Calix woke half-smothered by a pillow to find Tarquin in a chair next to the bed. His face was calm, but a raging storm of fury flashed like lightning in his dark eyes. Calix closed his eyes again, and let out a long sigh.

His back was no longer the mass of agony it had been since the whipping.

Malitech had only allowed him two days to recover before ordering the company's departure from Antelium. Calion and the company's surgeon had done everything they could to help, but the two week journey had been little more than a blur of blood and pain. The deepest wounds had bled from Antelium to Levitum—the only thing that kept them from festering was the cold.

He placed a hand on the mattress to push himself up, but Tarquin reached out, quick as a snake, and touched Calix's shoulder. "Don't. The physician here ordered me to make sure you don't tear the wounds open again."

Calix slumped back into the pillows, gaze darting around as much of the room as he could see. It was dark beyond the heavy curtains of the windows.

"How long have I been asleep?" he asked, grimacing at the harsh rasp that came from his parched throat. He remembered being awake for most of the court physician's ministrations until the man had managed to force a bitter liquid down his throat, shoving him unceremoniously from consciousness. 

Tarquin grimaced. "Nearly two days since you arrived. He kept you sedated until the wounds set properly. Some of the lashes were in bad shape." His dark eyes flashed again, his lip curling back in a snarl as he said lashes.

A breath huffed through Calix's nose. No wonder his head felt like it was stuffed with cotton. Moving gingerly, he managed to sit up without setting his back bleeding again, ignoring Tarquin's quiet protests.

He pointed wordlessly to a nearby pitcher of what he hoped was water. His throat felt like he'd tried to swallow a desert. As Tarquin poured, Calix rubbed gently at his eyes before scrubbing a hand over his jaw and the weeks' worth of beard there, careful of the bruises on his face.

Behind his closed lids, he saw her face again and again. The horror in her eyes as she'd look at him. Every moment of hesitation. Each reluctant step closer to him.

He heard the phantom crunch of gravel and the soft sweep of her skirt as she'd stepped away from him. The condemning sound of her shocked gasp when he'd told her what Malitech had done and how he had failed her.

Her touch had been nearly unbearable, not because she had accidentally pressed against injuries she didn't know were there, but because it made him want to take her in his arms.

Despite his shame, despite his utter conviction that the gods were punishing him for taking what was not his, he had still wanted to sweep her into his chest and lose himself in the feel of her lips on his. His hands had ached with the desire to bury his fingers in her soft, jasmine-scented hair.

If he did not heed the gods' warnings, would they instead turn their wrath upon her? The gods had forsaken him ten years ago, and would surely bring ruin to any who ignored that fact.

A gentle hand on his arm made him start, and he looked up to find Tarquin offering him a goblet. Hand shaking slightly, he took it and lifted it to his chapped lips. The water soaked into the parched tissue of his tongue and throat as he drank.

Tarquin returned to his seat and leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees, his hands clasped so hard his knuckles turned white. "What happened?" he growled. "I want to hear it from you. Every detail."

Calix was surprised he'd even waited this long to ask. He set the goblet down and began to shake his head.

Tarquin leapt to his feet and snarled, "If you say nothing happened, I will kill you. And then I'll tell Arcturus, and laugh while he kills you." His friend paced back and forth like a caged lion, looking just as murderous as he professed to be.

"Peace, Tarquin," Calix muttered, his head beginning to swim. He lay back down on his side and inhaled slowly. His brother watched on, the slight crease between his eyebrows the only outward sign of his fear.

"What happened, mindra. Please."

Calix closed his eyes, immediately opening them when he was assaulted by the image of her stepping back from him. "The prince is what happened."

He told Tarquin everything. The assault on Antelium. The fiasco with the chieftain's family. The pyres. Malitech's guards. The crucifixions and the beating he had sustained for questioning its purpose.

Tarquin grew paler as he talked and the pain in Calix's back grew as well. Whatever medicines had been used on him were wearing off.

When the tale was all told and Tarquin's hands were shaking with rage, Calix finally risked asking a question of his own.

"Has the princess come here?" 

She would want details. She would want to know every aspect of failure, because that was the only way to fix what had been broken—if it could be fixed at all.

Tarquin's dark eyes flicked to his own. "Yes," he said quietly. "Once. She requested that I inform her of your waking."

"No!" Calix lurched upright and his back barked in agony, forcing the breath from his lungs. "No," he whispered, closing his eyes and bowing his head. "I cannot."

