Chapter 1408: Too many bulls(1)

He walked through cold, weeping stone corridors beneath chandeliers of tarnished gold, haunted by the fragile ghosts of a life that never was.

In the hollow silence of Epietoli, he could almost picture it: a boy in the courtyard, small fingers wrapped around a blunt practice sword, guided by the patient, calloused hands of a father. He imagined the firm grip on his shoulder, the proud nod from the saddle, the fierce embrace after a hard day in the tilt yard, the sacred, tender bond between a sire and his flesh.

And it was taken from him, stolen all of it. All that could have been.All the joy. All the warmth.

Those who remembered his father spoke of him in hushed, reverent whispers. A creature of duty.

A man of pristine honor.

The dutiful second son who knelt willingly beneath his elder brother’s mantle, bowing to the ancient laws of the Five without a whisper of treason.

And for that immaculate, selfless loyalty, his reward had been cold iron in the dark.

Betrayed by his own blood so a bloated uncle could clear a path for a bastard’s crown. The plot had demanded two burlap sacks tossed into the churning river: one filled with the heavy bones of the father, the other with the kicking, fragile frame of a child.

It would have been the river for me, too, Merelao thought, his chest tightening with a sudden, suffocating grief, had Varo not bled to haul me into the woods.

He stopped before the great hearth, looking up at the faded portrait of his parents. He searched the painted face of the man for any scrap of himself, finding almost none. The thick, sunlit hair that tumbled across Merelao’s shoulders had been stolen entirely from his mother.

She had left the world in agony, screaming alongside the newborn she brought forth, until by dusk only the wail of a motherless babe echoed off the stone. Varo always told him that his father had withered inside that day, that though he was young enough to sow a dozen more sons, he never looked upon another woman. But he never blamed him for that. He was too honorable for that, he took him in and showed only love.

"She was pure grace, my prince," the old lord had sworn countless nights by the fire. "Your father loved her before they ever touched hands, and that love outlived her breath. When I look at you, I see his eyes. His straight brow. His quiet fire."

Merelao raised a gloved hand, tracing the bridge of his own nose, the line of his jaw. He could feel nothing of the dead man beneath his skin. Neither the mild face nor the gentle, yielding heart.

He could trace nor kindness in himself.Only thirst to sate a boy’s crying wish.

Their comeuppance would come one day, he promised for the gods knew what time.

"You were a loyal and godly man, Father," Merelao whispered, the words trembling with a bitter mix of devotion and quiet fury of what had transpired. His voice echoed off the empty flags of the great hall. "And yet... godly men are mere fodder for monsters. Hyenas do not marvel at a lion’s nobility; they only wait for his back to turn so they may feast upon his belly."

He stared at the painted fingers resting lovingly on his mother’s pale shoulder. Both of them turned to ash and memory, leaving their lone wolf to pace an empty lair of ghosts and never-heard lullabies.

Alone without a clear road but the one he would build, alone with treacherous monsters and trecherous allies.

"They could accuse you of no crime, nor did they bother to invent one," Merelao rasped, a single, hot tear burning a slow path down his cheek before he wiped it away with the rough leather of his gauntlet. "A dagger in the dark was simpler. Cheaper. And they will try it again with me. They dare not face me on an open field with steel in hand,cowards always prefer the shadows."

The Fat Prince had already wagered his soul on the Habadians, only for the Fox and the Bull to shatter their armies and trample their treacherous ambitions into the mud.

Merelao took a slow, deep breath, letting the sweet ache of grief harden into unyielding iron within his chest.

He was not his father. He would offer no pious bows to false princes, no graceful tolerance to usurpers, no quarter to kinslayers. Too long had the rot festered behind the high walls of Kakunia, gnawing at the heart of the realm. The hour for soothing balms and polite prayers had bled away.

Now was the hour of the cleaver, to cut out the infected flesh, to burn the wound clean, and to drag the throne back into the sun.

That, inevitably, would mean war.

