Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king-Chapter 979: A new player(3)

The feast roared on as the sun dipped well below the horizon, replaced by a river of wine that drowned what little decorum remained in the hall.

Hour by hour, the thin veneer of nobility peeled away like an onion. The high-born men, their chivalry abandoned at the bottom of a goblet, began to openly paw at the women weaving through the tables. Servants were detained by wandering hands, their duties forgotten in the face of drunken lust. Tiberius finally understood the logic why half the staff were men, and why the other half looked so weary throughout the feast.

They did whatever they wanted, they ate , they drank and they fucked like beast.

The more he observed, the deeper the knot of disgust tightened in his gut. The East prided itself on the twin pillars of wine and cavalry, yet their legendary horsemen had been humbled in the mud by common peasants. Now, it seemed, they sought to regain their lost pride by conquering the bottle and the helpless.

"Why are you staring so intently?" Eloir asked, her voice dry and brittle as she watched him survey the display "Do you wish to join the revelry?"

"Indeed, I would " Tiberius replied, his eyes fixed on a lord currently harassing a cup-bearer. "And I would do feast with a heavy stick in my hand. Though I fear there would be very little levity left once I was finished.I was never a really social person you see."

Eloir let out a sharp laugh. The wine had clearly begun to cloud her judgment , Tiberius reasoned.

By the time the moon reached its zenith, the atmosphere had shifted. The music of the lutes was nearly drowned out by a rising chorus of moans and slurred shouts. It was then that the father of the bride, the Lord of Rose, staggered to his feet. He was drunker than most, his tunic stained and his eyes bloodshot. He raised a trembling goblet, announcing the start of the bedding ceremony with a roar that silenced the room. He called for the guests to "aid" the groom, jesting loudly that Tiberius looked far too bridled with wine to remember how to perform his husbandly duties.

The groom felt a sudden, violent urge to hurl his heavy silver cup into that wet, wine-soaked mustache.

But as the rowdy nobles began to rise, it was the old man who stepped forward. With a presence that seemed to chill the very air, he managed to downplay the "aid" the guests were meant to provide. With a few quiet, cutting words, he convinced the mob to settle for merely escorting the couple to the chamber doors. He assured the crowd, with a ghost of a smirk, that the Imperator was wise enough to know how to remove a bridal dress, and how to provide his bride with a new one by morning, hopefully a white silky one.

The guests laughed. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝚠𝚎𝚋𝗻𝗼𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝚘𝐦

They heeded the old man not really out of respect as much as worry. To them, he was a ghost that had refused to stay in the grave, a legend of the old Emperor’s court who had returned from the grave.

The peace did not last. Before Tiberius could protest, a dozen hands seized him. The drunken nobles hoisted both the groom and the bride.

Above the sea of reaching hands, he caught sight of Eloir’s face. The mockery and the levity of the wine had vanished, replaced by a scowl of such pure, concentrated loathing that it chilled him more than the old man’s gaze.

He suddendly felt a chill on his throat...

When they threw them onto the bed they disappeared, leaving behind congratulations and hopes to the married couple and their merry time alone.

Not that there was to be great merry, as just the sight of the woman made him fickle and soft.

They stood alone then, no one really said anything for quite some time, there were no jests, no comforting words, just the silence and the golden threaded upperware of the matrimonial bed staring down at them.

Eloir’s gaze eventually drifted to his profile. It wasn’t the look of disgust he expected, nor the sharp levity of earlier; it was a neutral, clinical observation.

He refused to meet her eyes. The stillness grew until it became a physical pressure, an awkwardness so profound it made his teeth ache.Apparently she was waiting.

Finally, unable to bear the weight of her stare, Tiberius stood. He moved toward a small, unassuming wooden chest at the bedside.

Eloir watched him with a flicker of confusion as he knelt on the floor, his fingers searching for a hidden catch beneath the grain of the wood.

Tluck

"Since when was that there?" she asked, her voice cutting through the gloom.

"I had it installed weeks ago," Tiberius replied, his voice muffled as he worked the mechanism. "There are parts of me I am not fond of sharing with others."

Curiosity sparked in her eyes, and she shifted on the bed, trying to peer over his shoulder. Tiberius’ broad back remained a stubborn wall, shielding the hidden compartment until he withdrew a small, polished wooden box. He stood and tossed it onto the silk between them. It landed with a dull thud.

It was a chessboard.

"How do you fare with chess?" he asked abruptly.

Eloir looked at the board, then back at him, her expression unreadable. "I am... capable. It has been a long time since I last played with someone who did not let me win."

