Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king-Chapter 968: Closed life

The darkness was all that welcomed her.

When she finally fluttered her eyes open, she found herself in a world stripped of color and shape. Not a single sliver of moonlight escaped the heavy drapes, and for a heartbeat, she felt a flare of panic, the disorientation of the blind.

She reached out to her left, her hand sweeping across the silk sheets. Cold. Empty. The space beside her hadn’t held warmth for hours.

As her eyes slowly adjusted, the shadows began to separate and solidify.

Across the room, silhouetted against the tall, arched window, sat a dark figure.

Alpheo.

He was hunched forward in a high-backed chair, his wide shoulders curved like the gnarled branch of an ancient oak. His elbows rested on his knees, his head bowed over a silver cup held loosely in both hands.

"How long have you been awake?" she whispered, her voice barely a breath, terrified that a louder sound might shatter him.

His head turned toward her with a slow, mechanical precision. For a chilling instant, his body remained frozen while his neck rotated, making him look like an owl watching a predator in the brush.

"Did I wake you?" his voice was a dry rasp, devoid of its usual sharp edge.

"I felt the bed go light," she lied, pulling the furs up around her shoulders as she sat up. "The air gets cold when you aren’t there to break it. You haven’t answered my question."

He turned back to the window, staring out at the lightless gardens. "It was dark when I woke. It is still dark now. The hours... they don’t seem to move the same way in the night."

"Aren’t you going to join me?" she asked, reaching out a hand and patting the bed and the empty air between them. "The dawn is still far off."

"I can’t sleep," he said, "What’s the use in closing my eyes? The scenery doesn’t change."

"Nightmares?"

He didn’t answer. He simply tilted the cup to his lips, taking a slow, measured sip. In the charcoal light, she couldn’t see the lines of his face, but she could feel the profound, aching sadness radiating from him.

"How long has it been going on?" she pressed, her heart thumping against her ribs.

"Some time back, I’d say," he murmured.

Of course it had.

She had always loathed his friend, the thought that even now he would put a stick on her front wheel did not help.

The knowledge of how petty it all was sobered her up, however.

"Do you want to talk about them? Your nightmares?"

Even in the deep shadows, she saw him flinch. His shoulders jerked as if he had been struck by a physical lash, and he pulled the cup closer to his lips. Seeing him shiver like a frightened child in the dark evoked something in Jasmine she never thought she would feel for him.

It wasn’t just love, and it certainly wasn’t the political respect they had built their marriage upon. It was a protective instinct. As if she wanted to shield him.

She didn’t ask again. She made a decision and anchored herself to it.

"Come back to bed, " she said, her voice firmer now.

"I told you," he murmured, his silhouette unmoving, ’’Can’t sleep."

"That doesn’t mean we have to ," Jasmine countered. She reached down and threw back the heavy fur blanket, the movement rustling loudly in the quiet room. She patted the mattress right beside her, the rhythm slow and inviting.

He seemed to weigh the invitation against his own internal darkness, appearing agonizingly unsure. For a long moment, he remained a statue caught between the chair and the bed. The hesitation pricked at her; it bothered her to see him so estranged from his own sanctuary. She decided to give him the nudge he clearly lacked.

"It is freezing in here, Alpheo. How much longer are you going to make me wait in the cold?"

To her immense relief, the statue finally broke.

He rose from the chair , setting the silver cup down on the seat with a quiet clink. He made his way across the room, his footsteps silent on the rugs, until the bed groaned under his weight. As he slid beneath the furs, she caught the sharp, bittersweet scent of old wine clinging to him, not enough to intoxicate, but enough to know he had been trying to drown the noise in his head with spirit

He sat stiffly at first, but Jasmine would have none of it. She reached out, her fingers threading through his hair, and gently guided him down. She maneuvered his body until his head fell onto the soft rise of her bosom, pulling the blankets high around them both to seal out the world.

She began to stroke his hair, tracing the line of his jaw and the tension in his neck as it tensed and released.

He was a man made of iron and scar tissue, which he had never gave explanation for, yet in her arms, he felt as fragile as glass.

"Neither of us is going to get a wink of sleep like this, you know," Alpheo whispered into the crook of her neck, his voice muffled by her skin.

"You were already having trouble, " she whispered back, her lips brushing the top of his head as she pulled him closer, tucking his frame against hers. " If we stay awake until the sun bleeds seeps through the curtains, then that is how we shall spend the night."

She felt a long, shuddering sigh escape him, the first real breath he had taken since the parade. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the iron in his shoulders began to melt into the warmth of her embrace.

"You have been working tirelessly,we can all see it. You deserve a moment where you are simply a father and husband" Jasmine whispered, her fingers twisting a lock of his hair that had grown long and unruly during the campaign.

"I am sorry to have worried you," he murmured.

"That isn’t what I meant. Not at all,"

She wasn’t looking for an apology

"Than I do not hold your meaning. We are living in trying times. Every ounce of effort I pour into the work now is an extra day of peace that shall bless us tomorrow. I am buying time. I am buying safety."

"But you have only just emerged from the mouth of a hard war," she said, her voice a soothing balm. She had once thought him a man who relished the clash of steel, a creature of the hunt, but she saw the truth now.

He didn’t love the war. Or at least now between the both of them , he seemed not to.

"And now I must prepare for the next one," Alpheo countered, his voice gaining a edge, as if the ineptitude of it hurt him too. "And the one after that. You shall see the results of my labor soon, and then you will understand that the price was worth paying.It has to."

Jasmine pulled back just enough to look toward the shadow of his face. "And what after that? Will you simply prepare for another? Until when? War after war, after war. What comes at the end of the road?"

The question seemed to hang in the air like an executioner’s blade. He knew the answer, but he searched his mind for the vocabulary to make it sound like something other than a death sentence.

"Until it is done," he said finally. "One way or the other."

"Until it is you who does not return one day?" she asked, the courage in her voice flickering like a candle in a gale.

The question made Alpheo strangely glad, though he kept his features as still as stone. To be feared his absence, meant it was to be loved.

"That is a possibility. A man cannot hope to know the hour of his end.All will one day pay for what they eat.

I will not lie to you, you have a duty for our family too; what happened to Egil may one day happen to me. That is the nature of the iron we trade in."

He shifted, his gaze burning in the dark. "The cycle ends for me only when I die or when there is no one left with the strength to oppose me. If I leave a single enemy standing, they will not just hate me, they will hunt Basil after I am gone. So I shall strike now with my sword, in the hope that my son will never have to lift his.

Even if it all proves to be for naught, it is the burden required of me."

"I think you are the only one who thinks the world requires such a sacrifice of you," she whispered.

"It changes nothing," Alpheo said, his hand sliding down to rest with a heavy, grounding warmth upon her thigh. "War is coming whether I wish for it or not. I do not choose the storm; I only choose whether to build a roof or drown in the rain. We prepare and fight or we reap the consequences in ash.And I know for what end I shall strive till I draw my last breath."

With that, he finally closed his eyes, bearing no more answers to any question, his wife no longer daring to disturb him but satisfying herself in simply watching him sleep.

He was a prince and a killer of men, but here, wrapped in the scent and warmth of her, he allowed himself the brief, beautiful lie that the terrible moment they feared would not be upon them.