Thirteen Years Later

Something inside my head began putting the pieces together incorrectly.

I should have been faster. I should have stayed. I should have known.

I knew those thoughts were wrong, but they kept coming anyway.

A red flare climbed above the palace walls.

We had won.

Then why did it feel like nothing?

The flare should’ve meant something. The gates were ours. Rafael was still alive. Hundreds of people would wake up tomorrow in an Empire that no longer belonged to the people who had destroyed countless innocent lives.

But…

Marek wouldn’t.

Tessa wouldn’t.

Gideon wouldn’t.

Why should he be allowed to live instead of them?

Cedric raised his blade into guard as though we had stepped back into the training yard at Valemont.

My own sword felt heavier than it had five minutes ago. Something warm ran down my side and dripped from the edge of my cloak.

I moved first.

Cedric caught the strike and turned it away, but the impact forced his front foot backwards. I followed before he could reset, cut towards his shoulder and changed direction when his guard rose.

His blade met mine again.

Slower than I remembered—

No.

Not slow.

I’d gotten quicker.

The realisation should have felt satisfying. I had spent three years as a child trying to reach a man who always seemed one step ahead, then thirteen more becoming somebody who had finally climbed beyond what once seemed like the summit.

I could see everything.

His weight shifted before the next strike, and his wrist turned a fraction too early when he intended to cut low. Cedric attacked, and I stepped outside the line, driving him back another pace.

“You’ve improved, Leon.”

Cedric came forward properly this time. Three strikes arrived without pause, the second changing halfway through, in the same way he had taught me to change mine when I was eight. I caught the first, avoided the second and let the third pass by close enough to move the air beside my cheek before answering with two of my own.

He retreated from both.

“You don’t get to talk to me!” I barked.

“And yet you came looking for me,” he said, as calmly as ever.

For three years, I had believed that every smile, every joke and every lesson had been real.

“Did you enjoy it?” I asked.

Cedric looked puzzled, so this time I made sure he would understand.

“Putting on an act for that long and then…”

The rest caught somewhere inside my throat.

“How could you? My father trusted you. My mother trusted you. I trusted you.”

“Don’t make me laugh,” he said. “Your father was a selfish excuse for a man, only caring about himself—”

My sword moved before the sentence finished. He blocked, barely, and steel slid against steel as I pushed him towards the central steps and his shoulder turned.

Sunlight covered the courtyard. Steel became wood for half a second, and Cedric was standing opposite me, exactly where he had done all those years ago.

Then Gideon’s blood touched my boot.

“Why? Just tell me why? Why did you do it?”

The distance between us remained, but his sword hung at his side.

I kept mine raised while he watched me closely; then he opened his mouth.

“I had to work for everything I got. After a while, I stopped expecting anyone else to put me first. When the crown offered me a way forward, I took it.”

“And so you destroyed the lives of innocent people just to make yours better.”

“Why not? Your father did the same. It’s purely the way of nobles.”

“No. You’re wrong.”

“I’m not. Your father put House Valemont first. I was simply more honest about it.”

That was insulting enough to make me laugh.

“Your father trusted people too easily,” he continued. “Putting me near his son made the rest considerably simpler.”

My grip tightened around the sword.

“Children hear things adults assume they don’t understand. Visitors. Arguments. Names mentioned at dinner. Which knights leave the estate and when.”

I remembered telling him things that had never felt important. Father was meeting someone from Falkenberg tomorrow. Another Imperial messenger had interrupted dinner. Sir Edmund had doubled the patrol and refused to explain why.

Pieces.

I had handed him pieces.

We raised our swords.

Cedric attacked again, and I met him halfway. The next exchange lasted longer, but the difference between us only became clearer.

His sword scraped mine aside and came towards my ribs. I turned before it arrived, let the edge pass my cloak and caught his wrist on the return. Cedric pulled free before I could break it, but not before my blade opened his upper arm.

Blood appeared beneath the dark fabric, and for the first time his expression changed.

“You should have done that years ago,” he mocked.

The words made my stomach turn.

“You were always slower to understand than she was.”

Cedric stepped around Gideon’s body.

“Your mother understood before your father did.”

The leather around the hilt creaked beneath my fingers.

“She recognised me when we reached the study.”

“No.”

“She looked directly at me.”

“Shut up!”

“She realised exactly why we were there.”

Stop. Please, just stop.

“She knew she was going to die and yet she still tried to buy you a few more minutes.”

I attacked too fast.

Cedric caught the first strike and lost the second, my blade cutting across his jacket near the ribs, but he smiled anyway.

“You left them there to die.”

I struck again, and steel rang between us. I drove him back across the courtyard.

It was strange.

This was not a fight Cedric could win cleanly. Every exchange cost him ground, and every time our blades separated I could see another way through his defence.

