Chapter 2- The Kingdom He Leaves Behind
Achilles
There are battles that demand blood, strategy, sacrifice, and the kind of calm brutality most men spend their lives trying and failing to master.
And then there are conversations with Elias.
Only one of those things has ever truly tested my patience.
Morning settles over the palace in layers of muted gold and pale shadow, sunlight filtering through the tall arched windows of my office in long, slanted beams that cut across polished stone and dark wood.
The room always looks larger at this hour.
The light stretches over everything without warmth, making the carved desk at the center of the chamber gleam like something sharpened rather than crafted.
Shelves of ledgers, maps, royal decrees, and bound histories line the walls in solemn order.
Two flags hang behind the desk, my empire's black and gold beside Kyrian's older, prouder colors, both still, both silent, both a reminder that the room is less an office than the center of a machine large enough to crush nations.
The entire kingdom breathes through this space.
That is precisely why I should not be leaving it.
And yet I am.
Because Ophelia asked.
The thought should irritate me more than it does.
Instead, it remains lodged somewhere beneath my ribs like a truth I no longer have any intention of denying: I can refuse almost anyone anything.
I can deny armies, nobles, bloodlines, councils, even entire cities if I choose to.
But the moment my wife lifts those eyes to me and asks with that quiet sincerity she somehow still possesses after everything she has survived, the answer in me shifts before I can stop it.
A king should not be this easy to move.
It is a flaw.
A dangerous one.
Unfortunately, it is also permanent.
Ophelia sits atop my desk, slender and composed.
The morning light catches softly in her hair, painting threads of gold through darker tones, and falls over her face.
She is dressed simply by palace standards, though nothing on her has ever looked simple to me.
Soft fabric in pale tones drapes over her body with quiet elegance, the sleeves fitted at the wrist, the line of the bodice modest but shaped enough that I am forced to remind myself repeatedly that this is a meeting, not an opportunity to throw every person in this room out and lock the door.
Her hands are folded delicately in her lap. Her expression is gentle. Attentive. There is still kindness in her face, still that impossible softness the world has not yet managed to kill, despite all its efforts.
Across from her sits Elias.
Or more accurately...sprawls Elias.
No one else in the empire would dare sit in my office like that.
No one else would survive doing it. He occupies the chair opposite us with the offended despair of a man being asked to personally carry the entire kingdom on his back while half-dead and underappreciated.
One boot rests too far out. One arm hangs over the carved side as though his skeleton has given up supporting him out of protest. The recent injuries have not improved his sense of drama.
If anything, they have refined it. The missing eye should have made him grimmer. More solemn. More aware of mortality.
Instead, he now carries himself like a war hero inconvenienced by the continued existence of responsibility.
His dark hair is tied back carelessly, though still neater than he would prefer because Veronica likely threatened him into basic dignity before allowing him into my presence.
There are faint shadows beneath his eyes, a stiffness still lingering in one shoulder, a healing slash beneath the collar of his shirt hidden only because the fabric is high enough to cover it.
Anyone else would have been bedridden longer.
Elias, however, treats surviving horrific violence like a mildly irritating scheduling issue.
Behind him stands Veronica.
And that, more than anything else in this room, is the real danger.
She is dressed impeccably, as always. Dark fitted layers. High collar. Gloves. Not a thread out of place. Her posture is perfect.
too perfect.
shoulders back, chin level, hands loosely folded behind her.
Her expression rests in that terrifyingly neutral place she wears when she is either seconds from smiling or seconds from deciding whether disembowelment is more efficient than poison.
With Veronica, those two moods are often dangerously close together.
I have a strange suspicion she is enjoying this conversation more than she should be, which is already enough to make me distrust its direction.
"While I'm gone," I say, voice flat, final, already exhausted by the necessity of speaking at all, "you'll be handling the kingdom."
The reaction is immediate.
"No."
