Chapter 49

The prince reached up to brush thick, clinging soot from his collar just as his bodyguard emerged from the pitch-black maw of the warehouse. The man materialized from the encroaching shadows, his gaze lingering on the roaring furnace behind him. Orange tongues of flame still licked at the night sky, greedily consuming the last vestiges of the wreckage.

Whoosh!

“There is a fair distance between this warehouse and the neighboring structures, so the fire should not spread,” the bodyguard reported, his voice holding a steady, disciplined cadence. “I cleared away anything in the vicinity that might catch. We can notify the sentries on our way back.”

“Fortunately, there is no wind and no one lives nearby,” he muttered, his voice raspy. He dusted off his blackened palms, frowning as he instinctively scratched at the edge of his hand, likely digging out a jagged splinter caught while shifting the searing debris.

Kaiyan had wondered about the man’s whereabouts the moment they escaped the inferno. It seemed he had circled the entire perimeter, methodically inspecting the surroundings for hazards. Only after securing the area did the bodyguard allow his vigilance to slip. He released a long, ragged sigh, his shoulders slumping under the weight of his exhaustion as he sank to the cold ground.

“Good grief… I don’t think I have ever been this utterly drained near the new moon before…”

He abruptly clamped his mouth shut and glanced nervously toward the prince. Kaiyan had been staring up at the densely scattered stars, attempting to estimate the hour. Feeling the bodyguard’s scrutiny, he looked down.

The guard stared at him in the flickering light, blinked twice, then rose with a deeply troubled expression. “Are you all right, Lord Kaiyan? Your complexion is…”

Kaiyan regarded him for a lingering moment before turning away without deigning to answer. There was nothing left for him to do here. He began walking, his stride measured and cold, and the bodyguard scrambled to follow, his movements pained.

“Would you like me to carry you on my—”

The bodyguard began the offer cautiously from behind, but the words died in his throat. Kaiyan halted and turned his head. The guard wore an expression that practically shouted his disbelief at his own audacity.

“Never mind. I apologize.”

Kaiyan resumed his walk. After a brief, awkward silence, the rhythmic sound of footsteps resumed behind him. Kaiyan lifted a hand to wipe his face, and it came away thick with gritty soot and dust.

If he looked into a mirror now, he would doubtless appear wretched. Aside from being filthy from head to toe, his complexion was likely as dark and lifeless as a man on the threshold of death. Even lifting a hand felt like a colossal effort.

It was always like this as the new moon approached. The atmosphere seemed to press down upon him, heavy and suffocating. Every fiber of his body throbbed with a vicious, lingering fever. His condition now was worse than usual, reminiscent of his time on the frontier when he had spent three full days swinging a sword during the magical-beast subjugation. At this moment, he craved nothing more than to find a deep forest, scale a towering tree, and sleep for a century.

He knew without a mirror that he must look little different from a reanimated corpse, yet the bodyguard had actually offered to carry him. Kaiyan had never heard such an audacious suggestion in his life. For a fleeting instant, he had even needed to process what the man meant by the word.

The very idea of someone offering to carry him was absurd enough. More absurd still was—

“…”

Kaiyan watched the bodyguard walking several paces ahead, clearing abandoned materials from the ruined road and tossing charred scraps of wood toward the encroaching weeds. The man was scorched from head to toe, his clothes shredded and coated in thick ash. He was battered beyond all recognition. Kaiyan could not see his front, but blood was still slowly seeping from the deep wound across his chest, where Kaiyan’s own sword had carved a path from shoulder to waist. Burns mapped his arms and legs.

The bodyguard looked incapable of supporting a single stray cat, let alone a grown man, yet he had offered to carry someone else. The moment the thought crossed Kaiyan’s mind, one of the stray cats trailing the guard abruptly clambered up the back of his neck. The other two followed, scrambling up his frame as though they had been waiting for the perfect opportunity.

Soon, cats dangled precariously from the bodyguard’s shoulders, back, and head.

“Hey. Could you come down, please?” he complained, shifting his weight with a grimace. “I genuinely feel as though I am about to die.”

The cats began meowing in a synchronized chorus, as though they perfectly understood his plight. Three voices at once created a considerable, grating amount of noise.

“…”

Kaiyan suddenly looked down at his own hand. This same hand had held his sword only moments earlier. He could have cut him down.

When he had swung the blade in the warehouse, one of the cats had thrown itself at his arm and clawed him. Yet such a trivial weight could never have stopped him. He could have easily maintained the lethal force of the swing and split the bodyguard’s heart in two.

