CHAPTER 71: TOWER’S INNOCENT

  The next anchor greeted them.

  Not with the cold of the night.

  Nor the echo of footsteps.

  But with the weight of expectation.

  Walls rose like fingers closing around a throat, not to choke quickly, but to remind slowly.

  Stone did not have to speak to be cruel.

  It only had to stand there, tall and unyielding, long enough for a human spirit to start apologizing for existing.

  A pulse.

  A breath.

  A life measured in the rhythm of chains and the absence of choice.

  The Tower did not belong to the kingdom.

  The kingdom belonged to it.

  Suryel felt that truth the moment the anchor tightened around her ribs, the familiar pressure of being pulled into a memory that had already decided how it would end.

  In her satchel, the page warmed, humming faintly like a held note that refused to resolve.

  She swallowed against the sensation.

  Beside her, Helel’s posture shifted with that lazy grace of his, like he was simply strolling into a story… even as his eyes sharpened, scanning the walls, the parapets, the patterns of patrols, as if the Tower were prey and he was mapping the cleanest way to kill it.

  Yael stayed slightly behind Suryel, as if the air itself asked him to be a shield.

  His gaze moved in quiet increments, the way Recon did when they weren’t watching things… but watching intent.

  There were other people too, glittering and scattered like small stars in the day.

  Human soldiers in muted armor, posted in corners where shadow swallowed silver.

  Human sentries on the battlements, unmoving as statues, but their eyes tracked the courtyard with that specific kind of vigilance that meant they’d seen revolutions before.

  They didn’t look at Suryel, Helel, or Yael.

  They couldn’t.

  The anchor had folded them into the memory as ghosts.

  Observers.

  Silent witnesses pressed between seconds.

  Still… Suryel couldn’t shake the feeling that the Tower knew.

  That it could sense intrusion the way a wound senses salt.

  A man knelt in the darkness behind iron bars.

  The prince who would rather heal did not call for mercy.

  He did not cry for rescue.

  He did not curse the world for the shape it demanded of him.

  He only breathed.

  Slow.

  Measured.

  Not because he was calm, but because he was rationing pain.

  His hands were pressed to a wound at his side, fingers slick with blood that had already begun to crust… and then break again with each breath.

  It wasn’t a clean injury.

  It was the kind of wound that refused to become history.

  It insisted on being present.

  His shoulders trembled once, just once, and then steadied.

  Not weakness.

  Discipline.

  The kind learned by someone who spent his life trying not to inconvenience others with his suffering.

  The mutiny had left him bleeding, broken, and placed in the Tower not for justice… but because the world required a lesson in obedience.

  Suryel watched him in the dim torchlight and felt something in her chest pinch hard enough to sting.

  Because she recognized that look.

  Not despair.

  Not surrender.

  The look of someone who had already made peace with the fact that the world was wrong… and still refused to become wrong with it.

  Helel’s mouth twitched, like he was about to make a joke, but the humor never arrived.

  It died somewhere behind his teeth.

  Yael exhaled quietly, the sound nearly swallowed by stone.

  Then the memory shifted.

  Not forward.

  Sideways.

  The anchor did that sometimes.

  It didn’t just show an ending.

  It showed the thread that made the ending inevitable.

  And suddenly, the Tower wasn’t the first scene.

  It was only the last room of a long, tender corridor.

  The secured castle forest.

  It was peaceful.

  Almost offensively so.

  The kind of calm that made you forget violence existed… until it arrived to correct you.

  Suryel blinked and found herself standing at the edge of a secured castle grove, trees tall and well-tended, their branches braided with lanterns like captured fireflies.

  The air smelled green, clean, and expensive.

  In the distance, two children moved along the path.

  One wore the soft, embroidered clothes of privilege, too clean to be real.

  A small circlet crown sat crooked on his head like it didn’t belong to him… like someone had placed it there and he hadn’t yet figured out how to use it, or how to refuse it.

  The other child wore servant’s cloth, simple and patched, hair tucked back tight, running with the urgency of someone who could not afford to waste breath.

  The prince was reading while walking.

  Reading.

  As if the world and its responsibilities could be held at bay by pages.

  Suryel’s lips parted.

  She almost laughed, but it came out as a soft exhale instead.

  Helel leaned in slightly, voice low and bright with disbelief. “He’s a walking accident.”

  Yael’s eyes softened. “He’s like a walking prayer.”

  “Prince!” The servant girl called out, voice thin with panic when she lost sight of him.

  She wasn’t allowed to shout, not really.

  But she did anyway.

