*King Alexander*
The sky was bleeding into dusk.
A warm amber stretched thin across the horizon, pulling the last threads of sunlight down with it—like a closing eye. Soon, even that would be gone, swallowed by the deepening blue of nightfall. Each breath of evening air carried the metallic tang of approaching rain, mingling with the sweetness of blooming heather and the green, living scent of dew settling on warm stone. Somewhere in the castle's belly, a servant's laughter echoed—bright, careless, untouched by the weight pressing down on Alexander's chest like a stone.
But none of it reached him.
He stood motionless on the platform, gloved hands at his sides, shoulders square but heavy. His cloak flared gently with the breeze. The warmth of day was retreating, leaving behind the sharp bite of approaching night, and with it went the last fragile illusion that anyone would take notice of his departure. The leather of his gloves creaked as his fingers tightened, loosened, and tightened again—a rhythm as steady and unconscious as his heartbeat.
As if sensing the tension radiating from the king like heat from a forge, his old friend stepped closer, his boots making the softest scrape against stone. Each footfall was measured, careful, like approaching a wounded animal.
"The horses are getting restless, Sire," Not gentle—Johan had never been gentle—but there was something soft underneath, like a hand reaching through dark water.
Alexander's throat constricted. The simple kindness in his friend's tone threatened to undo him completely. His fingers found the pommel of his sword, gripping until his knuckles went white beneath the leather.
"I'm aware." He could hear them—snorting and stomping against the stone, hooves clattering in irritation, leather straps creaking as they shifted. They were impatient with good reason. Only the fastest horses in the stable had been picked, ones used to racing and quick travel. They needed ones as they were about to travel and neck-breaking speeds to return.
Such horses strained to be let loose, to run full charge into the waiting darkness with the wind singing in their manes. It pained them to stay still for so long, their powerful bodies trembling with barely contained energy. Just as Alexander had felt only a day before, longing to see Ana, to find the letters, his heart hammering with desperate urgency—but now—
Alexander gripped his gloved hand into a fist. The leather gave a soft, protesting creak as it stretched taut across his knuckles. The sound was sharp in the cooling air, final as a door closing.
It was time to go. There was no reason to delay. Ana needed him—needed him with a desperation that clawed at his chest like a living thing.
Still, he lingered. His sapphire eyes lifted once more to the tall castle doors behind him. Closed, unmoving, and empty, the grand window overlooking the entrance darkened as the flicker of distant candles started to light deep within the walls.
"Sire?" Johan gently touched his sleeve. "If you'd rather postpone until morning—" Johan offered, his pale brown eyes following Alexander's gaze to those glowing windows.
"No." Alexander cut in, voice low. He didn't look at Johan. His eyes were fixed on the door, like they might open if he waited just one more second.
But they didn't. They wouldn't. Something inside already told him that much. He knew it. But it didn't mean he still held hope for hope's sake.
The memory hit him like a physical blow, back to countless times before. Belinda smiled and kissed him goodbye. Nicoli bounced up, wild hair flying as he raced across this courtyard, arms spread wide like wings. "Papa, papa!" The echo of that joy reverberated through the empty space between past and present, making Alexander's ribs ache.
How far had things changed? How completely the world had shifted beneath his feet while he wasn't looking. Alexander closed his eyes, feeling the weight of those memories press down on his shoulders like stones. When he opened them again, the castle doors remained closed, and he had to face the bitter truth that tasted like ashes on his tongue.
"No one is really going to say goodbye." The words escaped him in a murmur, barely more than breath, each syllable heavy with the weight of acceptance.
Johan blinked, confused. "Your Majesty?"
Alexander waved him off. "Nothing. We've wasted enough time." He turned on his heel and descended the stairs, one hand brushing the cold iron rail. His jaw was set, eyes unreadable. He kept his back straight, movements precise.
Don't show it. Not now. Not in front of the men.
He looked up instead, seeking refuge in the vast expanse above. The sky was now dark as spilled ink, save for the scattered silver of stars that watched him with their cold, ancient eyes and a pale waxing moon that hung like a coin suspended in black velvet.