Elias says it so quickly that for a moment it almost sounds involuntary, like a body flinching from flame. His expression hardens into horrified disbelief. Then, realizing I am serious, he sits up halfway, points at me like I am the one behaving irrationally, and repeats, "No."
I watch him.
He watches me.
The pause between us is brief and deeply unimpressed.
"You don't get to say no," I tell him.
"I absolutely do," he says. "I just demonstrated it beautifully. Very clear diction. Strong conviction. Frankly, I thought it was one of my better refusals."
"You're taking control of the kingdom while I'm away."
Elias leans back again, dragging a hand over his face with the despair of a widower at a second funeral. "No, I'm not."
"Yes, you are."
"No." He sits up again, this time with greater outrage. "Find someone else."
"I did."
His face twists. "That does not count. You cannot look directly at me while saying that and still pretend you searched."
Veronica exhales through her nose.
Ophelia presses her lips together.
Elias gestures broadly around the room like he is presenting evidence before an incompetent jury. "Use the council. Use the advisers. Use the old woman in the east wing who terrifies servants by appearing without warning. Use literally anyone who wants to be king. I do not."
"Regent," I correct.
"I want it even less if you insist on precision."
"You've done it before."
"I suffered through it before." His glare sharpens. "This is different."
"It is exactly the same."
"It is not." He points at Ophelia now, as though appealing to a higher authority. "Tell him it's different."
Ophelia blinks once, caught between curiosity and barely concealed amusement. "How is it different?"
Elias stares at her like she has wounded him personally.
"Because," he says with immense patience, "I am older now."
"You're not that old," she says.
"That is not the point."
"You were also older the last time."
"That was a completely different age of my life. I was less tired. Less wise. More willing to make reckless mistakes."
I fold my arms. "You ran from your own coronation."
He lifts a finger. "Exactly. Youth."
"That wasn't youth. That was cowardice."
"That was instinct."
"That was embarrassing."
"That was liberating."
A small sound escapes Ophelia, half breath, half laugh. The corners of her mouth twitch before she can stop them, and Elias catches it immediately.
"There," he says, pointing at her triumphantly. "She understands me."
"She's being polite," I say.
"She likes me."
"That's because she has poor judgment in men."
Ophelia glances up at me, and there is the faintest sparkle in her eyes now. "true"
"See? She's on my side."
"You do not have a side."
"I do. It's the one where I'm not trapped in this office while you disappear to flirt somewhere picturesque."
"I'm not disappearing."
"You're leaving the kingdom."
"Temporarily."
"For leisure."
The way he says the last word makes it sound like an accusation, a scandal, and a personal betrayal all at once.
"I wasn't aware kings were allowed to enjoy themselves," he continues, voice thick with false astonishment.
"What a revolutionary idea. Perhaps next you'll smile in public, and the empire will collapse from shock. "
"I smile."
"No, you don't."
"I do."
Veronica speaks for the first time, her tone as smooth as a blade. "you bares his teeth. It is not the same thing." Ophelia lowers her head as though inspecting the embroidery at her cuff, but the movement does not hide the fact that she is smiling way too much.
"Give it to Veronica," he says abruptly, snapping back to the original problem as if that solves everything. He gestures toward his fiancée with all the solemn confidence of a man nominating a saint, not a psychopath. "She'd be excellent."
Veronica's brow lifts slightly. "I would burn at least three ministries by the second day."
Elias shrugs. "Efficiency."
"I know she would burn them," I say. "That is why she isn't regent."
"That seems narrow-minded."
"That seems accurate," Veronica murmurs.
I look at her.
She smiles very faintly. Not enough to be called warm. Just enough to warn me she is entertained. I hate when she's entertained.
Elias groans so dramatically that if he were any less injured I might have him thrown from the window on principle alone.
He drops his head back over the chair and stares at the ceiling like he is appealing to higher powers.
"This is cruelty. Targeted cruelty. I have done something to deserve this and I would like to know what it was. "
"Yes," I say. "You continue to wake up every morning."
