The waiting was worse than it had been before. When Ado had first arrived in her cell, with nothing to look forward to but her own execution, the days had congealed together into a single, homogenous torment. Now she felt every second as an isolated stab at her will.

She’d never understood, as a girl, how a person might go mad in captivity. Now she knew. When everything was so similar, when each hour brought entirely nothing new, it was terribly easy to grow lost within one’s own thoughts. And the thoughts of a person finding themselves jailed…Well, they were things to induce madness without a doubt.

This time, however, Ado was not waiting so long. Or at least she didn’t think she was. It was hard to tell, but she certainly slept less before being drawn out of her prison this time. Awaiting her outside was not a hooded executioner, but a more standard noble’s escort. They took her through the palace and deposited her, once more, in the King’s office. The man, if anything , looked worse than he had before, seeming to have surrendered an extra decade of his life overnight, and shaking as he poured himself rather more wine than he’d been drinking when last they met.

A good sign, Ado hoped.

“The High Priest is dead.” The King told her, his words direct, but his voice forced into a fearful whisper by his own tumultuous emotions. “Assassins sent by the Dark Lord, they permeated our defences and slew him in the dead of the night.”

Ado nodded, in understanding. As far as explanations went it was quite a pedestrian one, but she hoped that would only make it all the more sturdy over time. The King did not strike her as the sort of man who might maintain an elaborate lie, however better it might otherwise obfuscate their crime.

“I…Apologise.” He continued. “For not taking the true threat of the Dark Lord seriously enough, and I pledge my city’s forces to Silenos Shaiagrazni. For as long as I remain in power after this.”

He didn’t expect to live? That surprised her, Ado had taken him for a true fool to have acted so obviously against his own interest without realising it. Now she knew differently. He was just a good man, one who’s own life was not the most precious thing to him. She felt herself suddenly moved by the display.

But she hardened her heart carefully. Emotion was a mental fault she could not afford to humour, now of all times.

“Then my own forces are welcome into the Kingdom.” Ado guessed, stifling the urge to grow confident at the fact. The King nodded.

“There will be rebellions.” He croaked. “Blood will spill. So, so much blood…” The man swallowed. “Yes, they are allowed into the city. In fact I will announce the High Priest’s death only once you have positioned your forces behind its walls.”

Ado nodded, finding herself more and more convinced of the man’s competence with every passing word. It was disheartening to know she had not come with any great weight of military power, but she had more than one Shaiagraznian grotesquery. And one might almost have been enough on its own.

“Thank you.” Ado replied, and was surprised to see the King’s eyes grow hard and angry.

“I did not do this for you.” He spat. “Don’t thank me, don’t you dare. This is for my people, for the children of Wudra and the followers of God, understand?”

“I understand.” She nodded, suddenly careful, again, now that she’d seen his temper give. It appeared Ado had found one of the lines one couldn’t cross.

“Leave me.” The King scowled, leaning back in his chair and looking suddenly… shrunken. “Please.”

Ado left him.

Outside, she was not particularly surprised to find Folami waiting for her, and even less surprised to see a look of utter fury coating his face. Ado waited for the smug satisfaction or urge to gloat, but nothing came. She felt no victory, looking at her brother, just a nagging sympathy.

You had everything you ever wanted, then had it taken away. I can relate.

Ado felt that sympathy, and she crushed it as completely as she was able. There was no time for petty emotion now.

“Are you happy now, murderer?” Folami asked, hatred reaching a new height as he spoke, voice trembling under its weight. “It wasn’t enough to just aid a butcher, you had to become one yourself, is that it? Or do you somehow think the HIgh Priests’s death is the fault of others when you as good as ordered it?”

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

It was fascinating how little his words reached her. Ado just walked around her brother, heading to her own rooms. They had been the ones she ought to have been staying in from the start, large and indulgent as any she’d ever set foot in. The rooms of a King- or a Queen, in this case- and a conveniently short walk from the centres of Wudra’s command.

Folami, though, followed her.

“Do you not even intend to defend yourself?!” He snapped. “Or do you not care about being thought a killer, do you see no issues with that title? Damn it woman, answer me.”

They were in her quarters, now, and Ado was pleased to see a pair of guards awaiting her within them. Big men, both of them. Doubtless, they had their fair share of Vigour pumping through every vein to have been assigned the task of watching her. They would serve perfectly for what she needed now.