"It'll be full by the time we get there." His voice carried a note of grim calculation, the words hanging in the air like a prophecy.
"It will, Your Majesty." Johan's agreement was soft, understanding.
Alexander's jaw clenched so hard his teeth ached. "I hope we won't be too late by then."
The carriage wheels creaked forward, wood groaning under weight. One of the horses whinnied—sharp, demanding. They would start biting soon if forced to wait much longer. Their need for movement, for purpose, mocked his own paralysis.
This is how it would be now. He had to accept that. His wife would remain a stranger to him, her face a closed book written in a language he had forgotten how to read, and his son would continue to grow further apart, sprouting up like a tree reaching for light Alexander could not provide.
His home would just become a place to sleep between journeys, a way station on the road to where he was truly needed.
But Ana needed him. Ana, who had no one but him. He had to be there for her. The daughter of his heart, if not his blood—
Alexander turned, preparing to look toward the carriages and end this torment. "We'll just have to hurry—"
"Wait!"
A voice from above broke the quiet. Both men turned as hurried footsteps echoed on the stairs. A smaller figure was rushing down the stone steps, cloak flapping behind him like a shadow trying to catch up.
Alexander's brow lifted in surprise. The sight of the boy, no, young man, coming toward him suddenly sent him back in time a moment—a wave of relief washed over him.
"Nicoli?" He instinctively searched the stairs behind him. Expecting to see another to step forth, Alexander's eyes searched the darkness behind the boy, hunting for another figure. For silk skirts rustling over stone, for the gleam of jewels in candlelight, for Belinda's painted smile curling into a soft smile. His heart hammered against his ribs in desperate hope.
But Nicoli was alone.
Alone. The disappointment hit like cold water, stealing his breath. Alexander forced his mouth into what he hoped resembled a smile, though it felt more like a grimace carved from ice.
"What are you doing here? It's late. You should be in bed."
"I didn't want to miss you," Nicoli panted. His chest rose with quick breaths, trying to catch himself as if he had been running the entire way. "I," He swallowed, "didn't know you were leaving tonight. I could risk–" His voice drifted off, not from exertion but from something darker that shadowed his young features, as if he'd suddenly remembered the gulf that yawned between them now, wide as an ocean and twice as deep.
But as the silence stretched, reluctance painted itself across his face in shades of uncertainty and pain, turning his sapphire eyes—so like his father's—downward toward the stone beneath their feet. Neither moved as the moment stretched taut between them like a rope pulled to its breaking point, and the boy's breathing finally slowed to a steady rhythm that misted slightly in the cooling air.
Johan gave a quiet, discrete tap to Alexander's elbow, the touch light as a bird's wing but urgent as a heartbeat.
"Your Majesty—the horses—"
The animals were growing more agitated by the moment, tossing their magnificent heads and stamping with increasing violence. Their nostrils flared wide, showing pink within, and their eyes rolled white with impatience. Metal clinked against metal as they fought their restraints.
They were ready to go. More than ready—they were straining to run, to eat up the miles between here and where Ana waited.
So was he.
Or at least, he had been.
"Climb in. I won't be long." Alexander nodded toward the carriage, and Johan offered a subtle nod and stepped away, vanishing into the carriage to leave father and son beneath the darkening sky.
The night wrapped around them like a shroud. Somewhere in the distance, an owl called—lonely, mournful. The sound seemed to echo in the hollow space between Alexander's ribs.
"Nicoli." He had to clear his throat twice before the words would come. "What is it? Did you come to say goodbye?"
"That, no, I mean—" Nicoli hesitated, his throat working as he swallowed hard. His breath had steadied, but his voice trembled like a leaf in wind, uncertain and young. His eyes flicked away, then back to his father's face, then down to study the stones beneath their feet with sudden intense interest. He seemed to be struggling to find words that wouldn't cut them both to pieces.
"I—" he started again, but the words caught in his throat like thorns, stuck and painful and refusing to come free.
