Page 54 of Kingdom of Darkness and Dragons (Empire of Vengeance #4)

T he rain had finally stopped, but the silence it left behind felt heavier than the storm itself.

We'd been tracking through increasingly treacherous terrain for days, following the faint trail that Antonius insisted would lead us to Livia and her captor.

The shadow mage had covered his tracks well, but not well enough to completely fool a former gladiator with wilderness experience.

I found myself walking at the back of our small group, isolated by the invisible but very real barriers that had formed since my revelation on the battlefield.

Marcus and Antonius moved together with the easy familiarity of long friendship, their conversation quiet but constant.

Tarshi and Septimus flanked them, their own bond evident in every shared glance and casual touch.

Sirrax, despite his injuries, maintained his position as our scout, his enhanced senses invaluable in tracking our quarry.

And then there was me. The Emperor's son. The heir to everything they had spent their lives fighting against. Utterly fucking useless.

I couldn't blame them for their distance.

In their position, I would have felt the same mixture of distrust and barely contained hatred.

My bloodline represented every injustice they had suffered, every friend they had lost, every moment of pain inflicted by Imperial policy.

The fact that I disagreed with those policies, that I had tried in my own limited way to minimize the damage, meant nothing compared to the simple truth of whose son I was.

"Water ahead," Antonius called back, his voice cutting through my brooding thoughts. "Sounds like a river."

We crested a small rise and found ourselves looking down at a stone bridge that spanned a rushing torrent of muddy water. The recent rains had swollen what was probably normally a gentle stream into a raging river that flowed over the bridge's surface, turning the crossing into a dangerous ford.

"They came this way," Antonius confirmed, crouching to examine something near the bridge's approach. "Recent tracks, maybe two days old."

"Can we cross?" Septimus asked, eyeing the rushing water with obvious scepticism.

Tarshi was already moving toward the bridge, his movements careful as he tested the submerged stones. "It's possible, but dangerous. The stones aren’t solid, looks like some collapsed quite recently, and that current..." He shook his head. "One slip and you're gone."

"We have rope," Marcus pointed out. "We could rig a safety line."

"That will take time," I said, finally finding my voice. "Time we might not have."

The others turned to look at me, and I saw the familiar flash of irritation cross Marcus's face. He had made it clear that he didn't welcome input from the Emperor's son, regardless of its merit.

"You have a better suggestion, Your Highness?" The title was delivered with enough venom to kill a horse.

The contempt in his voice finally broke through my carefully maintained composure. "Yes, actually, I do. And you can stop calling me that. My name is Jalend, or Jalius if you prefer the formal version. I'm not 'Your Highness' to you or anyone else here."

"You're the Crown Prince of the Empire," Marcus shot back. "That's not exactly something you can just set aside when it becomes inconvenient."

"Isn't it?" I met his glare directly, feeling months of frustration and isolation boiling over.

"Because I've been trying to set it aside since the moment I arrived at the Academy.

I wanted to be judged on my own merits for once in my life, to be valued for who I was rather than whose son I happened to be. "

"And how did that work out for you?" Septimus asked, his tone deceptively mild.

The question hit like a physical blow. "Not well, obviously. But at least for a few months, I got to experience what it felt like to be a real person instead of a political symbol."

"A real person," Tarshi repeated slowly. "Is that what you call lying about your identity? Deceiving everyone around you?"

"I call it surviving," I snapped. "You have no idea what it's like to grow up knowing that every person who speaks to you, every friend you think you've made, every relationship you try to build is ultimately about what you represent rather than who you are.

I wanted one chance—just one—to find out if anyone could care about Jalend instead of Prince Jalius. "

The silence that followed was thick with tension. I could see them processing my words, weighing them against their own experiences and prejudices.

"So you came to the Academy," Antonius said finally. "Pretended to be a minor noble. Why there specifically?"

I looked around at their faces, seeing genuine curiosity mixed with suspicion. It was more engagement than I'd gotten from them in days, and I found myself desperate to maintain it even if it meant revealing truths I'd never spoken aloud.

