“Is that you, Your Majesty?” Roel called out.

The prince looked down and saw him. “No way, it’s –” And then his fingers slipped from the ledge and he plummeted down towards him. Bending his knees, Roel reached out and caught the boy.

“Are you okay? What were you doing up there?”

Instead of being scared, the boy’s face was ecstatic. “Wow, that was so amazing! How’d you react so quickly?”

With a sigh, he put the boy on the ground and checked for scratches. “Okay, a few scrapes here and there, but you’ll be fine. How are you feeling?”

“Good! I mean –” The boy gave a low bow. “Thank you very much for saving my life, Sir Roel.”

“Hey, hey, princes shouldn’t be bowing!” He tried to make the boy stop, but he was worried that he would get in trouble for touching him. He let out a long sigh. “Princes that climb ledges and princesses that crash banquets. What’s wrong with you guys?”

“Oh, you met my sister!” His face became serious. “How was she?”

“She was doing well. She told me about your snowball –”

“Did you like her? Isn’t she pretty? Are you going to marry her?”

“She’s beautiful, but…” Roel had always been good at answering nobility, but this boy threw him off. A prince, even one so young and carefree, was still a prince. If Roel answered poorly, the boy might naively start rumors that could never be put out. “She is still young. I think that marriage is still far off in the future for her.”

The boy stared at him. “But how do you feel about her?”

Roel felt a headache coming. He couldn’t explain to a child that marriage between a paladin and a princess would never be permitted. The relationship between the two was a purely symbiotic and aromantic one. If he could earn her favor, she would protect him from the machinations of the Royal Council; in return, he would protect her from bodily harm. He tried to change the subject. “What were you doing on the ledges, Prince…?”

“You don’t know my name.”

Roel tried not to grimace. For a kid with so little in his head, he sure was perceptive. “I apologize, Your Majesty. It has been a long time since I last visited the Royal Palace.”

“My given name is Charles, but everyone calls me Charlie.”

Like hell he would call the prince by a nickname. He would be drawn and quartered before he finished his sentence. “I admire your bravery, Prince Charles, but I think it’s best if you refrain from climbing ledges.”

The prince stared at him with a frown. Roel shuddered. He could see the influence of someone else in the boy. It wasn’t his father, King Mathieu, but his grandfather, King Maxime the Bloodstained. In a small voice, the boy said, “Even Divine Paladins aren’t any different…?”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand what you mean.”

“You’re like all the others. All of you praise and praise me, but your eyes move in a different direction from your mouth.” Prince Charlie’s frown went from a disapproving one to a sad one. He sat down and hung his legs over the ledge. “Only my family and Dagfinn. They’re the only ones who tell the truth.”

Roel fell silent. He calculated all the different ramifications on his mental abacus. He did it once, and then twice, and then he decided to stop calculating. He took a seat right next to the boy. “I apolo – err, I’m sorry, Charlie.”

Just like that, Charlie’s face lit up. “It’s okay. I always wanted to talk to you. That’s why I climbed out of my window.”

Roel tried to hide his shock. That was why he risked his life? His bravery – no, his lack of fear – was astounding, especially for a prince. “Well, you found me. What do you want to talk about?”

“Is it true you slay the Acid Spitter living in the mountains? Dagfinn thinks it’s bullshit. Oh, I mean, he thinks it’s impossible. He says its acid was…cursive?”

“Corrosive?” Roel searched his memories. There had been a large venomous lizard he had slain almost a decade ago, but the monster had secreted acid in small amounts rather than spitting it. It must have been the bards and minstrels who came up with such ridiculous names. “Yeah, I recall something like that. It was a pain, for sure. Though the acid was actually the easiest part to deal with.”

“I knew it! It’s because of your armor! The songs say that nothing can pierce it.”

He wanted to confess that the armor was more or less a prop, but he wasn’t going to ruin the kid’s excitement. “Yup, that’s right. The acid slid right off the armor.”

Ecstatic, Charlie began to run down a list of songs and poems he had heard. Some were outlandish (one swing of his sword could barely cut leaves let alone topple whole mountain ranges), but he was surprised to hear how startlingly accurate some were. When the boy ran out of stories, he started telling his own about his previous confinement.

