Of Gods and Warriors ✓

Chapter 25

Disappointment. Regret. Hopelessness.

In the dim firelight, they all glimmered as one in the dull eyes of Alastair Henris as he was brought before him.

Linder was familiar with such emotions a little too much for his liking, having seen them time and again in people he cared for. Gradually, he'd learnt to look for subtle changes, seen how one's eyes sunk, drained of life, heard how breaths came in long, heaving sighs and shoulders went limp, words sounded hollow.

Disappointment-- he'd seen on his parents' faces when Linder had finally mustered up courage to tell them he did not wish to spend the entirety of his life within the confines of their village, looking after the family farm and estate.

Regret, the purest form of it, he had witnessed in Gray's eyes-- and it had shaped everything the corporal did, from the decision to accompany him to Brittlerock, to the tinge of guilt in his every generous gesture.

And hopelessness in a fatally wounded old veteran's smile, whose life Linder had desperately tried to save when Brittlerock had been under siege years ago.

Thus, he had gotten better at reading people. Yet that was not an ability he was glad to possess, for he did not wish to empathize with the entitled noble-born archer before him, who was stricken by an onslaught of all the aforementioned emotions at once.

After his capture, Alastair had been taken down to the patroller's quarters underground where he could not escape the firm vigilance of the vampires-- although he hardly was in a state to flee.

"Kill me, I beg you." His voice was hoarse, throat parched. "Please."

The entirety of Kinallen's encampment wanted the same-- and so it had proven challenging to bring him down here alive after Klo's squad and a dozen patrollers had found him cowering behind a hut down at the village.

And Linder could see why they were riled up. To the soldiers-- most of them peasant-born, Alastair represented everything they despised in the nobility-- him potentially being an assassin was naught but an excuse.

Even Linder himself was not free of that bias, for Sir Troth's face came into his mind, as the soldiers cruelly dragged the archer across the camp grounds.

But he could not let Alastair die... yet. He needed answers.

The furious crowd had somehow been pacified-- or rather, distracted, when Linder and Wolturs presented to them the commander's silver cloak clasp found in the woods, and shown them a possibility of the commander's abduction-- although that discussion had been anything but peaceful; a brain-racking headache hammered behind Linder's eyes as he now faced Alastair.

His matted hair was like a haystack, his whole demeanor devoid of his dignified, pure blood status-- he looked starved and parched, and his captors had not been quite civil, if the bruises and broken teeth were any indication. Alastair lay gasping and in chains before them on the cold stone floor of the small room, patrollers standing guard outside the door.

Beside Linder, Farren cursed under her breath.

"Oh, I'd love to see that highborn in shackles, even for once," she'd said on her way here, full of pure malice just like everyone else. But now it seemed to have been replaced with shock instead.

Linder took his seat in a chair. "Very well. Why do you think you should be killed?"

Alastair wiped his bloody nose with the back of his hand. "Because I killed Commander Karyk."

Farren and Linder exchanged glances. Commander Karyk was anything but dead, and the Drisian soldiers they faced in the woods had only confirmed that.

However, Linder pressed on. "And how did you kill him?"