I had lived for over two centuries.

  Two hundred years of wandering a lifeless world, of tormenting others—some deserving, most not—and occasionally chasing after panicked souls who thought they could outrun me. I’d spent more nights drenched in blood than in rain, more days among the dying than the living. I had seen tyrants weep like infants and saints reveal their rotting cores. But somehow, in all that time, I had never encountered the kind of concentrated idiocy I witnessed that evening in the camp, watching soldiers fumble through card games like blind men trying to dance.

  Poker. Wizard. Spicy. I wasn’t even sure if that last one had real rules or if they were making it up as they went along. They played everything I could have possibly asked for—and none of it well.

  I joined a few more groups after that first one, more out of grim fascination than any real hope. What I found was sobering. These weren’t men who played with any real guile or strategy. They were trained—yes. Conditioned, even. Good at following orders, great at throwing themselves into the meat grinder without hesitation. And while I had no objection to using such men as living shields, I needed more than that.

  I needed minds.

  I needed the kind of people who wouldn’t wait for permission, who could read a battlefield like a board, who could lie without blinking and kill without needing instructions carved into their flesh. People I could trust to execute plans with subtlety and initiative—not just dumb brutes who’d walk straight into death with a grin because someone shouted the word honour.

  But no such minds revealed themselves that night.

  No cold, calculating soldiers lurking at the edge of the firelight. No men who tried to mislead me with their smiles or layered their bluffs behind false losses. They were all painfully transparent. I could see every tick, every grin, every flicker of greed in their eyes when they thought they had a good hand. I never needed to lose. But I did. Intentionally. Just to give them the illusion of superiority, of success. Still, even that didn't help smoke out the kind of soldier I needed. Just more mediocrity wearing iron and wool.

  By the time the moon had climbed high and the fires began to dwindle, I had exhausted every game and every player worth watching. I found myself wandering through the camp aimlessly, my cloak trailing through the dirt, boots silent against the trampled grass.

  What surprised me was the absence of guards. Not even a hint of a night watch. No one to stop a supposed child from roaming freely, no one to question who I was or what I was doing. It was recklessness at its finest—but also opportunity. I could go anywhere. Do anything. It wasn’t a blessing so much as a confirmation: nobody was truly in control here. They just thought they were.

  Eventually, my wandering led me to the heart of the camp, where the tents were bigger, cleaner, better-stitched. Regal colours dyed the canvas in rich shades of crimson, sapphire, and emerald. Family crests—some I recognized, some long since forgotten—decorated their flaps. This was where the knights made their nests. The elite. The so-called pride of the Worchester Kingdom.

  I already disliked them.

  But that distaste turned quickly into quiet fury when I saw him—a boy, no older than fourteen, sitting outside one of the grander tents, curled into himself like a forgotten dog. He had fiery red hair that stuck out from beneath a threadbare black blanket, his cheeks pink and raw from the cold. His shoes were caked in mud, worn through at the sides. He was shivering so hard his body twitched with it, and still, he sat there in silence.

  A moan drifted from inside the tent, long and unmistakably adult. I didn't need to guess what was happening in there. Whoever resided inside had warmth, comfort, and apparently the company of another. And this child—this squire, I presumed—was left to rot in the frost outside.

  A quiet rage twisted in my chest.

  I rubbed my own arms, more out of mimicry than cold, and approached the boy’s pitiful campfire. Its light flickered weakly, casting pale orange shadows across his dirt-smudged face. He didn’t look up at first. I knelt beside the fire, close enough that he couldn’t miss my presence.

  “Hey there,” I said softly.

  He flinched, startled, and turned to look at me. His eyes were glassy and rimmed red—not from tears, but from the sting of wind and exhaustion. I offered him a gentle smile, one I only reserved for children.

  I felt awful for him. And I hated that I did.

  It was that seed, I suspected—that cursed seed of life that had been forced into me. Or perhaps it was Aska’s influence, subtle and ever-present, poisoning my resolve with empathy. I didn't know. But I did know this: if I had ever felt something like genuine concern in all these centuries, it was for children.

  I kept my voice soft, my posture relaxed, but my mind raced with dark thoughts. I wanted to rip open that tent. I wanted to drag that knight out by his scalp and show him what real discipline looked like. Not because I wanted to be noble—but because this was wasteful. Leaving a promising squire to freeze outside was idiocy at best, cruelty at worst.

  And I had seen too much cruelty already.

  If this was the knightly “elite” the kingdom depended on, I had my work cut out for me. But maybe—just maybe—this boy could be something else.

  Someone worth watching.

  “Uhm… hi?” he said hesitantly, his voice barely louder than the crackling of the weak fire between us.

  His curiosity was obvious—unmistakable, even. A pale girl in a pristine white dress, walking unaccompanied through a muddy army encampment after dark, was far from ordinary. I couldn’t blame him for being startled. His eyes wandered over me with cautious interest, as though he weren’t sure if I were real or some kind of ghost conjured by the cold.

