CHAPTER 49: HUNTING GAME

The Duchy of Pentecase unfurled before them like a painting brushed by gods, rolling fields of sapphire grass, silvery streams mirroring the sky, ivory spires rising like silent sentinels. Even the wind carried a softer note here, gentle, fragrant with pine resin and wildflowers. No wonder visitors often mistook serenity for weakness.

Reichardt Razalo did not.

"The Duchy of Pentecase is more beautiful than I imagined," Reichardt said, voice laced with the poised cadence of a diplomat trained to measure words like blades. "It has a serenity that Xirudah’s lands have long lost."

Ahce lifted a teacup, porcelain as pale as moonglass. The steam curled toward her face like a whisper.

"Serenity," she echoed, swirling the amber liquid in contemplative circles. "Perhaps that is only because our battles are fought behind closed doors."

A flick of something passed Reichardt’s lips, subtle, restrained, but undeniably genuine. A smile carved not by humor, but by shared understanding. "Then perhaps we are not so different after all."

Lord Pentecase, silver-haired and ever observant, rumbled a pleased laugh. "Good, good. It gladdens me to hear heirs speak before striking. You will have much to discuss when the time comes."

When the time comes...

Three words that clanged loud in Ahce’s mind, a bell tolling a truth she wasn’t ready to face but could no longer outrun.

Lunch passed in a haze of negotiations, trade routes, mineral quotas, border security, words dipped in strategy and masked in etiquette. Reichardt spoke with quiet command, precise and firm. His voice never rose, but it never needed to. Authority bled from every syllable, natural and unwavering.

Yet, to Ahce, the politics blurred into background noise. It was not what he said that pulled her attention, it was how. The rhythm of his speech, the calculated breaths between thoughts, the subtle commanding lilt that stirred memories she had stuffed deep into the caverns of denial.

He avoided personal discussions with surgical skill.

But once, only once, his eyes betrayed him.

Their gazes collided, and in that split second, the mask cracked. There, buried beneath iron discipline and ducal composure, she glimpsed it, recognition. Pain. And beneath them both, something dangerously close to fear.

Not of enemies. Of truth.

When the meeting dissolved, custom demanded courtesy. So Ahce escorted him to the courtyard where stone met soil and regal greetings met moonlit honesty. The night air tasted of pine and winter’s promise.

"Duke Razalo," she said softly, voice intentionally neutral, "I hope your stay here will be comfortable."

"It will be brief," he returned, unreadable as a locked tome. "But you have my thanks, Lady Pentecase."

She dared a step closer, the lantern glow painting her sharp features warm as embers. "You look like someone I once knew."

Darkness passed through his gaze like a storm cloud crossing a star. "People say everyone has a double somewhere in the world."

"Perhaps." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "But doubles do not share the same soul."

He froze. It was barely a flinch, a microscopic fracture in composure, but she saw it. He recalibrated instantly, the fissure disappearing behind iron gates.

"Good night, Lady Pentecase."

He walked away without looking back.

Ahce remained beneath trembling lantern flames, heart beating treason inside her ribs. The cold was present, but it was not what chilled her.

It was the truth she had almost spoken aloud.

Morning arrived too beautifully for the tension it carried, gold bleeding into crimson across the horizon, clouds streaked like the world itself had split open. A sunrise painted in warning.

The Hunting Festival.

A tradition that glittered like a celebration but bore the teeth of political chess.

Ahce stepped into the courtyard already clad in ceremonial hunt attire, dark emerald coat detailed with gold-threaded sigils, sleeves tapering into leather gloves, boots polished to obsidian shine. The Pentecase crest gleamed at her collar like a crowned challenge. Beside her waited the ancestral hunting rifle, older than the empire, heavier in legacy than steel.

"Lady Pentecase," her attendant murmured, securing the glove strap, "You will be riding beside Duke Razalo today. By His Majesty’s personal arrangement."

Ahce froze. "The Emperor specifically requested it?"

"He believes it will strengthen ties between duchies."

A diplomatic way to say... He wants to measure the temperature between you both.

She inhaled slowly. "Of course."

But inside, she heard the real meaning echo.

Let us see if history repeats itself.

The palace grounds glimmered like a battlefield dressed for a ball. Dozens of noble carriages and reinforced automobiles lined the outskirts. Banners of gold and blood-red rippled overhead. Horses snorted impatience. Nobles glittered like jeweled predators, laughing, whispering, calculating.

Then she saw him.

Reichardt Razalo stood beside a towering onyx steed, coat black and silver like moonlight sliding across steel. Broad-shouldered, composed, terrifyingly statuesque. The morning sun carved his features sharper, almost mythic, as though war gods had shaped him from their finest obsidian.

He noticed her approach.

"Lady Pentecase." He bowed once, elegant, respectful, unreadable. "Your presence honors the hunt."

She returned the gesture with practiced grace. "Then we share the same duty. Let us hope His Majesty finds satisfaction today."

He offered his hand to help her mount. The moment their gloves touched, an electric familiarity thrummed up her arm, dangerous, intimate, and undeniable.

"Ready?" he asked, voice low.

"As always," she lied, smiling like a sharpened secret.

The horns blared. The gates opened. And the hunt began.

They rode like arrows, swift, tense, purposeful, forest swallowing them whole. Hooves thundered. Mist coiled low. Hounds bayed somewhere in the distance like omen-tongued heralds.

Gradually, the crowd thinned. Voices faded. Nobility scattered, swallowed by ambition and competition.

Until only two remained.

Silence stretched between them, weighted, deliberate.

A stag emerged, regal, antlered, stepping through fog like a spirit crowned in bone. Ahce lifted the rifle with slow precision...

"Don’t."

Reichardt’s voice cut cleanly through instinct.

She blinked. "Why?"

His gaze shifted just slightly beyond the animal. "You’ll hit the one behind it first."

She followed his eyes and froze.

A pit. Hidden. Camouflaged with branches and loose earth.

A careless step and someone, horse and all, would have plunged.

"How did you..."

"Instinct," he cut in smoothly. "Old habit."

The words struck like déjà vu.

Instinct. Old habit.

Things Richard always said.

They moved on, deeper, quieter, toward the forest’s unspoken heart.

Until the silence became wrong.

No wind. No birds. No insects.

Stillness like a held breath.

"Something’s wrong," Ahce murmured.

A snarl answered.

Then a second.

Shapes began sliding from darkness, massive wolves, mutated past nature’s mercy, eyes smoldering red, bodies mangled by foreign engineering or forbidden alchemy.

Ahce paled. "Those aren’t natural animals in the wilderness."

"Hybrids," he confirmed grimly, drawing his blade with lethal fluidity. "Stay behind me."

She didn’t move.

Not because she obeyed.

But because, for the first time that day, someone stepped in front of her not out of duty.

But instinct. Old habit. The kind born from memory.

It’s harder to pretend day by day.

I’m not someone fragile.

And beasts don’t scare me.