Alexander leaned down, slow and careful, only for the boy to involuntarily step back. It was subtle—just a small retreat—but it pierced him more deeply than he expected. He forced a smile, though it strained at the corners.
"I'm going."
"I know. Back to Nochten." Nicoli responded, but again, the words seemed to drop and fall to the ground. His voice was low, brittle, and uncertain, as though speaking to a stranger.
Alexander caught it—the hesitation, the careful distance, the dull tone that didn't belong in his son's voice. It sat wrong, like a discordant note in a familiar song. The boy's resistance to open up, to bridge the gap between them, only made Alexander more painfully aware of how wide that gap had grown. But still, he pressed forward, clinging to hope like a drowning man clinging to driftwood.
Nicoli looked away, his jaw clenched tight enough to make the muscle jump beneath his skin, then opened his mouth like he wanted to say more—but nothing came. His throat worked once, then again, a silent, desperate effort to speak through the storm of emotions that Alexander could see twisting behind his eyes like storm clouds.
Alexander shifted his weight, the leather of his boots creaking softly against stone. "Nicoli—" he started, reaching toward his son with one hand, but the boy stepped back again.
This time, Alexander didn't try to follow. His hand, which had been reaching to brush unruly hair from his son's forehead—a gesture as natural as breathing, performed countless times when Nicoli was small—remained frozen in the space between them.
"I'll see you when I return," he said instead, forcing a smile, the expression burning his cheeks as if he needed it even more than Nicoli. It barely reached his eyes as the sensation of strangled words burrowed deeper into his chest. The ache of loving his son but not being able to touch him harrowing.
Nicoli looked down again, quiet. But then, in a voice small and raw that he almost misheard over the sounds of the night. "Ana, is she okay?"
Sapphire eyes lifted to meet his father's, full and wide and shimmering with unshed tears. The very question seemed to have taken all of Nicoli's strength to ask, leaving him pale and trembling. But the love was there—the devotion for his sister burned bright and pure as a candle flame, untouchable even as Alexander could feel the weight of time and distance pulling them away from each other. This here was still true, still clean and uncomplicated. Love, yes. But fear too, sharp as broken glass. Guilt that sat heavy on young shoulders. And confusion that clouded those blue eyes like fog.
"I don't know what's going on." Nicoli whispered, each word struggling to rise. "Hidi said something, but Ana hasn't even written back. And I can't ask Mom because—" His voice broke on the word 'Mom' like a tree branch snapping under too much weight. The words lingered in the air like something delicate and fractured, like crystal that had been dropped and was still falling.
Because she won't speak to you about Ana. Because mentioning Ana's name turns her to ice and stone.
So he's noticed. Alexander closed his eyes for a moment, his jaw tightening until he could taste copper. The boy was too perceptive, too aware of the cracks in the foundation that the adults around him were trying so desperately to hide.
Nicoli pressed on, the words spilling out now like water through a broken dam. "You're the only one who knows. Something happened—something bad. It's why you're suddenly leaving in the middle of the night like—like we're at war or something. What was in those letters?" Nicoli stepped closer, his eyes searching his father's face with desperate intensity. "I—I just want to know if she's alright. If Ana's safe."
The truth sat in Alexander's throat like poison. Ana, caught in the web of Nochten politics, Ana, whose letters had grown desperate, frightened. Ana, who needed him in ways that Nicoli never would—never understood the feeling of being completely alone like she was.
"She's safe. For now." But even as he said it, Alexander tasted the inadequacy of the words.
"That's not the same thing," Nicoli's voice cracked with newfound steel. His hands clenched into fists at his sides, and Alexander caught a glimpse of a man and not a boy. A man determined, uncompromising. "Safe isn't the same as okay."
The observation was too mature, too knowing. Alexander hesitated, again finding his son all to aware of things he wished he could save him from. It carved fresh wounds in Alexander's already bleeding heart.
"Nicoli, Nocthen isn't like Dawny. There are things happening that—"
"But something is happening!" " The words exploded from Nicoli like water from a broken dam. "Things are happening, and no one is telling me anything. You're all just pretending, but I can see it. What's going on between you two?"
