Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king - Chapter 533

Chapter 533: A new prince(2)
For a small moment, Sorza did nothing but let his head rest against his mother’s chest.

He didn’t speak. He didn’t move. He simply allowed himself to sink into the warmth of her embrace, like a boy once more, tucked away from the world behind the quiet thrum of a heartbeat he’d known since the beginning.

His mother—Lady Calethra—had never been one to hide her affection for her children, not truly. Behind closed doors, within the soft light of chambers where courtiers dared not tread, she had been all things: warmth and will, tenderness and steel. She kissed their foreheads when no one was looking and whispered lullabies when they were children. Yet in public, like all royals, she had learned the armor of restraint. The mask of decorum that the blood of princes demanded. A crown, after all, did not sit well on a heart worn plainly.

But tonight, none of that mattered.

Tonight, there were no thrones. No gilded titles. No gazes of noblemen or whispers from the gallery. The court was broken. The family frayed. The future uncertain. And in that silence, stripped of all the pretense of royal life, she was not a princess consort, nor a matriarch of ancient blood.

She was simply a mother, holding her son like he had not been chased through forests with death at his heels. Like the weight of lineage and legacy had not crushed his shoulders raw. Like he wasn’t walking a path paved in the echoes of his father’s absence.

And Sorza—who had fled through fire and shadow, who had carried the silence of duty on his back for leagues—let her.

For a fleeting breath of time, the world outside the chamber ceased to exist.

No war.

No politics.

No ghosts.

Just the slow, steady rise and fall of her chest. And the comfort of knowing that, even now, someone could still hold him like he was not already halfway turned to stone.

But he knew the moment would not last.

It never did.

They stayed like that for a while—longer than a prince and his mother should, but not nearly as long as either of them needed. Eventually, Sorza drew a long breath, the kind that scrapes its way up from deep in the chest, and slowly pulled back.

His mother looked at him eyes still soft, still warm, but touched now with the familiar weight of a woman who had spent half her life managing a court and raising a family in a world full of daggers.

“Well?” she asked gently, brushing a few strands of hair from his face. “Tell me. What happened?”

He didn’t answer right away. He looked down, his hands clasped loosely between his knees. His voice, when it came, was low—flat at first, like he was reading from a script he didn’t want to believe in.

“We lost,” he said.

A beat passed. His mother said nothing. She waited.

“There was a raid in the night,” he continued. “They came down like ghosts from the hills. There was screaming everywhere. Some of the lords tried to hold the lines. Others ran.” His jaw clenched. “I… I ran along with my father and he nobles.”

He paused, eyes distant, as if replaying it in his mind.

“Then during the rout, we were pursued, and during it they started throwing javelins at us when they understood we were getting away.

One of them hit Father’s horse. He fell with it.

One minute he was right beside me, shouting, and the next he was gone. The forest swallowed him. I looked back, but the guard didn’t let me go. They said it was too dangerous. That he was probably already dead.”

His mother’s expression had grown unreadable—stone-like, but not unfeeling. She simply asked, “Do you believe them?”

“I don’t know,” Sorza admitted. “I… I want to say no. But I haven’t heard a word. No rider. No message. And if he had escaped, surely, he would’ve sent something by now.”

His mother exhaled slowly, brushing the last of the tears from her eyes. She stood, smoothing out the folds of her dark dress as if shedding the vulnerability of a grieving woman and donning once more the mantle of a royal matron.

“There are things you must hear now, Sorza,” she said, her voice no longer soft, but clear and composed. “And you may not like them.”

Sorza’s shoulders stiffened. He already didn’t like them, whatever they were. He knew that tone—it was the one she used when scolding ministers, or preparing her children for brutal truths wrapped in silken words.

“Word of the failed campaign has already begun to circulate,” she continued. “Whispers in the palace corridors. They say the army returned broken… that the prince did not return at all. And you—” she paused, letting the weight settle, “you rode in alone.”

Sorza looked down, guilt clenching again like a hand around his ribs.

“You cannot stop the rumors. But you can direct them. You can mold the story before it becomes a weapon in someone else’s hand.”

He raised his eyes, brow furrowed. “How?”

