"Eat shit, dog," the voice rasped from the gloom behind the bars.

Aldon said it to wound, but it seemed to instead find a soft mark in Merelao.

As he tossed his head back, his soft laughter smashed through the cramped stone corridor, the torchlight bathing his features in a warm, mercurial glow. He let the mirth run its course until it withered into a faint, lingering sigh.

"I suppose an old nut like you requires a heavier stone to crack," Merelao said, his voice dropping to a silken purr. "I cannot say the same for poor Sir Rolan. It seems his spirit has wandered to a place where his weary body cannot follow.What a weary thing to see..."

He shifted the torch, the amber light spilling over the young knight. Rolan was a pathetic sight, cowering in the corner of the filth-streaked cell, trembling with the frantic, rhythmic shivers of a beaten hound. The sight of his ward, the boy he had raised to be a pillar of ash and iron, reduced to such a state struck Aldon harder than any mace.

"You are as cruel as you are mad," he spat with heat "What manner of man smiles at the ruin he has wrought? But then, I am the fool. What should I expect from to be kinslayer and a betrayer?"

The word betrayer seemed to catch in the air. Merelao stepped closer, his face pressing against the cold iron bars, the only thing separating Aldon from the dark conjectures of the prince’s mind.

"I am not," Merelao spat.A flash of white-hot fury flickered in his eyes, gone as swiftly as a wind-blown candle, before his composure returned, smooth and impenetrable. "I am not mad. I am not cruel. And by the Father of law’s eyes I am no betrayer."

"How can you mouth such pieties," Aldon growled, "after the blood you have spilled? After this?After-"

"After everything I have done?" Merelao echoed, his gaze turning to one of weary distaste. "On the contrary, Ser, you invited this darkness into your own house. The man you slew was a loyal servant of my hearth for many years. You are fortunate I did not return the favor in kind; I could have seen your skull caved in like a ripened melon for such a slight."

He paced a short arc, his silken robes hissing against the stone. "I granted you a comfortable cage, and you rewarded my hospitality by stabbing me in the back. But what else should I expect from my uncle’s dog? Betrayal is the bread you break every morning. It is the very nature of the enemy I am beseeched to end."

"Then end it!" Aldon roared, lunging at the bars. The iron shrieked in its sockets, and Sir Rolan let out a whimpering cry, burying his face in his knees. "Speak your threats and make them true! Face me, sword against sword. Bring that old caretaker of yours if you lack the stomach for a fair fight, is he still apt with the steel, or has age turned his blood to water? Two against one! Will that enough be enough to make a fight of it? Or are you too craven to meet a proper challenge without treachery to tilt the odds?"

Merelao did not rise to the bait. Instead, he sank slowly onto the dirt floor, his blue silks pooling around him like spilled water in the mire.

"We may come to that dance later, if you still will it," he said softly. "But I come to offer you a different path. An alternative to the death you search so longingly."

Aldon remained silent, his chest heaving, his eyes burning with a cold, concentrated hate.

"Renounce my uncle," Merelao urged "Correct your course and take your place at my side. Lord Varo always spoke of you with great warmth, he told tales of how you fought with the strength of ten alongside my father in the war of youth.

If you bear any love for the memory of your old friend, come and serve his son. You will find glory and respect here, Ser Aldon. You are a fine blade; do not let yourself rust in a forgotten hole like a dagger that has outlived its purpose.You will find no glory in my uncle. Serve me and I shall elevate to a height that befit the mettle of yours."

"I spit on Varo’s memory if it led to you," Aldon rasped, refusing the alternative lesser men would have picked. "And I am certain your father would spit on you as well, were he here to see what you have become. He was loyal to his brother until his last breath. It is the law of the Gods, the younger obeys the elder. He understood the sacred order. He would give you no quarter if he held a sword this day."

"Or perhaps," Merelao mused, "he would have drawn his blade at my side. Perhaps he would have looked upon his brother’s works and recognized the rot you so blatantly ignored for what it is. Tell me, Ser Aldon, why would a man of honor spill his life’s blood for a sovereign who had already signed his death?"

