In his gauntleted hand, he held the Lorian sword—ancient, brutal, its edge runed with archaic marks, the hilt crowned by the Bloodstone of Ugarit—a king’s gift after some long, bloody siege.
“You come back with nothing?” he roared. The soles of his leather sandals smacked the stone like thunder, each step a judge’s gavel.
I stood in the hall’s center, and the cold beneath my feet felt like the rim of a pit. My eyes flicked to the hearth; Julian’s polished sword hung above it, perfect and consecrated, gleaming over the flames like an idol. He was still out there—still fighting, winning. Everything I was not.
My fists tightened until the knuckles sang.
“I refused their demands,” I said. “They wanted our ports. Our routes. A seat on our council. I would not sell House Lorian’s soul for a few fields and a vein of bronze.”
He laughed—as dry as struck flint, humorless and sharp.
He came down the steps, firelight dragging long scars across his lamellar. “A few fields?” he spat. “Those lands are the spine of the Baelric Valley—the gateway to the Hattina! Their grain fills our storehouses. Their bronze arms hold every sword in the capital. You let pride rob us of a future—while your brother bleeds for that future on a spear line and you sit in council halls and talk.”
“I protected what’s ours,” I snapped, stepping forward. “We already have power. We already have wealth. We don’t need to crawl after Baelric scraps.”
His fist came before thought.
White fire across my jaw. Copper filled my mouth. I staggered; the hall tilted, but I stayed upright.
“You dare speak back to me?” he bellowed. “While Julian bleeds for our name, you crawl home with failure in both hands?”
I wiped the blood and met his glare. “I’m not Julian.”
A blow drove into my gut. Wind left me. “You’re damn right you’re not Julian!” he spat.
He grabbed my cloak’s collar and smashed me into the obsidian pillar. The ancestors’ carvings bit my spine. “Julian is a commander, a warrior. And you—” His face contorted. “You’re a disgrace. A soft-bellied parasite with my name stamped on you.”
“I did what I thought was right,” I managed.
“You thought wrong.”
His fists rained with no mercy. My knees buckled. The floor rose and hit me. I tasted metal and dust; blood ran from my lip, my nose, and a cut over my brow.
He kept coming—righteousness in each blow.
I was a man of twenty-one and he still beat me like a child.
Something inside uncoiled.
His fist arced again. This time, my hand closed on his wrist. Hard. Mid-swing. His momentum died. For a heartbeat, his eyes went wide—less pain than indignation—offense at being interrupted.
I drove my shoulder into his chest. Armor protested with a rasp. He staggered half a step. My next punch was raw and desperate—palm to his jaw, then the heel of my fist crashing into his nose.
The sound was a wet crack—more awful than bone breaking, like pottery shattering under pressure. A hot spray stung my face. Blood flung across the basalt, a dark comet that splashed onto the floor. His hand flew to his mouth; red soaked his beard.
He did not fall. He swore—half a roar, half a curse—and for the first time I saw doubt fold his features. It was a thin thing, gone as quickly as it came, replaced by a hurricane of fury.
My chest heaved. My knuckles burned. The hall tasted of iron and cedar resin. Around us, the ancestors watched in stony silence.
He lunged. I met him again. Fists found flesh; armor dented. Blood mixed with sweat. The sound in my ears narrowed to the slap of skin and the wet thump of impact.
It became less about victory than survival. Each strike I landed tore a line somewhere—cut his lip, split the corner of his mouth, sent a bead of blood down the scar that mapped his brow. He barked and spat blood. The cloak at his shoulder was stained. For a sliver of a breath, he staggered, eyes blown wide, trying to remember how to be the mountain he had always been.
I did not know whether I was brave or mad. I only knew the shape of the heat in my gut—it wanted him down.
He steadied. His hands closed on my throat like clamps. The hall blurred. He laughed once and the sound turned the air to glass.
We were two men in a house that worshipped war. The watchers hewed above us held their silence like a verdict. Somewhere inside me, the old, quiet thing settled back under the scars, satisfied for now.
