Caeden jumped down from his anxious and breathless horse and ran as soon as his feet hit the ground. He rushed up the grand staircase two at a time, his blood pumped in his ears from his exertion.

Kael’s usual blithe drawl drifted down to him, but he could already pick up the disguised threat in his brother’s tone before he heard the words outside the parlour door.

“…rest assured that I will hunt you down and gut you myself.”

His jaw stiffened, he bunched his fist, and his body tensed in rage. Caeden burst through the door, crossing the floor with an ungodly speed.

Kael’s eyes widened in bewilderment and straightened, too slow to avoid his fist to his face. He tumbled from his perch on the table. Stopping his fall with one hand, he struggled to right himself with a couple of heavy steps.

Caeden bunched his fist again, ready to swing. This time with all the force of his weight. He pulled his arm back, but a slim hand curled around it, preventing further movement. He looked back angrily and met Ava’s saddened eyes. The red flower in her hair brought out their dejected expression all the more. His fingers flexed, torn between wanting to comfort her or rage once more against her aggressor.

Behind her, a blurred movement caught his eye. Ser Derric faced it in a defensive position. He had yet to brandish his sword, waiting for one of Kael's so-called guards to make the first move. He frowned with displeasure but lowered his arm. Curses! He had acted without thinking.

“Ahh! Gods dammit, you reckless brute!” Kael exclaimed angrily once he regained his balance, pressing the tips of his fingers against his reddening cheek. “Years of trying to get some sort of reaction out of you and you finally lose yourself over her?

“Do not flatter yourself, my dear. Caeden is not defending your honour. He just does not like anyone playing with his toys,” he spat viciously at Ava.

Caeden ground his jaw and stepped threateningly towards his brother. Fifteen years later and he was still holding on to that old fight?

“Prince Caeden, stop,” Ava whispered desperately as she pulled on his white mantle.

“He threatened you! Why are you defending him?” he bellowed furiously.

“He…”

“Tsk, Tsk, my dear. I do not believe it is your place to be spilling my secrets,” Kael interrupted with annoyance.

Caeden glared at him, ripping the rose from Ava’s hair and crushing it within his fisted palm. He threw it to the floor before Kael's feet as he led Ava out of the parlour.

He was seething and he tried to focus on his breathing to calm his irrational rage.

Fifteen years with barely any meaningful contact, and only one sentence brings forth all those years of bottled resentment and frustration over Kael's indifference. The Knights Guild would have been ashamed of my lack of discipline.

He led Ava to a small waiting area along the grand staircase and released her arm. He flopped onto a sofa, closed his eyes and heaved heavy breaths. He heard Ava shuffling around and cracked an eye open.

She moved around the area, taking in the space and its furniture with a raised quizzical eyebrow and a half smile.

“I did not know there was a room back here,” she said in amazement.

Understandable, it was designed as an optical illusion, making it look like a deep alcove rather than an entrance to a larger room from the outside.

“Castle Caedence has a host of interesting nooks, crannies, and secrets. We would always find something new as children,” he responded. He would have wished to show her everything he knew if he had only the time.

“What is behind the elaborate door in the foyer?”

“Nothing,” Caeden grimaced. “Forget you saw it.” That was something he was forbidden from sharing with anyone, not just her.

“I wonder if I should get used to princes telling me to forget things,” she muttered sarcastically.

She moved to a window when she heard a Knight contingent marching across the ground below. The commanding captain bellowed an instruction. His contingent shouted their affirmation in tandem and then followed his direction with a clamour of metal. They would join the mages from the guild to assist with the evacuation.

“What does that mean?” Caeden asked. What games was Kael playing?

“Nothing, it is already forgotten,” she glared at him before turning back to stare out of the window.

Caeden’s jaw tensed. Her insolence was annoying, but he should have known she would close up if he offered her nothing in return. He allowed his head to fall against the sofa’s back and stared at the carved wooden pattern along the ceiling.

“What happened between the two of you?”

He heaved a sigh. It was not a discussion he wanted to have, but he needed to give her something meaningful to satisfy her curiosity.

“We were close once. My brother and my mother were the only people I could trust without any measure of doubt back then. We played together often, even when things got tense between our parents, and we were warned away from each other. After much trial and error, we found a secret place where no one could find us and spent hours in our own little imaginary version of the Empire.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“But as we grew older the burden of my role and the bitterness of our mothers started to weigh heavy on me, and I began to resent Kael. I think he felt it too, and a rift developed. He was the son who got and had everything while I was the bastard spare. A second thought in the emperor’s mind and a constant reminder of his infidelity in the Queen’s eye. He would get the Empire, get our home, and have a wife and family while I would get battles and an ash fort by the sea, surrounded by knights for the rest of my life.

“My mother tried to compensate for this lack. Everything Kael received my mother tried to gift me something similar. At the time a toy range became popular among the noble children. They were wood carvings of the greatest heroes across Archaicron – Casimir, Solstein, Irahaan and Frikka. But there was one Kael’s mother would not allow him to have – Tekkhan, the Orc King and Mulgrath’s disciple.

“That toy was my pride and joy purely because it was the one thing I had that Kael did not. And naturally, it was the only toy my brother wished to play with the next time we met. We fought about it and the resentment I tried to bottle up burst forth. The folly of youth, such a stupid thing to pick a fight about,” he muttered with a frown.

“I went back to our secret place the following day to apologise and was willing to lend it to him to play with. He was not there. For a week he did not show up before I mustered up the courage to seek him out at the Queen’s Quarter. Each day I went there and each time I was mercilessly shooed away with the excuse that the crown prince had no time to humour my childish fancies. Eventually, I stopped trying.

