Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king

They say a man will never truly know a woman, but a woman will know the man whole.

Clearly, whoever coined that phrase had never crossed paths with Alpheo. The King of Yarzat possessed eyes that felt entirely unnatural, as if they were capable of peering directly through your flesh and stripping your soul bare. In a single, unblinking look, those hazel eyes could show you exactly how weak you were, exactly how little you meant , but also exactly how strong you could be.

Perhaps on that distant, sun-baked day on the run-down streets of Yarzat, the King had saw more of the latter than the others two. But right now, in the suffocating quiet of the solar, Alpheo only saw how meek his newly minted legate truly was.

A weak boy in love.

He knew. By all five of the gods, the King knew.

Ratto opened his mouth to speak. He desperately scrambled to find something important to say, something deeply meaningful. An apology, perhaps? Was that what the moment demanded? Did he genuinely need to apologize for his own heart?

But the words dissolved before they could reach his tongue, completely forgotten under the sheer weight of the King’s gaze. In an instant, the fierce young veteran who had stood his ground upon the blood-drenched battlefields of the South for six grueling years fluttered away into the shadows. In his place sat the terrified, lowborn boy of old. To his profound shame, Ratto broke under the pressure, dragging his eyes away from the King’s face to stare helplessly at the grain of the floorboards.

”Do you not have a single thing to say to me?” Alpheo asked at last, his voice cutting through the thick, stagnant silence once it became entirely clear the young legate would not dare to bridge the gap himself.

Ratto shuddered, the cold air of the room suddenly rushing back into his lungs. The words burst from his mouth before his thick skull could stop them. ”I am sorry,” he muttered, his tone as fearful and hollow as that of a small child caught with his hand buried deep in the sugar jar.

Yet, surprising the King, the room, and most of all himself, a sudden spark of that battlefield iron flared in Ratto’s ribs. He forced his chin up. He rose to his feet, standing at his full height that was but only a small hair smaller than that of the king.

”But I love her.”

Alpheo’s eyebrows shot up at the raw defiance of it, a genuine flicker of surprise crossing his scarred features. ”Love? Now, isn’t that an exceptionally heavy word to toss around in a palace?”

”Not for me, Your Majesty. I truly do,” Ratto insisted, his voice growing steady, anchored by the absolute truth of his feelings. ”And she loves me in return...”

”Still...” Alpheo murmured, leaning back into his furs and swirling the water in his silver cup. ”My wife’s own sister? A high-born princess of the realm? You are a lowborn legate, Ratto.”

As the King spoke, the terrifying ice in his eyes began to soften, thawing into a profound, weary fondness. He looked at Ratto with the exact same quiet, protective affection a man might hold for his own flesh-and-blood son.

Did the King truly see a son in him? It was a mirror of his own soul if that was true, for Ratto had long regarded Alpheo as the only true father he had ever known. So many dangerous, fragile things were left entirely unsaid between them that the air practically vibrated with the weight of a precipice.

Ratto swallowed hard. ”How long have you...?”

He could’t finish so the king did it for him

”Known?” Alpheo interrupted, letting out a soft, tired sigh as he brought a gold-ringed hand up to pinch the bridge of his nose. ”Did you truly believe there was a single, solitary moment where I did not know, lad? Just because you two whisper and hide in the palace gardens at the dead of night, fondly believing yourselves entirely alone in the dark, does not mean a hundred different eyes aren’t watching from the battlements.”

Ratto had the decency to feel a furious, burning blush creeping up from his collar, his ears turning a bright crimson.

”I was harboring a foolish hope that it was nothing more than a fleeting attraction,” Alpheo confessed, his voice dropping into a somber, protective register. ”Whether it was yours or hers, I prayed the winter frost would kill it.”

Ratto shifted his weight uncomfortably, a cold dread pooling in his stomach. ”Does the Princes—I mean... does the Queen know as well, Sire?”

”No. And she won’t. Absolutely nothing good would come from her discovering this little romance,” Alpheo said sharply. ”She is already actively hoping a proper, traditional match can be arranged for her sister.”

The King’s eyes narrowed as his mind instantly shifted back into the cold, calculated realm of politics. In truth, Alpheo had spent many efforts quietly doing everything within his royal power to shoot down any mention of a wedding. The Princess was a far too volatile, far too dangerous chess piece to leave loose on the board.

