Like a man struck by a sudden winter gale, Alpheo tore himself from the mattress. His feet hit the cold stone floor with a dull sound akin to a mace falling on a wall, and whatever lingering sweetness they had shared in the dark fluttered away like light snow before a spring wind.

With only a strip of white silk hitched around his waist to cover his nakedness, he strode toward the heavy oak door. Before throwing the bolt, he paused, turning back to ensure Jasmine was hidden from view.

She gave a sharp nod, pulling the heavy wool blanket tight against her chest. Given a few moments, she might have gathered her shifts and made herself look a queen, but a red ribbon allowed no time for vanity.

It was the color of blood after all.

The door swung inward. Wordlessly, Alpheo reached out and snatched the parchment from Sebastien’s hand. No greetings passed between them, he gave the man a tight nod, grunted a brief word of thanks, and kicked the door shut with his heel, one hand keeping the silk at his hip and the other gripping the message.

There was no ink of red upon the parchment itself, only a dollop of hardened scarlet wax stamped with the fierce fire of the Fourth Legion. It was the rider who had carried it who wore the ribbon, a sign that probably a horse had been ridden to death to bring these words.

Holding his breath, Alpheo broke the seal.

Behind him, Jasmine watched the heavy muscles of his back tense and drop as his eyes tracked across the lines. When a great, ragged exhale finally left his lungs and his arms began to tremble, she knew he had reached the end. Wordlessly, the hand clutching the letter dropped to his side.

He turned his face to the window. The morning sun was just cresting the walls, painting the room in pale gold. They had spoken of walking the gardens together before the council met, but clearly the gardens would have to wait.The king’s eyes narrowed into tight slits, then closed entirely. For a long moment, he stood in the quiet, as if mourning the fragile peace that had just been torn from him. When his lids snapped back open, the husband was gone; the man of war had taken his place.

"What does it say?" she asked, her voice small against the sudden stillness of the room.

Alpheo did not answer. He marched back to the bed, thrust the crinkled parchment into her hands, and turned toward the chair where his breeches and doublet lay waiting.

Jasmine offered him one last weary look, her heart hammering against her ribs, before she let her curiosity pull her down to the page.

To Alpheo,

I’ll waste no ink on your health or your titles, for I am in no mood for courtesies, and by the time you reach the bottom of this page, neither will you. I offer no excuses for what has happened here, nor will I dress up the rot in pretty words. You gave me a wretched task. I told you as much when you laid it on my shoulders, but you chose to turn your ears away. Not that I accuse you of anything, we were all in happy moods from a war that was well-fought and blood-well won.

But what is to be said shall be said, I told you a single legion was not enough to hold this hole. I told you the mountain barbarians you left to bolster my forces were useless. You waved my worries aside with a flick of your hand, swearing the locals were a broken people and all I had to do was keep the peace.

They are broken, true enough that I grant you, but there are far more pieces of them than we accounted for. My lines are stretched thin as a cobweb. I have left a miserable handful of men in the streets to maintain what you call the King’s peace. And what a glorious peace it is.

Every dawn brings a new tally of my soldiers hacked and gutted in the dark. They catch them alone in the brothels, or they wait in the unlit alleys, ganging up on our patrols like rats in the black.Veterans of many whore hacked by whores.That is not right.

I had the bright idea to use the tribesmen for night watches.Wise me , right?Perhaps their hulking figure would scar the scoundrels away.

The moment one of those wild bastards was found with his throat slit in a whorehouse, his kin put the entire building to the torch. Useless to say the whole fucking city was cinder waiting to catch.

The flames spread before we could blink, and a quarter of the lower city was turned to ash before the gods took pity on us and sent a downpour. It is pointless to use them anyway; the savages don’t even speak the tongue. I’ve shoved them out to guard the refugee camps beyond the walls just to keep them from burning the rest of the city down.

Give my legion an enemy we can see, and we will cut them down and burn them until nothing remains but cinder. But I cannot hunt ghosts in the dark alleys of this fucking city with the few boys I have left. And every time we string up a local in reprisal, it only seems to breed five more rebels hungry for our blood.

Were it only urban scum and midnight shivs, I would not have sent a horse to death to bring you this. A man can endure a slight in the dark if he keeps his wits. But there is a greater wolf at the door.

It is defeat and slaughter , I bring you.

As you read this, a refugee camp camp north of Apulio , holding a thousand souls or more, has been utterly slaughtered. The butcher is some dispossessed lordling out of Oizen, one of the bastards kicked off his lands by his own brother during the war. Marryn, Marrilin, I care little for the cunt’s name. You favored the usurper brother because you wanted no more friction with Oizen, remember?I DON’T, and I repeat again , I DO NOT hold this against you, I was weary of more war then too.

Well, the brother that was cast out had surrounded himself with brigands and broken men.Of that there were many after the war. by our hands or the prince’s own. They are bleeding our supply lines, burning the grain carts, and butchering everything that breathes.

Half a cohort of my veterans was stationed at that camp; the other half was out patrolling the brush so they were spared form the butcher. We knew there were bandits, but we did not count on an army of them.

I do not know how they managed that, no one survived the slaughter to tell, but if I were to wager they had help from the inside.

I will spare your eyes what they did to the bodies of our men. Just know that when I get my hands on those cunts, I won’t have my ears sullied by any soft words of reproach from your court regarding their fates. Even if I wanted to show mercy, I could not stop my own men from flaying them alive.Nor would I attempt to.

I write this so you can see the absolute clusterfuck you left me to drown in. My lines are too thin to hold the walls, let alone the countryside. I will not put a specific number of reinforcements in ink. Trust what you read here. Trust the urgency of this ribbon. Trust how fucking furious I am to see veterans of ten years of hard war slaughtered like pigs by dog-blooded cowards.

I trust you know exactly who to send.We, I need all the help you can give me.

---

Jasmine turned the parchment over, searching the blank reverse side for any final, missing piece of the horror, but there was nothing.Though that brought little relief.

She let the page drop onto her lap, its weight suddenly feeling like lead against her thighs.

She understood his fury now. This was not the grand, thunderous clash of armies they had just survived, but it was trouble all the same.

The mattress groaned as Alpheo plunged his weight back onto the edge of the bed. He yanked a thick wool sock over his foot with a savage jerk, his jaw set so tight the bone stood out against his cheek as it were a muscle. Standing, he stomped his feet into his heavy riding boots and strode directly for the door.

"What are you going to do?" she called out before his fingers could twist the iron handle. Jasmine knew little of fields and strategy, but she knew the heavy, exhausting toll the war had taken on him. She had only just gotten her husband back to her bed; she had no desire to watch him ride back out into the mud.She was kind of prepared to throw her hands around him , if he answered he would depart.

"What else is there to do?" Alpheo remarked dryly, not even turning his head, trhough a flickering ray of the sun made way toward his black hair, making a lock of them appear silver. "There are vermin infesting my fields and cutting the throats of my men in the dark. If those little bastards want to play at being hares, they had bloody-well better learn to stomach the hounds."