“Men, beat my brother, but do not kill or permanently injure him.”

For a moment, the room was silent. Then the sound of steel scraping on steel rang out as armoured men moved. Folami stared, swallowed, took a step back and opened his mouth with a face twisted tight into regal defiance as he made to speak.

His words were silenced by the first gauntleted punch slamming into his cheek.

His head snapped back, and he lost his footing near instantly. He was not allowed to fall, however, for the second guard grabbed him and hoisted him upwards for a second blow to fall upon his gut. Folami wheezed, folding over, trying to curl up as more fists came down on him. It was no use. Within moments his skin was a canvas of bruising and his body was shaky with pain. Ado watched his half-dazed form dragged from the building and tossed out into the adjacent hall.

She waited to feel something, a touch of pleasure or satisfaction, but she was still just as empty as before. Ado had not hurt her brother out of spite or self-gratification, she’d simply done it because it needed doing.

Like Shaiagrazni himself. Rulership was not something she’d understood before his arrival. How could it have been? Her only exposure to it had been exclusively through the lens of imbeciles, and how vastly more gifted than any of them she was. Now she’d seen a true ruler do his work, however, and she understood the place of cruelty in it, just as she understood the place of kindness.

There was little place for the latter in this world, though. Ado could be kind when humanity did not make itself her enemy. Until then, they’d need correction.

A knock took her door, and for a moment Ado wondered whether her brother had actually come back. But no, he was not a strong man- not strong enough to weather the sort of beating he’d just received and continue bothering her in spite of it. This was someone else.

“Enter.” She called, not bothering to take a suitably regal position in her seat, just standing in the open and waiting to speak with her visitor. Ado hadn’t known who to expect, but Rochtai had certainly not been among her first choices.

The Magus was looking better, which was to say he had put on some of the huge volumes of weight he’d lost and no longer had quite so pronounced a pair of bags under his eyes. The wear of his ordeal under Shaiagrazni was still apparent at a glance, but he kept it hidden with considerable skill. It was natural, she supposed, for a Magus to hold his emotions tightly concealed. Even when they were as crushingly intense as his must have been.

“My Lady.” He nodded, respectful now. It felt strange. Ado had always seen a superior in Rochtai- a tutor. Now, though, their stations could not be more reversed. Were she one of her brothers she’d have been raised to expect such an eventuality, told as she grew up that it was her birth right.

Yet another entry to the endless list of ways in which they were fractionally advantaged over her, she supposed.

“Magus.” Ado nodded, sensing a desire for formality in him and deciding to follow suit. It was only appropriate, either way, a ruler could not simply fraternise as they saw fit.

“You managed to turn things around.” He noted, smiling through his thick beard. “I knew you would. The moment we received the call to enter, I knew it was you. Mind, it came just in time, a few of our forces were eager to simply barge our way in.”

Ado winced. That would have been a disaster. Wudra was not as sophisticated as the armies of House Shaiagrazni, but they were still among the strongest of the continent’s nations. Thousands of Paladins, scores of thousands of normal men, and no small number of contracted Magi from Magira in wake of recent events to boot. Her meagre escort would not have lasted very long at all in a direct confrontation, let alone an offensive siege.

“Fortunate timing then, indeed.” She noted. Rochtai nodded sagely, and paused for a moment, apparently struggling to say something…Difficult.

“I am afraid, however, that your timing could have been somewhat more fortunate.” He continued, “Because the Dark Lord has already dispatched rather a large force our way.”

Ado swore. She should have known, the King had accepted her terms far, far too easily. Of course the Dark Lord was coming to crush them, he’d be an idiot to miss the chance of removing Shaiagraznian forces while they were isolated like this, and reanimating Wudra’s armies after the fact…

It might well tip the entire war in his favour.

“How long do we have?” She asked, abruptly. Rochtai was quick in giving his answer, as practical now as he’d ever been. Perhaps more.

“Days, at best. They drew incredibly close before being sighted.”

That was what one might have expected, without Kaltan Rangers surveying the horizons. It would have been amusingly ironic, to see Wudra fall for their own refusal to adopt such a useful tool, were it not so pathetically tragic. Particularly if it were not dragging Ado down with them.

She would not fail. Sooner die than fail.