He turns slowly and looks at me with real offense. "One would think surviving half-blind and half-dissected in service to this crown would purchase at least a little goodwill."
"One would think, yes."
"That implies there is none."
"That implication is correct."
"I hate this family."
"You are this family."
"That is the worst part."
Ophelia looks between us with the careful fascination of someone observing dangerous animals from behind reinforced glass. She has grown much more comfortable around me in recent month comfortable enough to read the spaces beneath the absurdity.
"Why are you so opposed to it?" she asks.
Elias goes still for a moment.
His performance drops a fraction.
He leans forward with a sigh and plops fully into the chair rather than lounging across it, elbows falling to his knees.
"Because I hate politics," he says at last. "I hate meetings.
I hate alliances made by men who smile too much and say too little.
I hate noblewomen who cry on purpose. I hate noblemen who pretend not to.
I hate every conversation that requires saying one thing while meaning another.
I hate the dance of it. I hate the lies.
I hate pretending to care whether one old lord from the north feels insulted because his chair was moved three inches left of where his father once sat. "
"That happened once," I say.
"It should never have happened at all."
"His father was executed."
"i never wanted the throne, that why i gladly gave it up."
"But my idiotic twin brother decided," Elias continues, "that dying before his sons came of age was somehow acceptable.
Which meant I was trapped on the throne, upholding agreements I disliked, attending ceremonies that should be classified as torture, and pretending not to want to strangle half the council. "
"You did strangle them," I point out.
"That's because they deserved it."
He says the last part with enough force that it almost sounds heartfelt. He is not entirely wrong.
"You were a twin," Ophelia says more to clarify than to question.
Elias nods once. "Unfortunately. But sadly i was older."
I glance at him. "You and my father were born an hour apart."
He straightens slightly. "Still older."
"By an hour."
"It counts."
"It doesn't."
"It does to me."
He says it with such offended certainty that even I almost admire the persistence.
Almost.
Ophelia's expression softens, now showing genuine interest. " Are twins common in this family?"
"Yes," I say before Elias can invent something theatrical. "Almost every generation."
She turns to me fully now, all quiet attention and unguarded curiosity. "Then how do you decide who rules?"
Elias lights up instantly.
Of course he does.
"Oh, this is the best part," he says.
He says it like a man about to tell children a festival legend, not explain a centuries-old succession tradition built on blood and stubbornness.
"They either agree to rule together," he says, spreading his hands slightly. "Which Rarely happened. . Usually, when one of them has better sense and less ego."
Veronica hums. "Neither trait runs particularly strong in this family."
Elias ignores her. "Or they fight."
Ophelia's gaze sharpens. "Fight?"
"One-on-one," I say.
"Until one of them surrenders," Elias adds lightly.
"Or dies," Veronica says with clinical calm.
Ophelia goes still.
Not frightened. Not quite. But the weight of it settles into her the way all difficult truths do, carefully, quietly, completely. She does not recoil from it. She simply takes it in, folds it somewhere behind her eyes, and accepts it as another piece of the world she married into.
There is something deeply unsettling about how well she does that.
Elias sees her expression and decides, because he is incapable of leaving anything dignified, to continue. "My brother won because I decided that continuing to be alive appealed to me."
"You didn't even get to fight; you tapped out the second the fight began," I correct.
"I decided court life was a disease and I chose not to get sick."
"You ran away."
"I withdrew from public service."
"You louder than anyone cheered during his coronation."
"I cheered during my liberation," he says, correcting me with exaggerated nobility. "There is a distinction."
"There is not."
"There is to me."
"But all my hard work was in vain," he mutters now, though I had said none of that aloud. "One horrible decision by one dead brother and suddenly I'm expected to care about revenue and seasonal grain allocations."
Ophelia is smiling fully now, small and warm and impossible not to look at. "You really hated it that much?"
He turns toward her and looks as though she has asked whether drowning is unpleasant.
