The corridor outside the King's office was dim and echoing, the heavy double doors shutting behind Reinhardt like the jaws of a beast. His cheek still throbbed where his father's fist had struck him, the dull pain matching the tightness in his chest. He kept his eyes forward, jaw clenched, moving quickly.
From the far end of the corridor, a pair of eyes followed him. Stanford leaned lazily against a marble pillar, arms crossed, a smile curling on his lips as he noticed the angry bruise.
"What a nice mark you've got there," Stanford drawled as Reinhardt approached. "Looks like father's hand fits your face perfectly."
Reinhardt's gaze flicked to him only for a heartbeat before turning away. "I don't have time for you." His voice was flat, steady. He stepped past his brother.
But Stanford's hand shot out, clamping hard around Reinhardt's wrist. "It seems my little brother is getting bold these days," he said lightly, but his grip tightened like a vice.
Reinhardt stilled, eyes narrowing. "I don't have the mood to play with you, Stanford."
"What now?" Stanford tilted his head, the mockery sharpening. "You get called 'hero' a few times, and suddenly all the ministers and nobles start looking at you. You think you're better than me?"
Reinhardt gave a single low breath and shoved Stanford's hand off his wrist. He said nothing, but the annoyance in his eyes was enough.
Stanford chuckled, stepping closer again. "I heard you retired to your bed early last night. And not alone, from what I'm told." His smirk widened. "You were with my maid. How low of you, taking a commoner to your bed. Is that what you were doing at the front lines too?"
Reinhardt's expression didn't flicker.
Stanford leaned closer, his voice a mocking whisper. "Her name, if I remember… Lacy? Cassy? Whatever. My maid. I choose them myself. Based on their bodies, their faces. They're pretty, right? They do their jobs perfectly…" His smile turned vile. "Especially on a bed."
Reinhardt's stare was flat, unreadable; Stanford didn't realize that Reinhardt had actually collapsed the previous night and the girl had only helped him.
"Are you jealous, perhaps?" Stanford sneered.
A quiet laugh escaped Reinhardt's throat, dark and humorless. "What? Me? Jealous of you?" He turned to face his brother fully, the coldness in his eyes cutting through the corridor's dim light.
That laugh ignited something in Stanford; his eyes flared with anger, his smirk tightening. "You should watch your tone—"
Reinhardt cut him off with a tilt of his lips, the faintest ghost of a smile. "Your behavior speaks louder than you realize. Try to hide it, dear brother. You're the Crown Prince now. Don't keep showing your weakness in front of your competitors."
He raised a finger, pointing at Stanford's chest with deliberate slowness. "It will eat you alive."
And without waiting for a reply, Reinhardt turned on his heel and strode away down the corridor, his boots striking the marble with calm, measured force.
Stanford stood frozen for a heartbeat, his smirk faltering into something sharper, darker. Behind his eyes, a storm began to form.
Reinhardt did not return to his chambers. The taste of the court's rot lingered in his mouth; he could not sleep while Kael lay dying and the king threw a banquet. He walked straight to the Tower of Viscount Jaesper with a single, dangerous idea: get Jaesper to the front lines — by any means necessary.
Jaesper looked up from a table cluttered with vials and scrap notes as Reinhardt entered. He offered the easy politeness of a court physician greeting a prince. "Your Highness, what can I—do you require treatment? You look pale."
Reinhardt gave no answer. He sat, unbuttoned his outer shirt, and loosened the bandages wrapped around his side. The skin beneath showed old cuts and new stitch-marks. He regarded Jaesper with an expression that had nothing to do with a patient asking for care.
"Heal me," Reinhardt said, simple and sharp.
Jaesper's eyes lit with professional eagerness. He sank to his knees and began drawing alchemical sigils in the air, chanting under his breath as he pressed gloved fingers to Reinhardt's wounds. The wound-smoking incense of reagents filled the room. Reinhardt flinched at the delicate sting of the salves, then steadied himself as the magic worked. Within moments, the bandages unwound to reveal unmarked skin; not even a scar remained where the stitches had been. Jaesper sat back, a small triumphant smile on his face. "There. That should hold. You pushed yourself too hard."
