, and even having admitted it to himself. Love of men, among men, was censured in Zoll Zora as quite a shameful sin. Among soldiers, it was a punishable felony.

Osus’s lover, Dyreus, was still in Zoll Zora—he had not been so eager to venture across the sea. But Osus had been bent on it, and so had bidden Dyreus farewell, in pursuit of faraway horizons. It had been difficult for him, but having since laid eyes on beauteous Glorion, he knew now that the sacrifice had been well worth it.

If nowhere else upon this earth, he felt, this was a place where his own beauteous brand of love just might be able to flourish, freely and unpunished.

But in any event, another matter lay now at hand. Leara was not merely the woman Eldor loved; she was a Glorian, an innocent Glorian who had hosted them kindly and befriended them with a warm and open heart, and who had evidently been abducted, no doubt at ill-intentioned Zoll Zoran hands. Her safety was therefore important to every one of them.

Eldor told them what he had surmised of the opposing army’s plans. His men all thought the inference plausible, and so set out for Doroth in hot pursuit.

Eldor remembered the way to the village. It was not very difficult, as the path between Daerion and Doroth was largely straight, and hugged the shoreline rather closely. There were a few points along the way at which one might be led astray. But Eldor navigated these potential pitfalls easily, especially with the aid of Osus’s clear memory and Claron’s sharp eye.

They reached the village just as the sun began to peer above the rim of sea and sky.

They had moved swiftly. But it had not been swift enough.

The vast majority of the ships had since departed. A lone few remained still at the shore. And further inland, the village was all up in flames. Most of the flames had died down somewhat, but the ashen skeleton of the town remained as a morbid token of what had been done. The Zoll Zorans had clearly decided to ravage the place, pillaging whatever goods they could despoil for their homeward voyage, leaving wreckage in their wake before they sped across the sea.

Eldor could have wept to see the ruination of a place that had been so pristine and pure. But his eyes were too busy for tears—they frantically surveyed the beach, until they came to rest upon a figure at the shoreline. Even from this distance, Eldor knew the figure well, and his heart might have exploded from his chest at the sight.

He rushed toward her, leaving his men lagging a ways behind, all of their eyes wide in sorrowful horror at the sight of Doroth’s death.

Eldor sank to his knees beside her and urgently undid her bonds—the blindfold, the gag, the knot of ropes around her wrists. The very vision of Leara bound in this way set him afire with rage.

“Leara,” he breathed as he untied her. “Leara. Have you been hurt?”

He wiped the tears from her cheeks with his thumbs, kneaded the indented skin at her wrists with his strong, gentle hands.

She shook her head as she fell into him, sighing his name over and over again, to assure herself that she was here, safe on Glorian soil, in the arms of her Glorious Zoll Zoran home.

“He… he wanted me for his queen,” she stammered, shuddering in his arms.

“But he let you go?” Eldor ascertained, as if the question were a genuine one, as if he did not quite believe his eyes that she was here. “He left you here—he let you go? How… how did…”

She upturned her tearstained face toward his, and entwined the fingers of one of her hands in his grasp. “Before we boarded, he unbound my tongue, for just a moment,” she replied. “I don’t know why. It’s almost as if… as if he wanted me to say that I would willingly go with him. As if he wanted my assent, before he took me.”

She looked at their interlaced fingers, then back up into Eldor’s endless eyes.

“But I gave him no such assent. I told him the truth,” she avowed. “I told him that, no matter where he took me, what he did to me… I would be yours.”

Those words had been enough, for Garendor. They had been too much. Something about those words, the steadfast honesty and depth with which she’d spoken them, had made him throw her down, replace the gag to stop her mouth from any more abominations, and leave her on the shore as he set sail.

Garendor had not known whether it was the monster or the man in him that had chosen to let her go. Mayhap both. Or mayhap neither.

“My lord!” came a voice from further down the desolate beach.

Eldor lifted his eyes to see some of his soldiers loping toward him, men from the few ships that had remained behind.

“My lord,” the soldier at the head of the group repeated, as they approached their kneeling prince, “your brother… he…”

Eldor rose, helping Leara to her feet alongside him. “Tell me what happened, Javen.”

Javen nodded, his heather eyes wide and unblinking. “He came bearing orders. He told us that we were all to set sail for Zoll Zora, and gather troops to come and conquer Glorion. We asked after you, and the others, wondering why only half the men who’d gone to Daerion had returned—but he gave us no clear answer. He simply said that… that you and those men were far gone.”

Eldor tensed his jaw.

“Some of us didn’t believe him,” Javen proceeded. “He said that he commanded us as high general to board the ships and ready them for home. But some of us insisted that we wanted your command, that we would not follow such orders in your absence. He was furious, at that, but eventually was forced to leave us be—there was no convincing us. He very nearly might have killed us, hadn’t some of the others protested against it, urging him to simply let us stay behind. They told him we would learn our lesson and pay the price for our insurgence soon enough.”

He ran a hand through his dark auburn hair, casting a nervous glance out on the sea, as if he worried that the general and his men might double back now to rescind that twisted mercy.

“So he left us here, those few who disobeyed him,” he continued. “And with the rest… with the rest, he set about ravaging the village. There was no stopping them, for they outnumbered us, and were hell-bent on destroying this place. We tried to defend it, and some of us fell in the effort—some of us paid the price sooner than later, for our loyalty to you, and for our sympathy for Doroth. But roughly a couple hundred of us remain. We watched them go, and thought we’d best wait here until you came. We knew you’d come, my lord.”

