Chapter 55

“How on earth would I know?” With a wall of heavily armed knights standing between him and his lifelong bully, Kosha finally found the courage to step forward. “I only came back for my geese. Where are they?”

“Fuck the geese!” Veorn spat out a mouthful of dirt and began babbling in incoherent panic. “You ran off with her. The whole damn town says so. I know she chased you around for years.”

Lucien tilted his head, crystalline irritation sharpening his expression.

At the silent cue, Eydric drew a heavy set of iron shackles from his belt and fastened them securely around Veorn’s wrists. He then seized the blacksmith by his filthy collar, hauled his massive body upright, and dragged him bodily into the sunlight.

Lucien watched the removal in complete silence.

Kosha had just turned back to search the empty shed for stray feathers when a tentative, reedy voice drifted through the shattered doorway.

“What in the heavens is all this dreadful commotion?” A newcomer peered into the gloom. “Is that really the little goose herder?”

Kosha spun toward the voice. His blue-gray eyes widened with pure delight when he recognized the deeply lined, familiar face.

“Pig herder!”

The unguarded intimacy in his mage’s joyful cry drew Lucien’s brows into a dark frown.

A remarkably short and frail middle-aged man hovered awkwardly on the threshold, wiping his grimy hands against his trousers.

“Goodness gracious, what happened to Veorn?” The older man squinted past the sunlight. “Are you truly the goose herder?”

Kosha rushed toward the doorway.

He nearly failed to recognize his old neighbor, marveling at how unexpectedly robust the normally sickly man now appeared. The two crowded shoulder to shoulder with easy familiarity and immediately launched into an animated, overlapping exchange of local gossip and delighted pleasantries.

Lucien folded his arms across his chest and observed the touching reunion with a deeply skeptical, calculating stare.

“I kept your lovely geese perfectly safe and sound,” the pig herder announced proudly, though his nervous gaze repeatedly flicked toward the two towering, heavily armed killers standing like statues behind his young friend.

“You really kept them safe?” Kosha clasped the man’s hands with profound gratitude. “Thank you so much. I’ve been sick with worry.”

The older man released an awkward, high-pitched laugh and clumsily patted Kosha’s shoulder. “Come now, we’re hardly strangers. What’s a little favor between friends?”

Strictly speaking, they were almost complete strangers, a fact made painfully obvious by the way the pig herder continued tracking the dangerous knights with naked terror.

“If you don’t mind me asking,” the older man whispered, “who exactly are these imposing gentlemen?”

Having endured the tedious reunion long enough, Gosrick stepped out of the shadows. “Let us prioritize retrieving the livestock.”

“Yes, absolutely. Right away, my lord.”

Instinctively sensing the crushing aristocratic weight radiating from the armored men, the pig herder hunched his narrow shoulders and folded himself into a frantic, scraping bow.

His cottage stood directly beside Kosha’s ruined property.

Tending livestock naturally guaranteed a certain degree of filth, but this particular yard surpassed simple untidiness. It resembled a mud-slicked disaster zone. A deafening cacophony of honking and squawking erupted from the rear pens, filling the humid afternoon air.

The three men of exceptionally high noble birth had willingly marched across the bloodiest battlefields in the kingdom, yet all of them looked visibly unsettled by the prospect of entering a poor peasant’s squalid backyard.

Unbothered by the stench, Kosha vaulted cleanly over the rotting wooden fence.

“My beautiful little ones!”

At the sound of his familiar voice, a massive flock of snowy birds rounded the corner of the hovel.

They were significantly larger and rounder than anyone had expected.

The lead goose spread its wings astonishingly wide, like a man opening his arms for an embrace, then hurtled toward Kosha in a frantic storm of slapping, webbed feet.

Kosha did not flinch. He dropped to his knees and threw his arms wide.

Nine heavy birds collided with him at once, burying his gray robes beneath a chaotic, boisterous eruption of joyful honking.

“I missed you too.” Kosha laughed brightly, burying his face in their soft feathers. “I’m so sorry I left you behind. But wait, how did all of you get so incredibly fat?”

The bizarre spectacle resembled an emotional reunion between long-lost blood relatives.

Lucien watched for a full minute before his thinning patience finally snapped.

“You can socialize with your dinner later,” he ordered coldly. “Load those noisy creatures into the wagon immediately.”