“So, when he made his way back to his room, I jumped out of the closet and purified him with Durendal!” Charlie said proudly. His prideful smile gave way to guilt. “Father said Uncle Ghislain was really upset with me and that I needed to apologize. Sis said I hit him in his ‘progeny’…?”

Roel tried to hold back his laughter, but he couldn’t. It was impossible to imagine Prince Ghislain, with his gaunt face and cold, dark eyes, bent over in pain with his hands over his crotch. Charlie didn’t seem to understand his laughter, but he tried to join in. And then he sneezed.

Immediately, Roel stopped laughing. He had forgotten how cold it was out on the balcony. The boy’s robes were thin, and he had been climbing on the window ledges for who knows how long. “We have to get you inside. You’ll catch a cold.”

Surprisingly, the boy got up on his feet. “I don’t want to end up like my sister’s instructor. But…what do we do? I’ll get in trouble if they catch me out. More trouble.”

Roel hoisted the boy onto his shoulders. “We’ll be fine.” He grinned. “Or do you not trust a Divine Paladin to guide a young boy back to his room?”

Even with the boy on his shoulders and his rather clunky armor, Roel snuck through the corridors with ease. He knew he could never admit it to anyone, but he had always felt more comfortable hiding in the shadows and sneaking around. Of course, he also felt the familiar creep of fear on his skin. If anyone saw him now, they’d no doubt assume that he was trying to kidnap the prince.

Luckily, the only people they encountered were old servants and greenhorn soldiers doing patrols. When they reached the boy’s room, he lifted him off his shoulders.

“Promise me you’ll never sneak out of your window again. This palace was built a long time ago; a loose brick and you wouldn’t be here right now.”

The boy yawned, not out of disregard but out of drowsiness. “I know. I only did it because it was you.”

Roel felt that same uneasiness he had felt when the boy was recounting the bards’ tales. “I think you overestimate my abilities, Prince.”

The boy made a face. “You’re being all stiff again,” he said. “I respect you the most because in the stories you always value the people. Dagfinn says you’re timid and boring, and that’s why there’s less stories about you, but he can shove it. Like, there’s your fight with the Acid Spitter. Afterward, you helped repair the damage it did to the mine and gave the reward to the families of the miners who had been killed by it.”

“Well, that’s…” It was true but like with all stories the extraneous details had been removed to emphasize the moral. Upon their ordainment, paladins were granted an enormous section of land. To put it bluntly, he had no use for the money. Furthermore, guilt was too easily misconstrued as kindness. It always shocked him that the serfs weren’t angrier with him for arriving as late as he did. It had taken him an hour to kill what had plagued the miners for weeks.

Charlie didn’t notice his silence. “And the other paladins are too much. Orlando is too boastful. Christian, too perfect. You’re…” He gave another yawn. “Temperate, like my father.” He seemed to want to say more, but his eyelids were closing on him. Roel helped him to his bed. He waited for a moment, but it seemed that the boy had fallen asleep, so he headed towards the door.

“Promise,” Charlie suddenly called out. “Promise we can talk again.” It was the closest Charlie had come to giving him a command all night.

“I promise,” Roel said, and he closed the door.

Charlie’s room overlooked the courtyard. The once-pleasant wind was now bitter and chilly. The torches flickered, distorting shadows on the long, wide hallway. He wasn’t sure where he was, but it wouldn’t be difficult to find someone to show him to his room.

As he walked, he thought back on his conversations of the night. It seemed that he needed to pay more attention to the royal family. He had previously thought that such an innocent child couldn’t possibly be raised in this environment. Had something changed within the palace or was the boy just an anomaly?

Roel spotted a tall man standing near the stairs that led down to the courtyard. There was just enough light to make out his features – the man’s long brown hair was streaked with gray, there were deep wrinkles that seemed to cut into his brow, and his thick eyebrows were arched in such a way that it gave him a permanent scowl. It was impossible to mis-identify the man, but Roel realized it was the first time he had ever seen his face so clearly. The man must’ve seen him first because he didn’t turn his head as Roel approached him.

“I did not know you liked to take nightly strolls,” King Matthieu said quietly.