“Heave-ho!”

  “Heave-hey!”

  The tug and pull of heavy rope echoed through the courtyard, fibres creaking, boots scraping on packed dirt as nearly a hundred men from all the different companies leaned back and dragged with everything they had. All except Stathis’s own company, of course.

  “Heave-ho!” Christos bellowed from the head of their rope, face flushed, shoulders bulging, looking for all the world like he was giving his all in the contest of strength. In truth he was losing, carefully, bleeding force from every pull so it wouldn’t draw eyes. Anyone watching too closely might have noticed the tiny gaps in the act – the lack of true strain at the corners of his eyes, the way his abdomen never quite locked into place before heaving – but Stathis wasn’t overly worried. They would have to be both looking straight at Christos and know him well to even spot the difference.

  Most people didn’t catalogue such things. That still struck Stathis as odd after all these years. One would think men would claw for any edge they could get, yet they cut corners instead, trusting luck or bluster over attention. Stathis had learned that if you watched long enough, everyone eventually revealed themselves in small habits – a twitch before they lied, a way they held a cup when they were ashamed, the words they chose when nervous. It was hard to rise above your station, and hard work often went unrewarded. But not under the Captain. With him, those small, quiet efforts mattered. And that meant everything.

  “He’s making it too obvious,” the Captain muttered under his breath. That, too, was a tell Stathis had filed away. When the Captain grew truly nervous he became obsessive, circling the overlooked details in plans and people, picking them apart until he started seeing threats everywhere.

  Stathis stayed silent, as was his way, but the observation slid into its proper place in his mental ledger.

  “What’s the next competition?” the Captain asked. He’d left most of the supervision and preparation for the end-of-season games in Stathis’s hands, and he trusted him to have answers ready. Stathis had built what little worth he possessed in Suyren off of that reputation, so he made a habit of keeping such details close to the front of his mind. People rarely appreciated how much work it took to be reliably informed. The Captain did, though.

  “The water carry,” Stathis said. “They go in pairs, and it can’t be the same men as in the tug of rope.”

  “We’re all set to lose it?” the Captain asked.

  “Positively,” Stathis replied, biting back a smile at the absurdity of losing on purpose. It was not something he’d ever aspired to. He had rarely won anything outright in his life, but he had always tried to make the best of whatever hand he’d been dealt. To now reach for failure deliberately felt almost like blasphemy.

  “Good.” The Captain turned to face him fully, and Stathis could tell by the tight set of his jaw that the moment had come. “I trust you to handle the rest of the competitions, Stathis.” His gaze slid toward the western gate where they meant to make their escape. “Start sorting men toward the west to set up camp. Slowly. The most trustworthy men first. Then, during the last competition, march the others there in good order.”

  They had gone over the plan in detail already, but Stathis understood this, too, as another shape of the Captain’s nerves – the need to repeat and go over every part of the scheme until it felt solid. Even the people whose armour seemed the strongest had weak seams if you looked closely enough. And Stathis always did.

  “Yes, sir,” was all he said, his true thoughts folded neatly behind his eyes.

  The Captain clasped his forearm, grip firm. “And whatever happens,” he said, expression hardening to something carved and absolute, “make it out and save yourself.”

  The hairs along Stathis’s neck rose. For the Captain to say that aloud… Even Stathis wasn’t privy to exactly how he meant to get word on the coming rebellion’s plans, but now it was clear he was going to reach for something bold and dangerous, the kind of play that could turn on him in an instant.

  “Yes, sir,” Stathis lied smoothly, the words sliding out with a straight face. The Captain nodded, some of the tension leaving his shoulders. That was the other advantage of showing little and saying less – it made it harder for people to read you. In this case, it let Stathis fool even the Captain into thinking he would abandon him if it meant saving his own skin.

  The Captain was going to do great things. This, Stathis knew. The certainty sat in him like something carved into stone. The Captain wasn’t just destined for the usual kind of greatness Stathis had seen before, the sort that put one man on a pedestal while everyone else stayed in the mud. He’d met men like that in Suyren – officers and nobles who climbed by stepping on the backs of others. The Captain was different. His greatness reached down, saw the downtrodden and the misevaluated, and dragged them up with him.

