The court was a battlefield long before steel met steel.

Long before trebuchets tore through keep walls and siege towers blotted out the sun, long before screams and steel and smoke, the deadliest game was played over wine cups and sealed letters. Deceit whispered behind closed doors. Smiles hid blades. Nobles circled like wolves, waiting for a weak throat.

After Foltest’s death—murdered by a Witcher, no less—the vultures wasted no time. Temeria, once proud and unified, frayed at the seams overnight. The nobles bickered. The council splintered. Everyone wanted power, and no one wanted the crown—until it was clear the only thing worse than ruling was letting someone else rule.

And so they found the only one they could stomach. The bastard. You.

Hidden away by Foltest’s quiet command, raised in obscurity for your own protection, you were suddenly dragged into the light and shoved onto a throne you never asked for. A crown too heavy. A title soaked in blood. You were too young, too inexperienced, too honest. You spoke like someone who thought politics could be clean. You believed in words like “justice,” “unity,” “peace.”

Roche watched all of it with hard eyes.

He stood behind you at every council session. He read every letter that crossed your desk. He vetted every servant who brought you food. He never trusted anyone—because he knew the truth of power. It didn’t corrupt; it revealed. And what it revealed, more often than not, was treachery.

He didn’t sleep. He didn’t falter. He didn’t pretend to be your friend—but he never left your side.

And then came war.

Then came the battlefield.

Nilfgaard pressed from the south, eager to snuff out the last flickering lights of the Northern Kingdoms. Kaedwen and Aedirn tore each other apart in the east like starving dogs, and Redania loomed with its own games, its own ambitions. Temeria was surrounded, bleeding out, gasping for breath.

So they clad you in armor and shoved a sword into your hands. “It’ll look good for morale,” someone said. “The people need a symbol.”

A symbol. Not a soldier. Not a commander. A painted banner in flesh and blood.

But you went anyway.

Roche rode beside you, barking orders with his cold clarity, keeping the flanks from buckling, dragging discipline from chaos. Sorceresses flanked your sides, spells snapping like whipcracks, lighting up the sky in arcs of fire and lightning. You didn’t even have time to breathe, let alone think.

The banners surged forward. The enemy met them head-on. Steel clashed. Screams rose. The horns were drowned beneath it all. The ground ran red and black with churned mud and blood.

And then—

A shot. Clean. Well-aimed.

Not an arrow. A bolt. Precision-forged. Not luck. Not random. An assassin’s shot—meant to end a war with one pull of the trigger.

It struck just under your ribs. The pain was indescribable—white-hot, slicing through your awareness like a blade through parchment. You reeled. Stumbled. Fell. Roche was the first to reach you.

They said Roche tore through the camp like death itself.

His horse crashed through the gates, flanks heaving, foam on its mouth. Soldiers leapt aside, stunned to see the Commander of the Blue Stripes riding like a man possessed. He didn’t speak. He didn’t stop. Not until he reached the healer’s tent—the largest, thick with incense and groaning with the injured.

He was off his horse before it had even stopped moving.

The guards outside stepped back too slowly. Roche shoved them aside, teeth clenched, eyes narrowed like steel drawn against stone.

Inside, the scent hit him first—burning herbs, boiling blood, the metallic tang of pain and magic. Healers bustled in a storm around your bed. Hands glowing. Cloth stained dark. Incantations whispered. A torch flickered. Sweat beaded down a mage’s temple.

And you… you were barely breathing.

Your chest hitched with shallow, gasping motions. The bolt was gone—extracted with care—but the wound was deep. Red soaked the linens around your torso. Pale lips. Paler skin. You looked nothing like a ruler.