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“I remember him.”

“I paid him a visit today. That’s where Maris got attacked. He told me that my own soldiers were leaving to join the rebellion and that they had a leader. How come I have to find this out from a fucking cook in Ophelia Plaza!” Valda bellowed, not able to hold in her rage any longer.

“I can explain.”

“Then talk, Arwin. Because I am about to break something, and it won’t be your desk.”

“I kept it from you due to your situation. You had too much going on at the same time. Your blindness, your mother’s death–”

“I asked for a meeting so you could tell me everything. I don’t need you to sugar coat things or give the information little by little. Right now, I have a million things going through my mind, and the one that is eating me alive is if I can still trust my father’s right-hand man. You.”

Silence fell in the room. The soft muffled click of the badges against the wooden desk took Valda by surprise. She shifted in her chair just as Arwin took a deep breath.

“Your father had trouble trusting me as well.”

Valda frowned. She wanted to ask why but before she could Arwin continued.

“I guess he saw me as a competition.”

“Why would the king see a soldier as a competition?” Valda asked.

Arwin grunted. “I don’t know, but I just knew he was threatened by me.” He chuckled, as his chair groaned when he moved. “He gave me the scar on my face.”

Valda frowned. She always wondered how Arwin got his scar. She never asked, thinking he must’ve gotten it in a battel when he was younger. It never crossed her mind that her father gave it to him.

“Why?”

Arwin inhaled. “Again, he was threatened. But I proved myself to him. I accepted his decisions, even the ones I thought weren’t so good. He made me his general. If he could find it in himself to trust me, so can you. You can always trust me, Valda.”

“Then prove it. Stop hiding things from me like I was a little girl. I can handle it.”

“Can you? What if I told you that a coup is imminent, that we are months, probably weeks away from having a civil war? That we need to head to Umbriel, fucking kill every single one of those bastards, and show their decapitated heads in the sand hills so anyone else who even has the audacity of thinking about dethroning you would run back to whatever hole they came from. What would you do?”

Valda swallowed hard. “Are we weeks away from a civil war?”

“Answer my question.”

“You know my answer. The same answer as always. I would go to battle as I have done before becoming queen. You know me, Arwin. You know what I am capable of.”

“And I know you hesitate a lot. I ask you to trust me, because I know you don’t trust yourself.”

Valda jumped as she felt the sudden touch of the general upon her shoulder. The tension drowned her, and as much as she didn’t want to, Valda needed to trust the only person that knew how to rule aside from herself.

“I will lead you to victory, protect you from harm as I have always done. There is always going to be the threat of a rebellion, a coup, but you know how we resolve all of that. I haven’t taken you to Umbriel for obvious reasons. My next trip will be in a couple of days. I cannot ask you to join me. I will not be able to defend you if we do not know who the enemy is. Trust me, Valda.”

Biting the inside of her cheek, Valda placed her hand over Arwin’s before he patted her shoulder and moved away.

“There is something I would like you to do for me,” Valda said, her white eyes searching uselessly for him in the room. “I need you to do an investigation. A background check on someone.”

“I am all ears.”

Valda exhaled shakily. “Maris.” She closed her eyes. “I need you to get me all the information you can from her. Family, where she lived, what she did before working here. Her education… her father.”

“Father?”

Valda nodded and wetted her lower lip before talking. “Her father was a soldier to our army, but she told me that she was abandoned by the crown when her father died.”

“Hmm. The only reason I can think of for the crown abandoning his family is—”