"Cannot?" Tarquin echoed. Calix opened his eyes to find his friend watching him with a considering gaze. "She has missed you greatly, mindra," he finally said carefully. "She never dared to say it, and often hid it well, but—"

"That doesn't matter," he whispered, a great, aching chasm opening in his chest. His eyes burned and he blinked hard, looking away. 

She would not continue to feel that way as she learned more, and his own feelings did not matter.

No response came other than Tarquin standing and beginning to pace again. Calix tracked each movement dully. Part of him wanted Tarquin to leave, but the rest of him feared where his mind might go if he were to be left in silence.

"The prince whipped you," Tarquin said with deadly softness. It was not a question.

"For falling asleep on guard duty." Calix was too tired to roll his eyes. He had never once fallen asleep on guard duty, and Tarquin hadn't been able to stop his scoff during that point of the story. "Fifty lashes."

"You lied because of the princess," Tarquin said. "You had only one course of action to fulfill your promise to her, and your lie got you whipped. Could have gotten you killed if the prince, her brother, saw fit."

Calix recognized that quiet tone. A glance up found the cold mask of a killing calm on his brother's face.

"My failure got me whipped," Calix corrected. "My failure to control the situation, to make sure the prince didn't do exactly what she said he'd do—"

"Stop," Tarquin hissed. "Stop. None of this is because of you, Calix. None of it. This is solely at the feet of the prince and the Heir. Royals play games and men like you and I bleed for their amusement."

He didn't bother responding. There wasn't anything else to be said.

Tarquin opened his mouth just as a quiet knock sounded on the door.

Ice wicked as death speared through him and he looked up at Tarquin with wild eyes. "Don't let her in," he breathed. "Tell her whatever she wants to hear but please. I cannot...I can't—" His voice cracked and he looked down before he could shame himself further.

He couldn't face her again. Not yet. Not until he could do it standing straight, his body able to handle whatever abuse she might wish to throw at him. Not until he could force himself to watch as her faith in him—misplaced from the very start—broke and she cast him aside. 

Not until he could face her without being a coward.

Tarquin left the bedroom, leaving the door barely cracked behind him. Calix lay on the bed, dreading and longing for the sound of her voice.

"Vestarin," she said in a low voice, and he closed his eyes, imagining the cold wrath on her face. "Is he awake?"

At first, Tarquin didn't answer. Calix's eyes flew open at the flood of venom that came from his friend.

"No," Tarquin spat. "No, he's lying unconscious, his back in fucking shreds because of your orders, Your Highness." The words were sneered more than said. "Because you could see right into what he is and played it to your advantage. You used him."

A startled silence met those words, and Calix barely dared to breathe. That wasn't true.

"Have you managed to have your fun?" Tarquin asked, his words a deadly hiss. "Have you people not taken enough from him already?"

"I—"

"With all due respect, Princess, it's best if you stay away from him. He doesn't need the ruin you'll bring upon him. He doesn't want you here."

The lies screamed through him. He wanted to deny what Tarquin had just said, but he only bit savagely into his lip, forcing his body to remain still, his eyes blurring. 

It was better this way. It was better if she stayed away from him.

"I see," she responded after several long moments of silence. Her voice was hollow, emotionless when she said, "When he does wake, tell him he need not seek me out. I know what happened—all of it."

Calix flinched, pain zinging through the lattice of lash wounds across his back.

A quiet shuffling sound reached his ears. Then she continued, "Tell him I release him from any promise made between us."

The words were a hammer blow to his heart. Released, because she believed him faithless anyway—there was no point in keeping him bound by oath.

Worthless. Faithless. Your only merit in this life every drop of blood you've managed to spill.

To his father. To the gods. To their Heir.

"Tell him—"

"You'll forgive me, Princess, when I say any words from you will do more harm than help." Tarquin's voice was hard as steel, but had lost some of its bite.

Another stretch of silence. Calix sat back up, staring blindly toward the windows and the dismal night beyond them. He shouldn't allow this to happen. He shouldn't hide behind Tarquin

But the idea of seeing her right now sickened him with grief.

If he saw her now, he would fall to his knees and beg for her forgiveness. He would beg, and he would hate himself after the fact. He might even hate her for the power she held over him.

So he closed his eyes and listened as she walked away, Tarquin shutting the door behind her. A quiet scrape of boots on stone made him flinch.

His brother's quiet voice snaked across the space between them. "Their entire family is poison, mindra."

Calix just shook his head and Tarquin let out a long sigh.

She was not the poison, but the antidote. 

