Prince of Lies [COMPLETED]

Chapter 1

There were only three tasks left.

Confront King Rycard.

Make him suffer.

Return with the coward's head.

Blood-and-ash sky glinted off Frederick's sword as he stalked past another window. Sweat poured down his temples and neck, gathering beneath his armor. Even his fingertips were drenched within his leather gloves, but he kept a firm hold around the handle. He would not lower his weapon for anything as he cleared hallway after hallway.

Nothing.

Irritation crawled under his skin. If the previous battles were any indication of how this fight should have ended, then he should have won well before this moment. For Thescan. But something had changed. Hendlemark's forces proved to be formidable in the final hours, carving through the Thescan army with renewed ferocity.

He lost thousands of men on the battlefield in the last two days alone.

There was no time to revise strategies, agonize over maps, or blame himself. That would have to come later—he would have to answer his king later. He was running out of options and decisions to make. Soldiers to spare. So against his father's orders, he entered the enemy's stronghold with three objectives to finish it all.

Confront King Rycard. Make him suffer. Return with the coward's head.

Every part of his body throbbed, worsening with each step. It would hurt when he took his boots off, but he couldn't think about that now. He couldn't think about the growing wet patch under the left side of his ribs or the fatigue gnawing at the edge of his consciousness either.

He made his ascent up another staircase and checked every room on the next level but continued to find them empty. The servants had the time to flee before his battalion arrived, so Rycard would have had time to escape also, but it was still worth seeing with his own eyes.

Reducing his castle to ash would not be enough. A statement was not enough. Not even if it meant obeying his father's orders to stand back and let the castle burn.

Confront King Rycard ...

His jaw locked, the back of his neck tugging. The ringing threatened to split his head into a thousand pieces, the horrid sound unlike anything he'd ever heard. His left arm twitched and tingled within the armor. Adrenaline was turning into a monster of a different sort, something that pained him more and more with every breath.

The view of the red-washed hallway began to thin. He had not rested in days, and it would cost him now. He'd spent the lead up to this moment obsessing over this final confrontation. He would sleep once this was over, and something told him he may never wake up.

Make him suffer ...

He finally reached the top of the castle, his breath wheezing out of him as he struggled to turn the next handle. Damn the thing. He was running out of time, and he shouted as he lunged, the wood breaking against his shoulder.

Nothing.

The next door—also nothing.

It wouldn't be much longer now. Two more doors, both sent into splinters with impatience—

Someone whirled from the fireplace. King Rycard.

His thin frame trembled as his dark gaze found Frederick, his sallow skin slicked with stress. This war had taken its toll on them worse than anything ever had, but a decade of fighting was about to come to an end.

Irrationality pricked the back of Frederick's eyes and threatened to ruin it all.

I'm going home.