MAKE YOU VILE.

ㅤESTABLISHED. MARCH 2025 ©

ALTHOUGH WITH THE HALF WIDE EYES OF A CAGED ANIMAL, hands bound with rope, shoved to a cart — Rattay horses, Rattay soldiers, Rattay banners — by Sir Radzig, Erik scoffs. "And what did I do to you, my Lord?" The title's spit with rancor and with venom, Erik's voice vitriolic and vulnerable as if Radzig's face, Radzig's fucking face, had set within Erik's aching chest a fire angry and furious and raging. Erik hates Radzig. Erik hates Radzig's very existence, that Radzig had known Ištván and had known Ištván intimately, that Radzig had fathered the bastard that murdered Ištván, that Radzig had fathered the bastard that murdered Ištván by defenestration, a forty metre fall. It was cruel. Radzig's bastard is cruel, horrifically cruel, and surely the apple must not fall far. ( Had Ištván survived the fall at first? ) Erik's hands flex against the rope, chafing rough and rubbing wrists raw. "I know what you did. What your bastard did." Again is the "title" spit with rancor and with venom, though Erik cares not for the situation of Henry's birth: Henry is a bastard because Henry is a fucking bastard but a fortunate bastard for it isn't Radzig who Erik's revenge will be exacted against but little Lord Capon. ( Selfishly, Erik would like to kill Radzig, too, for having ever known Ištván. ) "If he never knew you—" Erik's hands flex, breathing hard and bullish through flared nostrils. "—he'd still be alive."

COMMISSIONED FROM AN ARMORER IN ITALY, the Milanese Brigandine Istvan's fitting Erik into. The armor wasn't needed. Erik had armor. Erik had fine armor, crafted by the finest armorer in Sasau not five months before. But Istvan had insisted, and who is Erik to refuse such exceptional, pretty armor — who is Erik to refuse Istvan? Istvan could dress Erik as the retinue's prized pony and Erik wouldn't complain. Well, Erik would scarcely complain, as Erik is scarcely complaining, now, flustered and with a face flushed red. "It reeks of favoritism." The Milanese armor, the fitting of a soldier, a commoner and a former farmhand, in to the Milanese armor as one would fit their beloved into a corset or finery. The favoritism was obvious before. The favoritism was painfully obvious before, Erik's sickbed two months before not a bed of hay in the barn but a bed in one of the opulent chambers of Toth's estate. Now, though, Erik is wearing the favoritism, and how pitiful and pathetic is the pride swelling behind the cage of Erik's chest for being the warlord's favorite. "Forgive me for the, uh, im – imprudence. The bluntness." Such florid words still not fluent on Erik's tongue even close to two years later. "But the others won't be pleased." Not that they'd been fond of Erik before.

"I'VE KILLED BEFORE." By Erik's boots lies the corpse of a bandit, their would be murderer were Erik not painfully aware of the sound of boots in the leaves, were Erik not painfully aware of the breathing that belonged to neither man nor the child sleeping against Kade's shoulder, were Erik not painfully aware of the susurration of a sword unsheathed from its scabbard, plagued by thoughts of death, destruction, soldiers and bandits plundering, vultures and scavengers picking at the bones of the dead. "And I'll kill again — if it means keeping you two safe." Erik's eyes shift to Violet, sleeping soundly and unaware. He'd cut the brigand's throat for that reason: to be quiet.