Reinhardt did not meet the physician's satisfaction. He crossed one leg casually, the image of a prince occupying the slender frame of a man who had not slept in days. For a long beat he let Jaesper enjoy the illusion of control, then leaned forward.
"If I bring you out of this tower," he asked softly, "will you come to the front?"
Jaesper's smile collapsed into a frown. "My lord, I cannot leave without His Majesty's permission. The King forbids my absence from the palace. You know that."
Reinhardt's fingers found his chin and rubbed it lightly, as if considering a puzzle. Jaesper watched the prince, eyes narrowing — this was a different Reinhardt than the smiling court favorite. The aura around him sharpened, colder, and the physician felt it as one feels the change before a storm.
Reinhardt's voice dropped lower. "You remember Prince Robert?"
Jaesper's face shifted. "Prince Robert? Of course. The young prince with the weak heart. I know him —" he began.
Reinhardt did not let him finish. "If I told you he'd suffered a relapse — a sudden heart attack at the camp — would you come? Right now?" The question hung in the air like a blade.
Jaesper's breath caught. He swallowed. "If Robert… if His Highness Robert were in grave danger, I would move mountains for him. I would petition His Majesty —"
"But that petition takes time," Reinhardt cut in, and his hand moved faster than Jaesper expected. The prince's spear coalesced in a hard flash of light and slammed into the plaster of the wall. Stone and mortar cracked, dust blowing like a salt haze. Jaesper lurched back as the lab's order erupted into chaos.
The spear knocked over jars, sent set books tumbling, and clattered to a halt atop the cluttered table. Jaesper's face went white; he had never seen such public threat from a royal before.
Reinhardt stood, the spear dissipating into a shimmer of light as if it had never been fully solid. He closed the distance between them in two strides, and for a moment Jaesper felt something like the memory of the first king himself — commanding, absolute.
"Which is more important to you," Reinhardt asked, the words low and steady, "your research… or your conscience?"
Jaesper's lips trembled. He had been taught to venerate the King's seal more than anything — but he had also learned pity in the quiet hours, and in those quiet hours he had tended many nobles whose lives meant little to the court yet everything to families on the front. The physician's gaze dropped to the ruined table and then to the prince who had just broken a wall.
"Please," Jaesper said at last, voice small. "Calm yourself. We can discuss this."
Reinhardt's smile was not warm. It was thin and precise. "Answer me cleanly: King Stephen, or me?"
The question struck Jaesper like a bell. One did not answer like this in the Tower. He felt the room tilt; the tools of his livelihood suddenly took on the taste of the choice he'd always feared. He remembered the first sovereign who had recruited him, an older, sterner ruler who had trusted Jaesper — the first king whose face remained in the margins of Jaesper's journals. He recalled the nights when knowledge had been enough, and the nights when it had not been.
His knees hit the floor before his brain could stop them.
"I choose you, Your Highness," Jaesper breathed, bowing his head in the most sincere posture his training permitted. "No king has the same presence as the First King. I will come. I will go."
Relief briefly softened Reinhardt's features — and then the prince's voice hardened into business. "Be at my chambers this afternoon," he said. "If you are not there, if I do not see you, I will reduce everything in this tower to ruin."
Jaesper nodded, the scope of the threat settling his face into stone. "I'll come," he said. "I'll bring what I can. I'll do it quietly."
Reinhardt rose; the prince's shoulders bunched like a man about to shoulder an army. In the doorway he paused. He looked back over his shoulder with something close to a promise. "Bring blood packs. Bring tinctures. Bring anything that will save them."
Jaesper swallowed and bowed again, the humility of a man who had just been given the choice to save lives by siding with a prince rather than a king. As Reinhardt left the tower, Jaesper crossed himself in a private motion, then hurried to gather what he could — the decision already setting the threads of rebellion in motion.
Outside, the corridor's noise did not touch Reinhardt. He walked with the cool, cruel deliberation of a man whose plan had finally found the pieces it needed. He would tear the court down if he had to. He would bend the palace to his will. He would do whatever it took to bring Kael back from the edge.
