Chapter 1305: Lovestruck(1)
The king o leaned heavily against the stone wall, arms crossed over his chest, watching his newest legate with a mixture of amusement and mild pity.
Ratto sat slumped in his high-backed chair, an elbow planted firmly on his knee, his left leg trembling so frantically against the floorboards it looked as though the boy were actively drowning in dry air. Outside the heavy oak doors, the palace courtyard was alive with the bright, crisp sounds of harps and lutes. The court musicians were already doing their busy wares, enthusiastically setting the frantic tune for what the rest of the kingdom believed to be a joyous occasion.
Through the thick timber, the muffled melody of The Swan and the Wolf drifted into the dressing room. It was a pretty, sweeping song about misplaced devotion. It might have done wonders for the atmosphere if the groom didn’t look entirely ready to lose his midday meal.
Actually, it’s quite fitting, Alpheo reasoned dryly, straightening his broad back away from the masonry.
Flanking the nervous groom were Jarza and Asag, acting as the self-appointed stars of the day’s entourage. The two veteran warriors were currently busy taking turns giving Ratto heavy, booming slaps of encouragement and lofty, loud reassurances.
Little good it was doing.
"What if this is all a massive mistake?" Ratto suddenly whispered, his voice cracking.
"Hey, hey, look at me, it’s no mistake, boy," Asag grunted, bringing a massive, calloused hand down onto the young man’s shoulder with enough force to rattle his ribs.
"Hers or yours?" Alpheo chimed in from the shadows.
The question earned the King a round of thoroughly sour stares from everyone in the room.
"Both," Ratto groaned, completely ignoring the glares. Something foul was clearly gnawing at his insides. He stared at his polished leather boots as if he were about to puke right over them. "I mean... she is a true princess of an ancient house. And I am... I am..."
"A legate of the crown? A high lord by royal decree? A close, trusted advisor to the King himself, and a remarkably young, handsome bastard?" Jarza asked, as he raised an highbrow "You’re entirely right, Ratto. What a wretched, pathetic specimen you are. How will she ever survive the shame?You ought to drown yourself before going through this"
That bit of sharp wit did remarkably little to convince the man of the hour. A collective, exhausted groan rippled through the room as Ratto instinctively lifted his thumb and began frantically munching on his fingernails as if they were the tastiest delicacies in the palace.
Jarza instantly slapped the hand away from his mouth. "Stop that, you’ll get yourself raw before you even touch the altar. This is a joyous moment, boy. Why the hell are you souring the air with all this nonsense about errors? It is a sweet, beautiful thing to marry a woman for actual love, and it’s far too godsdamn rare."
The older warrior stepped in closer, thrusting a thick finger deep into the rich red fabric of Ratto’s wedding doublet. "They say a man will live his whole life and never truly know a woman, but a woman will look at a man and know him whole. She knows exactly who you are, Ratto, and she still decided to tie her entire life to yours. There must be something rare in there, something she has clearly seen and you’re too blind to notice. Give yourself some proper credit."
For a long, heavy heartbeat, Ratto stayed perfectly still. He closed his eyes, taking a succession of deep, ragged breaths until the frantic trembling in his leg finally began to subside.
"Is this... is this normal, then?" the young legate asked quietly, looking up at the hardened soldiers around him. "To doubt everything you’ve ever known when you’re standing right at the edge of the cliff?"
Had Edric , Laedio and Rykio been present in the room, they would have simply shrugged their shoulders in unison; all of them were stubbornly unmarried and preferred the company of whatever they fancied . But they were not here to offer their rough comfort. Instead, they were deep in the blood-soaked valleys of the south, doing the dirty, unglamorous work of hunting and hanging rebel rats.
Had things in the province gone a little better, the two lords would have been sitting right here beside the hearth, drinking fine wine, sharing spiced food, and laughing through this joyous and embarrassing moment with the young groom. But things were not going well down south. In truth, they were going from bad to worse, and the crown needed its fiercest hounds down there to prevent the entire border from spiraling directly into the dirt.
They had all initially thought this elusive Vulture Lord to be a passing nuisance, a brief, desperate gasp from a dying rebellion. But the bastard was not passing. That much was now as clear as the summer sky.