”To think that Tekkhan’s toy caused the rift between the Empire’s princes. The orcs would have a grand old time guffawing at that!” Caeden laughed bitterly.

“I watched him from a distance since then and was bitterly disappointed that he had grown into a voiceless shadow of his former self through which his mother and her court jester could speak. The idyllic vision of what we would make of the Casimir Empire together dying with his every inaction.

“And now I cannot decide whether he could be an ally in this endeavour or not,” Caeden ended with a sigh, rubbing his palms across his face.

“He can be,” she responded evenly.

Caeden raised an eyebrow at her matter-of-fact tone, enquiring at her meaning.

“Your brother wishes to support you. His reasons may not be selfless, but I think neither one of us has entirely selfless goals in this.”

His eyes narrowed suspiciously. He wondered if Kael had gotten to the truth of her goals yet. He had tried to figure them out oftentimes himself. Vengeance was the only goal she had that fully made any sense to him, but he knew there had to be something more. She did not harbour sufficient bitterness toward Azael for it to be her sole motivator.

“Regardless,” she continued. “Our aims are the same – to save Archaicron. He said as much.”

“Then why did he not come to me directly?”

“Because he is obstinate and stubborn. One of the few personality quirks you have in common. Why did you not go to him directly if you were considering having him as an ally?”

Caeden glared at her with undisguised annoyance but could not deny that she had a point. He scratched his chin thoughtfully. As much as he preferred not dealing with his brother, it was something he could not avoid. He certainly did not want him dealing with Ava directly.

“Why did he threaten you?”

Ava sighed sadly and she fidgeted with her nails. His threat got to her.

“He was trying to protect you, to ensure that I do not mislead you. I think your brother still cares for you deeply. And I think you are the same, but you are both too hard-headed to show it and make the first move.”

Caeden shifted forward and rested his elbows on his thighs. He placed his head in his hands, stared at the floor and moaned from exhaustion, still indecisive on his next move with Kael.

“I suppose I have to trust your mind because I certainly cannot trust my own anymore,” he muttered, more to himself than her.

She walked over to him and pulled his hand away from his head, dragging his face up to look into her frowning one by the chin.

“Are you getting headaches again? Have the hallucinations returned?” she asked as she pulled down his lower eyelids to examine his eyes.

“No headaches, but I thought I saw something in the temple earlier, Holden’s statue…” he trailed off when her eyes widened in shock. “What is it?” he asked in alarm.

----------------------------------------

Caeden looked up at the stern face of Holden’s statue. The white stone eyes stared unseeingly across the temple to its grand exit. They were empty and blank, no longer glowing vibrantly as it did when he fled from it in fear.

“Anything?” he asked Ava. His heart fluttered excitedly as he waited for her response.

She stood awkwardly in the central aisle. Her eyes swept through everything in the temple suspiciously. Clutching the magi’s satchel to her chest protectively, she was clearly discomforted by being in here.

Ava shook her head. “Nothing. Whatever you saw, whatever I felt, is not here anymore.”

“There are stories about the gods appearing to mortals in dire times and giving them divine instruction. To think I ran away in the face of such honour,” Caeden muttered with disappointment.

Against his judgement and rationale, he had begun to hope and believe when Ava explained what she had felt earlier.

“Are you certain it was Holden you saw?” she asked, her brow furrowing with perplexed concern.

“Well, who else could it be?” he countered. He knew he sounded foolish and irrational, but his faith told him it was true. Holden had spoken to him, and he had fled in fear.

“I – I don’t know. That presence did not feel… right,” she sighed. “Perhaps that is what god spirits are like, I cannot be sure myself. But you need to tread carefully.”

“Rest easy,” Caeden chuckled. “I will not allow my faith to blind me if that concerns you. Not that it matters now. I have shown cowardice to the god of protection, honour and order, I doubt he will return.”

He heard a gasp across the aisle and his eyes landed on Queen Aeline standing agape at the entrance. Anger shook her frame and she struggled to formulate the words her gaping mouth attempted to form.

What was she doing here at this hour? Queen Aeline was usually sequestered in her quarters during the evenings. He moved to Ava and dragged her behind him.

“How dare you?” Queen Aeline screeched.

“This is not as dire as you wish to make it. I suggest you calm down,” Caeden said calmly.

“Not as dire? This is the gods' temple and you of all people sully it by bringing that accursed demonkin creature here?” she shrieked aghast.

“Queen Aeline!” Caeden snapped. “This is just a building, and she is just a girl. I beg you to remember where your faith truly lies!

“Ser Derric, Her Highness has grown hysterical. Escort her back to her quarters,” he ordered the knight.

The queen ripped her arm from Ser Derric’s reaching hand and looked at him hopelessly.

“You cannot see that she has blinded you. She turns you against your brother and now turns you away from the light of the gods. I will free you from her influence,” she spat furiously before turning to leave.

“I apologise,” Caeden whispered to Ava with a sigh. “She was not supposed to be here…”

He trailed off. Queen Aeline's words had affected him, reminding him of the hero in the tapestry. The chilly fingers of uncertainty crept through his mind and made his heart flip over. No, I must trust that the path I am on is righteous. Faith and reason say it is so.

Caeden's eyes narrowed as they exited the temple, and a silent rage flared. Grand Master Gildaen stood outside watching the Queen and Ser Derric’s retreating forms. His smile was smug when he turned to him.

“You grow bolder with each passing day Gildaen. One day, you shall know my wrath,” he threatened.

“A frightening prospect, forever prince,” he bowed. The action was meant as a mockery. “But today is not that day.”