It was after he had left Prince Ghislain’s tent. Roel was trailing along the edges of the camp, mulling over the prince’s offer, when a voice called out to him from the darkness of the forest.

“Sir Roel,” the voice said, “how goes your assignment?”

He understood almost immediately who this person represented, and he almost laughed at the absurd timing. It had to be someone affiliated with the palace. He didn’t know if the person was there to monitor him, but it wouldn’t surprise him. This was too important of a mission. The assassination of a prince was not something that could be taken as lightly as, say, the massacre of a few hundred townspeople in Magerra.

The person who had called out to him emerged from the shadows of the forest without making a single sound. She was a short young girl, perhaps in her teens, and her light blonde hair was so long that it reached the end of her back. She wore a dark blue cotehardie, and in her right hand was a polished ashen quarterstaff.

“Well?” she said eagerly. “What’s your progress?”

“Just as a precaution, may I ask who you are?” he asked.

“Oh, I apologize for my rudeness. I go by Cleo.” She smiled proudly. “But you might know me as Lady Cleopatre, the 24th Divine Paladin.”

Based on her age and appearance, he had guessed her identity, but he still had to confirm. Cleopatre: a noble-born paladin and the newest member in their ranks. Of course, seniority meant nothing. What most of the citizens in Calorin didn’t know was that a paladin’s numerical ranking was of high significance.

Although the primary ability of the Lord’s Favor was rather simplistic and straightforward, there were different factors to consider, such as how long one could sustain it or by how much a paladin’s strength was amplified by it. While being the 24th didn’t necessarily make her the 24th strongest, she was undoubtedly stronger than him.

Roel was generally well-rounded, being able to destroy the stone gates of Rove and fight off their swarms of infantrymen without becoming too exhausted. Depending on how carefully he used his power, he could sustain it for about an hour. But those accomplishments would pale in comparison to someone who was ranked 24th. Fights between paladins were rare for a reason: the winner was usually obvious.

Furthermore, Cleopatre was an anomaly amongst the paladins. It was more uncommon for nobility and women to become paladins for the sole reason that the trigger for the Lord’s Favor – a situation of great physical harm or distress – was less likely to occur in these two groups.

But now that he met her, what he felt was not curiosity but sadness. What tragic event had led to her discovering her powers? Is that what he had looked like at first – proud, bright-eyed, and slightly nervous?

“It is good to meet you, Lady Cleopatre. I’m sure you were already told, but I am Sir Roel.”

“Yes, I’ve read up on you. I was quite…shocked to read about your accomplishments at the Battle of Wetshard.” There was a hint of doubt in her voice, and she quickly added, “It’s very impressive.”

“I couldn’t have done it without the other paladins,” he said. Such skepticism was expected, especially from someone who was still becoming familiar with the enormous power she had been bestowed. “As for the mission, it’s going well. I plan to carry it out tomorrow. If I am allowed to know, what task were you given?”

He kept his tone formal and polite. They were both paladins, yes, but that didn’t mean much else. The Battle of Wetshard indicated that much.

“The Royal Council sent me to assist you. I apologize for being so late.” She was trying to match his formal tone, but the words came out of her mouth slowly and awkwardly. “I just got back from another mission, so it took me a while to catch up. What can I do to help?”

He checked his surroundings to make sure there were no eavesdroppers and then beckoned her to follow him into the forest. They walked for several minutes in silence before stopping under a vast canopy of trees. It was dark, almost blindingly so, and he waited another moment for his eyes to adjust and to check if they had been followed.

“So, what’s the plan?” she asked too loudly.

“Speak quietly. The wind will carry your voice,” he said in a whisper.

“Oh, sorry. I’m not used to…something like this.”

He nodded, but he wasn’t sure if she could see him. “We have to be very careful. If we fail somehow and get caught, it might be over for us.”

During King Maxime’s reign, if a paladin were exposed in one of these covert missions and it couldn’t be covered up, the Royal Council would play ignorant, pretending as if they had never assigned him such a task, and punish him. There was usually no recovery from that, and the paladin would fade into obscurity and disappear. He wasn’t so optimistic to believe that King Mathieu would be any less harsh, especially for something of this scale.

“T-that’s true.” It seemed as she had just realized the enormity of what they were about to do. “But the prince is evil, isn’t he? If we just tell them that it was for the peace of Calorin…”

He gaped at her.

“Um, what is it?” she said self-consciously.

What stupefied him wasn’t just the naivety of her thinking; killing the prince, a descendant of the Lord, was unforgiveable and there’d be nothing they could say to exonerate themselves. It was that word: “evil.” For some reason, it sounded so childish to him, and he tried but couldn’t remember the last time he had used that word himself.

“Are you having misgivings?” he asked.

“No, of course not!” she protested loudly, and then immediately lowered her voice. “Sorry, sorry. But no, I have no doubts. If King Mathieu says this is for the good of the kingdom, then I will do it without question.”

His eyes had adjusted well enough to see the earnest expression on her face. He wanted to tell her that she should have misgivings, but it wouldn’t do any good. As much as he wanted to deny it, he knew that when he was younger, he had been just as eager if not more to put his life and reputation on the line. Self-sacrifice was a singular thrill.

Regardless, having the help of the 24th Divine Paladin would certainly make things easier. He revised his plan and explained it to her. Tomorrow, they would track down several packs of Berine wolves and anger them by killing their pups. With any luck, the wolves, who were most active when the moon was out, would be incensed enough to attack the soldiers. Around the same time of the attack, Cleo would light some of the tents on fire, and he’d free the prisoners.