  Stathis had been a respected veteran in Suyren, but respect and advancement were not the same thing. His prospects of rising beyond his station had always been slim. He didn’t have the brutal fighting skills that drew eyes on the practice field, nor the genealogical pedigree that opened doors before a man even knocked. Men like him became reliable sergeants at best, meant to drill others and then be quietly replaced.

  But the Captain had seen worth buried beneath the rubble of that fate. In a few short months he’d raised Stathis to a position where he could order other sergeants about, where his word carried weight beyond his own squad. He had dragged Stathis out of the faceless mass of veterans and set him where people had to look at him, listen to him.

  He would not abandon the man who had done that for him.

  The Captain turned away and strode toward the castle proper, but he did not leave without one final order tossed over his shoulder. “Oh, and see if you can make Kyriakos win.” He added a quick grin – always more layers and counter layers to his schemes – and then he was gone into the archway, swallowed by stone and whatever bold madness he was about to attempt.

  Stathis let out a slow breath and forced his attention back to the competition. The list of tasks in his head kept growing longer, the risks higher. It all loomed like a single, impossible boulder. But big problems could only be tackled one at a time. So Stathis did what he always did: he focused on the next step right in front of him.

  For now, that meant losing a competition and skewing the results without anyone being the wiser.

  Cassandra waited by the high-backed chair where she usually wrote her poems, fingers resting on the armrest instead of a quill. The chair faced the hearth in the Nomikos common room. She had chosen to receive Theodorus here because the fire kept this place warm in a way her own room never managed. He had insisted on picking her up at her door for today’s outing, a ‘special date’ he’d arranged for her.

  The logs crackled, but even with the fire today felt especially cold for March. It should have been a season of blossoming, of beauty. And like the season, she had once pictured her love with the Captain blossoming into full bloom. Now she found herself simply seeking warmth and staring at the same two verses she hadn’t been able to keep from her mind.

  A series of knocks rang out from the old wooden door.

  “Yes?” Cassandra called.

  “Captain Theodorus has arrived, my lady,” one of the guards at the entrance announced.

  “Ah. One moment, please.” Cassandra smoothed her skirt then drew herself up.

  Her heart still betrayed her when she stepped out and saw him waiting. The Captain stood by the doorway with a small, easy smile and one hand tucked behind his back. He bowed deeply, and Cassandra, despite herself, found her hand extending in answer. The Captain took it and kissed it slowly.

  “Good morning, my lady.” His eyes searched hers, warm and intent, and Cassandra had to look away quicker than usual. She needed to master herself, not fall for his tricks. She needed a clear head if she was ever to decide how sincere the Captain truly was.

  “Good morning, Captain,” she said, forcing her face into the least affected expression she could manage. “What do you have planned for us today?” Her tone came out cool, and she saw the small furrow appear between his brows. It pained her more than she would admit.

  “A walk around the castle, just like on our first date.” The Captain recovered quickly, his roguish smile reasserting itself as he straightened. Normally, that look would have set her stomach fluttering, but today she found she could sidestep its pull, at least a little. “Does that seem acceptable to my lady? I thought she might enjoy remembering the beginning of our courting.”

  “It is acceptable,” Cassandra replied, letting the words fall with a hint of disinterest. This, she told herself, would be a good test – to see what he truly had in store in this choreographed date.

  They took the stairs up to castle wall’s parapet in a slow, unhurried climb, Theodorus matching his pace to hers. Below, between the crenelations, a rolling roar of voices, bursts of laughter, and grunts of exertion sounded out from the courtyard. The end-of-season competition was in full swing. Lines of militiamen grappled in the tug of rope, others raced across marked lanes, more waited near racks of spears and practice swords.

  Cassandra rested her hands on the parapet and watched a pair of men trying to wrestle each other out of a chalked circle. The crowd bellowed its approval when one finally toppled with an undignified thud.

  “Shouldn’t you be down there?” she asked, eyes still on the melee. “Leading your men?”

  Beside her, Theodorus leaned on the stone as if he had no cares at all. “I had an appointment with my lady,” he said lightly. “And I could hardly fail to keep it, could I?”