  The prince didn’t answer.

  He was too busy being enchanted by words.

  He reached a tree with pale bark and started climbing it like the book had given him permission to defy gravity.

  Suryel’s fingers twitched at her polearm’s strap out of pure instinct.

  She shouted. “No! That’s not how you climb, kid!”

  The prince slipped.

  It happened fast, the way accidents always did.

  One second his hands held bark, the next his feet kicked air.

  The servant girl screamed and ran beneath him without thinking.

  She didn’t catch him.

  She cushioned him.

  Her small body took the fall like a sacrifice.

  The impact knocked the breath from her lungs.

  The prince bounced slightly, landed half on her, half on the moss, and then…

  He laughed.

  Not cruelly.

  Not mockingly.

  Just… joyfully.

  Alive.

  “Oh no…” Suryel whispered, horrified. “He’s adorable. I want him as a brother.”

  Helel shot her a look like excuse me?

  But his mouth betrayed him with a faint smile.

  The prince scrambled off the girl, panic flashing across his face as he realized what she’d done.

  He knelt beside her, hands fluttering like he wanted to help but didn’t know where to touch.

  “I’m sorry!” He blurted, voice cracking with guilt. “I didn’t mean to, I thought… I was careful… Are you hurt? Let me take a look!”

  The girl wheezed, then coughed, then pushed herself up with stubborn pride.

  Her eyes were sharp even through pain, like she was already calculating consequences.

  “What were you trying to do?” She demanded, half furious, half terrified.

  The prince pointed at the tree as if it were a classroom. “I needed the inner bark.”

  She blinked. “For what?”

  He hesitated, then lowered his voice conspiratorially, like sharing a secret. “It’s for medicine.”

  Suryel’s chest tightened.

  Because that wasn’t normal.

  Not for princes.

  Princes didn’t climb trees for medicine.

  Princes summoned healers.

  Ordered herbs.

  Made other people bleed for their comfort.

  The girl stared at him, then at the tree, then back at him, like she was trying to decide if he was stupid… or holy.

  Finally, she muttered. “Are you… ugh. Move.”

  She climbed the tree like she’d been born in branches.

  Quick.

  Efficient.

  Angry at gravity.

  The prince watched with wide admiration.

  She pulled out a blunt little knife, the kind servants used for kitchen tasks, and scraped the bark carefully, peeling away layers until she reached the pale inner bark beneath.

  Then she climbed down and slapped it into his palm. “There.”

  The prince beamed like she’d handed him treasure. “Thank you!”

  “You don’t have to thank… someone lower than you, Your Majesty.” She muttered, as if suddenly remembering rank.

  The prince tilted his head. “But why wouldn’t I?”

  The girl rolled her eyes so hard it almost became a prayer. “You’re going to get yourself killed.”

  The prince shrugged, still smiling. “Not today.”

  Helel snorted softly. “Oh, I’m starting to like him. He’s going to be a problem. A healer like Raphael… but young and chaotic like me.”

  Yael murmured, “He already is.”

  Then he added, voice faintly dry, “But here’s to hoping he doesn’t grow up chaotic like you.”

  Back in the castle—

  Time shifted to late afternoon.

  The anchor didn’t let the memory linger too long in innocence.

  The prince hummed as he worked in a small, stolen corner of the kitchens, hidden behind stacked pots and sacks of grain.

  Attendants passed by, busy with meals for nobles who never thanked them.

  None paid attention to the boy prince crouched like a thief, grinding bark with water into a crude paste.

  The servant girl hovered nearby, arms crossed, eyes suspicious.

  “You’re not supposed to be here, Your Majesty.” She whispered.

  The prince didn’t look up. “Neither are you.”

  “I do actually belong here.” She snapped, then hushed herself.

  He smiled without cruelty. “Then I belong wherever you are.”

  He winked and giggled.

  Suryel choked on air as the servant girl blushed. “Oh, that should be illegal! Not with a baby face! What have you wished for, Helel?!”

  Helel’s eyes widened like he’d just witnessed a murder. “I take back whatever it was I said.”

  Yael looked away like he was pretending he didn’t hear that.

  The prince finished mixing, then turned and offered the concoction in a small cloth-wrapped bundle. “Here you go, take this home.”

  The girl blinked at it. “What is that?”

  The prince’s expression softened.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  Not pity.

  Not superiority.

  Just… care. “For your brother.”

  Her body froze.

  The girl’s voice dropped to something raw. “How do you know about him?”

  The prince tilted his head. “You told me when I asked you— Well I bothered you about why you were quieter, remember?”

