Page 9 of A Gaze So Longing (The Fall of Livenza #1)

“Of course, Your Highness,” Favian said instead, knowing full well he could not tell the prince to leave a building over which his father governed.

“I’ve been wondering,” Leonardo hummed as Favian began filling trays. “Why are you working the stables now? Did you not enjoy the kitchens anymore? The trips to town? I thought you liked the rides.”

Favian blinked a few times before replying. “I did not choose to become a stablehand, Your Highness.”

“My father made you?”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

“Why?”

Favian contemplated this. Not the answer itself so much as what to make explicit. “I believe His Majesty wanted to see as little of me as possible.”

“Yet he commands you to serve him every single one of his meals,” Leonardo pondered.

It was a conundrum Favian himself had not entirely been able to make sense of.

Surely it had to do with his efficiency at work and his familiarity with the Majesty’s preferences, but part of him believed the more significant argument to be the proximity.

The closer Favian was to the king, the more tasks he was given to be personally witnessed by His Majesty, and the more likely it was that he would make a mistake in his direct vicinity, thus requiring immediate reprimand.

The distance from the hall to His Majesty’s chambers was much shorter than that from the stables.

None of this could be voiced in front of Leonardo.

Favian could not even voice it to himself.

Instead, he decided to feign ignorance. “It is just as much of a puzzle to me as it is to Your Highness,” Favian said, keeping his voice steady as he spoke.

He felt the prince’s gaze on his back, no doubt wondering how truthful he was being.

Favian knew he was a good liar—in a place like this, he had to be.

Nico uncovered his untruths every time, but Leonardo was all too glad to accept any reality rather than the one in which his family bore the responsibility for so much pain.

At least, that was the Leonardo Favian remembered.

Favian had already admitted to the intensifying violence the king had been inflicting on him, even if he had concealed the specific nature of said violence.

And somehow, Leonardo had managed to stop this violence for now.

“I have a question,” Favian blurted out, his back turned to the prince.

“Oh?” Surprise in Leonardo’s voice—excitement, even.

The barn around them had gone quiet, the prince waiting for whatever it was that had Favian initiating a line of conversation.

“Your Highness has talked to His Majesty about the punishments, has he not?”

A sound behind him, like Leonardo was standing up. “Yes. What do you want to know?”

Aggressively gripping the bucket he was holding, Favian closed his eyes. Took a deep breath in. Out. “I have been wondering,” he eased himself into the question, “how that conversation went. How did Your Highness convince His Majesty to no longer employ physical violence on his staff?”

There was a moment of silence.

“I’m not sure, actually,” Leonardo then admitted.

Favian turned to him, his eyes trained on the gate of the enclosure behind the prince.

He waited for Leonardo to continue, trying to make sense of what he was saying.

“He was surprisingly accepting when I told him I don’t like the physical violence and that maybe we could think of other forms of punishment.

I was expecting him to chastise me for going against him, but it was like he didn’t even consider it worth discussing.

Which is odd considering he said that out loud, at dinner, in front of you.

I told him I think he should call upon his advisors more often again, and he didn’t argue with me.

He almost sounded like the father he used to be when I was a child.

” Leonardo was chewing his bottom lip as he contemplated.

“He has been speaking to me so differently since I’ve returned.

He was never really nice, but it was. . . different.”

The prince seemed to snap himself out of his thoughts, shaking his head a little before continuing, in a firmer voice, “I figured he just didn’t want to discuss the punishments with me, go over my head instead, and continue the way he must have before I came back.

So I called upon the advisory council myself.

They will convene soon. I’m unsure if they will care about my father’s treatment of his servants, but I suggested that they would likely advise him against creating a climate that would lead to rebellion.

We will have to wait for the council meeting to see if I’m right, but the argument stuck with him, I think.

He has been treating you a lot better, hasn’t he? ”

That was certainly an over-estimation of the change in the king’s demeanor.

“He has refrained from corporal punishment since,” Favian replied.

“I’m glad,” Leonardo offered. “I still don’t understand what drove him to that kind of violence in the first place.”

Favian did not say that he believed King Amondo to simply be a cruel man. Contemplating Leonardo’s words, he went back to the work he had interrupted. The prince regarded him but did not push for a reply.

As Favian continued executing his tasks, Leonardo stayed by his side, offered help here and there—which Favian fervently declined—and shared anecdotes from the five years he had been gone.

They were surprisingly joyful, but Favian noticed a change in tone whenever the prince breezed past the violence to tell another story about a soldier slipping in mud or the Abijatan food he had gotten to try out.

Every time one of Leonardo’s stories hinted at the atrocities he must have witnessed, he got a little quieter, his speech bordering on edgy before steering back into jovial again.

It made Favian wonder, both about the impact the war must have had on the prince and the casual mention of the culture he had fought to wreck in the name of Livenza’s ever-growing hunger for expansion.

Favian longed to ask about the discrepancy, but he worried that aside from Leonardo potentially taking offense, such a conversation would reveal Favian’s more than spotty knowledge of the politics beyond the palace walls.

When they were younger, their mother would tell Favian and Nico of the many wars King Amondo had fought, just like his father before him, but the political implications of the fighting had never been the focus of those stories.

Rather, she had told them of the people.

About all those impacted by war, at the front and elsewhere.

About their fathers, though they had never met them.

While the prince had been gone, Favian had refused to think about what it meant for Leonardo to fight not only for his kingdom but for his life.

Favian had known that once he allowed that train of thought, he would not be able to shut it out again.

So he did as his mother had used to do; instead of thinking of the war itself, he thought of the people, of one person in particular.

Despite his earlier discontent with Leonardo’s presence at the stable, Favian found himself easing into it.

Leonardo didn’t seem to mind that Favian did not contribute much to the conversation, instead simply acknowledging the tales and occasionally asking the prince to take a step to the side when he was in Favian’s way.

After a while, Leonardo’s company became almost comforting, reminding Favian of the days they had spent together as children, when Favian’s workload had been significantly smaller.

Leonardo even managed to almost make him laugh a few times, coaxing a smile out of Favian as the prince went on and on about all the people that he, too, had stories about.

This, Favian realized with little resentment, could become my new normal.