Chapter Text
Gunfire cracked through the trees. They were surrounded. His men dropped one after another, the woods stretching outward without end...
He tore awake, breath ragged, heart hammering, his body shaking beneath cold sweat. He lurched upright, climbed over two naked bodies, and stumbled when he reached the bedside.
Two days ago, the Military Committee had subjected him to a third closed-door inquiry. His command ability had come under harsher scrutiny than ever before.
For eight hours, he swore to them again and again that he had called for support the moment orders came through. Swore the woods had been crawling with men. Swore he had already received confirmation of backup before leading the squad inside.
They still blamed the failure of the operation on his ‘recklessness’ and ‘impulsiveness’.
He shoved both hands into his damp hair and tightened his fingers.
His squad had been wiped out. He had lost men who had once followed him with absolute loyalty. Their deaths would forever be pinned to his “self-indulgent recklessness.”
He had gone to the Queen and explained that he might face a court-martial, but she refused to speak to the King on his behalf.
Since returning to Shiloh, Silas had cast him aside. No appointment. No position.
You have nothing.
He tightened his grip until a fresh dull ache spread beneath his scalp.
Curtis Everett.
Something coated the back of his tongue. The same thing rolled and burned inside his chest. Now all Michelle needed was a wedding and a child to reduce him to a court jester.
A naked female body pressed against his back, skin warm in a way that stirred both disgust and hunger. He released his hair and spread his legs.
Another body slid between his thighs. They collapsed back onto the damp sheets, and he buried his hand in a mass of thick hair.
He did not remember their names. He had no desire to see their faces clearly. It did not matter. They were the same as him. He needed them crawling across his body; they needed… whatever they could take from him.
He closed his eyes and clenched his fingers again.
…left-right-left, left-right-left. A screaming doe dragged into a dark corridor…
He disliked bright mornings, especially in this house.
When he entered the kitchen, the King stood beside the stove preparing breakfast for the family with meticulous care, while the Queen discussed her missing phone with Thomasina.
"Medium scrambled on whole wheat toast," Silas said as he plated the food and handed it to Michelle. “No butter on pain of death.”
The princess smiled and let the King kiss her forehead before carrying the plate to the table and pouring herself a cup of coffee.
White tablecloth. Ivory china. Pale flowers. Sunlight spread through the nearly colorless room and made it brighter still. He crossed to the counter with aching eyes, grabbed a croissant, dropped it onto a plate, and sat at the opposite end of the table.
"The queen's cell phone." He sank into his chair with the ease of an actor stepping into character. “It's got the email, birthdays, and bad spelling of every person comprising society in this country.”
The Queen looked at him over the rim of her glasses, green eyes sharp. "Jack."
He smiled at her and leaned forward to receive her kiss on his cheek. "I think they're more concerned with national security."
"You know I don't like getting involved with politics." The Queen spoke with gentle emphasis, her beautiful face untouched by strain.
"Yes, Ma'am." He echoed obediently, his gaze slipping toward her left earlobe.
"So come," the Queen announced with satisfaction as she rose from her chair and turned to Thomasina. “Let's keep looking before they call in the national guard. It's gotta be somewhere.”
The Queen and King kissed goodbye like an ordinary middle-class couple, despite the young men and women who likely existed between them.
He watched them separate, smiling at each other, and a wave of absurdity swept through him.
His stomach twisted with a sound only he could hear. His body was starving, yet he wanted nothing on the plate before him.
The food looked like pictures torn from a gourmet magazine—perfect and utterly unappetizing.
He lifted his glass and drank some water, hoping the tasteless liquid might quiet the acid churning inside him.
The Queen left the kitchen with Thomasina and the attendants. David Shepherd entered moments later.
"I was told to come?" Shepherd lingered near the doorway, his smile unable to hide the confusion and discomfort beneath it.
The farm boy probably had not expected to end up alone with an old lover so quickly.
"Good morning, David." He greeted Shepherd with a smile, unfolded a newspaper, and took satisfaction in the way Michelle’s expression stiffened. “Good to see you here, hero.”
David Shepherd’s gaze shifted between him and Michelle, as though he had no idea why he had been summoned here.
A herbivore wandering into a predator’s den, he thought, tearing off a piece of bread with idle interest. Perhaps the morning would not be as tedious as he had feared.
"Ah," Silas said as he turned around, like a shepherd spotting a lost lamb. “The brave soldier makes it.”
Shepherd looked toward the King, uncertainty creeping into both his posture and expression, like a sheep sensing danger without understanding where it lay.
"Serve Mr. Shepherd a coffee, please." He turned toward a servant before smiling back at Shepherd. “No sugar, just a touch of milk.”