  He frowned slightly, as if confused she didn’t. “Last week. You said he has loose bowels and he cries until he turns red. You said your family couldn’t afford a doctor.”

  The girl stared at him as if he’d performed magic.

  “This will help.” The prince promised, then added quickly. “I think. I read it. And… it makes sense.” He held out a small scrap of paper. “Follow the instructions I wrote here. Can you read? I can just tell you if you can’t.”

  The girl’s hands shook as she took the bundle.

  She didn’t cry.

  She didn’t thank him.

  She just held it like it was fragile hope… and shook her head no.

  He smiled gently. “That’s okay. It’s simple. You just need to add a fistful of this in water like making tea, then make him drink a cup for the whole day until his bowels improve.”

  There was silence.

  Then, in a voice that barely existed, the girl whispered. “Why?”

  The prince blinked. “Why what? Is there a part of the instruc—”

  “Why do you care?” She demanded, eyes bright with something sharp. “You’re a… Prince.”

  The prince’s smile dropped.

  He hesitated, then answered honestly, like the truth mattered more than safety. “Because you’re a person.”

  Suryel felt her throat burn.

  That sentence was a seed.

  A dangerous seed.

  Because once someone heard that and believed it…

  They would never need chains nor accept it again.

  True loyalty nurtured in a cherished bond.

  The memory flowed through time like water through fingers.

  Days became weeks.

  Weeks became years.

  The castle grew around them, unchanged in structure but altered in spirit.

  The prince became older, taller, sharper.

  His hands bore ink stains more than sword calluses.

  He spent time in infirmaries instead of training grounds, speaking with healers instead of commanders.

  Attendants whispered about him: kind, strange, soft.

  Courtiers did too, and they called him:

  A liability.

  A dreamer.

  A prince who didn’t understand power.

  He learned anyway.

  He learned herbs.

  He learned wounds.

  He learned fevers.

  He learned the names of the sick who lived in the lower district.

  He learned which servants had family members dying quietly at home.

  And the servant girl… she disappeared.

  Not from the castle.

  But from herself, so she could serve him better.

  One day she returned with her hair cut shorter, posture changed, clothes altered to match the pages.

  A boy now, at least in presentation.

  A page in training.

  A shadow learning to stand beside the prince.

  No one questioned it too deeply.

  In castles, people survived by pretending not to see what they weren’t paid to see.

  Suryel watched the Page move through corridors with the precision of someone who had memorized every stone.

  Watched him take hits in training meant for someone else.

  Watched him intercept insults, redirect danger, swallow anger.

  He was becoming devotion with legs.

  Helel’s gaze tracked it, sharp and silent.

  Yael’s expression tightened, like he understood the shape of a guardian being born.

  Suryel whispered, almost to herself. “That’s how it happens.”

  Helel glanced at her. “What?”

  Suryel swallowed. “True loyalty.”

  Her voice was rough. “Not commanded. Not bought. Grown.”

  Yael murmured, “Nurtured.”

  And then the memory darkened.

  Because loyalty like that always attracts violence.

  The prince grew into a well-educated young man who spoke gently… but refused to be bent.

  He treated the sick personally.

  He visited the poor without escorts.

  He spoke against the cruelty of conscription and the waste of war.

  He confessed once to the Page in a quiet corridor near the infirmary, voice trembling with something like longing. “I don’t want to be a prince.”

  The Page froze, eyes widening. “You can’t say that.”

  The prince smiled sadly. “But it’s true.”

  His fingers curled lightly around the edge of his sleeve as if bracing himself against his own honesty. “I cannot lead men with a blade raised to war… I cannot harm.”

  He leaned closer, voice softer, as if the words were fragile. “I want… to be a healer.”

  The Page stared at him, and something in his face shifted.

  Not surprise.

  Not fear.

  Acceptance.

  As if he’d been waiting for the prince to finally speak the truth aloud.

  “Then I’ll protect you and your dream, Your Highness.” The Page whispered.

  The prince blinked. “From what?”

  The Page’s jaw tightened. “From the world.”

  The mutiny erupted like a tightening noose.

  Suryel felt the Tower return in her peripheral vision like an approaching storm.

  The mutiny wasn’t sudden.

  It was a sickness.

  A slow infection of resentment and hunger and greed, whispered in barracks and kitchens and noble halls.

  The kingdom was tired.

  The soldiers were tired.

  The nobles were bored.

  And bored nobles always did the same thing:

  They created cruelty for entertainment.

  There were meetings in candlelit rooms.

  There were voices behind doors.

