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“Where is my father?”

“Where is your brother?”

Garendor glowered at his mother as he moved toward her across the dock. “Why has my father not come to greet me, his triumphant son returned? Where is he?”

“He is waiting for you. In the council hall.”

“And he sent you to fetch me?”

Vana wagged her head. “He sent Olbe to retrieve you,” she answered, gesturing at the palace lord who stood a few paces behind her. “I… I came to greet you.”

“You came to greet my brother,” Garendor spat. “But I will have you know, that Eldor is not here. He sits across the sea and speaks sedition. He has proven himself a traitorous son, a pathetic excuse for a prince.”

Queen Vana blinked, an invisible smile surfacing behind her luminous onyx eyes. Sedition against the empire, treason against the king—that meant that Eldor had been faithful to his promise to his mother, and to the world. Of that, the queen was glad, and deeply proud.

“Very well,” she pronounced, meaning these words more literally than the phrase let on, “Olbe will take you to see your father.”

Garendor stormed ahead, past Olbe, who followed mutely at the general’s heels.

From the far head of the table in the great hall, Xor could hear the heavy footfalls of his second-born prince through the closed doors long before he shoved them open and strode inside.

“Father,” Garendor greeted him curtly as he claimed his seat.

“Garendor,” the king acknowledged with a wan smile and a slight cant of his head. “And where is the high prince?”

“Across the sea. Defying his king and his empire.”

Xor lifted his brows. “Is that so?”

Olbe settled into his seat beside the king.

“He and his band of renegades harbor sympathy for Glorion. They refuse to do your bidding,” Garendor elaborated.

“Glorion?” Xor echoed, as though he’d never heard the name before.

“The land we found across the sea. It is a pitiful place, inhabited by idiots who have never seen a sword in all their lives. War and bloodshed, for those people, happen only in the storybooks.”

The king nodded, jutting out his lower lip in bemusement. “How interesting.”

“There is nothing interesting about the place, I promise you.”

“Your brother seems to have found it interesting.”

Garendor seethed.

“What was it about the place that may have piqued his interest?” Xor inquired. “Tell us, Garendor. What was Glorion like?”

The councilors assembled at the table seemed to all lean in at once, ears pricked and eager.

“Well, the land was good,” Garendor bluntly reported. “Lush. Fertile. The city that we visited had pretty buildings, but no infrastructure. No arms or defenses. No leaders. No order, no law.”

“No law? However do they get on?” one councilor asked.

“That is what baffled me.”

“Then the place must be in great disorder and disarray,” another surmised.

Garendor shrugged his stalwart shoulders. “It… it was actually rather…”

“Peaceful?” Xor proposed.

Garendor stared at the king, in something between a gape and a glare. “I would call it static.”

“And Eldor liked this static place?” Olbe queried.

“Yes,” the general snarled, “he did. He does. He harbors sympathy for the fools out on that continent. He would spare their lives and save their static land. He wants nothing to do with conquest or with empire. He does not even want his birthright to the throne.”

Xor’s eyes darkened as they bored into the low prince. “All the same,” he replied, “it is his.”

A councilor presently cleared his throat and interjected. “General, why don’t you tell us more of this… this Glorion.”

Garendor told them more. He told them all he knew, till all their interests had been satisfied, all their questions answered.

“And so, Father,” he addressed the king once all the council’s curiosity was sated, “I would have you send me back across the sea, with many fleets of warships. I will need a great Zoll Zoran army to make this Glorious conquest for the empire. For my king.”

Xor looked at him.

“At your word, Father,” Garendor persevered in response to the silence.

Xor leant in, resting his elbows on the table and balling both his hands into one fist, which he brought down on the cool surface with a soft but sovereign thud. “My word,” he answered, “is that I will lead the voyage back across the sea.”

The general knit his dark gold brows. “But…”

“But nothing,” Xor cut in. “You will come with me, of course. You will lead the army, as its general. But I will be the one to wage this war. I will declare it; I will lead it; I will win it.”

“I… I would be honored to have your company on the voyage, Father, and in this war, but—”

“Not my company. My command.”

“Yes, of course, but… but who, then, will watch over Zoll Zora? Who could be suited for that charge, while you are gone? Whose head is worthy of the regent crown?”

Xor smiled widely and nodded toward the palace lord beside him. “The very man under whose regency I grew into a king.”

“This old man?” Garendor scoffed.

“This very one,” Xor affirmed, laying a calm hand on Olbe’s shoulder. “And Garendor—I will have you show your regent some respect.”

“It’s quite all right,” Olbe interposed, rising from his seat. “Your son is simply anxious and concerned, for the sake of Zoll Zora. And rightly so. This is a heavy office for me to hold again, my king, and I must set about preparing for it, if you have indeed officially decreed it.”

