“Seriously, just marry my sister already,” Aroche said as they strode down the corridor. “It’s been two years since your ation. You’re a king now! My family doesn’t have any s left to shackle you.”

  One reaso had lost his mind over the broken e with Landevale was that it screamed rebellion—Burn cutting himself free from the Leodegrance’s influence.

  “You already know why I called it off,” Burn shot back, his tone sharp. “It wasn’t because I thought the Leodegrance could stifle me or my ‘growth.’ Your family couldn’t touch me even before I became king.”

  Aroche rolled his eyes, his annoyance evident, but he let out a sigh. “Yeah, yeah, I know. It’s because Landevale wao make her own mark as a knight. It’s admirable, and I appreciate you supp her behind the ses. But you still need a queen to help you rule the realm. Be ho—who else could you trust to have your back other than Landevale?”

  “Homie, I still got you,” Burn replied with a smirk, clig his tongue and winking.

  “I’M BEING SERIOUS, OI!” Aroche roared, his Southern at slipping through in his frustration.

  “And I’m being serious, too,” Burn said casually, his metal heels clig against the marble as he stopped in his tracks. “She, the bastard prince’s fiaold me she wao be reized for her strength—not her family’s status or her ties to me.”

  “Being my fiancée was already humiliating enough. It was holding her back, and now you’re suggesting she should be my queen? Do you even realize what you’re trying to force your sister into?” Burn asked, fixing Aroche with a poiare.

  “It’s been five years since we ehings,” Burn tinued. “Have you seen what she’s aplished sihen?”

  Landevale’s progress was almost absurd. The first woman to join the Round Table, rising through the ranks like a storm, and nearly breaking into the Five Stars of Force Art.

  “Make her my wife? Are you insane? She’s in her prime. People are callihe sed Gahad, f out loud. And you wao rot as… what? A glorified household manager?” Burn’s tone was equal parts disbelief and sarcasm.

  “But this isn’t just any household, you halfwit! It’s the royal household!” Aroche shrowing his hands up.

  Aroche stared at his so-called best friend—the greatest king who will ever live—and wondered, for the huh time, how someone so brilliant could be so utterly stupid. Did Burn actually think he could carry the weight of the kingdom all by himself forever?

  “Fine!” Aroche suddenly yelled, making 22-year-old Burn flinch for the first time in years. “Go find a girl. Any girl. I don’t care if she’s from the streets, as long as you think you fuck her forever! I’ll personally help you turn her into the most honorable woman iire realm!”

  Burn blinked, stunned for a moment, before bursting into ughter so loud it echoed down the halls.

  When his ughter finally died down, Burn said, “I won’t drag any woman into this kind of life unless she knows exactly what it entails, uands what she’s signing up for, and is willing to do it.”

  Then, with a faint smirk that didn’t quite reach his eyes, he added, “Frankly, I’d be relieved if a woman like that did.”

  Burn didn’t wish this burden on anyone.

  “A woman should be free to do whatever she wants. And this… world… was never made for women,” Burn said as he resumed walking, his voice tinged with rare solemnity and an undercurrent ret, “This is the world of men.”

  Aroche fell silent, his usual wit abandoned. Watg Burn’s back as he walked ahead, he could already imagine how this would sound to people who didn’t truly know his best friend. They’d mistake it for stubborn allegiao a patriarchal system.

  But Aroche knew better. Burn’s views on gender, like his thoughts on svery, cssism, and equality, were far deeper and more nuahan anyone gave him credit for.

  “Then what?” Aroche finally asked, his tone breaking the silence. “You’re just going to stay single forever? That’s yrand pn?”

  He caught up to Burn, slinging an arm over his shoulder—only to freeze mid-step and dramatically yank his arm back. He asked with disgust, “Hey, best friend… are you gay?”

  Burn shot him a deadpan look, ced with mild annoyance. “Don’t you think you’d know the ao that, sidering my history with noblewomen?”

  “But you get bored so easily!”

  “I don’t get bored easily. I just let them go ohey’ve gotten what they wanted from me. Isn’t that fair?”

  “Cold! Gay!”

  “Tell that to your wife. Oh wait—right. You don’t have oher.”

  “Then maybe we should get married, homie?”

  “AH! DISGUSTING! GET OFF ME!” Burn snapped, recoiling in horror.

  The two spat insults and scowled at each other, wrestling with a mix of genuine disgust and mockery. They choked, jabbed, and struck—Aroche’s arms locked around Burn’s neck while Burn’s relentless elbows found their mark in Aroche’s gut.

  Their juvenile scuffle came to an abrupt halt when Gahad suddenly sprioward them.

  “Sirs!”

  His face was troubled—deeply so—and his urgency stopped them cold. “Gawain just arrived in terrible shape. Please follow me, Your Majesty, Yrace.”

  At once, Aroche released his arm from around Burn’s neck, and Burn stopped jamming his elbow into Aroche’s gut. Their youthful antics vanished, repced instantly by the posed presence of two rulers in the fapending crisis.

  Gahad led them swiftly to the chamber where the nearly lifeless Gawain y. The room was one of the pace’s seldom-used chambers, and the sight within it was grim. Gawain g to sciousness as though it were the only thihering him to life.

  “Sir…” Gawain rasped, veins bulging in his neck as blood seeped from his tightly ched teeth. His body was riddled with stab wounds, the kind that threatened not only his life but the progress of his Force Art Stars. He was ghostly pale, his body teetering on the edge of colpse, yet he endured.

  Burn aowledged his pained greeting with a solemn nod, watg as the pace physis forced high-grade mana and healing potions into his mouth, then poured them over the haphazardly bandaged wounds c his broken form.

  When the first wave of aid began to take effect, Gawain sighed in agony, his chest heaving as his body struggled to stabilize. Yet even in his pain, his voice was clear, though strained and ced with fury, “Sir, it’s a rebellion.”

  Though spoken through ched teeth, the word cut through the air with terrifying crity.

  “Who?” Burn’s expression grave, thinking he was ready to hear who had dared to wage a war against him in his own backyard.

  Gawaiated. His gaze flickered to Aroche, who stood beside Burn, his expression a dark mirror of the king’s. After a tense pause, Gawain spoke. “Prince… Prince t…”

  Burn wasn’t ready.

  His mind reeled. His own brother? Was this real? t—his brother—had caused this? Had reduced Gawain, one of his most trusted fidants, to this wretched state? Burn’s jaw tightened as he shut his eyes. He thought t had made his peace with his assion to the throne. He thought.

  “Is that true, Gawain?” Aroche’s voice cut through the heavy silence, darker and sharper than Burn’s.

  “Sir… I witnessed him kill—COUGH! COUGH-COUGH!” Gawain spat blood onto the pillow. He grunted in pain and hatred. “HE KILLED MY BROTHERS!”

  The young man roared, tears falling from his eyes, and then he wailed—a long, heartbreaking wail.