Chapter Thirty-Seven: Betrothed, Pt II

Back in Lord Pravin’s house, designs for the reclamation of Valcrest began.

“The princes of this land each command their own army,” Pravin was explaining to Father as he gestured to a map of the nearby area laid out over the table. (Osmund sat nearby, hands in his lap as he stayed out of the way.) “Typically a mix of local conscripts and mercenary hires from other lands, selected for their unique skills.”

“Hrm.” Father was inscrutable as he rubbed his beard in contemplation. “What else?”

“The convenient thing about these imperial brothers is that they have no allegiance with each other—each acts only in his own self-interest. So, they can be approached individually with promises of an alliance.”

“Which prince is most valuable as an ally?”

Osmund’s ears strained—for some reason, this conversation felt important— but the harder he tried to focus, the more garbled the words became. He shook his head to clear the odd thoughts away. Why should he care about Meskato princes? No one here seriously planned to involve him in state matters, even after he ascended the throne.

Father pushed away from the table, and Osmund snapped back to attention. “I don’t like this plan, Pravin,” he announced.

Pravin’s eyebrows arched in a display of obsequious surprise. “My king?”

“I don’t like relying on these untrustworthy Meskato, or their even more unwashed mercenaries, from heavens only know where. I thought your contacts were all decent Tolmishmen.”

“My king, we are in the empire,” Pravin attempted tactfully. “If every Tolmishman in the empire were added together, we’d still find ourselves short of hands, and the lion’s share of them would be simple merchants and traders like myself, not fighting men. Alliances are necessary in such a situation.”

“I don’t recall asking for your judgment on the matter!”

For just a hair’s time, Osmund saw the unfiltered contempt in Pravin’s eyes, the thin disguise falling away. He didn’t know how Father seemed so ignorant to it.

“What do you think, Prince Osmund?”

Osmund jumped. His nervous gaze jumped from Pravin, who was peering expectantly at him, to Father. Then back again.

“Osmund is my son,” Valen Haldebard said. “We speak with the same voice.”

“Of course, sire. How impertinent of me.”

But Pravin’s keen-eyed stare lingered on him a moment longer.

Eventually, the two men tired of their war plans and announced their intent to retire for the night. Osmund was padding through the hall to his own room when Lord Pravin emerged from his study and pulled him privately aside.

“Prince Osmund! I believe I offended your father tonight. I wonder if you might bring him an apology gift.”

It sounded like a simple request, yet he was bringing him in and closing the door behind them. Osmund blinked. Before he could be apprehensive, he saw Selenne there too, seated as if in waiting. He felt naked under their combined stares, and squirmed.

“Father isn’t especially angry,” Osmund blabbed, wanting to fill the space. “Um…that’s just how he is.”

The merchant lord circled around to his desk. Unlike the rest of the house, this clutter was practical: account books and ledgers, a moneychanger’s scale. Alone among these mercantile concerns was a cask of wine. “This is a vintage from Lordenne,” Pravin said, lifting the bottle and contemplating its glassy surface. “Even a king shouldn’t be insulted, I think.”

He set it back down.

Osmund didn’t know what to do. He continued standing.

“It must be difficult for you, living under his shadow,” said Pravin.

“U-um?”

“You can speak freely, lad. No one here’s going to abuse you for what you say.”

Osmund looked between father and daughter searchingly, wondering whether this was a test or a trick. He couldn’t tell what they wanted or expected of him. Surely not the actual truth?

It’s terrible. He hits me. He yells at me constantly. He says everything is my fault. He used to reward my sister for her cruelty. He swears that if I ever fall in love with a man, he’ll have him killed. He hits his animals too, just because he knows I hate it.

Osmund reeled. He…hadn’t actually just confessed all that, had he?

The world felt blurry and strange around the edges. “It wasn’t easy for him after my mother died,” he said instead, so dutifully. The sense of unreality intensified. “But he’s always been there for me. He just wanted me to know what a real man was supposed to be like.”

Pravin took back up the cask of wine and placed it delicately into his hands. “Bring this to him,” Pravin said, “with my apologies for tonight. Who knows—perhaps his temper will improve.”

Osmund stepped tentatively through the door to Father’s room. His jaw was clenched and his knees were quaking, but the wine, at least, was clutched resolutely in his hands.

“F-Father?”

