Kings Rising (Captive Prince 3)

It had come. It was here, all that was between them. Auguste, his honour and determination. And young Damianos, riding arrogantly into the fight that would change everything. Chained, his hand clutched to his stomach, Damen wondered if Laurent saw Kastor at all, or simply saw the past, two figures, one dark and one bright, one destined to live, the other to fall.

Kastor lifted his sword. Damen tugged uselessly on the chain as Kastor advanced. It was like watching a former self, unable to stop his own actions.

And then Kastor attacked, and Damen saw what a lifetime of single-minded dedication had forged in Laurent.

Years of training, of pushing a body never intended for martial pursuits to its limit in hours of ceaseless practice. Laurent knew how to fight a stronger opponent, how to counter a longer reach. He knew the Akielon style—more than that. He knew exact move sets, lines of attack taught to Kastor by the royal trainers that he could not have learned from his own sword masters, but only by watching Damen with meticulous attention as he trained, and cataloguing each movement, preparing for the day that they would fight.

In Delpha, Damen had duelled Laurent in the training arena. Then, Laurent had still been only half healed from a shoulder injury, and furious with emotion, both clouding the fight. Now he was clear-eyed, and Damen saw the childhood that had been taken from him, the years in which Laurent had re-formed himself for one purpose: to fight Damianos, and to kill him.

And because Laurent’s life had been dragged from its course, because he was not the sweet, bookish youth he might have been, but instead was hard and dangerous as cut glass, Laurent was going to take on Kastor’s best sword work, and force it back.

A flurry of strikes. Damen remembered that feint from Marlas, and that sidestep, that particular set of parries. Laurent’s early training had mirrored Auguste’s, and there was something heartbreaking about the way that he conjured him up now, half embodying his style, as Kastor embodied Damen’s, a fight between ghosts.

They drew alongside the stairs.

It was a simple misjudgement on Laurent’s part: a dip in the marble altered his footing and affected his line, his blade cutting too far to the left. He wouldn’t have misjudged if he hadn’t been tired. The same had been true for Auguste, fighting for hours on the front.

His eyes flying to Kastor, Laurent tried to correct the mistake, close the gap into which a man could drive his sword if he was ruthless, and willing to kill.

‘No,’ said Damen, who had lived this, too, jerking hard on his restraints, ignoring the pain in his side as Kastor took the opening, moving with merciless speed to cut Laurent down.

Death and life; past and future; Akielos and Vere.

Kastor let out a choked sound, his eyes shocked and wide.

Because Laurent wasn’t Auguste. And the stumble wasn’t a mistake, it was a feint.

Laurent’s sword met Kastor’s, forcing it up, and then, with a neat, minimal motion of the wrist, driving forward into Kastor’s chest.

Kastor’s sword hit the marble. He dropped to his knees, staring up sightlessly at Laurent, who was staring down at him in turn. In the next moment, Laurent brought his sword once across Kastor’s throat.

Kastor slumped and fell. His eyes were open and didn’t close again. In the silence of the marble baths, Kastor lay motionless, and dead.

It was over; like a balance restored, the past put to rest.

Laurent was already turning, already at Damen’s side, on his knees, his hands firm and strong on Damen’s body as though he had never left. Damen’s relief that Laurent was still alive for a moment obliterated all other thought, and he just felt it, felt Laurent’s hands, Laurent’s bright presence beside him.

Kastor’s death he felt as the death of a man he had not known, or understood. Losing his brother—that had happened a long time ago, like the loss of another self who had not grasped the flawed nature of the world. Later, he would face that.

Later they would lay Kastor out, taking him on the long walk, inter him, where he should be, with their father. Later he would mourn, for the man Kastor was, for the man he might have been, for a hundred different pasts and might-have-beens.

Now, Laurent was beside him. Aloof, untouchable Laurent was beside him, kneeling on the wet marble hundreds of miles from home, with nothing in his eyes but Damen.

‘There’s a lot of blood,’ said Laurent.

‘Luckily,’ said Damen, ‘I brought a physician.’

It hurt to talk. Laurent let out a breath, a strange airless sound. He saw an expression in Laurent’s eyes that he remembered from his own. Laurent didn’t flinch from it.

‘I killed your brother.’

‘I know.’

Damen said it, and felt a strange empathy pass between them, as if they knew each other for the first time. He looked into Laurent’s eyes and felt himself understood, even as he understood Laurent. They were both orphans now, without family. The symmetry that ruled both their lives had brought them here, at the end of their journey.

Laurent said, ‘Our men have the gates and the halls. Ios is yours.’

‘And you,’ said Damen. ‘With your uncle gone, there won’t be resistance. You have Vere.’