The capital loomed before me like a memory I hadn't yet forgiven.
Its walls still stood tall, proud, but the streets inside buzzed with unease. Rumors of rebellion, of poison in goblets and whispers behind doors, seeped through every alley like mist.
I kept my hood low and my voice quieter.
Damien was in danger. And I had come too far to lose him now.
The palace guards didn't recognize me at first. Until one of them—a boy from my hometown—gasped.
"Elias Quinn? You're alive."
He smuggled me inside at dusk. I made him promise not to speak of my return.
"He'll want to see you," the boy said.
I nodded. "I need to see him more."
I found Damien in the east wing, standing before a map scattered with pins and fraying thread. His hair was disheveled. His tunic wrinkled. He looked like a man on the brink.
"It's worse than I thought," he muttered without looking up. "The regent's sold half the grain to private merchants. Armies in the south are starving."
He turned—and stopped.
His eyes locked with mine.
"Elias."
That single word undid every mile I had walked.
He crossed the room in three strides and pulled me into his arms, crushing and trembling all at once.
"You shouldn't be here," he whispered into my hair.
"Neither should you. But we are. So let's end it. Together."
We spent the night in the war chamber, pouring over documents, plans, names.
I saw it then—not the boy who had once tormented me, nor the tyrant who had taken me—but the man who was fighting to rebuild something noble from the wreckage of his past.
"They won't follow me again," he said. "Not unless I spill more blood."
"Then don't ask for followers. Ask for partners."
His eyes met mine.
"Start something new," I said. "Not a kingdom. A vow. A vision. A future."
At dawn, he stood before the nobles.
No throne. No crown.
Just truth.
"The regent has betrayed you," Damien said. "And I betrayed you long before he did. But I've returned not as a king, but as a man who has seen war, love, and the weight of both."
Murmurs rose. Some protested. Some cheered. But none ignored him.
He did not seize power that day.
He earned it.
And beside him, in silence, I stood—not as his shadow, but as his equal.