Alexander froze. The question struck deeper than he'd expected.
"Between who?" he asked, though the answer felt like a dagger in his own chest.
"Don't play dumb with me." Nicoli's voice was steady now, filled with a terrible adult clarity that no nine-year-old should possess. "Between you and Mother."
Alexander's breath caught in his chest like a trapped bird. The mention of Belinda's name sent fresh pain radiating through his ribs.
"Something is wrong, isn't it?" Nicoli pressed on, his young voice heavy with adult understanding. "This is something more than just a fight. Mother is different."
Different. Such a small word for such devastation. Betrayal. Resentment.
"Nicoli—"
"Mom cries when she thinks I'm not looking." The boy's words came faster now, tumbling over each other in their haste to escape. "She never used to cry. And now she's saying things—she said you wanted Julia punished. That you ordered it. But... that's not who you are. Is it?"
He stopped and looked up, breath held in his throat.
"You would never… would you?"
Alexander stood motionless, shock rooting him to the spot like tree roots growing through stone. The accusation—Belinda's words filtered through their son's confused understanding—hit him like a physical blow.
Is that what she told him? That I—
"No." The word ripped from his throat raw and desperate. "That—" But he stopped suddenly feeling his words come back to bite him. Because to explain the truth would mean cascading down to reveal everything. What Belinda had done. What his own mother could be capable of.
Belinda might be willing to use Nicoli as a weapon against him, but Alexander would be damned before he sank to that level. The boy was just a child—nine years old and caught in the middle of a war he never asked to fight. He should never have been involved in any of this. No, Alexander refused to poison his son's heart against his mother, no matter what she had done.
"I never wanted Julia punished like that. Never." Alexander could only say at last as an attempt to give Belidna some credit for the sake it being the boy's mother. But only that.
Nicoli stared, eyes flickering. Uncertainty warred in his face like a storm. His lips parted, but nothing came. His shoulders sagged under the weight of it all. Alexander's mouth opened, but no sound came. Nicoli's eyes shone now—not with tears, but with the desperate glimmer of someone caught between loyalties, trying to hold together two crumbling truths.
"I don't know what to believe anymore," Nicoli said, voice breaking softly like wind hitting through the trees, hard, sharp, and low. "And everyone's keeping secrets, and I'm not—I'm not a little kid anymore. I'm nine now. And I want to know. I need to know. What happened to Ana? Why are you really leaving? Why do you all look so scared?!"
His breath caught at the end, chest heaving from more than just running now. There was no mask left. Just a boy—confused, frightened, angry—and a father who had no easy answers.
Alexander paused, his mind racing through possibilities and explanations, each one more impossible than the last. How could he even begin to explain? Where would he start? The marriage that had become a battlefield? The political machinations that had ensnared them all? The secrets that stretched back years, growing like cancer in the dark?
The explanation would be too long, too complicated, too ugly for a child's ears. And even if he could find the words, was it fair to burden Nicoli with the weight of adult failures and betrayals?
"It's complicated." The words felt inadequate even as he spoke them, but they weren't lies. If anything, they were the most honest thing he'd said all evening.
"Why does Mom not like Ana?"
The question hit Alexander like a physical blow, knocking the breath from his lungs and leaving him gasping in the night air. His vision blurred for a moment, the world tilting sideways.
"Nicoli," he managed, but the name came out strangled, barely recognizable.
"I don't understand," Nicoli said, eyes shimmering—not with tears, but with the ache of loyalty being torn in half. "Ana's my sister. I love her. She's never done anything wrong, never hurt anyone." His voice cracked. "What would make Mom hate her? What could Ana have possibly done?"
How— But just as quickly, Alexander closed his mouth, the words dying on his tongue. That was the most loaded question of all, wasn't it? Because the truth of it, the very reason for Belinda's hatred, would be—
From the carriage window, Johan's voice broke the moment. "Your Majesty? If we want to make the mountain pass before noon—"
"Alright," Alexander agreed, his voice hollow and distant. But he could feel Nicoli still watching him, still waiting for an answer that might make sense of the senseless.