Give her hand to a powerful, traditional Yarzat lord, and their children’s full-fledged, ancient blue blood would perhaps possess a vastly superior, more legitimate claim to the throne than Alpheo’s own son could ever hope to boast. Give her to a foreign prince, and the situation grew infinitely worse at that, granting an external enemy a permanent, legal invitation to march across the borders and meddle in the affairs of his newly fledged kingdom.

Alpheo let the silence stretch, his fingers trailing over the smooth silver of his cup as his mind turned the problem over.

”You see the trap we’re standing in, don’t you?” Alpheo asked, his voice barely louder than the crackle of the hearth. ”To the world, you are a lowborn favorite. A boy I plucked from the mud and handed an iron staff. If I give her to you, the old houses will scream sacrilege. Already they barely stomached me from my legions. Many were holding hope of marrying into the royal family.”

Ratto’s jaw set, that stubborn battlefield iron anchoring him even as his heart hammered violently against his ribs. ”Let them scream, Your Majesty. I have faced their high-born knights before, and their blood spills just as red in the dirt. Regardless of whatever color they claim it to be.”

”Aye, it does,” Alpheo said, a sudden, sharp grin cutting through his somber mood like a flash of steel. ”And you’re a brave lad for saying it. But you are also a fool if you think that is where it ends. Those old houses won’t come at you in the open with a sword, Ratto. They will strike with poison or a dagger in the dark. Go on, draw your blade, lad, show me how you intend to parry both of those?”

”You have just made me a legate,” Ratto replied. When he looked up, his eyes held the quiet, unshakable strength of a man who would not turn away from his path, no matter how long, dark, and bloody the road ahead might be.

”And soon, I will be a lord,” he continued, dropping deliberately back down onto his knees before the massive desk. ”I will win title enough to be a worthy match. I will make myself enough to ask for her hand. I love her, Your Majesty. I truly do. I only ask for your benediction now, and for a kind word when the day comes that I must go to my knees before the Queen. The word of her King would do wonders to soften her heart.”

He looked up, his gaze trembling with a fragile, burning hope as he stared at the man who had given him everything and could the same way torn it away but with one word.

Words. They held the biggest of power it seemed.

”King,” Alpheo repeated. The sheer weight of the word somehow made him smile, a tired, cynical twisting of his lips. ”And yet, I am not even permitted to deny something so simple. What a strange word to wear.”

”It is a strange world, Sire, the one we live in.” Ratto said, a tentative smile breaking through his anxiety, hope beginning to color his features.

”Aye. But strange as it may be, there are still limits.”

The happy expression on the young legate’s face soured instantly, the color draining from his cheeks as if his entire world were suddenly threatening to come crashing down around him.

”My title and my position compel me to say nay to you,” Alpheo said, his voice dropping into a flat register.The royal one. ”The crown demands I tell you that you are no match for a woman of royal blood. It spurns this match.” He let out a long, heavy sigh, the gold embroidery on his tunic shifting in the candlelight. ”But my love for you... it pushes me to give my consent. That is the fundamental curse of a king, you see. My entire life is now reduced to balancing one impossible end against the other.Gods know how long it had been”

His hazel eyes settled heavily on Ratto. The boy sat frozen, no longer knowing what to expect, fear and hope mixing together like a volatile cocktail in those wide eyes of his.

They look just like Egil’s, the King thought for a fleeting second, his breath catching. For a dangerous moment, a profound softness threatened to carve its way into his chest, melting the iron necessary to rule.

Alpheo ruthlessly scoured that feeling from his inside, hardening his posture.

”You say you love her, is that right?”

”With every fiber of my being, Sire.”

”And she loves you?”

”So she has proclaimed to and by the gods.”

The King sighed, the sound echoing softly off the stone walls. ”Then we shall put that proclamation to the test. This matter will be taken entirely out of my hands and placed squarely into yours. I cannot give you what you want, and I cannot give myself what I want. So let it be. I shall give you more than should ever be expected of me as a sovereign, and yet far less than you are hoping for.”

He breathed out, his hand resting on the pommel of the sword that carved the kingdom they were sitting in.

”A chance, Ratto. That is the absolute most you will get from me. And make no mistake... this is already the second great boon I am granting you today.

And Weaver cut my thread if I lie.

There won’t be a third.”