The servant poured Shepherd a cup of coffee and added milk.
After a moment’s hesitation, Shepherd approached the table. "I—"
"How do you take your eggs?" Silas asked as he stepped in front of him, every inch the chef ruling his kitchen.
Shepherd stared at the King, apparently unsure how to answer such a simple question.
"Are we still using that expression?" Silas turned toward them with theatrical curiosity before looking back at Shepherd. “Given the overwhelming evidence in favor of evolutionary theory, I need to make a royal official declaration here.”
He then launched into a philosophical discourse on chickens, eggs, evolutionary theory, and God’s role within it, leaving the poor soldier even more bewildered than before.
Throughout it all, Michelle said nothing. She drank her coffee in silence, though the stillness of her beautiful face and the downward cast of her eyes betrayed her discomfort.
He tilted his head toward her and flashed a grin before gesturing for a servant to pull out a chair for David Shepherd.
"So evolution is just one of God's many tools, like me. The only real and lingering question being..." Silas paused, picked up an egg, and looked back at David Shepherd. “How do you like them, first-come eggs?”
David Shepherd looked at the chair, then at the King waiting for an answer. "Is there... something you'd like me to do?"
Silas’s speech had completely broken the poor domestic animal’s brain, he thought with near malice. Perhaps he should arrange more scenes like this before David Shepherd lost his entertainment value and became nothing but a strategic asset.
"He'd like you to sit and eat." He took pity on Shepherd and explained, though the warmth and teasing tone remained. “My father insists on making breakfast. It makes him feel like his kids are still five.”
"You were small and manageable and I preferred you that way." Silas addressed him and Michelle before turning back toward Shepherd. “Shepherd, today you're with the family. Jack insisted.”
Another lie, of course. Yet he showed no reaction, because when Shepherd looked at him in surprise, he could feel Michelle’s anger radiating across the table.
Anger. One of his oldest companions. Real. Reliable. Always beside him.
He maintained his smile and gestured once more toward the chair.
If the lamb was destined for slaughter, then he intended to gain something from it—even if only a little more blood to spice up the performance of this ‘loving family’.
"I can't stay long." David explained before looking at Silas. “I have to report back to base this morning.”
"No, you don't. You're not going back to the front." Silas set the egg down and addressed Shepherd. “I've got a job for you here.”
"Sir—" Confusion flooded Shepherd’s face, tension seeping into his stance.
"You've been transferred to Shiloh," Silas said as he crossed to the other side of the kitchen island and examined the edge of a medium chef’s knife. “As Military Liaison to the Press Corps.”
A glass tipped over and shattered across the floor. Water and broken shards scattered in every direction.
He rose from the table so fast the chair legs shrieked against the floor.
This has to be a fucking joke, a voice sneered inside his head. A farm boy. A stupid, naive domestic animal. Taking his honor and his position while he fought for the King. While he sacrificed nearly everything for it.
He would not allow this to happen.
He did not know when he left the table. He heard Michelle speaking to David in that polite, warm, relaxed tone. He strode through a doorway, fully aware that his behavior was neither appropriate nor safe to expose.
He should always maintain—
The King had found a better replacement. The voice laughed beside his ear. And he was nothing but a court jester.
He stood in another room with the taste of rust on his tongue and a half-empty liquor bottle in his hand. He did not know how it got there, but when he poured the burning liquid down his throat, the voice split into two, then three…
They overlapped and echoed, collided and merged, swelling into a wave of heat that spread through his chest.
He hurled the bottle. It slammed against the wall with a thunderous crack.
"You might want to keep that temper in check, cousin Jack."
He turned and found Andrew Cross leaning against the wall, studying him with a smile.
The bastard had clearly just crawled out of someone’s bed. He had not even bothered fixing his collar.
"It's 'Your Highness' to you, Cross." The words scraped through his teeth as his trembling hands curled into fists. “Get out.”
"Yes, Your Highness." Andrew pushed off the wall and strolled toward him, stopping as they passed shoulder to shoulder. “But let me guess what's got you so riled up this time, dear Jack.”
He turned his head and looked at Andrew Cross.
"Betrayal, neglected..." Andrew smiled back at him, his gaunt face almost translucent beneath the bright morning light. “Or... abandonment?”
He did not remember when he reached for him, just as he did not remember when he had started hating this estate and that white kitchen.
They crashed together and slammed into something. His hands locked around Cross’s throat, ignoring the glass object that struck his own head moments earlier.
Blood streamed down his forehead and into his eyes, turning his vision red and warped.
Andrew drove his elbow into his ribs once, twice, three times, trying to force him to release his grip.