  She turned her head just enough to glance at him. “You scheduled this ‘special’ outing for the very day of the competition.” Her voice stayed mild, but suspicion coloured the edges. “Surely we could have done this some other time.”

  For a moment he didn’t answer. His gaze had drifted past the crowded yard, to the pale line of mountains beyond Suyren’s walls, their tops still dusted with old snow. The wind plucked at his dark curls.

  “In truth,” he said at last, “I don’t especially want to win the competition.”

  Cassandra blinked and turned fully toward him. “Truly? You don’t care for it?”

  He huffed a quiet breath, almost a laugh. “True worth isn’t decided by a few games at the end of the season. Not mine. Not my company’s. The scoreboard today will be forgotten in a fortnight. What matters is the mark we leave on the city and its people.”

  He pushed off the stone and gestured for her to walk with him along the wall, as the castle town spread beneath them.

  “When I first came to Suyren,” Theodorus began, “the southern quarter was the worst of the slums.”

  Cassandra’s eyes went to the low sprawl of buildings below – the area the townsfolk had long called the Dung Quarter. Once it had been a tangle of crooked shacks and broken roofs, lanes clogged with refuse, smoke from cheap fuel staining the air. Now, even from up here, she could see a small island of order carved into the filth. Streets swept clean with proper packed earth lanes. Houses daubed and thatched, refuse absent from the street.

  “I set my company there on purpose,” he said. “Do you know why?”

  “To…revitalise the quarter?” Cassandra tried. “Impose order on the people? Show them your company’s strength and your worth?”

  “Close,” Theodorus said softly, eyes fixed on the little district. “But not quite.”

  There was a look on his face she didn’t often see – not his usual roguish amusement, nor the sharp, calculating glint she’d caught when he thought she wasn’t watching. Something more distant, almost wistful.

  “It was to give them hope,” he said. “Hope that even in the foulest corner of the city, things can change. That they aren’t doomed to live and die in filth just because they were born there.” He turned to face her fully now. “You see, if they can believe that, then everything else becomes possible. Hope is everything, Cassandra. Without it, people just endure. With it…” He spread his hands, as if the whole city lay between them. “They start to build.”

  Her breath caught. She hadn’t expected that answer. His voice had dropped, the words for her alone, and suddenly the distant noise of the competition felt very far away.

  “I’m not particularly concerned with who drags a rope over a line today,” Theodorus went on, turning back to the view. “That is not how I measure the worth of my company, and it is not how anyone should. Besides,” he added, quieter, “there are some people who need to win more than I do.”

  “Who?” Cassandra asked before she could stop herself.

  He glanced at her, a familiar glint of mischief returning. “Well, that would be telling, my lady. And I am not in the habit of sharing other men’s secrets.” He smiled that infuriating, easy smile.

  Cassandra felt heat rise to her cheeks and looked away quickly. “You are quite good at keeping secrets,” she managed, keeping her tone cool, clinging to the distance she had been trying to build. And that she felt slipping away.

  “Occasionally,” he said. “When they are important.”

  They descended from the wall walk by another stair, this one opening into a quieter part of the castle grounds. As they walked, Cassandra’s thoughts tangled. In some ways, it would have been easier if he had grown angry at her sudden reserve, or wounded, or tried to press her past it. Then she could have wrapped herself in indignation and pushed him away. But the Captain had done none of that. He had simply respected the space she held between them and moved on with their day as if nothing at all had changed. As if telling her he was waiting for her to come back.

  That gentleness made it far harder to keep to her plan. But she needn’t have worried, because that plan entirely collapsed when they turned a final corner and the garden opened before them.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  Cassandra stopped dead.

  The castle’s garden had always been her special place, a comely beauty she’d treasured, but now it was entirely transformed. Everywhere she looked, it was overflowing with greenery. Vines ran along the inner walls, studded with masses of flowerbuds colored magenta and orange, blooming into splashes of colour like banners. The old cypresses and dark firs gave a deeper backdrop, while unfamiliar new shrubs with feathery pink plumes and tiny leaves added an almost coastal feel to the air.

  Closer to the paths, she saw careful clumps of tulips with petals the colour of spilled wine and burning embers, white narcissus with sunny centres, and low mounds of dark flowers she didn’t recognise at all. And through it all their scents mingled – sweetness, citrus, and something sharp and peppery – until the air itself seemed thicker.