  There were guards who started looking the other way.

  The prince didn’t see it coming.

  Or maybe he did… and refused to believe the world would truly punish kindness.

  The Page saw it.

  Of course he did.

  He moved like a ghost, collecting fragments of conversation, tracking unusual patrol changes, counting which officers suddenly started wearing armor at dinner.

  He warned the prince once, breathless, eyes intense.

  “Something’s wrong…” The Page said, gripping the prince’s sleeve. “They’re moving.”

  The prince frowned, looking up from a medical apparatus in his room. “Who?”

  The Page’s voice dropped. “The courtiers. And your older brothers.”

  The prince tried to laugh it off.

  Tried to soften it.

  But the Page didn’t soften with him.

  “Please.” He begged.

  And that single word held years of devotion. “Listen to me.”

  The prince stilled, gaze lifting fully to the Page’s face.

  Then he nodded—

  Too late.

  The mutiny already erupted like fire.

  Steel in the hallways.

  Screams.

  Attendants scattering, trays dropped, food wasted on marble.

  Scattered guards wearing different banners shouted orders, trying to contain the chaos into their favor, but betrayal ran deep inside the walls.

  The prince was caught.

  Not because he fought.

  He lost from the moment he refused to fight.

  From the moment he refused to order silent, underhanded executions.

  From the moment he refused to assassinate his brothers, merely because courtiers promised him it was the surest way to win.

  He refused to become the kind of ruler they demanded as the price.

  There was infighting among the King’s sons, the prince’s brothers.

  One won.

  Many brothers were cut down on the spot by the new King.

  But this prince… was looked down on as weak.

  So they didn’t kill him.

  They imprisoned him.

  Dragged him.

  Bleeding.

  Broken.

  Mocked.

  Into a Tower.

  Back to a Tower.

  The memory snapped back like a whip.

  The prince knelt in the darkness again, hands pressed to that wound that wouldn’t seal cleanly.

  And still… He didn’t beg.

  He didn’t rage.

  He only watched the bars like they were a problem to solve… not a fate to accept.

  The loyal Page arrived when the stars were faint and low on the horizon, carrying nothing but devotion in his eyes and urgency in his hands.

  The Page moved through corridors like water.

  Not rushing.

  Not hesitating.

  He had memorized every turn: every guard’s rhythm, every weak hinge, every shadow that could swallow a body.

  Human guards stood at posts, half-asleep in routine.

  One of them shifted, and the Page paused in darkness, breath held, body perfectly still.

  The guard yawned.

  Looked away.

  The Page slipped past.

  Suryel’s chest tightened.

  That kind of stealth wasn’t training alone.

  That was desperation honed into art.

  Inside, the prince lifted his gaze.

  Not pleading.

  Not despairing.

  Recognition.

  Trust.

  A quiet smile that might have meant hope.

  The Page reached the bars and whispered, voice shaking. “My prince.”

  The prince’s smile deepened faintly. “You came.”

  The Page swallowed hard, hands working fast at the lock.

  “Of course I came.” He whispered, eyes glossy with fear. “I’m not leaving you here.”

  The lock clicked.

  “Please.” The Page pleaded. “Let me save you. Come.”

  He extended a hand.

  The prince took it.

  Freedom hung between their fingers— Almost.

  The tower door creaked under their care, stones grinding like teeth.

  Outside, the world was patient only for the obedient.

  The Page led him through corridors of darkness, heart hammering loud enough Suryel swore the stones should hear it.

  The anchor pulsed with him, matching that frantic rhythm, like time itself was anxious.

  Every shadow was a choice unmade.

  Every step a question.

  Could mercy outrun inevitability?

  They reached the outer wall.

  For a breath.

  For a heartbeat.

  The prince felt it: Wind on his face. Night unbroken.

  His eyes closed briefly, and the expression that crossed his face was so soft it nearly broke Suryel.

  Almost tenderness.

  Almost another kind of future.

  And then the dawn crept in.

  The guards discovered the mutiny’s survivor was gone.

  A prisoner had escaped.

  The alarm sounded.

  A bell rang once, then again, then again, louder each time, as if the kingdom itself was screaming.

  Boots thundered.

  Torches flared.

  The streets emptied into chaos.

  The world did not wait.

  The Page cursed under his breath and dragged the prince forward.

  “We need to go faster, Your Majesty.” He pleaded, almost carrying the thin frame that could barely be called a living human body. “We’re almost there. Please hang on to me, you’re almost safe.”

  But the prince’s wound slowed him.

  Every movement was a negotiation with the body.