"What madness is this!" Aldon roared, his patience snapping like a dry twig. "He died defending the borders of the realm! He died for the brother he loved! Do not sully his ghost with your filth. Is nothing sacred to you? You, with that... that mad blood in your veins?"

Merelao’s nostrils flared. Yet he did not strike nor raged. He merely leaned against the cold stone, he let the mention passed unchecked for the sake of the conversation. 𝚏𝕣𝐞𝗲𝐰𝕖𝐛𝐧𝕠𝕧𝚎𝚕.𝐜𝚘𝗺

"Ah, the bandit’s arrow," Merelao said in a nostalgic tone "A stray fletched stick from the woods, so they say. A tragic end for a titan. That is the tale my uncle spun for the courts, and the one you swallowed like sweet wine.It easy to drink something sweet is it not?Such a pretty lie, easy to believe, easy to dismiss.

But tell me, Ser, since when do forest thieves possess shafts tipped with armor-piercing bodkins, that only forged in the proper armories? A common poacher hunts deer with wood and flint; he does not carry the precision required to find the narrowest seam of mail above a Great Lord’s gorget. My father was not slain by a bandit. He was executed by an assassin"

"Lies," Aldon hissed, though a seed of doubt flickered in his eyes. "You have no proof. Only the venom of a spurned nephew."

"Even if you choose to drape your eyes in black, you cannot deny the theft of my birthright. You, who worship at the altar of the Father Protector of Laws, how did your stomach turn when the fat prince on his gilded chair conspired to strip the heirship from the rightful son of his brother? He took the crown that should have been mine in time and was planning to place it upon the brow of a cousin that has the stain of illegitimacy. Is that the ’sacred order’ you defend so fiercely, Ser Aldon? A law that bends like a willow whenever it suits a tyrant’s whim?"

He reached through the bars, not to strike, but with an open palm as invitation.

"The laws of men are a tattered shroud, Ser Aldon; my uncle saw to that when he wove the hemp to throttle my father’s life and then measured the coffin for my own. I offer you something truer.’’

Merelao stepped closer, his shadow stretching long and lean across the stones that made final home of many men. "But a man such as you requires more than the music of my voice. I see the suspicion curdling in your eyes, you take me for a spider weaving a web of silver deceit. But I have never dealt in that trade, nor shall I start with with you."

"And what do you call this rebellion if not the blackest treachery?" Aldon spat, his hands still white-knuckled upon the iron.

"I call it justice," Merelao countered, his tone a velvet caress. "It is the divine prerogative of the strong to reclaim what the weak have stolen. If they wish to play at being kings, it is their right and duty to defend what they believe right, a crown is warranted by strenght, just as it shall be my exquisite pleasure to feel my steel part their ribs for the attempt. But as I said... it is proof that moves the world, and even a blind man must eventually acknowledge the sun."

With a flourish of his hand, Merelao drew a heavy parchment from the folds of his cerulean silks. He held the torch at a distance, ensuring the dancing flame did not scorch the vellum, yet bringing the light close enough for the jagged black ink to bleed through the gloom.

Aldon squinted, his breath hitching as his eyes traced the jagged, familiar sigil at the base of the page, the broken seal of the Crown. "What... what is this?"

"The final aria of a dying man, that is not still dead of course." Merelao finished for him, his voice a low, theatrical hum. He nodded slowly, the light catching the sharp angles of his cheekbones. "Behold the last act of my beloved uncle, to be opened in his final hours. I am sure you are literate, and you can descend the fine ink of where he legitimise my cousin, to the one where he name me an enemy of the crown if I not come to swear oath to the bastard."

He leaned his forehead against the bars, the parchment crinkling softly between them. "And looking at this ser, who is my enemy, is it you, Ser Aldon? Is it the Oizenians?Is it the bandits of the wood?

Nay, for it is my own blood that would see me to the worms.’’