The question sank into every corner of the bedchamber. His father, standing at a table by a curtained window, gave an aggrieved grunt. Sprawled in front of him were the notes from the day’s meeting, which he’d charged one of Pravin’s servants with recording. Even in exile, his royal hands were idle.

“Osmund. Spit it out and stop loitering.”

“I…” Osmund hesitated. His fingers worried at the cold glass neck of the bottle. “I’ve brought you something. It’s a gift from Lord Pravin.”

This time, Father did deign to look up. “Bring it here, then,” he snapped, making space on his desk for the cask and pushing out a nearby glass. “Since he already has my heir doing servant’s work.”

Osmund took another slow step closer. Father flushed with annoyance.

“Are you bringing it or aren’t you?!”

“Um—yes—coming.”

Father went back to glaring at his notes, so Osmund took his sweet time unstoppering the bottle. His thoughts raced as his resolve wavered.

“May I…ask you something, Father?”

Such uncharacteristic insolence must have so surprised the king that for once, he didn’t blow up. “Ask me what?” Father said instead, eyes narrowing.

“I was wondering,” Osmund began, not daring to make eye contact, “if you regret having a son. If you regret…” He swallowed. “Me.”

It was such a frivolous, pointless question. But he had to ask it anyways. In his novels, people could change when given the chance. Surely his own father deserved that chance too.

Valen Haldebard heaved an annoyed breath, snatching the wine away and pouring it himself. Osmund watched the steady flow, and said nothing. “Regrets are pointless, Osmund,” the king groused. “If princesses could become princes, I could have relied on your sister Evanor not to shame my good name. In the end, you’re finally doing your duty for this family. You can be proud of that.”

“But,” Osmund protested, “how I am. Who I am. Isn’t it so detestable to you?”

To that, Father gave a last, scathing laugh.

“It does not matter who you are and what you want, and it never has.”

And he lifted the cup to his lips, without a glance to spare for his son and heir, nor even a cursory sniff for the wine currently coursing down his throat.

Father has always been so trusting.

The truth of the thought surprised Osmund as he looked on, numb. It was simply a fact—Father had always moved through the world so convinced that nothing could touch him. Because who would presume to even dare?

After only a few gulps, the coughing began.

The recently-deposed ruler of Valcrest went purple in the face. His glass toppled, then rolled to the side. He convulsed, hacking.

“F-Father?!” Osmund raced to his side, attempting to support Valen Haldebard’s king-sized weight as he staggered against his table. A memory of a buck with an arrow in its haunches, struggling to right itself. “Father, are you alright?!”

The wine was…?!

Osmund dithered aimlessly while Father continued choking around his own spit. His great wheezing gasps were like that of an inbred dog, too ruined to live.

Father’s hand bunched up in Osmund’s tunic. They locked eyes.

This person before him—that wasn’t his father. It couldn’t be. Osmund had never seen Father look afraid of anything in all his life.

Father opened his mouth. Whatever he intended to say, it sputtered and died in his throat. That wide-eyed terror never left him. Not even at the end, when he collapsed to the floor, wriggling his body like an inchworm making for the door. Then his gasps, too, petered out with one final effort.

Osmund stood in the puddle of wine and simply faded away.

Pravin killed my father.

Osmund was sitting with his back to some cold wall, somewhere.

He and Lady Selenne—they killed my father.

He couldn’t stay here! Not with the people responsible for such a heinous deed!

They killed him, they gave me the wine and now he’s dead and I’m all alone and I

He repeated these truths to himself over and over.

They killed him, they–

“Don’t you just want to be rid of him?”

The world changed shape, morphing like a ripple in a pool. He was back in the study, standing shock-still under Pravin’s assessing gaze. The older man was standing so close, Osmund could smell the figs he’d eaten for dinner on his breath. He didn’t even react when he felt Pravin’s surprisingly soft fingers touching his jaw and turning it to the side, like he was appraising an expensive object, or checking a horse’s teeth. “Look at you. So docile. He’s completely broken you.”

“I’m not broken,” Osmund insisted, his voice betraying him with a crack. Pravin laughed.

“You’re a grown man who cowers like a dog waiting for the next kick. But not to worry—my girl and I treat our dogs well. Isn’t that right, dear?”

Selenne approached, smiling warmly as she joined her father. “That’s right, Osmund,” she said. “It’s not wrong to want a gentler hand on your leash.”