“Before, I was worried about the timing, but with your help, we’ll be fine even if one of the three factors fail. I’m not sure if the wolves will be daring enough to attack a large camp, but maybe we’ll be able to attract some other monster in the process.”

Cleo hadn’t said a thing as he explained the plan, but there was a small frown on her face. “I know that we have to kill the prince, but is this the only way? I mean no offense, but this is a bit convoluted, isn’t it?”

“Assassination is more than just killing the target. We also need to frame it as the work of heretics, and I need to have a reason for not being there to protect him.”

“What about poison? I know it’s cowardly, but…”

“I’ve considered it, but he’s very thorough. Always has someone who tests his food for him.” Perhaps it was a result of the prince’s upbringing. Roel had heard the rumors about the in-fighting between the royal heirs. The deaths of ten out of King Maxime’s twelve children was too suspicious, but the domestic affairs of the royal family were a closely guarded secret.

“Can’t we just attack him at night?”

“That’s the other problem. Joseph is always with him; they even sleep in the same tent. He’s the type of man who’d take a sword for the prince, I’m sure of it. By myself, it’s not possible to kill the prince without involving Joseph. Even with your help, I’m not sure if we can do it. It’s better to minimize the risk. If they’re caught in a situation of great peril, Joseph will go to fight with the troops and Ghislain will take command from the safety of a tent.”

His time at Rove had been brief, but he had seen how the two operated. Ghislain gave orders, and Joseph was the one who went out and made sure those orders were followed to a tee.

“And what if King Mathieu gets upset that we freed the Rove prisoners?” she pressed.

From the poorly concealed frustration on her face, he knew she wasn’t satisfied with his response. He could believe that the Royal Council had sent her to assist him in the assassination, but he wondered if the secondary reason was that they were using him to mentor her. If more of these covert missions were going to be assigned soon, it’d follow that they’d want their newest and most promising paladin to be trained in such tasks. This level of foresight brought a certain duplicitous cardinal to his mind.

“Our only priority is the assassination of the prince. The more factors we have, the more likely the plan will succeed,” he said patiently. He had anticipated her objections – these used to be the kind of things he’d ask himself. “The prince is a cautious one. We have to surprise him with overwhelming force. And it’ll be more convincing if the soldiers are attacked and the prisoners are freed.”

“What do you mean?”

“If the narrative is that the heretics came to assassinate the prince, it’d follow that they have no qualms about hurting the soldiers or freeing the prisoners.”

She considered his words for a moment. “You put a lot of thought into this, Sir Roel,” she admitted begrudgingly.

“I understand your concerns, but I will always go with the option that has the least risks. If you have an alternative, I will gladly follow it.”

There was a long silence between them, but finally the girl sighed. “No, I can’t think of anything. Maybe if I had more time.”

He felt no sense of triumph or glee from her words. He really had hoped she would have an alternative. There was a simple one that came to his mind when she arrived, but the more he talked to her, the more he thought that it was riskier than his current plan.

If he lured Joseph away, she could come in and assassinate the prince. But he didn’t have to ask to know that the girl had no experience with murder. The first time he had tried to kill someone, an earl who was said to be a spy, he had almost failed. He had gone for the throat, but he had been too slow and the cut too shallow, so the earl managed to let out a loud scream before Roel went in for the second attempt.

When the earl died, clutching at his wound pathetically as if he could stop the blood from spilling out of his throat, Roel just watched in equal parts horror and fascination at what he had done. Luckily, Lady Romane had been there to snap him out of his daze as the guards arrived.

Furthermore, that assassination had been in the earl’s private residence; it was easy to leave no witnesses. They were in a camp of nearly five thousand soldiers of varying skill, and if she botched up the murder, he didn’t think she would be able to escape without revealing her identity as a paladin.

A mission of this scale required minimal risk-taking. They’d isolate Prince Ghislain by drawing away Joseph and most of the soldiers, and he would deal the killing blow. The king himself had said the casualties were irrelevant, and Roel almost suspected that King Mathieu was expecting them.

For a moment, a different kind of alternative appeared to him. He could convince the girl to abandon the mission somehow, and he could still escape from Calorin with the prince and his crew.

But although honor, loyalty, and duty had long lost their meaning to him, he couldn’t imagine a world in which he escaped from Calorin. It couldn’t possibly be as easy as the prince made it out to be and putting his hopes into such a plan required a courage that he had somehow lost throughout the years.

“It’s nice to have a place that you understand,” the herbalist had once said. “I know this shop is small and cramped, and some customers can’t stand the smell, but when I walk in here in the morning, I just feel so…so relieved, I guess.”

At the time, he had interpreted her words as joyful ones. But now, whenever he brought the scene to his mind, he saw her as melancholic, resignation in her lowered eyes as she listlessly traced her finger along a wooden counter.

“I understand what you mean now,” he would say to her. “A place that you understand is not the same as a place that brings you joy. The only thing it brings you is a sense of comfort, and that’s all you can really hope for.”

And he clung to that comfort.

“Alright,” he said to Cleo. “Then we’ll go with my plan tomorrow.”

The possibility of escaping the continent had faded away like the illusion that it was, and he chided himself for letting himself be taken in by the prince’s plan. If Calorin was a prison, then paladins were both inmates and prison wardens. He would neither escape nor reach the top of the hill.