Something inside him snapped. Bone perhaps. Or something else entirely.
He neither knew nor cared.
His vision narrowed into crimson. Adrenaline drowned every other sensation.
That thing flooded his veins, raced with his blood, filled every nerve and every muscle.
Be quiet. It screamed beside his ear.
He hauled Cross upward by the throat and slammed him into the floor.
Be quiet. It spoke in his voice.
Cross’s face twisted red. Blood vessels burst in his eyes as they bulged outward.
It smiled with his face. Be quiet forever.
An arm locked around his throat, fast and precise, carrying the scent of snow.
"Let go." A voice ordered near his right ear. “Now.”
His fingers spasmed. His breathing tore through him in ragged bursts. Everything around him became painfully bright and deafening while the thing inside his head continued screaming.
The arm tightened further, cutting off his air for a second while a hand clamped around his left wrist.
His fingers suddenly released. He dropped the prey.
The arm dragged him off the floor and forced him against a hard surface.
A table or a wall—he could not tell. Blood surged through his veins like boiling tides, driving his body to struggle.
The hand pinned his left wrist, twisted his arm behind his back, and forced the elbow upward.
He had no choice but to stop fighting. His right hand braced against the surface beneath him, supporting his upper body as it bent forward under pressure, making enough room for his heaving chest.
He pressed against the cold wall and breathed hard, the edges of his vision filled with moving figures and fractured light.
Cross’s bodyguards. The palace guards.
They crowded around the bastard, dragging him aside, shouting, slapping his face, attempting CPR.
He gasped for breath and closed his eyes. The thing in his chest felt satisfied.
Be quiet. It giggled. Be quiet.
Dizziness swept through him. His focus drifted. Darkness unfolded like the wings of a giant butterfly and wrapped around his mind and vision.
For one moment, he sank into deep water, falling without end. Silent. Peaceful.
The hand released his wrist, leaving behind a burn like fire. Pain pierced his senses like a stimulant and dragged him back from the stillness.
"……leave it to us, sir."
Walsh. Captain of the guard.
Rough fingers left his wrist, and his elbow finally dropped.
He turned and leaned against the wall, wiping blood from his eyes with the back of his right hand while his left arm hung at his side, throbbing.
Curtis Everett stood in the bright daylight, every detail impossible to hide and impossible to fully grasp.
Walsh approached to examine his left arm and the cut on his forehead, asking question after question.
He ignored them all and let Walsh inspect his ribs, shoulders, fingers, and the back of his head. The muscles in his limbs trembled while sensation flooded through him in waves.
He watched Curtis Everett through slow blinks and let the world shift and harden around him.
The bodyguards helped Andrew Cross to his feet and escorted him out of the room.
Walsh continued speaking—questions perhaps, or warnings.
Whatever he said, Jack answered at random, inventing, selecting, breathing slowly alongside the dark thing inside his chest.
More people entered the room. Their movement disturbed the light, as though birds kept sweeping past the windows through the morning sun.
Servants righted overturned furniture and cleaned the shattered dishes in silence, carrying out their duties without pause.
He blinked once and straightened, no longer answering questions.
As though some suspended moment had broken apart, Curtis Everett looked away at the same time.
Michelle Benjamin entered the room in a red dress bright enough to seize every eye the moment she appeared.
Everett turned toward her and watched her cross the wreckage before stopping beside him.
She rested one hand on his arm and spoke softly. "Sorry for dragging you into this."
"It's okay." Everett’s voice remained low, nearly a whisper. “Don't worry about it.”
Michelle smiled and lowered her head, curling her fingers around Everett’s arm. "I think we—"
"How sweet, isn't it?" He pushed away from the wall and strolled toward them. “But why keep playing this charade, Michelle?”
"Stop your stupid game, Jack." Michelle said, all brightness stripped from her beautiful face. “You're just embarrassing yourself.”
"Are you afraid the truth might ruin your little fairy tale?" He smiled down at his twin sister and rival, using his height to loom over them both. “You should've told him the truth long ago.”
"The truth is you cannot bear to face your failure." Michelle did not retreat. She stepped half a pace into his personal space instead. “So you lashed out, clinging to anger and violence, envying David's success—”
"I'm not jealous!" he snapped, the thing inside his chest beginning to burn again. “You have no right to judge me —— not after you cast him aside like a used toy for a new one.”
The same thing burned inside Michelle’s eyes."I'm fighting for my right to exist."
"So am I, dear sister." He looked into her eyes, into that dark thing. “I won't sit by and be plowed into obscurity.”
He raised his head and looked at Curtis Everett.
"Not for anything." he said. “Not for anyone.”