Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king - Chapter 814

Chapter 814: Back home(1)

Alpheo drew the blanket up to his chest, pressing it tight as though it might shield him from the thoughts at his heart. He let his back sink deep into the mattress and, for a fleeting moment, closed his eyes and forced the air from his lungs until there was nothing left inside him.

He was home. Finally.

The war was over, and the peace signed.

By all accounts, he should have been basking in triumph, holding his son in his arms, kissing his newborn daughter, reuniting with the wife who had waited through months of steel and blood. But joy did not come. Only exhaustion. A weariness so heavy it seemed to crush his very bones, as though in Sharjaan he had left behind a piece of himself that could never be reclaimed.

He had been so drained that he had skipped the triumphal march altogether, though once he would have relished it. The grand spectacle of the city lined with cheering crowds, the banners snapping in the wind, the soldiers marching in ranks to thunderous applause despite it of course being useless it was still a nice spetactle to watch.

Now the thought of it only wearied him more.

So he skipped it and let the others take command of the march inside the city.

And the men had basked in it, of that he was sure. The white Army always did. Heroes returning from war, greeted with garlands and cheers, the admiration of the people in full bloom.

Many, no doubt, had marched with their eyes half upon the crowds, searching for a pretty smile or a beckoning glance, promises of company to ease the weight of the campaign. And why not? Legionnaires were a coveted prize in Yarzat.

Were was that glee in him?Where was that hope?

How could soldier be more blessed than their liege?

Their pay was steady, their privileges many, and even in death they provided security: widows’ stipends, state care for orphans, guarantees that set them apart from the uncertain fate of other men’s households.

It was no wonder the sight of a legionnaire in black and white set many hearts aflutter. To wed such a man was to wed not just a soldier but the stability of the state itself. And yet, strangely enough for all that, many legionnaires remained unmarried well into their service.

It was not from want of prospects, but of time. Service consumed their lives, days and weeks swallowed by the barracks, campaigns that dragged them across mountains and seas. A man was lucky to see three days of paid leave in a month, and only after a campaign could he count on two weeks of respite.

How could one build a home in such conditions?

Many men found it easier to embrace the single life, to live for the march, the barracks, and the fleeting pleasures of the road. They told themselves that when their years of service dwindled, when the sword at last rested in its scabbard, they would seek a wife, plant roots, and build a life beyond the bronze shield and the endless drum.

Alpheo caught himself in a strange, almost shameful thought, he envied his own soldiers.

He could picture them still drunk on triumph, drunk on the city’s cheers, on the open arms and warm embraces that awaited them after years of war. For them, victory meant release, meant elation, meant nights of laughter and indulgence to wash away the blood and dust of the campaign. They had peace now, if only for a while.

For him there was no such reprieve.

He was medieval…he was grotesque? He may have been apt with his mind and his tricks, but he had failed in his humanity.

Peace was a lie. He had scarcely set foot back in the capital, and already his mind was being dragged forward into the shadow of the next war. A Napoleonic struggle loomed on the horizon, armies larger than he could hope to field, a coalition that would dwarf Yarzat four times over at the very least.

He should be planning, laying down measures, and preparing supply chains, allies, and contingencies. He knew this. But all he had in his head were scattered fragments, vague notions, nothing solid, nothing he could clutch with certainty.

The sheer scale of it pressed on him like a mountain. Every hour not spent was an hour wasted.

And yet every time he forced his thoughts to strategy and policy, his mind recoiled, exhausted, demanding rest. Even the thought of rest filled him with guilt. What right had he to sleep while the noose of tomorrow’s war was already tightening around his throat?

Gods, what was happening to his life? How had it all turned to this endless treadmill,victory without joy, peace without rest, triumph without reward?Was he alive?Was this all a nightmare devoid of any meaning?

In the end he had made himself a promise, hollow though it felt: just for this late afternoon, he would stop. He would do nothing. He would sleep if he could, or at least let his body lie still and pretend.

But to the eyes that now watched him lying there, eyes that mistook his restless stillness, his sighs, his clenched jaw, he looked not like a man at peace, but like one sulking, as though sulking were all that rest had become for him.

He felt a sharp pressure against his cheek, a fingertip, the nail digging just enough to sting. A voice followed, soft but edged.

“What’s gotten into you this time?”

He had wanted to drift into sleep, to sink into nothingness, but rest would not come. Maybe words could ease what silence could not. Maybe talking would tire his mind where closing his eyes had failed.

“Nothing, really. I am just tired.” He turned his head to find Jasmine leaning over him, her expression narrowed, measuring.

“You don’t look tired,” she said flatly. “You look exhausted.” She folded her arms across her stomach with a regal sharpness that never left her. “And that’s a first. I have never seen you so down after a war you claim to have won.”

Was it really a victory, though? The question rang in his head like a mocking bell.

He forced out an answer. “I suppose leading men for two months caught up with me all at once.”

“No.” Her voice cut clean through the lie “I’ve seen you go days with barely an hour’s rest, and then leap in the courtyard like a boy, chasing Basil. That was true exhaustion, and yet you never let it cling to your face the way it does now.”

Her eyes searched him, unyielding. “This isn’t your body giving out, Alpheo. This is something else. When you barely glanced at your children, when you brushed me aside saying you wanted nothing but sleep, I thought it was an excuse for another thing. Imagine my surprise and disappointment when you actually lay down, pulled the blanket to your chin, and closed your eyes like a corpse.”

He swallowed, his gaze slipping to the curve of her dress, she really did.

“So,” she pressed, quiet now, almost coaxing,hand moving on his cheek “something has happened. Care to explain?”

For a moment, a fleeting, dangerous moment, Alpheo considered it. To let the words spill out. To confess the wound Egil had left, the way their friendship had torn open like flesh under a dull blade. To admit how much it hurt.

But he did not.

Jasmine already despised Egil, tolerated him only because Alpheo valued him. To her, Egil was little more than a brute in service of the throne, a man useful but ultimately beneath their station. She could never understand how deep that bond had once run, how much of his soul Alpheo had entrusted to him. To her, it would sound like weakness.

And Egil was not weakness. Egil had been his friend, one of the few relationships that was real, untainted by ambition or convenience. And now it was ash.

How many of those do I have left?

His eyes drifted to Jasmine. Is this…is this us…genuine? Their marriage had begun as cold politics: he, fastening his hook to the ladder of power; she, securing her bid for a throne through his rise. That was how it had started. But was that all it still was?

When he thought of a day without her, without Basil’s laughter or Rosalind’s bright eyes, without the quiet warmth of their household, was that a day he desired? No. Gods, no.

And yet… was that love? Or just comfort? Or something stranger, messier, harder to define?

The words pressed at his lips, the truth begging to escape. But he smothered it. He had already wounded one bond; he would not expose another.

So he lied and felt shame for it.

“I can assure you, I’m just tired.” His voice was calm, smooth, practiced. He turned away from her, pulling the blanket higher, closing his eyes as if to seal the conversation shut.

But silence was rarely kind. He heard the soft shift of fabric, the turn of her body away from him.

“Then I am tired too,” Jasmine said quietly

Guilt crawled through him, cold and wretched. He should have told her. But the words had stuck in his throat, and now it was too late.

For a moment he thought she would keep her back to him all night, an ocean of silence between them. Instead, she shifted once more, pressing close, her hand slipping over his stomach.

And for the first time in weeks, his body, tense and brittle, let itself sink into the mattress. And with Jasmine’s hand on his stomach, anchoring him to something still real, still his, and that he did not yet know , he finally truly slept.