But there was no dissuading Tarquin after his mind had been made up. And he was too heart-weary to argue about the princess anyway. 

He lay back down on his stomach, focusing on the pain in his back because it was easier to acknowledge than the pain in his heart. Tarquin settled into the chair beside the bed, and the quiet sound of pages turning began to lull Calix back to sleep.

You are not needed. You are not wanted.

Calix's fingers knotted in the sheet beneath him. His father had cast him out because he had another, better son. During his first two years in the army, Arcturus had been forced to move him between four different units because the common soldiers had hated him for his noble name and bloodline.

She no longer wanted anything to do with him.

Calix choked on the agony of that thought. What a fool he had been to think he was better than the world had taught him he was. 

Finally, mercifully, his body's exhaustion won out and he tumbled into sleep with the taste of copper on his tongue and the smell of jasmine in his nose.

                                                                        ~~~

Six more days passed and Calix just let himself heal. His thoughts had often lingered on things they shouldn't, and the walls of his bedchamber had started to close in on him, feeling more like a cage than a room in the king's castle. 

Tarquin had kept him from doing anything that would set his back to bleeding again, but Calix would go mad if he were forced to lie quietly for even one more hour.

Even if the quiet had offered some clarity.

He shivered in his cloak as they walked through the dead hedges of the gardens. A light dusting of snow covered everything; his breath frosted in the air.

And if Tarquin gave him one more gods-damned sideways glance, he was going to tackle the soldier into the next thorn bush they passed.

Tarquin seemed to sensed the irritation rolling off of him and said, "Once those lash marks scar over, we'll need to re-ink the tattoos."

Calix grunted noncommittally. The physicians had told him only one or two of the lash marks would leave noticeable scars, but the prince had apparently made it a point to destroy the two tattoos he had on his back.

A scar now cut through the letters SHV on his right shoulder while the sword, shield and spear crossed over the center of his spine had been nearly obliterated. 

"I'll have to go into the city today to see if I can find ink and needles," Tarquin continued. "Mine are still in Brunia."

The Sorvetian's artistic skill was well known throughout the entire Second Legion, and he'd often been kept busy during winter lulls designing and inking hundreds of tattoos. 

Calix just nodded, but couldn't really bring himself to care about the ink in his skin that branded him a soldier. The conversation only turned his mind toward the princess, just like everything else.

Phantom fingers brushed over the skin of his shoulder and her soft voice echoed in his head, asking what the tattoos meant.

Strength. Honor. Victory.

One leads to the other, he had told her as she'd laid down beside him, honey eyes turned to pure gold by the candlelight. Strength will bring honor. Honor ensures victory. Victory allows for strength.

He'd had neither strength nor honor when he had first faced her. And he regretted that more than almost anything else about that night.

Calix would speak to her before he left in nineteen days, after Cairna.

The castle had been buzzing with preparations—decorating and cooking and cleaning as they made ready to watch another year pass into history. 

He had never cared for the celebration, finding it mysterious and dismal, but an invitation to the feast and subsequent masquerade had found its way to his rooms that morning. He would need to send for a mask to be made.

They broke free of the hedge maze and Calix frowned lightly when he found they were heading toward the guards' barracks. His feet had carried him here subconsciously. 

He had appreciated that many of the guards and more of the garrison—who had been given a weeklong leave in Levitum—had inquired after his health. But he didn't want to deal with questions from the palace guards, or concerned looks from any of the century who might be here.

He started to guide Tarquin away, but it was already too late. A cry rose up from the training ground—someone had seen him.

A heavy sigh left him, but he dredged up a grin and began to walk toward the men who were calling out to him.

Tarquin stayed close, but didn't interfere as the men reached to shake his hand and asked after his health. They never asked what his injuries had been, and Calix had no doubt many of them had already gotten the story from the men of the century.

"Dragon. It's the Dragon!"

Calix looked up at the call to find more off-duty guards coming from the barracks and the training grounds. Even some of the servants had started to drift over.

That word continued to whisper around him, making him frown. He turned to Tarquin, who just shrugged. Calix started when a hand came down on his shoulder and found Calion giving him a half-smile, which was about as close to a full-on grin as the man ever got.

"That's what they've taken to calling you, General," he said as Calix clasped his forearm. "You've been the Dragon Bane of Mortania since we returned."

"Dragon?" he repeated, eyebrows raised.

"We heard how you set fire to everything, sir," one of the guards chimed in—a man who looked vaguely familiar. "Set fire to everything and fought your way through the city to get to the prince."