Eldor laid a calm hand on the young trooper’s trembling shoulder. “Thank you, Javen. And I thank all of you, for your loyalty and strength.”

Javen nodded once and smiled weakly. He and the other few men who’d come running behind him were all casting curious glances at Leara, with the mess of undone bonds at her feet.

“This is Leara,” Eldor introduced her simply, “from the city of Daerion. She and her family have been hosting us there.”

Javen bowed his head at her in greeting. “And you… brought her here with you?”

Eldor shook his head and gestured toward the ropes and cloths upon the sands. “My brother brought her. Bound, against her will. He nearly took her with him to Zoll Zora.”

“But he let me go. And Eldor came and saved me,” Leara added, beaming up at him.

“Oh!” Javen exclaimed in alarm. “You were bound here, on this very beach, all the while?”

Leara pursed her lips and nodded.

“Oh, I’m—we’re sorry for not having come to your aid! We’d not seen you…” Javen eagerly apologized. “Whatever forms we saw upon this beach, we took for slaughtered villagers, and thought… thought it’d be best to wait till…”

Leara assured him that it was quite all right, and that she understood completely. Zoll Zoran men, she mused—always so eager to solicit her forgiveness, even when there was nothing for her to forgive. These warriors, trained all their lives to be lions, often behaved in her presence like lambs. It was endearing. And very human.

Eldor surveyed the beach. There were indeed a fair number of Dorothan victims strewn upon these stony sands. It seemed that the Zoll Zorans had spared no mercy. The very winds that soughed across the pale gray dunes were like the breath of death, jarring and dry. Not a soul stirred. Not a throat was left uncut.

His gaze then settled on one form that caught his eye. One limp, lifeless figure sprawled facedown, a stone’s throw away. Even on its belly as it was, its face averted and faraway, that corpse exuded, in Eldor’s direction, the familiar glare of hateful umber eyes.

Eldor began toward the dead body, the others trailing behind. As he drew nearer, his recognition of the boy became more definite. He sat on his heels, peering at the profile of the pale face buried sidewise in the sand, one cheek pressed into the pebbles below, the other exposed to the air, the freckles on his nose and sloping cheekbone seeming already to fade.

Leara approached and sank softly onto her knees beside Eldor. “Brontus…” she murmured.

The other soldiers stayed a ways behind, unsure of the particular significance of this victim.

“I’d thought I heard his voice,” Leara glumly continued. “I thought I might’ve heard his voice, when they began away from Daerion. I wasn’t sure, but… but they must’ve taken him, to guide them here, to make sure that no time was lost in navigating. They couldn’t even spare him the small mercy of letting him live, after forcing him to lead them here, only to burn his village to the ground.”

Eldor looked solemnly down at the boy, a boy who had so loathed and feared him in his lifetime. He wished those umber eyes would come to life again—he much preferred the animate fire of fear and loathing to the misty glaze of death. He hoped, for Brontus’s sake, that the last sight before these misty eyes had not been that of his home burning to the ground.

“We can only hope,” he uttered gravely, “that they were merciful enough to kill him ere he had to watch it burn.”

It was a slender hope, and small and modest. But for this soul too soon departed, it was the only hope they had.

They buried Brontus, as well as all the other recoverable bodies that they could find in this burnt skeleton of a town. Even with the aid of all the many Zoll Zorans who had remained behind, the task took a long while. It was well past noon by the time they returned to Daerion. Eldor, Leara, and some of the soldiers went on foot; the rest sailed the few ships over to the Daerian shore, on Eldor’s direction to head straight south and stop once they saw the gleaming spires of white and gold. He bade them wait awhile and not leave till much later in the day, for he would not want those in Daerion to be alarmed at the sight of unexpected black ships drawing in at their shores.

Eldor and Leara’s return was met with an effusive, anxious welcome. They quickly explained all that had happened. The story elicited a wide variety of reactions—Kevriel was grave but grateful; Caliphria bewildered but relieved; Anorrah concerned but deeply glad to see her daughter safe, and reassured to know that this man Leara loved had done nothing to harm her, but rather had come to her rescue. Lincia was pained to hear what had befallen Brontus, but that pain was slight beside the rapturous joy of seeing Eldor’s face again.

Gorovan had turned into a human wall of brick.

He took Anorrah aside, later in the day as the Daerians were welcoming all of the new Zoll Zorans, including those who now arrived aboard the ships. Gorovan spoke with her of what this meant for Glorion, the doom that Garendor’s mission spelled for their family and their continent. Brontus had been the first to go. He would by no means be the last.

Anorrah spoke little, her blue eyes dark and deep at the brink of despair.

She heard a faint rustle, then saw a small scroll clutched in Gorovan’s hand.

“But there is hope yet, for Glorion,” he stated.

She blinked at the letter from Shelta, the letter from her husband. She had hoped to forget ever having read it, hoped to forget that it’d ever been written. But alas, those things in her life that she hoped to forget were always those etched deepest in her memory.

Crion had spoken, in that letter, of such deep and dangerous things. Anorrah shuddered and spoke in a low whisper. “A mighty hope. A terrifying hope.”

Gorovan paused. A sliver of light broke through the wall of brick. “The only hope we have."