CHAPTER 468: THE KING’S REGRET

Inside the throne room, silence reigned like a sovereign of its own. The chamber stretched wide and cavernous, its high-arched windows bleeding daylight onto marble floors polished to a mirror’s sheen. At the far end, upon a throne wrought of polished white marble and gilded steel, King Heimdal sat, his posture straight but heavy, the crown weighing as much as the years etched into his stern face.

Before him stood two figures—his son, Alaric, and the man Heimdal had always believed to be nothing more than one of Alaric’s loyal guards: Angus.

Heimdal’s eyes lingered on Angus longer than was necessary. The memory came unbidden—of a much younger Alaric, brash and restless, arriving at the palace gates with two scrawny siblings he had purchased from the slave market at the borderlands of Estalis.

Heimdal had kept his distance, as he so often did with his son. To the court, to the kingdom, it looked as though he despised Alaric, as though the boy had inherited only his contempt. But the truth was less simple. Heimdal did care. He had set watchful eyes around his son, hidden guards tasked with protecting him in silence, even if Alaric never knew it.

"Your Majesty," Alaric said, bowing with the practiced aloofness of one who had grown accustomed to masking his heart. His voice carried neither reverence nor warmth, only cold purpose. "I am sure you know Angus—he has stood at my side as my guard for many years. But his true identity..." He let the pause linger, sharp and deliberate. "...is that of Prince Aragon. The firstborn of King Rafael Delmar, assassinated by his own general more than a decade ago."

The words fell like an iron weight into the hall.

Heimdal’s chest tightened; he drew in a slow, heavy breath that echoed faintly in the chamber. Prince Aragon. The lost heir of Estalis. And all these years, he had walked under Heimdal’s very roof, his true name buried beneath a false one. A blade hidden in plain sight. Would he one day become a threat to Northem?

Alaric pressed on, his tone clipped, decisive. "We will strike Estalis first. Prince Aragon has already gathered the remnants of the Estalis army—those still loyal to the Delmar line. With them, and with us, we will set out in two days’ time."

"In two days?" Heimdal’s thoughts churned. Too swift. Too reckless. He shifted on his throne, the stone creaking faintly under his weight. "General Bener is still injured. Who will lead the Eagle Team?"

"Do not trouble yourself with the Eagles, Father," he replied coolly. "We do not need them this time."

The words lingered, unsettling in their certainty. For the first time in many years, Heimdal felt as though his son was no longer the one being guarded—he was the one moving pieces across the board, and Heimdal could not yet see the shape of the game.

The great doors of the throne room closed with a hollow boom, their echoes rattling through the chamber long after Alaric and Angus had departed. Silence reclaimed the hall, but it was no longer the dignified stillness of a king’s sanctuary—it was suffocating, heavy with the residue of what had just transpired.

King Heimdal leaned back into his throne, the stone biting cold through the layers of silk. His hands tightened around the armrests, knuckles whitening as though he could anchor himself by force alone. But his grip did not still the storm rising in his chest.

Do not trouble yourself.

We do not need them this time.

Those are the words of a son who did not need his father’s help. And it made Heimdal uncomfortable.

For years, he had told himself that distance was necessary. That a king could not afford to provoke the people who had killed his queen, lest they would also assassinate his son. He played his game so well that he had let the court believe he despised Alaric, had even let Alaric himself believe it. And his son’s strength was born out of the cruelty he received, and in strength, survival.

He had watched from the shadows, ensuring his boy was guarded, his life preserved. But when he thought that he had removed the threats to his son’s life, and he could openly show him his love as a father, Alaric was no longer a boy. He has grown up.

And indeed today... today Alaric had not looked like a boy at all. He had stood in this chamber with a poise that was not borrowed from his father’s presence, but his own. And worse—he had spoken not as one seeking approval, but as one declaring intent.

As a father, he was proud of what his son had become, but he wished he could turn back time, so it would be a loving father who had molded Alaric into the man he was now, rather than his neglect and indifference.

Heimdal’s jaw tightened. In two days. Two days were too soon, and it was too bold. Yet Alaric’s certainty had been unshakable, his voice, the voice of a man who commanded fate rather than pursue it.

And Angus—no, Aragon. The revelation gnawed at him. The lost heir of Estalis, kept hidden in plain sight at his son’s side all these years. Heimdal had thought himself the master of hidden pieces, the weaver of unseen threads. Yet his son had harbored a prince beneath his very roof, and Heimdal had been none the wiser.

He rose from the throne, the weight of his crown dragging against his temples. His steps echoed as he paced the length of the dais, each footfall loud against the marble.

Was it really too late to be part of his son’s world?

He remembered Alaric’s final words—cold, clipped, dismissive. We do not need the Eagles.

The phrase lingered like a blade against his throat. Not a suggestion. Not a request. A dismissal of his authority, delivered without hesitation.

For the first time in many years, Heimdal felt a sliver of something he despised in himself: fear. Not for the war to come, but that he would not be a king worthy to be the father of a man that Alaric would become.