Chapter 65: A Backhanded Way to Save Life...
Keiser knew those green eyes.
He had seen them before, cold, merciless, the same way she had stared down the beasts of Sheol during the subjugation campaigns.
Back then, her gaze had not wavered even as the monsters screamed and thrashed, her arrows cutting them down one by one with clinical precision. It was the look of a hunter toward prey, stripped of all hesitation or pity.
And now, that same look was turned on him.
A shiver crawled down his spine. This wasn’t just Olga, the sacred beast-cored archer, nor Olga the knight of the sixth princess.
This was Olga Reinhardt... Lenko’s sister. The one who had lived through his disappearance, missing for years while no one cared enough to search... because the prince he served was nothing but a bastard.
He remembered when the news of her brother’s death had reached her.
Everyone had expected tears, outrage, or at the very least, some lament for the loss of a prince of the royal line.
After all, the Reinhardt name had, for generations, bound itself in loyalty to the king’s children. To lose one of their own... no matter if the prince he served was branded a bastard, was no small wound to that legacy.
But Olga... she had never once mentioned the tenth prince. Not once.
There had been no curses against the world, no railing against the cruelty of fate, no tears shed for a bastard son of the crown whose life had been so easily discarded. The loss of royalty meant nothing to her.
What had cut her, what had broken her, was her brother.
He remembered it clearly.
The day the Sixth Princess had offered prayers for the souls of Muzio and Lenko. Her voice had been soft, her words sanctified, carried on the weight of a Saint’s blessing for peace.
But Olga had stayed silent.
Not a word. Not a whisper.
Her lips had never moved, her eyes had never closed. She had stood there like stone, silent as the grave itself, while the Saint prayed for the repose of Muzio and Lenko’s souls.
And Keiser, watching her then, had understood, her grief wasn’t for the lost prince.
It had only ever been for her brother.
So when Olga turned toward him and suddenly lunged, Keiser’s instincts screamed. He had to move, had to escape.
But his body was not what it once was. Even though Muzio’s frame had begun to recover, the sigil wounds across his flesh knitting slowly, the fever finally loosening its grip, he was still running on fumes.
Days of chaos had worn him raw... the schism in Hinnom, the bargain struck with the elven broker, the frantic escape through the knights’ relentless pursuit, and the maddening ascent up endless stairs the elf conjured step by step, where only their faintly woven lights kept them from tumbling blind into the abyss.
Each moment had worn at him, grinding him thinner and thinner until nothing was left but raw nerve and stubborn will.
So when she came at him, the sheer force of her presence bearing down like a predator’s pounce, his mind blanked. His body, driven by desperation, fell back on the only thing left to him, his escape.
Mana surged.
He felt the familiar tug deep in his hand, the sudden wrench of space bending around him. In the blink of an eye, he was gone from where he stood and reappeared, right above Lenko.
Keiser’s good eye widened, he still wasn’t used to the sudden wrench of space, the way his body lurched and spat out somewhere above Lenko as though tethered by an unseen chain. His stomach twisted from the disorienting shift, his balance thrown. On the back of his hand, the sigil flared, hot as iron pressed to the skin. It didn’t bleed, but the burn cut deeper than any blade could.
Lenko staggered as he tried to catch him, teeth gritted against the sudden flare of agony from his forearm. From beneath the wrappings, faint lines of light pulsed and seared outward, burning against skin and cloth alike. The tether. The mark Keiser had burnt into him back in Sheol forest.
Tyron’s reaction came first. His eyes went wide, jaw dropping before he spat out a curse loud enough to echo in the narrow alley. Jim and Jill weren’t any better. Both froze in place, their faces pale, flinching back as if they’d just witnessed a ghost materialize. Keiser’s sudden appearance above the air, blinking into existence only to tumble into Lenko, had startled them all.
Even Olga faltered. She stumbled forward with a sharp gasp, her fist slicing through empty air where the tenth prince’s face had been only a heartbeat earlier. The strike cracked against nothing, her strength wasted, and she spun sharply at the sound of commotion behind her.
And there he was.
Her eyes narrowed, her breath heavy as she took in the sight of the tenth prince slumped over Lenko. Lenko staggered beneath the sudden weight, eyes wide, his footing unsteady as Keiser half-crashed into him. Both of them nearly went down before managing to brace against each other.
For a moment, Olga simply stared. "How?"
The word was sharp, clipped, her voice cracking under disbelief.
Lenko sighed, dragging his gaze away from his sister’s glare as Keiser disentangled himself, trying to steady both of them. Keiser’s hand clutched at his arm, pulling him upright, their movements clumsy but familiar.
"It isn’t something bad, sister," Lenko said quietly, though there was a tremor in his voice. He tried for calm, but the weight of her stare pressed down like iron. "I wasn’t being abused."
He gestured toward Keiser, almost defensively, as though putting himself between her fury and the prince. "You think this young lord could?"
His words hung heavy in the night, somewhere between a reassurance and a rebuke.
Olga’s jaw tightened. Her glare flicked from Lenko to Keiser, and back again, suspicion hardening her expression.
And Keiser could only think that if this was Muzio’s backhanded way of trying to save his life from his sister’s fist, then so be it... he’d take it.