Page 69 of The Prince's Mage

“So did Nikias not follow this tradition?”

Gavril sighed. “No, no he did.”

“But… he has no wife, so…” Marcella paused. Ah.

Admittedly, she was a little dense at times.

“Nikias was not in the position I was in where there was no one I had affection for and simply chose the person I was expected to choose. Faustina… she had his whole heart in her hands from early on in his time at theacademie. Oh, Nikias would drive me up the wall. I used to look forward to when he would come back to the palace because it was a break from our parents, but Faustina became all he could talk about. It was sickening. She was a good mage. You have to be to even make it onto the command track, but she was not at the top of their class like Nikias was. She was closer to the bottom. When the tournament happened, she barely, just barely managed to get the last spot, much to Nikias’ relief because he wanted her more than he wanted anything.”

Gavril’s hand rested on Marcella’s shoulder and she could not see his face. But in the way his fingers curled into her arm and her heart started to beat faster she heard what he wasn’t saying.

He didn’t understand then. He understood now.

So did she.

“Faustina made it, and Nikias didn’t wait for the ceremony to be over before he made her his promised and she accepted. They were married in the time it took my parents to badger me into verbally choosing Aimilia.” Marcella could no longer sit perfectly still. She reached behind her and took his hand into hers, squeezing it. It must have taken quite a bit of magic for him to hide the results of that badgering.

“I had never seen Nikias so happy. And Faustina was lovely, she was. She was kind, surprisingly maybe to you that any of us could be kind. But—”

“You are kind,” Marcella interrupted, but his gaze was still lowered, not meeting her eyes so she could not force her words to stick.

“Faustina was good for him, for everyone, but as it turned out… she was not as good as a commander. She was assigned a mission, given a team of combat Runai, soldiers like I had. Assigned, I say. She begged for it. She’d wanted to go on her own, but that was where Nikias refused. If she insisted on going, he would go too. Nikias as the heir can’t go on many, even though he is a commander. His role is to mostly oversee the commanders. She wanted to feel like all her work on the command track had been worth more than just a crown. She told me when I asked her the night before why she was going. She told me…

“I’ll never forget that last conversation. She told me ‘Life is fighting. Every day. Every second. Running away? Taking the easiest path? It doesn’t work. Trust me, it will just make you miserable and you will have to live with your weakness for the rest of your life. No matter how tired you are, it will never tire of you. The fight will find you. It is not done with you. Or me.’”

Oh. She wasn’t just important to Nikias. Gavril had loved her like a sister as well. And if that was the last thing she ever said to him…

He continued, “That conversation is the reason I stayed in theacademieand on the command track when I was going to run away completely. She had no idea I spent that conversation desperately trying not to reopen my split lip.”

Marcella tightened her grip on his hand and she turned back to face him as her eyes watered at the admission while her heart turned that he was telling her of it of his own accord.

“Regardless, she went. I do not know every detail that went wrong. Nikias to this day will not tell the whole story. What I’ve heard from the soldiers who survived was that they were riding to attack one of the temples on your lands, to send a message against the aggressive moves that your people had made against one of our border villages. Something along those lines. But when they made it to the temple—”

Marcella did remember this.

She had only recently passed her tests and it was too important a mission to send a green soldier on. Or maybe just a weak one.

But Hypatia, two years older than her, and skilled enough to have been able to qualify for anything before she’d turned ten, had been thrilled at the chance to lead their people herself in a scheme of her own making.

“It was a trap. Hypatia’s trap,” Marcella finished.

After the success, it was all Hypatia talked about for a year. Hypatia had been sixteen and Marcella fourteen, so it had been four years now with how long Marcella had been away from her people.

“Yes. Because it was officially Faustina’s mission, she went in first. The soldiers didn’t see what happened next, only Nikias did. He realized everything was too quiet and rushed in after her, but… Nikias has never excelled in healing runes. And Faustina didn’t come home. Nikias always just said it was the Desero demon who had done it. When we heard about Hypatia’s marriage, Nikias was the one who insisted we take advantage of it and capture her. In hindsight, I think he told me the plan to keep her unharmed and as a hostage was just the way to get me to commit to the mission. I don’t know what Nikias would have done if I’d actually brought back Hypatia, if he would have even been able to just let her be treated as a valuable prisoner or not. The way he has treated you, whose only crime is looking like her—” Gavril broke off and pressed his forehead into her shoulder.

Marcella leaned her head against his. This certainly explained a lot.

Why Nikias reacted like it was a personal insult when she’d cried out for Gavril. She was not unaware that not only did she look like Hypatia, but she sounded like her too.

Gavril may not know exactly what had happened in Hypatia’s trap to Faustina, but she did. Marcella curled in on herself slightly as the feeling of the knife cutting along the lines of her scars started to creep in. It was not as horrific as what he’d had done to her. Not by any means.

At least Hypatia had given Faustina and all her enemies the mercy of a quick death. Not necessarily a painless one, but she did not flay them open for days on end in a horrific violation of all that was good and holy.

Nikias still deserved nothing.

But… Marcella didn’t want to hand him over to Hypatia if she didn’t have to. Only Asentai knew what Hypatia would do while he was their hostage to antagonize him further and only lead to renewed war when he did one day become king.

But…

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