Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king-Chapter 1025: What trust can there be?(2)

"That was truly divine" Merelao muttered, patting his stomach with a series of rhythmic, contented sighs that sounded like the aftershocks of a great battle.

"If you find our palate so agreeable, I would be more than happy to send a cadre of my cooks back to your capital," Alpheo offered. He sat far lighter than his guest; a stone sat in the pit of his stomach, curbing any appetite he might have possessed, after all today was the day where everything would be decided.

He maintained his mask of stoic detachment, but inwardly, he was acutely aware of the stakes. He needed this alliance with the desperation of a drowning man, and, fortunately, it seemed Merelao was becoming increasingly drunk on both the wine and the atmosphere.

"They say the path to a man’s soul is paved through his stomach; I believe I finally grasp the literal truth of that ancient proverb," Merelao said, reclining until his chair groaned. "I truly cannot find the space for another morsel, even for the sake of my own life."

Yet, as he spoke, he reached for his goblet . It appeared that while his appetite for meat was sated, his thirst for the vine remained bottomless. Alpheo, noting this, signaled the servants to keep the decanter close.

"Tell me," Alpheo said, leaning forward slightly. "Are you ever going to enlighten me as to how your first meeting with my son truly transpired? My curiosity has grown quite sharp after the... spirited displays at this table. He is quite a closed and bookish boy, can’t see what you must have done to awake him so."

"It is a sacred secret between a man and a cub, Prince. It is really not my place to betray the sanctity of such a fascinating encounter," Merelao replied, his smile widening, though his eyes remained strangely piercing. "The real question, the one that dances in my mind like a flame, is how you chose to cultivate such a boy. You treat him with a peculiar brand of respect, not that of father and son really.... Most men of our station would have curbed their sons long ago, correcting every perceived slight with a lash of the tongue to curry favor with a guest. Yet you? You simply gave him the open field and told him the sky would be his own to fall from. You left him to the mercy of his own consequences.

And at the same time, you yourself put big trust one me , after all was I a different man I could have had another reaction to all of this..."

"Do you find my methods to be in error?" Alpheo asked, tilting his cup....of water.

"On the contrary." Merelao mused "The boy is grounded; his feet are planted in the earth, not in the clouds of his own vanity. That is a rare harvest for those born into the purple of power. Five hells, I am man enough to admit that even I suffered from the delusions of my own divinity at that age."

He spoke as if he did not suffer from it still.

"It is the perennial plague of the high-born," Alpheo muttered, his gaze drifting to the ripples in his water. "They believe they are owed greatness by right of blood, but greatness is a thing that must be hunted, bled for, and seized. I have made it my life’s work to ensure Basil understands that my triumphs are not his inheritance. He is the master of nothing he has not earned. There is no tutor more profound than the cold weight of experience. Soon, I shall grant him the greatest gift a father can bestow: the agonizing opportunity to grow. No matter the height of the wall or the bitterness of the pain, I must allow him to become a man I can respect as a peer."

Alpheo fell silent, realizing with a start that he had lied. He did not need to wait; he already respected the boy.

He loved the fire in Basil’s spirit, but he needed that fire to be tempered into a blade that could hold the weight of a crown. He had provided the tutors, the histories, and the drills, but now he had to provide the one thing a father fears most: the hardship. He needed Basil to not merely know the history of Yarzat’s suffering, but to feel the sting of it, so that when he eventually took the reins of power, he would not treat the state as a toy, but as a sacred trust.

"You possess a rare wisdom, " Merelao said, his tone shifting into something approaching genuine admiration. "I find myself respecting you, if not for your prowess on the field, then for the terrifying clarity of your fatherhood. I wholeheartedly hope the boy becomes everything you wish for."

And everything I fear he must be, Alpheo thought, his eyes fixed on the empty seat where his son had sat. He didn’t want a successor who was merely a name on a list; he wanted a man who could stand alone when the rest of the world turned to wolves.

He sighed....the time for parables and domestic posturing had passed it was time to work.

"Perhaps," he begun "we should migrate to a place of more... strategic comfort. There are maps in the solar that require your particular eye, and I believe we have reached the hour where—"

"How do you dream of dying?"