He knew that, so he stopped trying to beat my sword.

His balance was wrong, his sword was too far outside his body, and his left side was exposed from his ribs to his shoulder.

An opening.

No.

A fake.

Cedric recovered, and something almost like approval passed through his eyes.

“You really did learn.”

“Yes.”

“Then that must make this very frustrating.”

He attacked low. I blocked and stepped inside, our guards locking.

“For thirteen years you convinced yourself you were becoming different. You found people. You trusted them. You even let yourself care.”

My chest tightened.

Cedric looked past me towards the courtyard doors.

“And where are they now?”

My eyes fell towards Gideon.

“Dead.”

The word landed harder than any blade ever had.

“You can dress it up however you like,” Cedric said. “The moment you care about someone, they get hurt.”

“That isn’t true.”

“No?”

“No.”

“Then why did you come after them?”

I had an answer. The revolution had succeeded. Gideon had chosen the courtyard; Marek and Tessa had chosen with him. I understood all of that.

Cedric raised his sword again, and I moved.

His sword barely caught mine before I struck from the other side and he staggered.

“You always had to believe that there was something you could do.”

“You don’t know me.”

I stepped closer, and his guard shifted, exposing his left shoulder. I saw it immediately, and so did he.

Why?

The question appeared, but Gideon’s body entered the corner of my vision.

Cedric was still standing.

Something had to be done.

My sword entered beneath his ribs, and for an instant, Cedric’s eyes widened. I realised I had finally hit him.

Then something cold entered mine.

I looked down and saw Cedric’s sword beneath my ribs.

Deep.

My hands went numb.

Cedric’s face was inches from mine, blood touching the corner of his mouth as he smiled.

“You haven’t changed one bit, have you?”

The words hurt because he was wrong. I had changed. I had wanted things eight-year-old me would never have known how to want: a table at the guild, a repaired wall at Valemont, another argument with Marek, Tessa denying she’d stolen food from my plate, and Gideon complaining about paperwork.

None of that stopped the blade inside me from being real.

I twisted my sword, and Cedric’s expression disappeared.

His knees failed first, and we fell apart from each other, both blades pulling free at the same time. Cedric hit the stones on his side while I stayed standing for perhaps two seconds longer.

Then my right leg stopped participating, and I landed beside Gideon.

The courtyard sounded strangely distant.

Cedric moved once behind me, so I turned my head.

He had rolled onto his back, one hand pressed uselessly against the wound in his chest.

His eyes were already empty.

I had beaten him.

The thought felt smaller than expected.

Blood spread beneath my cloak, and I pressed one hand against it, although I knew enough about wounds to recognise the problem.

My breathing shortened as the red banners above the courtyard began losing colour.

I blinked, but they stayed grey.

So did the gold around them.

That seemed unfair. I had only recently started noticing colour again.

I closed my eyes.

Fire arrived first. Elara’s hand slipping in blood. Father standing before the study doors. Mother’s scream tearing through three stone walls. Sir Edmund at the tunnel exit.

Then…

Elara was alive.

She was threatening to fetch Mother after I claimed a scraped knee did not hurt. Mother laughing at dinner because she and Father had answered at the same time. Sir Edmund telling me to make bravery smaller.

Gideon’s office. Marek losing money at cards. Tessa kicking a chair towards me instead of asking me to sit. Fresh bread. Butter. Salt. Warm crust.

Isabelle laughing across the guild table.

My chest hurt.

Not from the sword but something else.

I don’t want to die.

The thought arrived so clearly that I almost laughed.

Thirteen years ago, surviving had been an order.

Now, it was something I wanted.

I wanted tomorrow.

I wanted to know what the capital looked like when this was all over. I wanted to see whether Rafael could become the kind of ruler who understood that the people beneath the crown mattered too. I wanted to rebuild the eastern garden wall.

My throat tightened.

I wanted Isabelle to find me and tell me I was an idiot. I wanted to argue with her and, once or possibly twice, let her win.

My fingers had gone cold.

I opened my eyes and looked towards the courtyard entrance, but nobody came.

It was probably better that way.

Then I remembered what Isabelle was like and knew she would come anyway.

That was the problem with people: they kept choosing.

I smiled. Or rather, I tried to.

Mother had told me I had time. For years, I had been angry because she was wrong. Now I finally understood why she had wanted to believe it.

I thought of Isabelle one last time: bread in one hand, sunlight behind her, looking at me as though stopping in the middle of the street because food tasted good was somehow the strangest thing I had ever done.

I wanted to see what happened next. For once, I really did.

I just didn’t have any time left.

I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die.

I kept repeating it until the words stopped sounding like words.

I wish…

I wish I could…