  “What is this?” Cassandra whispered. “Captain, what…?”

  “This,” Theodorus said, watching her reaction more than the flowers, “is a present from me to you.”

  “A…present,” she repeated faintly. “All of this?” She couldn’t imagine the expense, and with the Captain’s notoriously strained finances…

  She moved forward almost without realising it, fingertips hovering over a branch heavy with unfamiliar blossoms. A particular flower caught her eye. A tulip whose petals were a deep copper-orange, streaked with darker veins like tongues of flame. She leaned in and breathed it in.

  “Many of these weren’t here before winter,” she said slowly, glancing around, “and the garden was never so full as this.”

  Theodorus came to stand beside her. “I could have given you a bouquet,” he said. “Something you could keep in your chamber for a week or two before it withered. But I would rather plant them in good soil, where you can see them grow, season after season. Where other people can walk among them and be cheered as well. It seemed…more fitting.”

  Cassandra swallowed. The gesture, the thought behind it, the way the gift reached beyond her alone – it struck her harder than any romantic phrase might have.

  “This is lovelier than any set of cut flowers,” she said softly. “It is wonderful.”

  Theodorus reached past her and, with a care that made her chest ache, plucked a single bloom – that same copper-orange tulip, its petals catching the light like hammered metal. He turned it in his fingers once, then offered it to her.

  “You are wonderful, my lady,” he said. There was no roguishness in his tone now, only a quiet sincerity that made it hard to breathe. “And I am thinking of asking Lord Adanis for your hand.”

  The world narrowed to the space between them. The distant sounds of the castle – the faint echo of cheering from the courtyard, the murmur of guards at the gate, even the birds in the branches – all faded.

  Cassandra’s breath caught in her throat. For a heartbeat she merely stared at him – at the soft black curls ruffled by the breeze, the silver-grey eyes watching her with an openness she was not used to seeing there. All of her doubts seemed to burn away under the heat of that look.

  Her heart soared, wild and weightless.

  “Yes,” she whispered. “Yes…yes.” It felt like the only word she knew.

  He stepped closer and they embraced, Cassandra burying her face briefly against his shoulder, breathing in leather and iron, and everything about his smell. For a moment she simply existed there, held and holding, between the flowerbeds in bloom.

  March didn’t seem as cold as it once did.

  The urge to tilt her face up and close the last distance between them flared bright and fierce. She wanted to kiss him more than she’d ever wanted anything, but it would be improper to do such a thing here, alone among the trees, before any formal agreement had been made, so she mastered herself. She held him tightly instead, the tulip crushed lightly between their joined hands, letting the riot of colour around them be enough.

  “There is something else I wanted to show you,” the Captain said, a soft smile tugging at his mouth.

  “You had yet even more prepared, Captain?” Cassandra could not keep the surprise from her voice.

  “I do like surprising my lady.” He added a small wink, and Cassandra let herself be led through the paths of the garden until they ended beneath the old oak she cherished. At its roots someone had laid out a woollen blanket with food and drink set upon it. From here, the mountains stood clear beyond the town’s roofs.

  Strips of fried dough glazed in syrup, figs stuffed with nuts, and a pile of sugared almonds were all splayed out on the blanket, waiting to be picked. The centrepiece was a finely worked jug of wine, dark clay painted with curling patterns and capped with polished wood. Even before it was opened, she could smell cloves and cinnamon on the air.

  “A picnic?” Cassandra asked as Theodorus guided her to sit on the blanket’s edge.

  “You did enjoy it last time,” he said. “I wanted to repeat the experience.” He smiled and poured a cup of wine for her and another for himself, then lifted his own as if in a toast.

  “To our future,” he said. “Together.”

  Cassandra raised her cup and took a deep gulp to match his. The wine hit her tongue harshly. It was thick, heavy with spice, stinging at the back of her throat. She almost choked it back out.

  “Ay, Captain, this is quite a strong concoction,” she managed, coughing a little.

  “It is from a vintage my father set aside for…important occasions,” Theodorus confessed. Cassandra suddenly felt guilty for nearly spitting it out. Before she could apologise, he went on, “Did you know it is considered ill luck if the couple doesn’t drink the full cup from their first toast together?”