And somewhere in the dust of the Tower, the first thin seeds of his rebellion sank into the ground.
-----------------------------------------
The palace kitchens boiled with noise. Copper pots hissed on the stoves; bread steamed in baskets; knives chopped through onions in a rhythm like rain. Servants hurried back and forth with trays and ladles, their chatter low and quick.
Lucy sat alone at the end of a long bench, a crust of bread trembling in her fingers. She chewed slowly, each bite like ash. In less than an hour she would be required to report to Prince Stanford's wing again. Her stomach turned.
She stared at the crust until her eyes blurred. If only the head maid would listen to me, she thought. If only she would transfer me to Prince Reinhardt's service. That was why I came to the palace. That was the only reason.
Her hands clenched in her lap. She had spent half the night tending to Prince Reinhardt's fever — wiping his brow, keeping him from collapsing completely. He had looked so pale, so close to breaking. She had not expected him to thank her, but when he had, her heart had ached.
She lowered her gaze. If Prince Stanford discovered where she had been, he would crush her. She had seen what happened to others who crossed him.
Lucy's mind drifted back further, to the ashes of her childhood. Her family had been one of the villages burned by the Demon Army. They had been trapped in a church as flames ate the rafters. It was the Hero's banner that had appeared at dawn. It had been Prince Reinhardt, sword wet with blood, who had torn the door from its hinges and carried the children out. He had been her savior long before he had even known her name.
When she learned that the hero who saved her was a prince, she had vowed to serve him. She had taken a position in the palace, polishing brass and cleaning halls, hoping for a chance to work directly under him.
But it had been Stanford who had chosen her.
At first she thought it might still be a step toward her goal — a way to prove herself. All of the prince's maids were chosen for their skill and beauty. It was a coveted post, whispered about in the servant halls. She had been proud the day her name was called.
Then the nights began.
Prince Stanford would summon one maid at a time, always after the corridors had gone silent. When the women returned at dawn their faces were pale, their hands shaking, their lips pressed into silence. No one ever spoke about what happened behind his door.
Lucy remembered the night her turn came. A messenger had arrived with a folded slip of paper: His Highness desired her presence. She was to come immediately — and she was not to wear underclothes.
She had stared at the words until they blurred. She had asked the messenger if there had been a mistake. The messenger only lowered his eyes and muttered, "You will obey."
Her legs had gone numb as she walked the dark hall to Stanford's chambers. She had believed — wanted to believe — that he needed the room cleaned, or some special errand. Anything but what the note implied.
She could still see the look in Stanford's eyes when she entered. Not the look of a prince. Not even the look of a man. A predator. He smiled as he locked the door.
When she tried to retreat he grabbed her wrist. His voice had been soft, almost amused. "Defy me, and your family dies. The same family the Hero saved? I can have them hunted down before dawn."
He had taken her dignity piece by piece that night. She had left his chamber broken, unable to meet anyone's eyes. Since then, he had summoned her again and again under the name of "private duty." She had learned to swallow her voice and move like a shadow.
Now, as she sat in the kitchen, the memory of last night with Reinhardt returned. How his hand had been burning with fever, how his eyes had flickered when he thanked her. Tears pricked her eyes. For a heartbeat she had felt hope, a small, desperate hope that he might see her — that he might take her from the nightmare she had been living.
She wiped at her cheeks quickly before any other servant could notice. Her bread sat untouched. She could hear Stanford's voice already, summoning her.
"Lucy," a cook called softly, placing a small jug of water beside her. "You're pale. Eat something. You've been looking tired these days."
"I'm fine," she whispered. Her voice cracked like old paper.
The cook squeezed her shoulder once and moved away.
Lucy stared at the bread again. Please notice me, she prayed silently. Please, Prince Reinhardt. Don't let me go back there tonight.
Outside the kitchen windows, the sun was rising pale and cold over the palace roofs. The bells began to ring for the morning shift. Somewhere above, Stanford was already awake, waiting for his next "maid."
And somewhere else in the palace, Reinhardt was planning his own rebellion, unaware that one of the people he had once saved was drowning just a few halls away.