"Because of Imperia," I said quietly. "My dragon.

I'd had her since I was twelve, and she was.

.. she was the only real relationship in my life.

The only creature who seemed to care about me rather than my title.

" I paused, the bitter irony of that memory hitting me anew.

"Of course, now I know she never had a choice in the matter. "

"The collar," Sirrax rumbled, understanding immediately.

"The collar," I confirmed. "But I didn't know that then.

I thought we had a genuine bond, that she chose to be with me.

When I expressed interest in formal dragon-riding training, my father saw it as a way to give me military experience without actual danger.

Send the heir to the Academy for a year, let him play at being a soldier, bring him back with some useful skills and a better understanding of the military. "

"Except you didn't want to come back," Marcus observed.

"I never wanted to be heir in the first place," I admitted. "I wanted to fly. I wanted to serve in the dragon corps, maybe become an instructor myself. I wanted a life that had nothing to do with politics or succession or the burden of eventually ruling an empire I wasn't sure I believed in."

The words hung in the air between us, more honest than I'd intended to be. But something about this remote mountain location, about the shared purpose that had brought us together, made concealment feel pointless.

"You don't believe in the Empire?" Septimus asked, his voice carefully neutral.

"I believe in the idea of the Empire," I said slowly, trying to articulate thoughts I'd never fully examined.

"A unified realm where people can live in peace, where trade and culture can flourish, where strength protects rather than oppresses.

But what we've become..." I shook my head.

"What my father has made us... that's not an empire worth preserving. "

"Pretty words," Tarshi said, his tone sharp with anger. "But you still took the promotion, didn't you? When they offered you command of a wing, you still said yes."

The accusation cut deep because it was true. "I tried to refuse," I said quietly. "I told him I wasn't ready for command, that there were others more qualified. But—"

"But you took it anyway," Marcus interrupted. "You led that army north. You gave the orders that put us all in that valley."

"Because I had no choice!" The words exploded from me with more force than I'd intended. "You think I wanted to lead that slaughter? You think I enjoyed watching good soldiers die for a cause I knew was wrong?"

"Then why did you do it?" Antonius demanded. "What could possibly have forced you to—"

"He showed me the prisoners."

The simple statement seemed to leach all the energy from our confrontation. They stared at me in silence, waiting for an explanation I wasn't sure I could give without breaking down entirely.

"My father took me to see them," I continued, my voice barely above a whisper.

"Thousands of them, locked in dungeons beneath the capital.

Men, women, children—all with Talfen blood, all captured during raids in the last few months.

He told me that if I refused to lead the campaign, he would have every single one of them executed. "

I could see the shock ripple through the group, the way their expressions shifted from anger to something approaching understanding.

"Thousands?" Septimus asked.

"Three complexes that I know of, maybe more.

Families torn from their homes, children who've never seen sunlight, elders who remember what freedom felt like.

" I closed my eyes, trying to block out the memory of those hollow, desperate faces.

"There was a woman holding a baby, maybe six months old.

A toddler clinging to his mother's skirt.

And my father standing there calmly explaining that their lives were the price of my compliance. "

"Gods," Marcus breathed.

"So yes, I took the promotion. Yes, I led that army. Yes, I gave orders that resulted in deaths on both sides." I met each of their gazes in turn. "Because the alternative was watching thousands of innocent people die for my principles."

The silence stretched between us, heavy with the weight of impossible choices and moral compromises. When Tarshi finally spoke, his voice had lost its earlier edge.

"You knew," he said. "About the resistance. About what was really planned for the festival."

It wasn't a question, and I didn't try to deny it. "I suspected. There had been increased chatter about potential terrorist activities, and the timing seemed too convenient. I tried to warn Livia not to attend."

"But you didn't try to stop it," Septimus pointed out.

"How could I? I had no proof, no specific intelligence. And even if I had..." I spread my hands helplessly. "Who would have believed the Emperor's son claiming his father was planning to sacrifice his own citizens?"

"You could have tried," Tarshi said, but there was less accusation in his voice now.