Page 98 of The Wild Prince’s Favorite (The Dragon Empire Saga #3)
He was not usually one to get offended easily, but now wasn’t the time to let his generals insult him with thinly veiled sarcasm.
Kassein was still a prince, the owner of a dragon, and the Commander in Chief of this army.
Even Kiera raised an eyebrow at the General, her sullen mood redirected at him.
She might not have been fully on board with his idea, but Kassein was her younger sibling, and no one was allowed to disrespect him in her presence.
She took out her little dagger and began playing with it, throwing the weapon in the air and catching it perfectly as an obvious threat.
“I-I mean,” Herken cleared his throat, “I understand that Your Highness has a personal interest in obeying the Emperor’s order that is fuelling your plan, but this endeavor is.
.. We might be setting the foundations for several years of labor.
No one has managed to reach out to those tribes before and establish any kind of communication. I doubt that is what the Emperor—”
“My brother’s will is not my goal,” Kassein retorted.
“He told me to pacify the north. It can be interpreted many ways, but no one can say the tribes have made a scratch on our people since I marched this army all the way to the foot of their mountains. As far as the Empire is concerned, the north is pacified enough. And no one cares what happens north of the Onyx Castle but me.”
That was a truth none of them could deny. The three generals exchanged looks, visibly at a loss for words, before Kauser gave a strong nod.
“The Commander’s plan might take years, but it also could be a quick affair. Those tribes have been isolated for centuries, they might be eager to establish a rapport with the Empire. Grand Intendant Tievin’s hypothesis might turn out to be the solution the Emperor has been waiting for all along.”
“I still want to clarify,” Sazaran lifted a finger off his crossed arms. “Commander, it sounds like you want more than... to establish rapport with those tribespeople.”
Kassein nodded and leaned over the map. He traced a finger all the way from the northernmost tip of the Empire, all the way down to the forest that separated the Onyx Castle from the Diamond Palace, and then crossed another horizontal line from one coast to another.
“This will be mine,” he declared.
“Commander, that’s—”
“The north has been neglected by the Empire for too long. The Onyx Castle is empty, the Shadelands and its villages are struggling, and the land is full of resources no one has bothered to exploit. Every hunt I’ve gone on shows that the Northern Forest is full of prey and resources.
The land is harsh and the weather harsher, but the locals are used to it.
The Empire has no intention of taking back our army nor welcoming anyone moving from the north.
The Capital is already overcrowded and trying to send its people east and west to remedy that.
The west is full of land waiting to be explored and plenty of places for new villages to appear, while the Eastern Kingdom is more than welcoming of the workforce.
No one gives a fuck about the north but us. ”
The generals all went silent.
They all knew Kassein spoke the truth and were probably even more surprised by how knowledgeable the Prince was about the current state of the Empire.
Kiera’s lips curled into a quiet sneer; under his brooding charm, as she called it, her brother had been educated the same as all of the siblings, which is more than most nobles.
Their grandmother and mother refused to have young princes and princesses who were ignorant and uneducated about the Empire their family ruled.
Kassian wasn’t the only one who had been trained from a young age to take over the throne; all eight siblings had shared the same teachers over the years, been taught the basics of politics, and sent to scour the borders of their Empire with their dragons.
Kassein was probably even more knowledgeable, as he had traveled all over during the years, going west to fight in deserted lands with his dragon, east to visit their siblings who had established their families in the Eastern Kingdom, north during their childhood in the Onyx Castle of course, and south when he had followed the family to the Capital.
Kiera might be considered the adventurous one, but she had mostly stuck to the busy streets of the Capital and explored the unfamiliar west; Kassein was the one who had gone everywhere and truly seen all the confines of the Empire outside of the Capital.
The fact that her brother had acted so uninterested before had probably pushed his generals to think he was also ignorant.
They couldn’t have been more wrong. There was one thing that Kiera had to admit, and it was that when he put his mind to it, Kassein could be one hell of a leader.
