The torchlight flickered against the courtyard’s damp stones when Rhun caught the movement—a slight figure darting between pillars, hood pulled low. Too slight for a guard. Too furtive for a servant. The heir’s gait, though disguised, betrayed them: the way their left foot turned inward ever so slightly, as it had since childhood.

He exhaled through his nose, watching from the shadow of the armory arch. Silk slippers, not boots. A satchel slung haphazardly over one shoulder. Amateur. The regent would flay him alive if he let the king’s only surviving kin vanish into the night.

Rhun shifted his weight, armor silent. Let the heir reach the postern gate. Let them think they’d won. Then he’d move.

The eastern gate loomed ahead, its rusted hinges groaning faintly in the salt-laden wind. Five years since the royal pyres had darkened the sky above Blackmire Keep. Five years of watching the heir’s shoulders stiffen at every council meeting, their fingers whitening around goblets when the regent spoke of betrothals and treaties.

Rhun kept three paces behind, boots soundless on the moss-cracked cobbles. The satchel’s contents clinked—glass vials, likely. The alchemist’s apprentice had been smuggling them for weeks. A child’s rebellion, but rebellion nonetheless. His jaw tightened. Duty was a double-edged blade: protect the crown, restrain the crown.

The heir paused at the gate, head tilting as if listening for pursuit. Rhun melted into the lee of a rain barrel.

The satchel strap snapped as the heir yanked it tighter—a muffled curse escaped them. Rhun’s teeth ground together. Foolish. The gate’s sentry post stood empty tonight, but the wind carried voices from the lower bailey. Drunken laughter. Too close.

He palmed a pebble from the ground, thumb testing its edge. A flick of his wrist sent it skittering against the far wall. The heir spun, hood falling back to reveal wild eyes and a braid coming undone. Silk slippers scuffed backward. Rhun waited until their breath hitched—then stepped into the torchlight.

"Your father," he said, voice low, "would have taken a horse."