A Crack in the Wall
Carion strode on with a storm in his face and his fists clenched tight.
By the time he reached his office, though, the upheaval in his gut had all but settled. He turned the moment over in his mind, tracing back why he had let his feelings get the better of him and stormed out of the room.
He had spent his entire life in the thick of a battlefield of intrigue. An emperor who weighed his five sons like pieces on a board. Half-brothers who watched for nothing but the chance to drag one another down. Wolves who flocked toward power the moment they scented it. There was no shortage of men who provoked him under the guise of deference, calling him Your Highness while they probed for a weakness. Now and then, someone even had the gall to be openly insolent.
When they crossed the line, he did not get angry. He laughed, and then he crushed them.
Today, he had gotten angry.
Why?
The answer came to him, and he dropped into his chair with a bitter smile. It was the first time anyone had ever rebuked him for the way he lived. No one had ever said such a thing to him. His mother had left the imperial palace when he was a child, and he had not seen her since. His father did not offer his sons advice. The only people who had ever stood at Carion's side were servants and guards, and after he became commander-in-chief, the men around him were soldiers who obeyed the chain of command without question and followed his orders to the letter.
Rhea's words kept circling in his head. A community bound to you by fate.
He had no interest in power. Falling out of the emperor's favor meant nothing to him. But if that fall dragged everyone who followed him down into misery as well...
The thought of it felt worse than being thrown in a cesspit.
"Cedric."
"Yes, Your Highness."
Cedric, who had been waiting in tense silence, studied his lord's face.
"How are the preparations for the next leg of the tour?"
"Complete, Your Highness. We are standing by."
Carion let out a breath.
"There will be no next leg. We go to the capital. I've received His Majesty's edict, so this time I will have to go. The Zephyros delegation will accompany us on the way."
Cedric showed no surprise.
"Yes, Your Highness."
"Accompany. Nothing more. Make that perfectly clear to the princess."
"Yes, Your Highness."
Once he had left the office, Cedric stopped in the corridor and sorted through what he had just heard. His Highness changed a decision he had already made.
As a loyal chief adjutant, Cedric had catalogued even the smallest of his lord's faults. Chief among them was this: once stubbornness entered a decision, Carion never reversed it. Cedric had always regarded the prince's continued disregard of the emperor's edicts as a form of that same stubbornness.
And now, because of a kingdom's princess he had known for only a handful of days, the prince had yielded.
Princess Rhea of Zephyros...
Cedric decided he would need to gather more information. He needed to understand what kind of person she was.
After Cedric had gone, a question surfaced in Carion's mind, unbidden.
Three worst things. What was the third?
He should have stayed long enough to hear it. But if he went back to ask, she would think he had invented an excuse to see her. The fact that he was even thinking this was so absurd he let out a short, incredulous laugh.
He doesn't want to distinguish himself... That is a variable I never accounted for.
You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink. Rhea pressed her fingers to her temple. If he had simply said he did not want to marry her, she would have found another way.
Why does he have no ambition? What good is a capable prince with no ambition?
Nella had been harsh in her assessment of her own son. Most mothers, when they thought of their children — and all the more so of a child who had died — tended to gild the memory. Nella had spoken only of his flaws.
Rhea had, in truth, misunderstood a little. She had assumed he must have been a son who never quite measured up in his mother's eyes, or that he had leaned too heavily on his maternal connections, and so on. Which was why, the first time she saw Carion, she had been startled by how fine he actually was.
She nodded to herself. She is his mother, after all. Of course she knows her son.
Honestly, she had been a little excited before she met him. Ten years on, the Commander-in-Chief of the Northeast was a man whose reputation split cleanly down the middle, and she had always wanted to meet him at least once. The ones who spoke ill of him were the wealthy and the powerful. The ones who looked up to him were the powerless. That had interested her.
But he had been, unmistakably, imperial royalty representing the empire's military, and she had been the leader of a wandering people opposed to that empire. In practical terms, a meeting between them had been impossible. When she heard that he had died, a hollow feeling had opened in her chest. After she met the king of Nortia, she had thought more than once, What if he had lived? She had regretted not finding some way — any way — to meet him while he was still alive. Even if he had been a man of the empire, looking at the path he had walked, she had felt they might have understood each other.
And then she had met him, and he had turned out to be an obstinate brick wall.
I'll grant that he's handsome. I know he's capable. And what of it? At this rate he'll die of that stubbornness, just as Her Majesty said!
A knock, and Penny came in.
"Princess. Lord Milo wishes to see you. He's His Highness's adjutant — the one who came out to greet us..."
"Yes, I know. Send him in."
Cedric entered a moment later and delivered Carion's decision: they would be accompanied all the way to the capital.
"Why the sudden change of heart?"
"His Majesty issued an edict commanding His Highness to return to the capital. He had been deliberating whether to obey it."
"Killing two birds with one stone, then. But if His Highness travels with us, I will take that to mean our delegation will be present when he has an audience with His Majesty. Even the emperor will not believe an excuse like, I only traveled with them — I know nothing about this."
"His Highness is well aware of that."
Even after hearing Cedric out, Rhea could not quite pin down what Carion was thinking. Why did he change his mind? Was it something I said?
If it was, the man looked different to her. It would mean that the imperial prince and Commander-in-Chief of the Northeast had actually listened to the bitter words of a kingdom's princess who wanted to become a vassal state.
Perhaps he is not as pigheaded as I thought.
After Cedric left, Rhea's mood lifted considerably. She had not secured a confirmation of marriage, but accompaniment was something. One step forward. She would keep advancing, steadily, from there. As the leader of a wandering people, she had lived ten years without being able to see an inch ahead. She would gladly draw the water herself and offer it to the horse.
At dusk she went out into the inner courtyard for a walk and found Carion already there. He saw her at almost the same moment and stopped, watching her.
She came toward him without the slightest hesitation, and he asked,
"Aren't you afraid of me?"
"Everyone else seems to be, I take it."
"In the Northeast, I am the emperor's proxy."
I know someone who looks just like you. She was strong, and she was beautiful. She is a benefactor I could never repay, not even with my life.
Carion saw a fierce, shimmering heat rise in the eyes looking up at him. It was the first violent feeling he had found in a gaze that had, until now, been nothing but plain and clear. A strange thirst caught in his throat, and he turned his head away.
"We are only traveling together."
"So I heard. When do we leave?"
"In two days, if we can. Three at the latest."
"Ah."
That dubious little sound made him look back. Rhea was already walking beside him.
"It takes you a long time to make a decision," she said, "but once you have, you move quickly."
"I make decisions quickly as well."
She glanced at him, then looked ahead again.
"I see."
Her easy agreement sounded, to him, like I don't agree, but I have no interest in a pointless argument.
"To tour the entire Northeast, you have to decide fast and act fast. I do not spend days on a single problem the way I have this time. If I hadn't been tied down by the Zephyros delegation, I would already be at the next—" He broke off. "Enough."
He had worked himself up into a long, rambling defense, and the sound of it struck him as so pathetic that he shut his mouth.
"You hadn't even started. Say what you were going to say."
"I don't give people openings."
"Openings? You mean you'd rather say nothing at all than talk long enough to make a mistake?"
"..."
Rhea thought she could see, just a little, the wall the man named Carion had built around himself.