  “Well, we can’t have that,” Cassandra declared, laughter spilling out of her despite herself.

  They drank and talked and let the hours slip by. The sun edged across the sky and the air cooled. From where she sat, cup in hand, she could not imagine a more beautiful view.

  She raised her cup again in a mock toast, more drunk on the moment than on any wine. “To…everything,” she murmured, and drank.

  It was only after a while that she noticed the change in him. The Captain’s laughter came less easily. His smiles hovered at the edges of his mouth but did not quite reach his eyes. A faint nostalgia crept into his stories, then a low melancholy. His pauses between words stretched longer.

  Meanwhile, Cassandra’s own speech grew more slurred, and her head felt light. The ground seemed to tilt when she turned too quickly.

  “You look so down, Captain,” she announced, pointing at him with the stem of her cup. “You must cheer up!”

  “I will, for you, my lady,” he said, the corners of his mouth twitching. Then the smile faded. “But I must get back to the competition. Perhaps I can escort you back to your room.” He rose and offered his arm.

  “I can do it by myself, thank you, Captain,” Cassandra insisted, a petulant note slipping into her voice that was unusual for her. Perhaps she was a bit tipsy. She had never been particularly good at holding her drink.

  She allowed Theodorus to help her up, and the movement sent a rush of dizziness through her. She swayed and caught at his sleeve.

  “Careful there, my lady. Perhaps the wine was a bit too much. I apologize,” he said quietly.

  “Nonsense, my love,” Cassandra replied before her thoughts could catch up with her tongue. “It was a delightful…wrinkle in this date.” The word came out oddly, and when she realised exactly what she had called him, heat flooded her face. But thankfully the Captain didn't press her on that particular blunder.

  It was with no small shame that Cassandra had to lean heavily on him as they made their way back, not to her chamber as that would have been far too intimate, but to the Nomikos common room instead. Each step made the world tilt a fraction, and she focused on the familiar weight of his arm to steady herself.

  They reached the double set of doors. Theodorus straightened and greeted the guards on duty.

  “Morning, sergeants,” he said. “I’ve come to drop off the lady.”

  “What happened to her?” one of the men grumbled, eyeing Cassandra with a suspicious frown.

  “She’s had too much to drink, I’m afraid,” Theodorus replied. “Perhaps I can escort her inside?” He suggested, keeping his tone polite.

  “Only Nomikos family members are allowed inside,” the other guard grumbled. Cassandra frowned. They were addressing the Captain like some common thug loitering at the doors.

  “The Captain is to be my future husbaaand,” Cassandra announced, the word stretching as her balance tipped. She caught herself on Theodorus’s arm. “Let us through.”

  She knew, dimly, that she ought not to have been so blunt. This was the sort of declaration that should not be slurred in a doorway with her cheeks flushed from wine. But the deed was done, and some reckless part of her thrilled at having it all laid bare for others to see.

  The guards exchanged a look, then finally stood aside, though one of them planted his boot to keep the door from closing fully.

  “Perhaps some privacy?” Theodorus asked mildly.

  “You are just entering to let the lady rest,” the first guard said, jaw tight.

  “Stop being so uptiiiight,” Cassandra admonished, wagging a finger in his vague direction. “Close the doors and let us have some time alone. I am quite in control of myself.”

  The statement lost some of its force when she swayed on her feet. The guards did not look convinced, but as she drew breath for another imperious command, they finally relented and let the doors shut, the latch clicking softly into place.

  The Captain guided her across the room, arm steady under her hand. The Nomikos common room was quiet at this hour with the great hearth banked low. He eased her into her favourite chair by the fire, and Cassandra all but plopped down.

  “I’m sorry, Captain,” she murmured, staring at the pattern on the rug as it blurred at the edges. “I’m not usually like this. Even when I drink.” Her limbs felt heavy, impossibly heavy, as if someone had piled stones atop her. Her eyelids slammed shut of their own accord, and she felt herself slipping, sinking.

  “I’m the one who’s sorry, Cassandra,” the Captain said. His voice sounded far away, weighted with something she could not name.

