He had blood on his mouth. I had blood on my skin. The floor would need scrubbing in the morning.
He did not hit me again—not immediately. He breathed, and I heard the counting in that breath—a list of debts to be paid, a plan already forming.
For a moment, the thunder of his sandals receded. The hall exhaled. The fight had not ended. It had only changed.
“You will not hit me again,” I growled, chest heaving like a war drum.
Lord Lorian straightened—slowly. The look he gave me was not pure rage or mere disappointment. It was disbelief, as if the son he knew had become something else.
“You dare defy me, boy?” he thundered; his voice shook the stones. The firelight dimmed, cowed by his presence.
I stood my ground. Every breath was a rebellion. “I’m not a boy anymore,” I said. “I’m a man.”
He sneered and closed the distance until I could feel the heat of his breath. “A man?” he spat. “You think defiance makes you a man? One pathetic strike earns you a name in this house?”
He laughed—low, scornful, the sound of flint on flint that erased years in a single breath. “A man commands respect. A man earns honor. A man bleeds for kin, wins wars, brings glory—not some pale, mewling excuse who shames us every time he opens his fucking mouth.”
His words hit harder than his fists ever could. Still, I did not look away.
“I did what you asked,” I said, my voice cold. “Everything. And it’s never enough.”
“It will never be enough!” he snarled.
His hand cracked across my cheek with a loud report that hushed the torches. My head snapped; stars flared behind my eyes.
He stepped back, circling like a jackal around a wounded stag—blood still dark at the corner of his mouth where my blow had found him—then lunged.
The next strike shattered into my ribs. Breath exploded from me. I reeled; the world narrowed to fire and iron. Blow after precise blow fell—each one a lesson honed by decades of war. I tried to guard, to return the strike, but he was faster, harder; he did not fight to teach. He fought to fucking destroy.
My knees buckled before my resolve did. I collapsed to the obsidian, hands braced, blood searing down my lip to the polished floor. Breath came ragged and shallow; pain crawled through my ribs and spine like crawling coals.
He loomed above me, unsated. “You will never be Julian,” he hissed, venom low and certain. “He is everything this house was built on—warrior, commander, a name carved into the bones of our enemies.”
He crouched, voice dropping until it was almost a whisper—sharper than his shouts, the knife that always cut deeper. “You… are fucking nothing.”
My lips trembled.
But I didn’t cry.
I wanted to scream, tear the room apart, spit blood across the obsidian, and curse his name loud enough for the gods to hear.
I would not give him that satisfaction.
I bit down on the pain, swallowed the fury, and hauled myself up. Every inch of me burned—ribs splintered, shoulder throbbing like a war-hammer had hit it. Warm blood blurred my vision.
Still, I rose.
I passed him without a word, without a look. My limbs begged for rest; my pride begged for vengeance.
He did not stop me. He never did. His silence—cold, absolute—was the final strike. Not a retreat. A verdict.
To him, my pain was not punishment. It was proof—proof I had failed, proof I deserved it.
The halls of House Lorian swallowed me—black stone carved with a thousand dead faces, ancestors frozen in judgment. Their eyes followed the blood on my skin as if to say,You are not one of us. Their chiseled mouths held nothing but scorn.
I tasted copper as I pushed through the outer gates. Guards averted their eyes. Servants did not speak. Maybe they feared him. Maybe they pitied me. Maybe they had seen it too many times.
I crossed the courtyard and made for the stables. Nyros, my black stallion, snorted when he heard my steps and pawed the earth—his hooves stamping like a war drum.