When the drums sounded, the lords of Kakunia would fracture like dry timber. Merelao knew precisely what manner of host would gather beneath his banners: an uneasy council of proud, honorable men who balked at bending the knee to a bastard born of lust, mingled with ruthless opportunists who merely saw in the young prince an auspicious star upon which to hoist their own fortunes. Theirs was a service born of raw ambition rather than leal devotion, yet on the march, steel was steel, and blood bought the field all the same.

"He used to linger before that very canvas," an aged voice drifted from the gloom of the great archway.’’You are more similar to your father than you give yourself credit’’

Merelao turned his head, watching his savior and caretaker step into the firelight.

"I would often find your lord father standing where you stand now," Varo murmured, a fond, weary smile softening his weathered face. "He could pass half the night in quiet contemplation, searching every stroke of paint as though some tiny detail might have changed since his last vigil. For all his martial renown, he remained a man of remarkably gentle inclinations."

Merelao looked back toward the gilded frame, his eyes tracing the delicate sweep of his mother’s painted collarbone. Some men serve out of greed, he mused silently, and others out of love for ghosts.

"Tell me true," Merelao said, his voice quiet, measured, and graceful despite the shadow in his heart. "Did he never look upon me with resentment for her passing? There are sires in this realm who would name a child a kinslayer for taking the mother’s breath in the cradle.I recall very few memories of my father, only a few time when he visited me at my uncle’s court."

"A babe has neither malice nor design when he comes out of the womb," Varo replied softly. "He knows only the bite of the winter air and the hunger for his mother’s breast.A child can hardly be called a kinslayer for death in childbed. But you do not ask for a priest’s verdict; it is your own guilt seeking a foundation."

"Does it possess one?"

A long, heavy silence stretched between them, thick with the unspoken grief of nearly twenty years.

"From every hour I served at your father’s side, I swear to you he harbored no bitterness," Varo said, stepping forward until the torchlight caught the silver in his beard. "He understood the cruel truth that run this world. As men are summoned to bleed upon the field of battle, so women are called to fight their own perilous war upon the childbed.

It is no less a bloody one, and no less courageous of them to be in.

He never once looked upon you with anger or regret. You were the son he had long prayed to hold; and when the heavens demanded his beloved in exchange, he bore the sorrow with that immaculate, lordly dignity that defined his every breath. All who knew him revered him, if not for his sweet nature, then for his unyielding honor."

"And yet, not all loved him" Merelao murmured, the cadence of his words rising with a cold, tragic clarity, "that immaculate honor bought him only treachery and a shallow grave."

"And Kakunia is vastly poorer for the loss," Varo conceded with a heavy sigh. "Yet if we spend our days merely mourning what was stolen, rather than honoring what was given, we allow the dark to claim a total victory. We must endure the coming tempest with the same unbending grace your father carried, even when the gale blows from the hearth of our own blood."

"They are no kin of mine,water is thicker than that thing that flows in our veins" Merelao said, the same way he would have denied hospitality to a thief and rapist. "They ceased to be blood the night they sharpened their knives in the dark. They see in me only an obstacle to be butchered, and I see in them only a rot to be excised with my sword. There shall be no shared bread, no polite parley, and no mercy across the banquet table.All your wishes you had for peace between us have ceased.

Usurpers and kinslayers understand only the argument of the edge."

"The Five watch closely, Merelao," Varo warned, stepping closer, his weathered hand resting gently upon his lord’s shoulder. "The heavens weave a dark doom for any man who spills the blood of his own line. Cursed are the kinslayers in the eyes of gods and men."

"Then let the gods judge the heart beneath the mail," Merelao whispered, his sunlit hair catching the torchlight as he turned away from the portrait "If heavens will refuse me, than I will welcome hells as my dome.

This is not a road I would ever have chosen, but it is the anvil upon which I have been cast. If I am to break the chains wrapped around our neck, I shall need more than righteous sorrow. I shall need an iron will... and an unyielding blade to match it.

But you are not here to speak of my father, I know well, you mean to give me counsel, no?"