  “Why?” she whispered. Her tongue felt thick, her lips slow to obey. At the back of her mind, a thin shard of panic pushed through the wine-haze. This didn’t feel normal. She had been drunk before. This was different.

  “Because I must become a villain in this story,” he whispered, close enough that she could feel the breath of it near her hair. “And you its victim.” Through the fog in her mind, she caught the tremor in his words.

  She tried to force her eyes open, to fix his face, to read the truth there. Her lashes fluttered. For a heartbeat the room swam into focus, and she saw Theodorus bending over her, jaw clenched, eyes dark with something like anguish. Something is wrong, she thought, sluggish and horrified. What did he do to me?

  “I’m sorry,” she heard him say again, softer.

  Cassandra stirred, fighting to rouse herself, but when she tried to push up, his hands were already there, holding her gently by the shoulders, pressing her back into the cushions. Not rough. Not cruel. But firm.

  “It will be over soon,” he murmured. “Do not fight it.”

  “The wine…what did you…” The words tangled and fell apart. The room grew dim around the edges. Her own limbs no longer seemed entirely her own.

  “A great storm is coming, and I must save us all.” the Captain repeated, as if trying to persuade himself as much as her.

  Cassandra trembled in disbelief, or would have, if her body still obeyed her. The Captain had betrayed her. That thought rang clear, sharp as glass, cutting through the fog.

  Her last awareness before the darkness closed in was not of the room, nor the chair, nor even his face, but of the fine, almost inaudible sound in her chest. The faint cracking of her heart as it began to break.

  Theodorus stood very still for a long breath, head bowed, Cassandra’s slack hand held between both of his. Her fingers were warm, but there was no strength in them now, only the soft weight of trust he had just used against her. His mouth twisted in a grimace.

  He had been cultivating this closeness from the moment he realised that the Nomikos common room connected directly to Lord Adanis’s private office. He had known, then, that if he was to succeed in his mission in Suyren, he would eventually need access to whatever passed between Adanis and the other nobles – letters, sealed orders, reports.

  He had hoped, foolishly, that some other path might present itself. That he would not have to use Cassandra. But as the noose tightened around the Principality and time slipped away, he saw no other way to gain the minutes of unobserved access he needed.

  “I am sorry,” he said again, softly, to the sleeping girl. Then he gently laid her hand on the armrest and stepped away.

  The hearth in the common room still burned low. He crossed to it, knelt, and swiftly rearranged the logs, coaxing them into a brighter flame. Sparks climbed up the chimney. On a nearby side table he found a small copper basin, the sort used for washing hands. He filled it with water from a jug and set it over the fresh blaze, angling it so the guards outside would hear the crackle of the fire rather than any small noises from within.

  While the water began to heat, he moved to the inner door – the one he knew would lead to the Lord’s office. Its weight was obvious even before he touched it, but he eased the latch up and pulled, timing the slow swing of the door to coincide with a deliberately louder thread of speech.

  “We’ll have you resting in no time, Cassandra,” he said in a conversational tone, as if she were still awake. “You’ve had quite a day.”

  To the guards beyond, it would sound like nothing more than a man soothing his lady. As the door opened, he kept talking, a steady flow of gentle nonsense, then gradually let his voice drop, sentence by sentence, until anyone listening would assume that the pair within had simply lowered their conversation to a private murmur.

  He slipped into the study and eased the door shut behind him.

  Lord Adanis’s office greeted him with its familiar extravagance of gaudy paintings and baubles. And, dominating one wall, the massive tapestry of the grand hunt presented at the New Year’s feast.

  Theodorus didn't dwell on it. He was running low on time.

  Cassandra would remain senseless for a few hours, but not forever. The guards outside would grow suspicious eventually if they heard nothing at all. He needed to work quickly.

  The hardwood desk dominated the centre of the room and smack dab in the middle lay the missive, crimson goblet pressed into the unbroken wax. The Lord had not read it yet.

  Theodorus picked it up, weighing it briefly in his hand, then carried it back toward the fire. The basin above the flames now trembled with small bubbles, the water near boiling. He held the sealed edge of the letter over the rising steam, careful not to let the parchment itself grow damp while the warm vapour softened the wax.