  “What’s your name?” I asked, folding my hands neatly in my lap as I sat by the fire. My tone was soft, even friendly—nothing threatening about it. Still, I watched his face shift almost instantly. The corners of his mouth dropped, and a subtle tension crept into his shoulders. It was as though I’d said something wrong—something that poked at a raw spot.

  He hesitated, then muttered, “Kamachakyatamakyan.”

  For a moment, I just blinked. I wasn’t sure if he was cursing me in a foreign tongue or having a seizure mid-sentence. My brain scrambled to process the syllables, but they refused to make sense. I felt like someone had taken a handful of gravel, tossed it into a tin can, and shaken it until it spelled a name.

  “Ahhh,” I said finally, more air than word. There wasn’t really a correct response to that, and if there was, I hadn’t found it in two hundred years. I probably should’ve offered my own name then, but my brain was still caught somewhere around syllable number five of his. His complexion dimmed a shade at my awkward reaction, but I figured he’d seen worse. He didn’t seem angry—just... used to it.

  “What about you?” he asked, his voice slightly more guarded now.

  At that exact moment, another moan drifted from the tent behind him—long, breathy, and utterly unashamed. It curled into the night air like smoke. The flap of the tent shifted under some internal pressure, stretching unnaturally for a heartbeat before relaxing again. I looked away immediately, suppressing a grimace. That tent wasn’t just crowded—it was moving. I’d already counted three distinct voices inside, and none of them were talking.

  “Oh. My name is Lucinda,” I replied quickly, trying to push the imagery out of my mind. “Is your teacher inside there?” I gestured vaguely at the tent, not really wanting to look again in case something… slipped out.

  The boy followed my glance but didn’t seem half as disturbed as I was. If anything, he looked embarrassed and resigned, like a child standing too close to a family argument at a feast. The fire reflected in his eyes, dim but unwavering.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  “Are you one of them?” he asked suddenly.

  I turned to look at him fully, momentarily stunned. That question—so blunt, so raw—landed like a slap. And yet, there was no hostility in his voice. Just confusion. Curiosity, maybe. But also a kind of sad familiarity, like he already assumed he knew the answer and hated himself for asking.

  “One of who?” I asked, tilting my head, playing dumb—but not too dumb.

  He didn’t answer right away. Instead, he looked back toward the tent as another sigh echoed from within. This one sounded tired. Content. And vaguely feminine. His lips pressed together, and finally, he said it, almost in a whisper.

  “Whores.”

  I blinked again, this time not in confusion but in realisation. Ah. So that was what this was. Not a barracks of honourable knights resting after a day of noble service. No. This was a brothel with chainmail. A seedy den dressed in royal colours, hiding its rot beneath layers of dyed cloth and heraldic pride.

  The revelation soured something in me.

  If even this child—no more than fourteen—understood the nature of what surrounded him, then there was no illusion to be had. He wasn’t na?ve. He was just enduring it, as quietly and invisibly as possible.

  I shifted slightly, moving away from the fire and toward a nearby tent where a woman’s gentle snores drifted out into the night. No guards. No questions. No honour among the so-called elite. Just drunken men and weary women, seeking warmth in each other’s flesh instead of discipline or duty.

  This wasn’t a knightly camp.

  It was a pleasure ground wrapped in steel.

  I glanced back at Kamachakyatamakyan—yes, I was still trying to process that name—and felt an unusual stir of protectiveness. I didn’t care much for humans, generally speaking. But there were still exceptions. Children.

  While these men likely bore the title of "knight," most had probably climbed their way into prestige through politics, inheritance, or sheer brute force rather than virtue. The idea that they each had a squire wasn’t born from a noble desire to train the next generation—it was practical. Cheap help. Portable manpower. Disposable. And frankly, I despised every last one of them for it.

  I don’t care if some were innocent or even kind. That one child alone, shivering outside in the night while his supposed mentor enjoyed himself with half the camp's women, was enough to sour me. And while their reputation as warriors might still hold merit—superior to your average conscript swinging a sword for coin and ale—I could no longer stomach the image of these men as paragons of anything. A knight with blood on his blade and a child servant at his heel didn’t command my respect. He made me itch for violence.

  I returned to the boy with renewed resolve and a mildly theatrical sigh.

  “Do I look like a whore?” I asked with a tilt of my head, resuming the conversation as I knelt beside the fire once more. My voice was light, even playful, but something sharper hid beneath the surface.

  He blinked at me, caught off-guard again, and glanced away before mumbling, “No.”

  Good. Whatever-his-name-was had some perception after all. He might have looked at me with confusion, even suspicion—but at least he didn’t lump me in with the tent’s current clientele. Not that I hadn’t used my body as currency before and would never again. But that wasn’t the point.

  As I settled beside him, something else caught my eye—a wooden board resting near his feet, its surface checkered in alternating shades of brown and white. I leaned forward in surprise, eyes narrowing. A chessboard? Here? Amongst these dullards?