One of the largest geese had wound its long neck affectionately around Kosha’s shoulder. At the sound of Lucien’s voice, the bird whipped its head toward the blond lord. It fixed him with wild, unmistakably hostile eyes, thrust its beak forward, and unleashed a piercing, demonic shriek.

HONK-HISS!

“Goodness, what has gotten into you?” Kosha scrambled to restrain the furious bird as it writhed and hissed in his arms.

Sensing the escalating chaos, the experienced carriage driver hurried forward and began professionally herding the flock toward the waiting transport.

The pig herder seized the opportunity to step into Lucien’s path, wearing a sheepish but calculating smile.

“If you intend to take them back now, there’s the small matter of the expensive feed they consumed, the extensive daily care, and the associated labor costs.” He addressed Kosha, but his greedy eyes remained fixed on the wealthy nobles.

Lucien dismissed him with a bored tilt of his chin. “Settle his account, Gosrick.”

“Bless you, my generous lords!” The pig herder dropped into a rapid series of exaggerated bows before pressing his advantage. “There is also the matter of my wooden fence. The wild birds completely shattered it when they first broke into my yard, so perhaps you might cover the structural damage as well.”

“We understand perfectly,” Gosrick replied with a heavy sigh. “Just tell me the total.”

Ignoring the question, the peasant wrung his filthy hands. “They also gnawed rather aggressively on several irreplaceable household possessions, so I’ll require fair compensation for my ruined heirlooms.”

“This man possesses an endless supply of pathetic excuses,” Gosrick muttered, clicking his tongue in disgust.

Realizing the extortion attempt would continue indefinitely, the knight withdrew an elegant notepad and quill from his breast pocket and quickly scribbled down an address. He shoved the parchment against the man’s chest.

“Add up your entirely fabricated damages and send the final bill here.”

“May the gods bless your endless wealth.”

The pig herder smiled so broadly that his cracked lips nearly reached his ears. He then crept back to Kosha’s side and gave him another condescending pat on the shoulder.

“I have no idea what sort of trouble you stumbled into, but it seems you found yourself a highly profitable arrangement, little goose herder. Then again, I suppose I no longer have the proper standing to call you that.”

“Thank you for everything, sir,” Kosha replied warmly.

“I always knew you were destined for greatness.” The older man winked conspiratorially. “Ever since that mysterious lady raised you, always calling you ‘young master’ this and ‘young master’ that. I always thought you…”

HACK! COUGH!

A sudden fit of violent, wet coughing seized the pig herder and cut off the dangerous revelation.

His weathered face flushed a mottled, alarming purple as he struggled to breathe.

Lucien’s sharp gaze snapped toward Kosha.

The mage’s soft smile had frozen into a mask of subtle terror. The bright, joyful light that had animated his blue-gray eyes only moments earlier drained away, leaving behind a hollow, guarded emptiness.

“Did I swallow a bug?” the peasant wheezed, spraying spit. “This is terrible.”

“You need to go inside and drink fresh water immediately.” Kosha hastily pushed the choking man toward the cottage. “I really must be leaving now.”

“Just go on, then,” the pig herder managed between agonized coughs. “When you finally make it big, don’t forget the enormous favors this old man did for you today.”

“Don’t waste another second on him,” Lucien muttered.

He seized Kosha’s thin wrist and pulled him away from the stench.

Lucien found the entire squalid neighborhood offensive on every conceivable level. He had absolutely no intention of ever returning to this rural nightmare, and he intended to ensure that his mage never set foot there again.

He needed to get both of them out of the filthy, suffocating village before its rot infected them.

One final, infuriating complication arose when they returned to the staging area.

Kosha approached the wooden supply wagon, fully intending to ride back exactly as he had on the journey there. Lucien instinctively stepped into his path and blocked the tailgate.

Kosha looked up at him in genuine confusion.

“Are you seriously planning to ride back there?”

The cargo bed was packed to the brim with nine aggressively agitated geese.

Kosha nodded with perfect sincerity. “I’m quite sure I can squeeze into a corner.”

The flock spotted Lucien through the wooden slats. Nine serpentine necks stretched over the siding as the birds erupted into a synchronized chorus of territorial fury.

HONK! HONK!

Lucien recoiled in pure disgust.

“How do you expect to survive several hours inside that feathery madhouse?”

He surveyed the dirt road.

There were four riders but only three available horses. A narrow wooden bench sat beside the coachman, but subjecting the mage to such a degrading and exposed position felt fundamentally wrong.

