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His whinging had come from a place of true despair. Everything he knew and loved had been stripped away from him, and there was nothing left, not a single pretty thing. The clothes he now wore pinched in the wrong places, itched, and smelled like the beasts from which they came. He suspected some of them had actually been worn before by other people and not been in any way washed since. The thought was truly distressing, so he tried not to indulge it.
He wasn’t surprised that Lucan didn’t want to hear his complaining. Nobody had ever wanted to hear Sebastian’s complaining. He had always been treated as more of a prop than a person. So he shut his mouth, and he did what he had always done, he went inward.
The forest soon swallowed them up. Riding a horse through a forest was the sort of thing he had always imagined doing when he sat in his castle tower and looked down at the world around him. The mare’s motion was smooth and rocking, quite soothing really. It did not make anything better, but it did stop him from becoming even more incensed.
His silence did not seem to concern Lucan. The knight’s head often swiveled back and forth. He was on high alert for hostile forces. There weren’t any, though. There were just a lot of trees and not much else. That was good. Sebastian had spent most of the day absolutely dreading the possibility of being drawn into combat. Images of the brutal events of the day before still played through his head. He saw heads in cakes. He saw blood arcing through the air. He saw death. He felt it in his bones too. He was not the same man he had been yesterday. Yesterday he was a boy who wanted birthday cake. Today he was a man. Just a man. Not a prince or a king.
It was just as well Lucan believed in him. Sebastian was quite worried as to what would happen when Lucan inevitably realized how pointless this all was. If he was lucky, they’d get to the Verdant Green before that happened. Maybe that was Lucan’s plan in its entirety. Just get rid of him. Hand him off to another royal family and wash his hands. It was a generous thing to do. Every other soldier and knight seemed to have washed their hands of him and his family. It was a near complete betrayal.
He had to avoid annoying Lucan too much. Sebastian knew he was irritating. He had been told so almost every day of his life. So he stayed quiet and he tried not to think too much about cake and blood.
Several hours later, Lucan drew them off the main path and into a clearing where both horses put their heads down and began to graze. It was somewhat disconcerting to see the big neck and head of his mount simply disappear in front of him.
“Stretch your legs,” Lucan said, offering Sebastian a hand down. Sebastian ignored the hand and tried to get off the horse himself. Having never done it before, he was momentarily befuddled. He wasn’t certain how to get down. He’d seen Lucan do it before, but making his body do the same thing suddenly seemed like a challenge. The knight simply swung himself off the horse, but waving his leg over the back of the beast seemed to be a good way to face plant directly off the creature. Fortunately the mare ignored his scrambling as he managed to slide down to the ground without becoming tangled in the straps of the saddle.
His legs were stiffer than he expected them to be, and his ass ached too. Every step felt as though it was being taken by someone else’s limbs. He took a few creaking, halting steps, then pretended to be very interested in a tree. He did not want to look at or entertain Lucan in any way.
“Get some water and some food,” Lucan said. Sebastian ignored the order. He had decided he was not speaking to Lucan. If the knight was going to snap at him and shut him down in the same way his parents and their advisors had, then he would treat him the same way. He knew how to play the unwanted outcast.
“Seb!”
Lucan said his name sharply.
“Yes?” Sebastian used Lucan’s earlier technique of not looking at him while he spoke to him.
“Get some water and some food.”
“I’m not hungry or thirsty, thank you, Sir Lucan,” Sebastian said, speaking very formally. He knew precisely how to evade the authority of those who held rank over him.
“Come here,” Lucan said, grabbing Sebastian by the ear. He forced the prince to look at him, keeping hold of his ear. It was a grip appropriate for a scoundrel child, not a royal. Sebastian whined as Lucan’s eyes narrowed darkly at him.