Yet the strength had simply abandoned his hand, and the blade had only opened a shallow, superficial wound. Kaiyan lifted his gaze from his hand and looked at the guard again. The man threw a length of wood blocking the path into the weeds, his shoulders hunched under the weight of three mewling, demanding cats. He looked like someone being subjected to an endless, unrelenting lecture. His lips protruded in a sulky pout, his whole face announcing how desperately he wished to escape the noise.

“Oh, enough! Yes, thank you. I am grateful. You saved my life, all right? So will you stop now?”

He grumbled so quietly that an ordinary person would barely have heard him, but in the oppressive silence of the night, every word carried.

One of the felines perched upon his shoulder let out a sharp mewl, its tongue rasping against the raw, inflamed skin of his cheek. Ow! That stings! You are licking a burn, you little monster! The guard jerked in surprise, blinking away the moisture stinging his eyes as he tilted his head to distance himself from the animal. A weary sigh escaped him before he reached up to stroke the creature’s head. Beneath a hand caked in ash and marred by weeping wounds, the cat began to purr in deep, rhythmic contentment. Despite the guard’s unsteady gait, the cat clung to his shoulder with preternatural balance, showing no inclination to fall.

Perhaps it sensed the weight of Kaiyan’s scrutiny. Without warning, the cat snapped its head toward the prince. Its pupils, vast and luminous as glass lanterns, tracked him with an unsettling, predatory intensity. It emitted a fierce, guttural hiss before pointedly looking away.

Why are you suddenly so irritable? Stop bickering on my shoulder, you lot. I am far too exhausted for this.

Kaiyan observed the muttering guard and slowly clenched his empty hand into a tight fist. Why had he not simply ended the man? Every opening had been presented to him. He knew that when the cat had initially lunged, he had deliberately loosened his lethal grip. But why? From the very beginning, something about this bodyguard had nagged at him. That persistent, inexplicable unease remained.

“You.”

Kaiyan’s voice was little more than a low murmur, yet the bodyguard pivoted instantly.

“Yes?”

The man regarded him with a look of genuine confusion. He was a ruin of a human being. The fabric across his chest was soaked in crimson from shoulder to waist, and burns mapped his skin, yet the guard ignored his own suffering to study Kaiyan’s complexion, his brow furrowing with genuine concern.

“Would you like to pause here for a moment? You look quite unwell. I can go retrieve a horse for you.”

A surge of sudden, violent heat flared within Kaiyan’s chest. Anger. It was an alien sensation. He had often found people or situations irritating or tiresome, but his solution had always been swift eradication. That had always been the end of it. This felt different. It was a heavy, murky frustration, and for the first time, he could neither identify its source nor determine how to excise it.

“You cannot retrieve it.”

“Ah… I suppose you are right.”

Kaiyan’s answer carried a frigid edge, and the bodyguard offered a submissive nod before turning away without further argument. He continued his trek, methodically clearing away the debris and splintered wood from their path.

Kaiyan trailed behind in silence as a sudden, intrusive question took root in his mind: was this particular man an exception to his usual judgment?

His stallion had been a tribute from the Freya region five years prior, a land renowned for breeding the finest steeds in the kingdom. Even in Freya, where horses capable of running a thousand miles in a single day were common, the royal stablemaster had remarked upon its peerless excellence. The horse had been Kaiyan’s constant companion since the frontier days. It was brave, whip-smart, and profoundly arrogant, treating stable hands as mere servants and permitting no one but its master to approach. It would thunder to his side the moment he called, yet it despised the tether and preferred to roam the wilderness at will. As such, no other soul could summon or restrain it.

When had it been? Five, perhaps six days ago.

Kaiyan had been immersed in a book in his study when he had glanced out to see the horse grazing in the courtyard. It was intelligent enough to forage for itself, so he had ignored it and returned to his reading. Then, a low murmur drifted up from below. He recognized the bodyguard’s voice immediately. It was long before the man’s shift, yet he had arrived early, sitting beneath the window to catch his breath.

Click.

“Hey… your manger is overflowing with the finest hay, so why are you settling for butterbur? Of all the things to graze on, you chose the bitterest,” the guard said, his tongue clicking against his teeth as a soft, self-deprecating laugh bled into his tone.

Kaiyan peered down. The bodyguard was sprawled against the wall, his legs stretched out in a display of ease that suggested he owned the very grounds they stood upon. He stared at the horse with a vacant, gentle curiosity.

The stallion flicked an ear toward him before returning to its graze. As it chewed, its aimless path brought it closer and closer to the man.