Chapter Text
Gizel paces the room. Everything is coming undone. Stormfist lost. The loyalist army approaching the capitol.
Marscal stands looking out the window. East, toward the mountains. Gizel already knows what the old man is planning. That in the end, despite his words, his ambitions, he will abandon them all for some magic buried in the ice. All for a rune.
“Was it worth it, father?” Gizel asks. He doesn’t expect a satisfying answer, but then, like the war, that wasn’t always the point.
“It will be,” he says, eyes narrowing. “They’ve cracked the Sun Rune. I’ll bear it, at last, and usher in a new age.”
Cliché. Boring.
“Well then,” Gizel says. “Tell me, are you proud of me?”
Marscal flinches, eyes dropping from the window, though he doesn’t turn to regard his son.
“Of course,” he says. “I couldn’t have done this without you. Without your sacrifice.”
Gizel smiles. Ah. Of course. His sacrifice. To Marscal Godwin, everyone is as valuable as what their sacrifice brings. Like Bahram Luger had been valuable. Like Dilber Novum had been valuable. Valuable corpses, they’d all be. While Marscal…
“Dolph!” Gizel says, sudden as lightning. The young man doesn’t move, doesn’t show any response to the sudden use of his name. “Dolph, how are you? I feel I haven’t checked in with you recently. Doing all right? Any complaints?”
“No, Lord Godwin,” Dolph says.
“Anything you want, though? To be made a Queen’s Knight, perhaps? I fear you might feel left out.”
“I wish only to serve,” Dolph says.
Is it sadness in the young man’s expression? Boredom? Bloodlust? It’s still hard to look at him and remember that he’s the one who killed Gizel’s mother. Just a boy, then. A boy no longer, though.
“Excellent answer. Isn’t that a good answer, father?”
Marscal huffs and moves to the sideboard, pours himself a large brandy.
“You should go to bed, Gizel,” Marscal says. “Tomorrow is a busy day for you.”
Gizel looks at the door to his quarters. Of course he should. Should sleep and wake and watch the last of his schemes unravel. The last ploy slip into ruin. And wonder all the while if he wanted to win in the first place. No. Certain that he didn’t. Oh, to have a father like Marscal Godwin.
“Are you proud of the Prince, father?” Gizel asks.
Marscal’s head whips up. Bloodshot eyes radiate heat as they glare across the room as Gizel. “What? Why should—he’s the reason we’re in such trouble. An interfering, effeminate disgrace!”
“And yet he’s winning!” Gizel crows. “He’s completely defied our expectations. Who would have thought? And isn’t that something to be proud of, in a way? Our Prince, strong enough to overcome every obstacle? To kill our generals? To take our home?”
“He’s nothing,” Marscal says, downing the brandy and pouring another. “It’s that bitch Lucretia’s doing. Her webs that have infiltrated everywhere. A foreigner.”
“One you invited here,” Gizel says.
“You would do well to guard your tongue,” Marscal snaps.
Gizel laughs. “He is no pawn. He’s chosen of the Dawn Rune. He’s killed your best killers. Concede to him, father. Admit that you were wrong, that yours is not the only way to be strong.”
“I conceded nothing.” Marscal downs another brandy, pours again.
Gizel holds up his hands. “Okay. Okay. Just…doesn’t it ever get old?”
“What?”
“This quest you have for revenge. This quest everyone has…for revenge.”
“I don’t—”
“Oh come off it! Be honest with yourself—be honest with me. This day at least. This whole thing is just one big circle, waiting to be closed. The war for succession—”
“That was Barrows!”
“No! No, father, stop putting this on anyone else. You blame Barrows because he used the tactics that you perfected? Because he was slightly less subtle? Nether Gate didn’t pop up over night. And it wasn’t just the Barrows who employed them. But what? They killed your cousin, your wife. And you launch a scheme for revenge that spans decades. You feed the rest of your family to it, just as the Barrows, just as the Queen, fed all of their families. All for revenge, all to win.”
“You understand nothing of power, boy,” Marscal says.
“I know enough to die for it,” Gizel says. He feels drunk but he hasn’t touched a drop. How fun this all seemed when it was love that drove them all. Love for those they had lost. Love for what they could gain. His love of Sialeeds. But no, even that well was poisoned. By Marscal’s plotting, by the long bitterness that had snaked its way into Gizel’s and Sialeeds’ hearts. A need to punish those who had plucked joy from their grasp.
“Which is, ultimately, all you know of it, too, father.”
Gizel turns and leaves the room, doesn’t falter as his father’s glass shatters against the wall near the door. Let him rage. Gizel marches down the hall, not to his quarters, but to the courtyard. The open air. The moon.
He plans to watch the night, free from the weight of his father’s plans and plots. Free of his own hurts and hatred. Free. He reaches the courtyard and stands there, looking up at the sky. The stars in their incalculable orbits. Another life, and maybe he could have traced himself in heroic arcs through the stars, found a home. A family worth having. Instead…
Already the stars are fading, though. To the east the sky is beginning to give hints of its first blush. The dawn is coming. But until it does, Gizel imagines a world where his father had survived the war and…put down his arms. Mourned his wife and honored her not by more war, more betrayal, more assassins in the night. But with peace. Peace for his son, for all the children who had lost, and who stood to lose more. Gizel imagines the man he might have been. The one he’s known in flashes, in the broken moments he knows that he’s not a hero.
Did he fight as hard as he could have? Was he as ruthless as his father wanted? Does it matter? He is the villain of the story, he knows that. But did he try, at least, to restrain the worst of his father's impulses? Did he make things better than they might have been, if he were just another ghost to avenge? He wishes on the stars for an answer, but they are silent.
He'll just have to live with what he's done, he knows. Lucky for him, though, he doubts he'll have to live with it for much longer.
Eventually, the dawn comes, and Gizel is left with the man he is. And all the decisions that led him to this point. He walks back through the halls of the palace, and prepares to meet the day.