It was the second royal resettlement camp he had successfully breached and gutted in less than a single month. That kind of humiliation could not be allowed to continue. Something definitive had to be done. Not just because of the localized harm the rogue lord and his band of raiders were causing, but because of what those burning camps fundamentally signified to the smallfolk.
Every supply cart burnt on the high road meant a loss of authority; every loyal village given over to ash signified that the new King’s shield was weak. If Yarzat was truly to be the grand, permanent light in these conquered territories, then they needed to ensure their light completely burned away the darkness. So more resources and more men had to be sent south.
Luckily he had a new batch of both that he was ready to send , no doubt to the happiness of Edric.
Still, Alpheo knew it was no good to sour his legate’s wedding day with the tally of war.
"Most men and women in the high courts have their marriages meticulously arranged by fat old men behind locked doors," Alpheo said, stepping forward so the candlelight caught his scarred face. "Whatever frantic doubts they possess usually circle around changing political inclinations or how heavy the bride’s dowry is. Do you truly think many people in this world get to unite out of pure love, Ratto?"
"You’re right, sire," Ratto muttered, running his trembling hands through his thick, blonde hair, pushing the strands back from his face before immediately launching into another rapid tirade. "I am truly a dumb man. She is going to marry an absolute idiot. I should have stayed ion my place. She would be a thousand times better off with a proper lord someone who actually knows how to speak , someone who—"
They had all officially had it up to their godsdamn necks with the melodrama.
"Gods above, will you stop this pathetic charade?!" Asag finally snapped, breaking first. He stepped right into Ratto’s space, his booming voice easily cutting through the distant sound of the harps. "Grow a fucking pair of stones and conduct yourself with some basic decency!Is this a fucking legate or a whimpering boy? What are you planning to do? Annul the entire covenant? Are you going to march out there into the bright sun, look the King, the high lords, and her royal family in the eye and say, ’Sorry friends, I don’t feel like going through with it today’? Is that the grand plan?"
Ratto blinked up at him, entirely defenseless. "Should I?"
Before the word could fully leave his mouth, Asag’s heavy hands clamped down onto Ratto’s shoulders like two iron vices, squeezing until the boy winced.
"No, you should fucking not," Asag growled, his face inches from the legate’s. "Because if you walk away from that girl now, I assure you on my mother’s grave, you will regret it for every miserable second of the rest of your life. Do you truly think your mind won’t crawl back to this room every single night? Do you think you won’t sit in your cups and ask yourself, ’Why did I do that? Why did I willfully deny myself a lifetime of happiness out of fear?’ Look me in the eye, Ratto, and tell me you won’t do exactly that!"
Ratto opened his mouth, his throat dry. "I..."
"You’re a fool," Asag sighed, the sudden tempest of his anger fading into a deep, bone-weary tiredness that lined every inch of his rugged face. He let go of the boy’s shoulders with a dismissive wave. "That’s plain as day for all of us to see. But somehow... women look at us and see something much better than we actually are. Don’t go proving her wrong by acting like a coward now."
Jarza chuckled softly from the side, pouring a small splash of pale wine into a goblet and handing it to the groom. "Drink. It’s just enough to dull the edge, not enough to make you trip over your own cloak on the stairs.Remember if you are scared to do something, do it with fear. You’ll have much less regret, if you do."
Ratto took the goblet with both hands, his knuckles still white, and drained it in one long, desperate swallow. He wiped his chin, looking between the three men who had built a kingdom from blood and mud.
"If I trip," Ratto muttered, a tiny, fragile spark of his usual humor finally returning to his eyes, "promise me you’ll just kill me where I lie. It would be cleaner than facing her "
Alpheo smirked, reaching out to give the boy’s red shoulder a firm, parting squeeze. "If you trip, legate, at least you’ll meet her father and give him your congratulations. Now straighten your collar, put on your smile, and let’s go give the court their joyous occasion. The vultures can wait for tomorrow."
And at long last he did, rise , trembling and all, but he still rose. To the happiness of all, who had truly started to fear for the worse.