  The wood was scuffed and chipped, its once-smooth polish long since worn away by weather and misuse. But it was unmistakably a board. An odd find in a place like this—chess wasn’t exactly a popular pastime among drunkards and brothel-knights. My heart fluttered for a foolish moment. Could this boy—this half-frozen, blanket-wrapped whelp—be something more?

  “Precisely!” I said with a growing smile. “How about we play a round of chess while we chat?” I pointed at the board, unable to hide my glimmer of hope. Maybe—just maybe—I’d stumbled upon an unforeseen opportunity in this godforsaken camp.

  Even if he was young, that was irrelevant. Brilliance didn’t care for age, and I had molded odder lumps of clay in my long, accursed life. Already, I was picturing the possibilities: training him, sharpening his mind, perhaps even—

  “Chess? Oh… that’s a cutting board,” he said.

  My face didn’t fall—it plummeted.

  What kind of savage engraved a cutting board to look like a chessboard? Who desecrated such a sacred relic of strategy and turned it into a butchering slab for vegetables?

  I stared at the offending object, briefly considering setting the whole thing on fire in a fit of offended pride. My dreams—my precious, glimmering dreams of discovering a diamond in the rough—shattered in an instant. A single sentence, and the illusion was gone. Reduced to pulp. Like whatever root vegetable had last met its end on that cursed board.

  “…That’s disappointing,” I said flatly. I didn’t even have the strength to feign enthusiasm anymore. Still, I composed myself with a deep breath. I was nothing if not persistent. “Any other games?”

  To his credit, he nodded. A little spark flickered behind his tired eyes, but it didn’t last. Just as quickly, he looked away again, shame or hesitation creasing his brow. I narrowed my eyes slightly.

  What now? Had the playing cards been used as toilet paper? Was the dice set stolen? Were the game pieces eaten?

  I swore, if he told me the deck had been burned to light the evening stew pot, I might have finally lost my composure.

  “We do have some… but…”

  He flicked his eyes toward the tent behind him, nodding ever so slightly in its direction.

  Ah. Of course.

  My gaze followed his, but I didn’t so much as flinch. That tent—now mercifully quiet—held every ounce of my disdain. Even if he were to crawl inside and retrieve the game wrapped in golden silk and written by ancient sages, I wouldn’t touch it. Not if it meant risking even a finger against whatever filth had been exchanged behind those canvas walls.

  So that was it, then. He was out. Not because he was dull, not because he was broken—but because the entire environment had already defiled him by proximity. A single ember might still flicker in him, but I wasn’t willing to scorch myself to find it.

  Instead of testing his wits or dragging the conversation through more disappointment, I sank down cross-legged in front of the fire, resting my chin in one hand and letting my eyes drift skyward. The stars were clearer here, far from any city’s noise or smoke. Little dots of ancient light, hanging quietly while human messes unfolded below them.

  “How often is your teacher… you know?” I asked, almost casually, but with an edge. A sharp one.

  He hesitated for a second, then answered without meeting my gaze.

  “Every night. It’s not just him… most of the knights do. The noble ones. Even the upper commanders invite the women to their tents.”

  My stomach tightened. I’d already suspected this, but confirmation brought the taste of iron to my tongue.

  They could be spies—easily. Information could flow freely from moaning lips and drunken mouths.

  Diseases—inevitable. The worst kind: invisible and slow.

  Professionalism—nonexistent.

  And then there was the simple matter of fatigue. Commanders stumbling into battle after a night of indulgence wouldn’t just be sluggish—they’d be distracted, half-blind, arrogant. This wasn’t a disciplined army. This was a pleasure camp wearing a soldier’s cloak.

  A perfect playground.

  I smiled thinly, still watching the stars. “The upper echelons, you said? Even the duke?”

  He stiffened. The firelight cast nervous shadows on his face. His gaze darted around as if expecting assassins to burst from the darkness.

  “I don’t want to get in trouble.”

  His voice was quiet—defensive. Fearful. I almost pitied him. Almost.

  Trouble. I’d been on a first-name basis with it for two centuries. Yet it never failed to amuse me when people tried so hard to avoid it, only to end up neck-deep in it regardless.

  I leaned forward and met his eyes. “Your secret’s safe with me,” I said with a warmth that was surprisingly genuine. But he still shook his head. No words. Just a young boy, too used to the sound of boots behind him.

  Fine. If he wouldn’t tell me, I’d find it myself.

  “Can you at least tell me where the duke’s tent is?” I asked, this time letting a touch of steel enter my tone.

  He hesitated. I didn’t blink. Just stared, quietly. Firmly. And like most people, he caved. His hand lifted and pointed to his right, fingers trembling faintly.

  “Thank you,” I said smoothly. I rose, dusted off my skirt, and gave him a smile that could mean anything. “Oh, and if you want to see me again, meet me at the fire tomorrow. Bring some friends, too. It’s going to be fun.”

  I turned away without waiting for a response. The stars kept watching, the fire kept burning, and the camp—rotten to its noble core—kept sleeping.

  And somewhere to my right, a duke snored in his gilded tent, completely unaware that fate had just taken a seat by the fire.