“I hereby have,” the king ruled.

“Then I thank you, my king, for this honor,” Olbe expressed with a deep bow, “and I would be excused, that I may attend to my new regent duties.”

Xor nodded in a gesture of dismissal.

Garendor watched the regent disappear, his icy eyes simmering.

Xor watched the general smolder. “He supports you, you know. Far more than I do.”

“I do not care.”

“Well. As he is regent, you really ought to.”

Garendor fumed and stood to leave. He had always resented Lord Morowyn, a little. He frowned upon him as a measly palace lord. Olbe was an old man who did not merit the high esteem in which his king had always held him, and who had outgrown the regency of his younger years. An old man whom Xor loved more than his own second-born son. Unrightfully so.

There was one man, at least, within these palace walls who loved and believed in the general. Garendor comforted his cold soul with the thought, as he meandered through the bowels of the palace towards the only room in which he’d ever felt like a future king.

He told Ghergol everything, as he always had, and always would.

Ghergol listened with open ears and heedful eyes. “You’ve done the empire proud,” he commended Garendor once all was said and told.

“And you, I hope?” the general asked, pale eyes raised toward his only friend.

Ghergol smiled over his snowy beard. “My pride in you, my future king, has never faltered.”

Garendor beamed, though the smile was quick to dim. He looked down at the tumbler of wine in his hands.

The lowly palace lord peered perspicaciously at the general before him. “Tell me, Garendor,” he enjoined him, “did you not falter? Not even for a moment? Did you never once find yourself tempted by the beauty of the place?”

Garendor did not look up from his wine. “The place, no.”

“Another kind of beauty, then?”

Garendor looked up. He met Ghergol’s gaze and felt bare and naked beneath it. Those earthen eyes had always known how to pierce his soul, to peel away its every layer, even past the innermost film of its core. “I had hoped to claim my queen. But she would not have me.”

Ghergol’s eyes glinted imperceptibly. He twisted his dry lips into a drier smile. “What kind of foolish whore would refuse the future king of Zoll Zora?”

The general took a long draught of his drink. “She’d rather have the real heir to the throne.”

“And would he have her?”

“Of course he would. Eldor would always have what I want. Everything… everything that I want must be his.”

The palace lord paused. He ran his fingertips along the round rim of his cup of wine, in a dance of eerie knowledge. “Your blood boils. You are on fire for her.”

“Am I not allowed my passions?” Garendor abruptly barked. “I can assure you, they come nothing close to love. My heart beats for no one, nothing, but the empire.”

Ghergol calmly blinked.

Garendor wished, in this moment, that that blink would never end—that those eyes would remain veiled behind those closed lids, so that they could not perforate his soul.

The palace lord set down his drink on the low oaken table beside him. “That is well,” he pronounced. “And who is this woman, this whore? This would-be queen of yours?”

He watched the general wince at the whorish reference to his lady.

“Her name is Leara,” Garendor answered in a lowered voice. “She is the daughter of Anorrah, the woman whose family hosted us in Daerion.”

Ghergol paused again. It was a lengthier pause this time. He did not blink.

He rose from his seat and walked over to the general, leaning down over his chair to place two firm hands on his shoulders, and looking squarely into Garendor’s legible eyes. “Well, Garendor,” he uttered, “this is what I would have you do. In order to be strong, a king must be happy. And I see that you cannot be happy without your queen.”

Garendor’s eyes faltered beneath lowered lids.

“I want nothing more than to see you a strong, happy king. And to see Eldor fall,” Ghergol continued. “Let the warriors wage their war. Send them into battle. But I want you to focus all your strength on one war in particular.”

The general’s heart beat like a broken drum.

“Win this woman from your brother,” Ghergol pressed him. “Make her yours, at any cost. It will make Eldor weak. It will make you impossibly powerful. And once you have secured her for your own, send her back to your city.”

The ice-cast eyes now lifted toward the palace lord beneath creased brows.

“Send her back to Zoll Zora, where I will keep her for you. I know you do not want to see her hurt, or lost to you. I will keep her safe from all the Glorious chaos across the sea. I will keep her here, waiting and longing for you,” Ghergol promised, “as your patient and passionate queen.”

Garendor did not quite understand. But there were very many things he did not understand. At any rate, he knew, this old man was the only soul upon this earth who’d ever come close to loving him. Garendor trusted and respected him with every fiber of his hard Zoll Zoran heart.

Ghergol had always been wise. He had always seen and understood so many things. Mayhap, the general mused, there was no better place than in his wise, old hands to consign Leara’s safety. There was no way she would be safe across the sea. Not in the midst of all the havoc that Garendor was set on wreaking on that continent.

Garendor nodded mutely. He would do as he’d been bid.

That had always been one thing, mayhap the only thing, that he knew how to do.