  He retrieved a thin stilleto, then, when the seal had grown just pliable enough, he set the point of the blade against the narrow gap and slowly, very slowly, worked it beneath the softened wax.

  His hands threatened to shake, but he forced his fingers steady, jaw tight, and with a careful twist of the wrist slid the thin steel cleanly along the fold, lifting the seal whole.

  The whole procedure was something he’d drilled again and again with the forgery kit the Doux had sent him. The method itself – written in a separate, sealed instruction sheet – had been entirely unknown to Theodorus before then.

  A message was valuable, but it became priceless if the enemy never realised you had seen it. That was a truth the Doux understood as well as Theodorus. So he’d gifted him the tools to read the letter with no one the wiser.

  Now, whatever lay in this envelope was the culmination of every risk, every sleepless night, every careful step he’d taken since being appointed to Suyren.

  The softened seal lifted with barely a whisper. Theodorus exhaled slowly through his nose and unfolded the parchment within. Lines of neat, confident handwriting stared back at him. As his eyes moved over the words, he felt his chest grow tight, and his breath hitched.

  You have done well in gathering your troops and coin, my Lion. My vassals have also finished assembling the masses and the money.

  Our army stands ready to strike, and the Principe is finishing preparations to leave the capital behind. We will meet south-east of Mangup, where we will feign an approach upon the city. That is where the Crown will expect us to strike first, but Mangup is too well fortified for a frontal assault. We must first neutralise the Papadopoulos Family.

  We strike at Kalamita. I will explain the details in person when we finally meet again.

  Arrangements have been made in the capital. The Church and nobles will stay their hands when we usher in the new regime – headed by both of us, of course.

  Until we meet again,

  P.M.

  Theodorus stared at the closing initials for a heartbeat.

  This was more than he had dared hope for. Direct confirmation of their next blow.

  The decision not to hurl themselves straight at the capital was the most startling piece, and yet, in a twisted way, it made perfect sense. Mangup was a behemoth of a fortress in this day and age, carved into rock and bristling with walls. For those without cannons, it was near impregnable, and massive in scale.

  To assault Mangup would not really stop any conscription efforts from the Crown, since the Crown controlled little rural territory directly. Mangup’s population would account for most able-bodied men, men that could be raised just as easily with the gates closed as open. The southern countryside, however, held just as many ready to be called up, and those could be strangled far more efficiently by occupying it and sieging down the Principality's southern city.

  Mangup itself also needed constant streams of food to function. Without the countryside food from either the northern, eastern or southern territories, it would collapse all on its own. All without assaulting the fortress.

  Carefully, Theodorus folded the letter back along its original creases, aware that nearly a quarter of an hour had slipped by. He returned the parchment to its envelope, aligning every edge with care.

  He lit a candle and held the underside of the loosened wax near the flame, turning it until it grew supple but not molten. Then, with slow, deliberate pressure, he pressed the seal back into place, fitting it into the faint impression it had left behind. When he drew his thumb away, the crest sat there as before, a casual glance unable to tell it had ever been disturbed.

  The deed done, he wiped any stray moisture from the envelope, returned it to its exact place on the desk, and went back into the common room.

  Cassandra still slept in the chair by the hearth, head tilted, copper hair spilling over the cushion. For a moment he stood there, jaw tight, then forced himself to turn away and move to the main doors.

  When he opened them, the guards straightened. One of them peered past him into the room. “And the lady?” he asked.

  “She fell asleep,” Theodorus said easily. “The day’s excitement tired her out more than she expected. I thought it best not to wake her.”

  The answer seemed to satisfy them. Theodorus gave them a brief smile, then walked away at an unhurried pace until the turn of the hall took him from their sight. Only then did his expression slip.

  Philemon was crafty. That much was now beyond doubt. He knew he did not have the strength for a single decisive strike, and likely suspected that the Doux already had his eye on him and his plans. So he would not gamble everything on one bold assault. He would sidestep the quick victory and reach instead for advantage in a long game.

  The situation was priming itself for a long, drawn-out, bloody civil conflict.

  But now he held in his hands the means to stop it. Only if he could get this knowledge out of Suyren and into the Doux’s keeping without being cut down along the way.

  Read 20 Chapters ahead and get many more perks over on Patreon