But how could he explain that some answers were more dangerous than questions? That some truths could destroy more than lies ever could?
At that moment, Alexander truly looked at his son—not just glanced at him or smiled in his direction, but really saw him. He tried to memorize him as he was now, to capture this moment before it slipped away like water through his fingers. Still a boy, but barely—caught in that strange space between childhood and something harder. The soft roundness was leaving his face, revealing the sharp bones beneath. His limbs were longer now, and his movements were less clumsy.
All things that would change and keep changing with each journey, each departure, each time Alexander climbed into that carriage and chose someone else's need over his son's.
The loss of one child for another. The mathematics of love and duty, always requires sacrifice.
He looked at Nicoli—not just at the boy standing there, but at the space between them, the shape of what had grown in his absence. With each passing month, each trip to Nochten, Nicoli would become someone Alexander barely knew anymore. The realization hit him like a final blow, sharp and clean and utterly devastating.
"Nicoli, you've really grown up." The smile that accompanied the words was sad enough to break hearts, full of all the moments he'd miss, all the conversations they should but would never have. .
One day soon—sooner than he wanted to imagine—Alexander knew he would return from one of these journeys to find a man standing where his boy had been. A stranger in all but blood, with his father's eyes but experiences Alexander had never shared. And if by then it might too late to bridge the gap that yawned between them...
"I'll tell you everything. I will, one day. When you're old enough to understand." Alexander reached out slowly, giving Nicoli time to pull away if he wanted to. When the boy didn't move, Alexander squeezed his shoulder, feeling more muscle than bone beneath his palm. He really is growing up. I've missed so much of it.
The thought was a knife between his ribs, but Alexander couldn't afford to dwell on it. Not now.
Alexander climbed the carriage steps, each one feeling like a step away from something precious and irreplaceable. "Not now."
"But—Father—" Nicoli reached out, desperate again.
"I promise," he repeated, meeting Nicoli's eyes one last time. "You'll know the truth."
"The truth…" Nicoli echoed, but the word sounded hollow now.
"Continue to be good for your mother," Alexander added, his voice soft with something that might have been regret. The smile he offered was gentle but weighted with unspoken burdens. Forcing him to be obligated to be the love he could never be now.
"You are all she has right now. And she needs you more than ever."
"Dad," Nicoli blinked—once, twice—his expression flickering, as if the words had struck something deeper than they were meant to. His shoulders, already held too stiff, slumped ever so slightly—not in relief, but in quiet surrender.
He looked down, away from his father's face, as though the floor might give him better instructions on how to stand. His hands curled tightly at his sides. The fine muslin of his shirt pulled taut between his fingers, twisting, stretching. He didn't seem to notice he was doing it. His knuckles whitened.
Alexander stepped closer, his voice gentler now, as if that would soften the weight of his request. "And smile for her. She likes that."
Nicoli's jaw clenched, the muscle twitching once, like he was biting something down. His mouth opened slightly, then closed again. The smallest flicker crossed his face—a spark of emotion that never quite made it to the surface.Then it was gone, buried beneath the careful mask he was learning to wear.
"...Yeah," he said finally, but the word came out hollow, barely above a whisper.
The boy stepped back, and the space between them swallowed the last of what could have been said.
The carriage door closed with the finality of a coffin lid. Alexander's hand pressed against the window, separated from his son by mere inches that might as well have been miles.
"I'll keep my promise," he said, his breath fogging the glass. "Just wait a little longer."
The whip cracked overhead, and the horses started forward with a jolt. The carriage creaked as it pulled away from the courtyard stones. Through the rear window, Alexander caught one last glimpse of the boy, standing still, arms loose at his sides, shirt wrinkled where his fists had gripped it. His face was unreadable. Heavy. Suddenly, years and years older.
"Whatever happens, just keep smiling!" Alexander called out, his voice slipping through the open crack in the door.
But Nicoli didn't answer. He just stood there, watching the carriage grow smaller, swallowed by the morning light and dust of their leaving.