Calix's lips parted in shock while Tarquin chuckled. Turning to his brother, he muttered, "Did you know about this?"

"How could I?" Tarquin whispered with a grin. "I've been playing nursemaid."

Calix elbowed him in the ribs, then turned back to the men, nodding to and exchanging words with as many as he could. As he continued to move through the modest crowd, the knot in his chest started to loosen.

None of them flinched away from him or looked at him with shock in their eyes.

They didn't tear rabidly at the old injuries to his heart. They didn't remind him of anything.

Tarquin and Calion stayed at his back, making sure no one bumped into his still tender wounds. Even the captain of the guard had come to talk to him, asking how he fared.

After several minutes of this, the captain finally decided his guards had lingered long enough and began shouting orders. The guards grumbled and shouted for promises that Calix would return, but finally went on their way.

The other lookers on began to drift away, finally leaving Calix with just Tarquin and Calion. His back was beginning to ache, but he didn't want to return to his rooms just yet.

He shot a curious look at Calion and asked, "Why are you here instead of enjoying your leave in the city?"

Calion gave him a wry glance. Then he raised an eyebrow at Tarquin. "You didn't tell him?"

"It slipped my mind," Tarquin answered, looking apologetic. He turned to Calix. "Calion wanted to talk to you."

Both of the men scoffed at that, but Calix waved a hand at the legionary. Calion looked up at the sky, like he was attempting to read the clouds. A sigh frosted from him and he said, "Rumor has it, General, you're being sent to Brunia before the end of the year."

"That's right," Calix replied, brow furrowing.

"My contract with Lord Vetus is nearly fulfilled. I would like to offer it to you when I'm freed of my obligations to Vetus."

For a moment, shock was the only response he could muster. Calix threw a questioning look at Tarquin. Had he told the man what, exactly, the general was supposed to accomplish on the island? Tarquin just shook his head and Calix frowned.

Then he began to consider.

He would very much like a man such as Calion around, especially if he was to take control of an entire legion of men he'd never fought with before. 

"You do not wish to return to your home?" Calix asked curiously, giving the man a considering look.

"Nothing much to return to, sir." Calion's eyes turned haunted, and Calix just nodded.

Tarquin was eyeing Calion with interest. Calix had told Tarquin about the legionary, and Tarquin looked very much like he would also appreciate if Calion was there to watch Calix's back when he could not.

He nodded again. "I'll get a letter of passage for you before I leave."

What might have been relief broke over Calion's face, shocking Calix. The legionary thanked him and saluted, then made to leave.

"Why?" Calix choked out, making the other two turn toward him.

Calion looked curious, but Tarquin's mouth pressed into a suddenly furious line, like he knew what Calix was about to say.

"Why would you want to follow me after what happened at Antelium?" Calix couldn't stop his gaze from flicking up to the castle, like he might find the princess staring down at him from one of the gold-tinted windows, burnished by the morning light.

Understanding flickered across Calion's face. He gave him another half-smile. "I've been in the legions for nearly twelve years, sir. I've seen my share of generals, and none of them like you." He turned to leave. "I tire of marching on the orders of men into battle, General, but who wouldn't want to follow a Dragon?"

He left then, his words stirring something in Calix's chest.

They returned to the castle in silence, Tarquin forcing him back to his rooms to rest. Calix knew it was his own fault that his friend was putting on such a mother hen act. And he couldn't deny that collapsing into his bed and sleeping for a few hours sounded like a good idea.

Dragon.

He chuckled at the name as he pulled his boots off. Just as quickly his smile fell.

Dragon indeed.

Dragons feared nothing. They knew neither shame nor regret. And they certainly didn't avoid lovely maidens, afraid of words they deserved.

Perhaps he could do with being a little more like a dragon.

Tarquin was saying something from the other room, but the only word Calix caught was ink. A thought jolted through him at that. He shuffled to the bedchamber door as quickly as he could. "Black and red."

Tarquin turned from the main door, looking startled. 

"Black and red ink. A lot of it." His brows knitted in thought. "And a little gold."

Tarquin gave him a small smile, understanding lighting in his dark eyes. He nodded once before slipping quietly into the hall.

Calix stumbled back to the bed and lay down, the knot in his chest dissolving. 

He had learned his lesson. He had bore up under each punishment and the fact remained that he was still here. He was still alive regardless of his hollow heart.

That had to count for something, just as it had counted for something ten years ago.

Tomorrow. He would seek her out tomorrow instead of waiting until the last moment and then fleeing like a coward.

He had been a coward once before. 

Never again.