"I have never lost a match to the old man," Tiberius said, a rare note of genuine pride coloring his tone. "It is one of the few things in this life I truly own, you could say...." He knelt again, this time retrieving a small, chilled carafe.

"Isn’t drinking during the bedding ceremony considered bad luck?" she asked, a faint smile touching her lips as she began to set the black pieces into their starting ranks. "And how did you smuggle it in past my father’s guards?"

"The old man has a long reach and a quiet tread," Tiberius muttered, pouring a golden stream into two cups. "I told him I needed a bit of liquid courage to face the night."

"Am I truly that terrifying?" she asked, her eyes meeting his as she slid her knight forward in an unorthodox opening move. She apparently took the white without even saying it.

Tiberius handed her a cup and settled onto the bed, his mind shifting into the cold geometry of the game. He countered her knight by clearing a path for his bishop

Never fails

"Who taught you?" Eloir asked softly.

Tiberius’ hand, which had been fidgeting with a pawn, stopped mid-air.

She noticed. A small, knowing light appeared in her eyes. "Was she the sun of your youth, then?"

"Yes," he replied, his voice barely a whisper as he finally forced the pawn forward. "She was."

"Ah," Eloir murmured, her knight leaping across the board to claim his pawn. "A girl. I should have guessed. "

He made no answer, his focus intensifying on the carved wooden pieces.

"What happened to her?" she pressed, her voice losing its edge, becoming almost human.

"Why so many questions?"

"Why not?" she countered, the tartness of the cider lingering on her tongue. She leaned back against the plush pillows, the heavy silk of her bridal gown pooling around her like a silver spill. "You know my entire story, every bloody, public Chapter of it. What is the harm in me trying to gauge yours? If we are to be locked together in this cage, we might as well know what forces forged the bars. So, who was she? The girl who took your first? A boyish obsession that refused to fade?"

"No," Tiberius said, his voice dropping into a low, resonant hum. "She was never that to me.She was never mine, that was half her beauty."

He could sense the skepticism radiating from her. It was easy for someone to confuse a profound devotion for a common itch. He suspected Julian harbored the same delusion, treating Tiberius’ preoccupation with the woman as a passing adolescent fever that would break with time.

But the fever had only burned hotter. Where are you, Clara?

"I find that hard to believe," Eloir said, her eyes tracking the slow, methodical movement of his fingers over the board. "A man and a woman, alone in the shadows of a palace?There isn’t much to do there , isn’t it?’’

"Is your world so small? Do you truly believe no bond can exist between a man and a woman unless it is carnal?"

"Pretty much," she replied, her tone devoid of bitterness, stating it as a simple law of nature.

"Mothers exist, don’t they?" he countered, sliding his bishop into an aggressive diagonal. "Are they not exempt from your rule?"

"Was she your mother, then?" she asked, her gaze sharpening as she leaned forward, sensing a crack in his armor.

Yes, he thought. In every way that matters.

"No," he said aloud, his expression a mask of impenetrable stone. "But I owe her everything that I am. I owe her the very air I am breathing in this room tonight."

That earned her undivided attention. The mocking levity vanished from her face, replaced by a genuine, hungry curiosity. She pressed him, her questions becoming sharper, more insistent, but Tiberius had spent a lifetime guarding his secrets against better inquisitors than her. He gave her nothing but silence and the cold clack of the chess pieces.

Finding the well of his past gone dry, Eloir sighed and turned her attention back to the game, though her mind seemed to drift. "On my first marriage night," she began, her voice distant, "they went through with the full ceremony. The whole rabble followed us into the room. During the undressing, I felt more than one set of hands cupping my cheeks... and they weren’t the hands of my husband.Not that his would prove to be any different."

Tiberius gave her a brief, sideways look before returning his focus to the board. He made no comment.

The game continued in a tense, rhythmic silence until the board was a skeletal landscape of few remaining pieces. The talke some more, this time about a more useless subject.

Eloir reached out, her fingers hovering for a second before she tipped her queen forward.

The fool...he could no-

"Checkmate," she muttered, her eyes meeting his with a spark of triumph.

Tiberius looked down at the board, his jaw tightening as he surveyed the ruin of his defense.

"One more," He declared as he set up the pieces.

They would play two more games after that , and he would lose both.

They would go to sleep then, one with a strangely light heart and the other with a grumbled and clearly unsatisfied one, both of them unknowing however, that in that night someone else was preparing a very nice gift for both of them at their wake.