He was also the one that their mother had declared to be the most like their father, the War God, and Kiera had to agree; whether they liked it or not, Kassein was more than fit to inherit the Onyx Castle and take over the north.
“Commander,” Sazaran said, “I will absolutely follow you into any battle and any conquest you want to make. If you believe we can pacify those people, I will be right behind you up those mountains to fight or negotiate peace. However, we are men of the Empire before anything. I was made a general and sent to this army by your brother, the Emperor. If... If you were to take over the north, does that mean you would become its official ruler? The Onyx Castle has always stood as the helm of the Empire’s Northern territories, and I agree those territories, the Shadelands, have been neglected ever since your family left them.
But for you to take ownership of the north.
.. I am your man in any war you want to start, Commander, but I also want to be sure of what this would mean toward the Empire. ”
“I will go and meet my brother in the Imperial Palace,” Kassein said.
“The Emperor will be aware of my intentions and decide for himself what will be done about the north. But know that I will not give up on any of it. This army, the mountains and its tribes, the Onyx Castle, the Shadelands. I will return, and it will be mine.”
“But the Emperor—”
“My brother and I will find common ground,” he retorted with a growling tone.
Kassein’s furious green eyes were not accepting any more objections.
His mind was set, and while his brother would be far more complicated to convince than his three generals, he wouldn’t leave the Imperial Palace until he got what he wanted.
He had never wanted anything so strongly before nor been so desperate for it.
He wasn’t willing to say it out loud, but he might be willing to fight his own brother.
Kassian might have been the Emperor and fourteen years older, but Kassein wasn’t willing to change his mind.
“...This might be a historical change for the Empire,” Tievin cleared his throat, “but not... unheard of. After all, the Eastern Kingdom was also once part of the original civilization that created the Empire, if we believe what history has uncovered in recent years. Perhaps this continent should become ground for more countries before the Empire starts to cannibalize itself.”
“More countries might mean more wars,” Herken muttered.
“Then you won’t be out of a job too soon,” Kiera retorted.
“You three have spent years in this place. You’re men of war in times of peace, you should be jumping at the opportunity.
My brother intends to pacify the mountains exactly as planned.
Be assured that the tribes that are unwilling to cooperate might need more. .. heavy-handed convincing.”
Kassein didn’t voice it out loud, but a part of him did hope that one tribe would resist: the one that had banished Alezya.
He had never been one to enjoy actual wars, but he had been raised by the War God; he knew wars could be necessary. If he was going to raise a country and trace a border between his brother’s Empire and the north, he had to be determined to do what it would take.
He had no intention to become a tyrant, but he sure needed to conquer those mountains once and for all.
The feud between the Empire and the Northern tribes had been going on for centuries already, and while the casualties had lessened during his father’s time in the north and his, he had every intent to end them once and for all.
The tribes kept losing men to meaningless skirmishes; they couldn’t possibly wish for this to last for several more centuries rather than end it once and for all and offer their people the option to trace a very different future.
He had seen how Alezya reacted to things as simple as meat, fur coats, and soap.
The fact that such common things in the Empire were a luxury in her eyes meant that the tribes weren’t living lavishly, far from it.
He couldn’t imagine what life was like, holed up in their mountains for centuries. They probably had a very different way of life, but it didn’t mean that the north couldn’t benefit them and the other way around.
He could already envision it. A future where the tribespeople taught the people of the Shadelands about life in the mountains, and they taught the tribespeople everything the land they hadn’t been allowed to set foot on for centuries could offer.
“Is that why you’ve given the order not to kill any more of them?” Sazaran petted his beard again. “What are we to do with the prisoners, Commander? Are they hostages?”
“We will start negotiating with the tribes,” Kassein said. “We cannot do that by killing any more of them.”
“What if they send more carrying diseases? They’ve had no issues trying to kill our men with the most vicious, vile means before...”
“If you see any sign they carry diseases, kill them,” Kassein said. “Otherwise, isolate their men.”