Merelao interrupted him with a voice that was suddenly, jarringly devoid of its theatrical lilt, Alpheo had grown accustomed with.

It was a question tossed out of the blue, like a stone dropped into a still well.

Alpheo froze. That....took him by surprise , really.

He was a man prepared for questions of logistics. He was prepared to be insulted, to be bargained with, or even to be threatened.

He stood silent for a long moment, his hand still resting on the edge of the table. He looked at Merelao, searching for the joke, the hidden barb, or the drunken whim, but found only a cold, crystalline sincerity in the younger man’s posture.

"How I... wish to die?"

The silence stretched again, heavier this time.

He looked down at his water, then back at the golden prince who sat across from him, waiting for the only truth that truly he believed mattered between men of their station.

"That is a question for a poet supposedly," Alpheo said softly, with a hollow chuckle.

"Do not hide behind your jest now," Merelao whispered, finally raising his sapphire eyes to lock onto Alpheo’s. "Every man who lives as we do, with a crown of thorns and gems, must have a dream of the end. Is it in a bed of silk? On a field of iron?I cannot see myself fighting alongside a man that does not even though what he would repute as a meaningful death.

"That is a macabre question to pose over the dregs of a dinner," Alpheo countered, leaning back and lacing his fingers behind his head. He watched the younger man with a cautious, calculating stillness, trying to discern the rhythm of the madness he was dealing with.

Merelao let out a sharp snort. "Is that so? My fellow lords have spent decades whispering that I am a queer, misshapen creature of the court. Why should I disappoint them now?"

His levity vanished like mist, he reached for the fine silk of his sleeve and pulled it back. On the pale, sun-kissed skin of his forearm, two identical, puckered patches of grey scar tissue stood out, ghostly marrings on an otherwise perfect canvas.

"I am certain the vultures in your employ have brought you the rumors," Merelao said, his voice dropping down to ice. "They call me mad. They call me a lunatic. It is one of the many poisons my uncle drips into the ears of the populace to see my birthright withered."

He stared at the scars, his eyes reflecting the dying orange of a sun-set that was not there "I was bitten by a viper when I was but a cub. A lethal thing. By every law of the physicians and the gods, I should have been carrion before the sun set.They said I was lucky enough I did not drop dead minutes after the bite...old fucks knows nothing of me.

I lay bedridden for months, trapped in a sarcophagus of silk and sweat. I outlived every one of those decrepit old fucks who stood over me shaking their heads."

He chuckled, but it was a dry, joyless sound. "I recall it vividly. Being cold, yet burning with a fever that felt like liquid lead in my veins. My skin felt as though it were fashioned from needles; every movement sending shivers of burn up my back. And in that agony, I realized one thing: I did not wish to die there. Not in a bed. Not under a blanket, smelling of sickness and fear, watched over by ..... the only one who truly cared for me."

He looked up, and for the first time, the joviality was entirely stripped away.

"I do not seek the hollow victory of old age. That is a prerogative of the mundane, and I was not born for the mundane. I was terrified then, not of the silence of the dark, for the dark and I are old friends, but of dying nameless. I feared being a footnote that fades after forty years of dust. I want my name to be carved into the marrow of history. I want them to read of my feats and weep, crying, ’Alas! If only the gods had not snatched such a light so early!’"

Merelao leaned over the table, his intensity so great the candles seemed to flicker toward him.

"They will never know that the gods did not catch me. They will not know that I spent my life screaming for their attention, demanding they look at me. For a man like me, the when is a trifle. The how is a mere detail. It is the afterward that matters. I do not care if I perish young, so long as I perish after I have made the world unrecognizable."

He went silent, his sapphire eyes locked onto Alpheo’s, waiting for the Fox to reveal if he, too, was a man who lived for the echo his death would leave behind.

But he was not , Alpheo was a coward. He did not care for his legacy, he once thought he did. He was a liar then as much as he was a coward now.

He looked down at his hands, his nose suddendly growing runny. He sniffed , passing his fingers to relieve the itch.

How did he wished to die?He never wandered that. He always had death so close that someday...he knew it would just happen. One moment he was alive and then....poof. Gone.To the dust.

’’I...’’ he found his throat to be dry, he coughed to clear it. ’’ I once had a friend...’’