"I hated waking up and remembering people could find me."
He is intolerable.
"I am not doing it," he says again, with renewed conviction, as if the entire conversation can be reset by stubbornness alone. "No. Absolutely not. Let the council handle things."
"The council would collapse by the second day."
"That sounds like a council problem."
"That becomes my problem."
"Not if you're gone."
"I will return."
"Tragic."
"You're still doing it."
"No."
"Yes."
"No."
"Elias."
He throws his head back and makes a sound of such profound agony that even Ophelia glances at him with pity.
I do not.
He sits up again and points between my wife and me. "Have children."
The room goes still.
Ophelia's eyes widen.
I stare.
He continues anyway.
"Immediately. As many as possible. Solve the succession issue the proper way."
"You want me to create an heir to avoid leaving you temporarily responsible."
"Yes."
"That is your argument."
"It is an excellent argument."
"I'm not sure that's how these things work," Ophelia says softly, and despite her blush, she is trying not to laugh.
Elias leans toward her confidentially. "It is exactly how they work if both of you apply yourselves."
I consider having him stabbed.
This is a reasonable thought.
"Given the way he lives," Elias says, jerking his chin toward me with all the reverence of a drunk uncle at a funeral, "I don't want to test fate."
"What exactly is that supposed to mean?" I ask.
He looks genuinely offended by the question. "It means you routinely throw yourself into situations designed to kill ordinary men because apparently your hobbies include warfare, revenge, and glaring at maps until someone dies somewhere."
"That isn't a hobby."
"It is for you."
"I'm not dying," I say flatly.
"yet."
"But if you do," he says with increasing exasperation, "I'm screwed, I do not want to be the miserable bastard left holding the crown because the royal bloodline was too distracted to reproduce."
I am going to kill him after all.
Ophelia turns pink.
Veronica looks delighted.
This is all becoming unbearable.
"No," Elias says suddenly, lifting both hands like a man negotiating with executioners.
"No, I'm serious. Listen to me. I have done this already.
I have ruled. I have smiled at ambassadors.
I have sat through trade disputes. I have explained to grown men why setting fire to neighboring ports is, in fact, bad diplomacy.
I have signed grain orders. I have heard petitions.
I have worn the robes. I have done the whole miserable performance, and I hated every second of it. "
"You kept the kingdom stable."
"I kept it alive out of spite."
"That still counts."
"It should not."
"If you do this...properly...I will owe you a favor."
The room goes silent.
It is immediate. Absolute. Even the morning light feels as though it pauses.
Elias stares at me with interest.
Dangerous interest.
Veronica's head turns slowly in my direction.
Ophelia looks from him to me with visible confusion, which means she does not yet understand how catastrophic those words might prove to be.
"...what?" Elias asks carefully.
"You heard me."
"I want to hear it again."
"I said," I reply, already regretting this, "if you handle the kingdom while I'm gone, I will owe you a favor."
His eyes narrow with predatory satisfaction. "A real one?"
"No, an imaginary one."
"Don't be bitter because I'm negotiating better than you."
He leans forward. "Anything I want?"
"Within reason."
"That is not what I asked."
"And yet it remains the answer."
He considers me.
The room is quiet enough now that I can hear the faint movement of fabric as Ophelia shifts in her seat. I can feel her looking at me. I do not return it. I am too busy trying to calculate the scale of my own mistake.
Because I know this expression on Elias.
I know exactly what it means.
He is thinking.
Worse...he is imagining.
And every time he imagines something, my life worsens.
"Anything," he says again, slower this time, savoring the word, clearly picturing scenarios I have no doubt will grow increasingly intolerable with time.
I should withdraw the offer.
I should end this now.
Instead, because I am already committed and because my wife's vacation is somehow now tied to this disaster, I say, "Yes."
That is the moment the grin spreads across his face.
It begins slowly, almost politely, then sharpens into something vivid and unholy. It is not the grin of a man relieved. It is the grin of a man who has just been handed a weapon by someone arrogant enough to believe he will never use it.