Inside the carriage, Johan shifted uncomfortably. His eyes remained fixed on the boy's retreating figure until darkness swallowed him completely.
"Will you really tell him?" Johan asked quietly, his voice nearly lost beneath the rumble of wheels.
Alexander's hand fell from the window. The smile he'd worn for his son's sake crumbled like old parchment.
"Will you tell him everything? The whole truth? About Empress Parsul? The uprising?" Johan's voice carried a note of genuine concern. "Do you think that is wise, Your Majesty?"
The questions hung in the air like smoke. Alexander closed his eyes, feeling the weight of years settling on his shoulders like snow.
"I promised I would." The words carried the weight of an oath sworn on something sacred. "I owe him that much. Both of them." He paused, his throat working. "They have to know eventually."
Johan released a soft breath, the sound heavy with resignation and old loyalty. He was prepared to follow his king's decision, but not without reservations that lined his weathered face like scars. "I know, Your Majesty, but if it ever gets out that she's not—"
"Belinda was right," Alexander murmured, almost to himself, the words barely audible over the rhythmic clatter of wheels on stone. His voice carried the hollow quality of a man finally seeing the true shape of his choices. "I am choosing one child over another. It just never dawned on me..." He swallowed hard, his throat working against emotions he couldn't name. "That Nicoli would realize it too."
The admission hung in the air between them like incense, heavy and choking.
"Your Majesty," Johan spoke gravely, his weathered hands clasping and unclasping in his lap. "This was your decision to make. And we both know that if you weren't there to help the Empress—"
"I'm not saying I regret it." Alexander's voice was steady, but a deep weariness ran beneath it like an underground river, cold and constant. The kind of exhaustion that sleep couldn't touch, that lived in the bones and fed on sacrifice. "I will never regret protecting Ana. Never." His jaw tightened, the muscle jumping beneath skin that had grown too pale in recent months. "But I'm just now seeing what the true cost is. And why Belinda's anger..." He paused, the words sticking in his throat like glass. "Why it's not without reason."
Johan studied his king's profile in the dim light filtering through the carriage windows—the sharp line of his jaw, the way his eyes had grown hollow in their sockets, the new lines that spoke of sleepless nights and impossible choices. He didn't press further, understanding that some pain was too raw for questioning.
Alexander exhaled through his nose, the way men do when the weight of too many years sits heavy behind their ribs, pressing against their lungs until each breath becomes an effort. The sound was soft but telling—defeat dressed up as resignation.
"Yes. I will tell him everything. I will tell them both." The words rang quietly but firmly in the confined space, carrying the weight of a vow that would change everything.
He turned back to the window one last time, though Nicoli was long gone now—just empty road stretching behind them, lined with trees that stood like silent sentinels in the moonlight. The landscape rolled past in shades of silver and black, beautiful and indifferent to human pain.
"It's a secret I've kept for too long already, and at the cost of so much." Alexander's reflection stared back at him from the glass, ghostly and insubstantial. "But they have a right to know. Both of them deserve the truth, no matter how ugly it might be."
It was a promise—one he meant to keep, no matter the consequences. A truth that would no doubt shatter what remained of their carefully constructed world and rebuild it into something unrecognizable. For better or worse, the reckoning was coming.
Johan shifted uncomfortably, the leather seat creaking beneath him. "And if the boy can't handle it? If knowing destroys what little family you have left?"
Alexander was quiet for a long moment, watching the countryside blur past. When he finally spoke, his voice was barely more than a whisper, lost almost entirely in the sound of hoofbeats and creaking wood.
"Ana and Nicoli are not related by blood."
The words fell into the silence like stones into deep water, creating ripples that would spread far beyond this moment, this carriage, this night. They were simple words—just eight syllables that contained the power to reshape two young lives entirely.
Outside, the moon continued its ancient journey across the star-drunk sky, indifferent to the human drama unfolding below. The horses ran on through the night, their hoofbeats marking time like a funeral drum, carrying Alexander away from one child and toward another, bound by love and duty and choices that had seemed so clear once upon a time.