Having finished securing Veorn to a nearby post, Eydric adjusted his heavy leather saddle and stepped purposefully into the silence.

Gosrick raised a desperate hand to stop him, but he was a fraction too late.

“Shall I take the mage on my mount, my lord?” Eydric offered smoothly.

“And why, exactly, would you do that?”

Lucien shot back with a harsh retort, not pausing for a second. It wasn’t a genuine inquiry; rather, the sharp tone was a forceful demand to speed up their exit. He grabbed Kosha by the upper arm and spun him around.

“Do you even know how to ride?”

“Perhaps… a little?” Kosha stammered, shrinking beneath the intensity of his stare.

“You either command the animal or you don’t.” Lucien’s patience had completely evaporated. “What kind of pathetic answer is ‘a little’?”

Before Kosha could defend himself, a pair of large hands, clad in leather, wrapped around his narrow waist. Despite his famously frail appearance, the mage still had the skeletal frame of a grown man. Lucien, however, lifted him straight off the ground as if he weighed nothing at all. The sudden lift sent Kosha thrashing in startled panic, but his captor remained as immovable as a stone pillar.

He feels impossibly light.

Shock flickered through Lucien.

For one absurd moment, he wondered whether a mage’s bones differed fundamentally from those of ordinary men. The young man’s waist seemed to consist of little more than a handful of fabric wrapped around hollow ribs.

Lucien deposited the wriggling mage unceremoniously atop his massive warhorse, then vaulted into the saddle behind him.

One heavily muscled arm closed around Kosha’s torso, forcing the restless body to settle securely against his chest.

The immediate, perfect alignment between them felt remarkably and dangerously unexpected.

“We won’t be returning to this filthy province for a very long time.” Lucien leaned down until his warm breath brushed Kosha’s sensitive ear. “Tell me now if there’s anything inside that ruin you actually need to pack.”

Kosha opened his mouth, intending to ask for his threadbare spare tunics, but Lucien tightened his hold before the request could escape, preemptively crushing any peasant nonsense.

“I don’t mean useless garbage,” he clarified darkly. “I mean something irreplaceable. An item of actual value. A keepsake from your dead parents, perhaps.”

The mage closed his mouth and swallowed the request. He stared toward the distant horizon, considering the question with genuine care for several long seconds before slowly shaking his head.

“I possess nothing of the sort,” Kosha answered quietly.

“You have absolutely nothing?” Lucien pressed. “Not even a single heirloom?”

“Not even one.”

The absolute firmness of the reply stood in stark contrast to Kosha’s usual hesitation and stammering.

Lucien’s gaze sharpened with a calculating and predatory intensity. His eyes moved along the tense slope of Kosha’s shoulder, paused on the exposed pallor of his neck, traced the curve of one ear, and finally rested on the soft crown of his head. Breaking away from this sudden fixation, Lucien glanced down at the knight who was waiting.

“You will remain here with Eydric and finish cleaning up this pathetic mess,” he told Gosrick. “Follow our trail once the supply cart is secured.”

Gosrick stared up at his lord in open dismay. “And what of you, my lord?”

“Is there any logical reason for me to endure this stench a moment longer?”

The shameless deflection left Gosrick completely flustered.

That was hardly the central issue.

Was his master truly planning to abduct the mage and ride away entirely unescorted?

The physical arrangement between the pair appeared deeply unsettling, intensifying the knight’s darkest suspicions. Lucien seemed to be intentionally embracing the smaller man from behind, trapping him against the saddle. Riding double naturally involved close contact, but the specific positioning of the towering aristocratic warrior pressing himself tightly against the delicate spellcaster in gray robes appeared shockingly intimate and highly inappropriate.

Oblivious to the political scandal brewing beneath him, Kosha simply stared into the middle distance, pleasantly dazed by the chaos of the afternoon.

Gosrick remained frozen in the dirt, paralyzed by his conflicting duties.

Lucien snapped the heavy leather reins, and the massive warhorse surged forward.

Startled by the sudden acceleration, Kosha gasped and clawed desperately at Lucien’s forearm for balance. Lucien reacted at once, tightening his muscular arm around Kosha’s delicate waist and bracing him securely against the rushing wind.

Abandoned in the ruined yard, Gosrick could do nothing but stare helplessly as the intimately entwined silhouette receded into the distance.

***