Veronica closes her eyes briefly and exhales."Oh," she says. "That is a terrible idea."
I ignore her.
Elias looks visibly delighted.
His entire posture changes. He straightens in the chair. He points at me with malicious pleasure. "Deal." The word lands like a signed contract.
Irrevocable.
I know it immediately.
I have just made a bargain with the closest thing to a demon I am legally required to tolerate.
"Choose carefully," I tell him.
"Oh, I already did," he says.
He says it softly.
Happily.
With the sort of evil delight that should only exist in bedtime stories meant to frighten children into obedience.
I already regret this more than some wars.
"Good," I say coldly. "Then we're done."
Elias rises from the chair at once, all traces of suffering gone. Apparently, the threat of duty had nearly killed him, but the promise of blackmail has restored his will to live.
Remarkable.
"I'm going to enjoy this," he says.
"I know."
"You're going to regret it."
"I already do."
Veronica pushes off the wall with elegant ease and begins walking toward the door. "You made a deal with him," she says. "Whatever happens next is your fault."
"I'm aware."
Elias pauses halfway to the exit and looks over his shoulder at Ophelia. "If he tries to back out of this later, you're my witness."
She smiles helplessly. "I don't think he can."
"Excellent." Elias looks back at me. "I like when things are legally binding."
"Nothing about this is legal."
"That has never stopped me before."
He reaches the door. Then stops again.
He turns, expression bright with mischief and entirely too much confidence.
"Enjoy your trip," he says. "Try not to come back pregnant, murdered, or emotionally improved. I'm not prepared for major changes in the household dynamic."
I reach for the nearest object on my desk.
He vanishes through the door immediately.
Veronica follows at a more dignified pace, but not before casting me one final look of deep amusement over her shoulder.
I exhale slowly and stare at the closed door for a long moment.
I have made a serious error.
A historic one.
The kind scholars will likely write about.
Beside me, Ophelia is quiet for several heartbeats.
Then she says gently, "Was that a very bad idea?"
I turn toward her.
"Yes."
"How bad?"
I consider it. "Potentially catastrophic."
I step away from the desk and move toward her, the office suddenly feeling far too formal for the fact that it is now only the two of us inside it. "He said yes because I offered him leverage."
"Still yes."
I place one hand on the table and lean down slightly, close enough now to breathe in the faint scent of her skin, close enough to let my voice drop.
"This is your fault."
Her brows lift with amusement. "Mine?"
"You wanted to leave."
"That seems like a very unfair accusation."
"I had to negotiate with him for your sake."
She tilts her head. "And?"
"And now he has something over me."
She smiles, completely unrepentant. "I'm sure you'll survive."
I study her for a long moment.
Then I move closer still, until my hand can slide from the table to the edge of her waist.
"For the record," I murmur, "if I end up forced into some humiliating future arrangement because of this...if he demands anything intolerable...I will kill him."
She looks up at me with that same soft expression, but there is more confidence in her now than there was months ago.
She would never have allowed me this close to her when she first entered this palace.
She would have lowered her gaze. Withdrawn.
Feared the edge in my voice and mistaken it for real anger.
My hand tightens at her waist..
Her gaze flicks briefly to my mouth.
That small movement does more damage than battle ever has.
And just like that, I am no longer thinking about the kingdom, or the favor I owe, or the catastrophic consequences of my own poor judgment.
I am thinking about my wife in the morning light, seated on my desk as she belongs there, smiling at me as if she knows exactly how close I already am to abandoning all remaining dignity.
She probably does.
I lower my head slightly. "You're pleased with yourself."
"A little."
"You manipulated me."
"A little."
"You let Elias watch."
Her lips part around another laugh. "I didn't make him talk."
"No. He does that naturally."
I lean in until my mouth is near her ear and say quietly, "If they do burn the kingdom down while we're gone, I'm blaming you first."