  With time.

  With fate.

  Helel watched from above, still as a blade poised but not yet swung.

  His eyes were sharp, predator-focused, the kind of gaze that knew exactly how easy it would be to intervene.

  And yet how catastrophic.

  Suryel’s fingers tightened on the hilt of her polearm, not to act… but to anchor herself to the moment that brushed her memories smelling of bark, meadows, and velvet halls.

  She recognized this memory.

  Yael crouched below on a rooftop edge, daggers ready, eyes calculating routes, exits, the angle of archers on walls.

  He didn’t move.

  But his stillness was a scream.

  The prince stumbled near the town’s edge.

  Almost safety.

  Almost the wild beyond the kingdom’s grasp.

  The Page caught him, arms shaking, lips tight with effort and fear.

  “Hold on.” He begged, voice cracking. “Your Majesty, we are almost there. Please. Or at least let me carry you to safety—”

  The prince’s eyes lifted to the horizon, where dawn painted the world gold like mockery.

  And then the first bolt rang out.

  A signal.

  An arrow was loosed.

  The prince jerked, shock blooming across his face.

  The Page didn’t understand at first.

  Then the prince sagged into his arms.

  Warm blood soaked into the Page’s sleeves.

  The prince’s eyes met his one last time.

  Hope.

  Trust.

  Freedom.

  Reflected… with a smile.

  “Thank you… and I’m sorry.” He whispered.

  Then the warmth on his face dimmed.

  It was not enough.

  The Page screamed, raw and animal, clutching him tighter like devotion could stitch flesh back together.

  But sound could not undo inevitability.

  The prince’s blood kissed the stones.

  The dawn rose bright and still indifferent.

  The Page shook, weeping, pressing his forehead against the prince’s like he could share breath.

  “No!” She sobbed. “No, no, no…”

  Then another bolt struck.

  The Page’s body arched.

  His breath left him in a single broken sound.

  He folded over the prince, collapsing into him like the last act of loyalty was to die with his master… so he would not be alone.

  Still his most loyal Page… even in death.

  Suryel’s heart ached, not for the loss.

  She had cataloged that.

  She had lived through endings before.

  But for the almosts.

  The futures that would never unfold.

  The tenderness that would never touch flesh.

  Helel’s presence grew heavier, restrained danger coiling in his bones.

  His jaw flexed once, like he was biting down on a war.

  He said nothing.

  He merely exhaled and let the moment imprint.

  Yael’s gaze lingered on the fallen, daggers lowered, silent witness to what the world refused to bend for.

  The anchor tried to justify.

  Tried to fold the story neatly.

  The prince had resisted.

  The Page had acted.

  Dawn claimed its due.

  History wanted a lesson—

  “No.” Suryel stepped forward.

  Not as a ghost.

  Not as an observer.

  But as a variable that refused to let the lie stand uncorrected.

  Her voice cut clean through the air, low and clear, like the final line of a verdict.

  “Say it correctly.” She demanded, staring at the air above the bodies as if the anchor itself had a face. “The world does not break men because they are weak.”

  Her grip tightened on her polearm.

  Her humor was gone.

  Only truth remained.

  “It breaks them because it refuses to bend.” She swallowed, eyes burning, voice sharpening. “This story is not a warning. Not a lesson on morality.”

  Her breath trembled. “It is a measure of consequence.”

  The anchor shuddered.

  It could not seal itself.

  It cracked, folding the Tower, the prince, and the Page’s loyalty into a single fragile page.

  Time carried the weight forward.

  The ripple spread, quiet but relentless.

  Whispers in corridors.

  Songs sung in kitchens by attendants who didn’t know why their throats tightened on certain lines.

  Rumors stitched into children’s games:

  One child pretending to be the prince, another pretending to be the Page, both insisting on kindness even as the ‘guards’ chased them laughing.

  The Page survived.

  Not in flesh.

  But in story.

  Carrying memory heavier than any gold.

  The prince was gone, remembered not for what he did… But for what he refused to be.

  Only for written texts on early herbal medicines discovered centuries later, moving him into a simple acknowledgement in traditional medicine.

  Suryel held the page and tucked it carefully away.

  Hands steady.

  Eyes sharp.

  No forgiveness.

  No false comfort.

  Just understanding.

  Some sacrifices do not redeem.

  Some almosts never become real.

  And the Tower?

  It was allowed to ask its question, soft as stone:

  Who dies when roles refuse to bend?

  The answer came like a bruise blooming beneath skin:

  It is those who insist on being themselves in a world that does not allow it.