They killed him they gave me the wine they

“How about it?” Pravin was placing the cask in his hands. “This is only what any self-respecting man would do. You must know that the way he treats you is barbaric. An embarrassment to our entire nation.”

Stop, Osmund thought, horrified, watching from somewhere outside himself as he took the cask in both trembling hands. You can’t do this! He’s your own father!

They killed him it wasn’t me I never meant to –

The world was dissolving in pieces. It was if he’d drunk of the wine himself; he couldn’t breathe. He grasped at his throat, scrambling for air. His own mind was at war with itself.

You think you deserve to live after what you’ve done?!

He poured the wine himself, I didn’t even–

You didn’t warn him.

I never had a chance!

Quit lying! You always had the chance!

I’m not a bad person. He was the bad person.

What kind of son murders his own father?!

“Osmund!!”

Someone, somewhere, was calling his name.

Staggering to his feet, Osmund stumbled blindly in the direction of the voice. He wanted to believe a person out there existed who thought he was still worth saving.

Who are you? Where are you? I’m here! Help!

When he rubbed his eyes, he was back in Valcrest Castle, in that vibrant green courtyard. It was that ancient boyhood memory again! How could he survive like this—he was only a child! This was him at his most helpless!

“Osmund!”

He glanced desperately around the courtyard, and finally he saw—

“her”?

It was that tall Meskato princess again. She was standing on the other end of the peristyle, shouting at the top of her lungs at him. Osmund crumpled. Now that his salvation was in sight, he rejected it.

Please go away! he thought madly. I’ll only disappoint you! Better to die now, unmourned and unloved, than live to hurt someone else!

He sank into himself as this scene, too, began to drop out beneath him. He was good at this—at balling up and waiting for the world’s punishment. But before he could shut his eyes, the princess moved.

Heavens, she was fast! Osmund was spellbound watching her dart, sure-footed, over the splintering castle grounds. Everything was falling away into the gaping abyss. At this rate, they’d both get sucked in!

“Leave me alone!” he cried. “You’ll fall! I don’t want you to get hurt!”

But nothing he said made a difference. She kept coming, swift as the wind.

I don’t deserve to be saved. I don’t deserve to be loved. Please don’t come.

A yawning gap opened in the earth between them. The princess stopped in her tracks. She held out a hand.

“You have to come the last way yourself!” So she did speak Tolmish! Osmund looked on in fear. “Jump!”

“I-I can’t.” The chasm was eternal, sinking all the way into an endless abyss. “I can’t. It’s too far.”

“It isn’t real!”

But this was real. Maybe not this bit, but—he really had killed his father. It was a truth so horrible, he’d literally, physically run away from it.

That was why he’d fled from Lord Pravin’s house onto the streets of Şebyan, wasn’t it? It wasn’t because he’d wanted to fall in love on his own terms. Even that tiny bit of courage had been a lie! He’d fled because he was a coward who couldn’t face the truth of his own actions!

“Osmund!”

Osmund’s knees were locked together in terror, which was the only thing keeping him upright. If he collapsed now, he’d never get back up. “I can’t. I really can’t.”

The princess cursed. Then backed up, as if to get a running start. Seeing this, Osmund floundered.

“What are you doing? You can’t jump that! It’s pointless!”

She wasn’t listening. Osmund finally came back alive.

“Don’t! Don’t come! I’ll jump! I’ll do it!”

What was the difference, dying here or dying there? At least if he made it, he wouldn’t have to be alone!

He stared down into the chasm beneath. Something about it cooed to him so seductively—he looked away. The abyss might be calling for him, but so was someone else.

Someone he couldn’t disappoint.

He jumped.

The cold sensation was back again, and then, just as swiftly—it was receding. He was being dredged out of those depths, limp as a dead fish.

And this time there was pain. Heavens—how his ribs hurt!

Without thought for it, he whimpered.

“I’m sorry,” he heard, the voice worn but familiar, as warmth bloomed all around him. “The pain should be gone soon.”

Osmund knew that voice—and that blissful, if faint—warmth anywhere. He’d know it even in another place, another time. Or at least his heart would.

“Cemil?” he attempted, but his labored breathing kept the sound inside.

He heard a faint, exhausted laugh. “Welcome back, love.”