“You must step forward. Immediately. Take command of the court, speak with the ministers and the generals. They must see your face. Hear your voice. Understand that the line of succession has not broken—that the realm still has a spine.”

He said nothing. She pressed on.

“If your father is dead, you are prince now. If he is alive, but captured, then you are his voice, his sword, his heir. Either way, the burden is yours. And it cannot wait.”

Her words hung heavy in the chamber. The gilded light from the tall windows seemed colder now, as if the sun itself had recoiled from what was being asked of him.

Sorza stood, slowly, not quite steady on his feet, as though the very floor had changed beneath him.

“So I am to gather the court?” he asked.

“You are to command it,” she replied.

He looked toward the tall doors of his chamber, where beyond them the great halls stretched out like a waiting mouth—ready to swallow him whole.

“Do you believe they’ll come for us?” she asked. “The prince of Yarzat?”

He turned his head slightly, his hand still resting on the bronze handle. Her eyes met his, probing for the kind of certainty only generals and gamblers pretended to have.

He shook his head. “Not yet.”

She frowned. “You sound sure.”

“I’m not,” he admitted. “But I know he’s still fighting two other armies. They still have to fight against two other forces. He can’t afford to bleed himself dry over our bones while Herculia still snarls at his borders.”

There was a pause. Then: “And after?”

Sorza’s jaw tightened. He hated the question. Not because it wasn’t fair, but because it was exactly fair.

“After,” he said, voice heavier now, “everything changes. If he wins—and only if he wins—Herculia will be weaker than it has ever been. He’ll be at the height of his strength. And we will be alone.”

The silence thickened between them.

“We’ll send riders,” he continued, eyes on the stone floor. “To find out what became of Father. If he lives… we prepare a ransom. If he’s dead…”

He hesitated, the words clinging to his throat like bitter wine.

“…we make peace.”

There it was. Cold and final. It struck the air like a bell tolling at a funeral.

For a moment, he couldn’t look at her. He knew what it meant to say that. What it cost.

The stillness that followed said more than any scream could. His mother said nothing about making peace with the man who might have killed her husband. She didn’t flinch, didn’t protest—but neither did she approve.

She simply turned away from him, moving to close the window shutters with hands that had once cradled princes and now only sealed in the gloom.

The air in the room thickened again, but this time not with grief.

With consequence.

But that wasn’t the worst part of it.

Not the silence about his father. Not the thought of bowing heads at court. Not even the looming possibility of making peace with the man who had unraveled their campaign with a flick of his sword and the curse of his name.

No. The worst part was what Sorza had begun to understand, quietly and with growing certainty.

If they were to fight alone, he would never win.

Not against him.

Not against Alpheo.

Even now, in the safety of his childhood palace, with his mother nearby and the doors barred, the thought of the Mud Prince made his hands twitch—made his breath shorten just a little. Alpheo wasn’t just dangerous. He was unpredictable. He was maddeningly beloved by his men, now soon to be mythologized by his enemies, and worse still, clever enough to make that all matter. To make it work.

Sorza stood near the hearth now, the chill of the stone floor biting through his boots. His arms crossed tightly over his chest.

“We can’t beat him,” he said at last, voice flat. “Not alone.”

His mother didn’t answer. Her eyes rested on him with the calm stillness of a hawk perched on a branch, listening.

“If Father is dead,” Sorza continued, “then I will have to look for a wife.”

This earned a raised brow. His mother blinked once, slowly. “Sorza,” she said gently, “there are more important things than weddings right now.”

He let out a bitter laugh. “That’s the point. A wedding might be the only important thing left.”

She tilted her head, curious.

He sighed and turned his gaze to the high windows where the morning sun struggled through the cloudy glass. “The princess of Yarzat had a younger sister. Barely spoken of, but not invisible. I remember her at a banquet. Quiet. Strange eyes.”

He looked back at his mother. “If they would agree to marry our houses… if we could become kin…”

There it was. The full shape of the thought—naked and ugly and true.

“Then maybe,” he finished, “we could hold peace in our hands.”

His mother said nothing. She studied him a while longer. Her face remained unreadable—neither approval nor protest in her eyes. The cool mask of a royal consort who had seen more wars begun by pride than ended by love.

But she didn’t dismiss it either.

And that silence… felt almost like permission to break bread with their enemies.