The fire behind him hissed and roared, sparks snapping upward as though the flames themselves were echoing the storm simmering beneath his outward calm. He turned, slowly, toward the soldiers frozen in silence around him.
"Find them," he said, each word clipped and final. "Whoever they are."
The command fell like steel on stone, and though his men stiffened, Drayce was already elsewhere. Even as the order left his lips, his eyes were already moving sharp, unblinking and drinking in every detail. His eyes moved with the precision of a predator, scanning for the prey hiding from the predator. His instincts years of battle sharp were honed beyond reason, trained to detect shifts in breath, in wind, in silence itself. Whoever had slipped past the perimeter hadn't gone far. They were still close.
Seconds later, he heard it. So faint it could've been imagined. A shift of weight on loose earth. The faintest rustle of canvas behind the weapons rack. Like someone brushing against the inner wall of the tent from the inside.
Drayce suddenly moved like something not quite human. Silent as falling snow, but twice as deadly. Then in a blur without any warning, he turned, his arm snapped up. A dagger flew, gleaming like a sliver of shadow, and embedded itself with a solid thunk into the tent's side post, just inches above the spot where a tremor of breath had betrayed the intruder's presence.
There was a sudden rustle of tent followed by a fractic scuffle of boots against canvas and a muffled curse, as if someone had just realized they'd made a fatal mistake.
The canvas behind the weapons rack burst open. And a figure bolted through the rear of the tent, a young scout no older than twenty, his cloak flapping and mud-slick boots slipping as he sprinted for the tree line, panic propelling with his every step. But he couldn't get far.
Thwip.
"AAhhhhh!"
Another dagger black-handled, thrown with surgical precision whistled through the air and sank into the trunk of a pine, pinning the thief's cloak in mid-leap. Momentum yanked the boy backward. And he fell hard on the ground, his limbs tangling in his own coat. A sharp gasp torn from his lungs as the breath was knocked from him.
Catching his prey, Drayce didn't run after him. He walked, his each and every step deliberate, unhurried, with the stride of a hunter who already knew the chase was over. To someone who had never known the young emperor, the faint curve of his mouth, the stillness of his expression, might almost have looked like amusement. As though he were entertained. But that was the worst mistake one could make mistaking his calm for mercy. By that time the others came sprinting toward the noise, their weapons drawn and shouts rising in alarm. Drayce was already there, standing over the would-be spy, his eyes glinting gold and cold as winter steel.
The young boy now fearing for his life kneeled in fright. The thief looked up, shaking. A smear of blood glistening on his split lip, his eyes wide with the kind of fear that came too late.
"My lord...I—I wasn't trying to steal, I swear— I was j-just too curious"
Drayce's voice was quiet, but it cut like a blade. "You entered my tent," Drayce said, voice low. "You touched what was mine." He said it while looking down from a position of power, his shadow falling over the shivering boy who knelt beneath him, trembling under the weight of his gaze.
The boy's head jerked in a frantic shake. "I didn't know—I swear by the gods, I didn't know it was yours! My lord, I just, I just—I thought maybe—"
"So, you thought you could take it."
The boy's breath caught. "Have mercy, my lord. It was just a pendant, please—I wasn't—"
"You don't get to decide what is just anything." His tone held no anger. Just cold finality that made the thief realize he had committed a crime. The boy swallowed hard, his wide eyes darting to the figures standing around Drayce, searching desperately for help, for mercy, for anyone brave enough to intervene.
Still pinned and still shaking, but he tried foolishly to hold his gaze, as if that might earn him mercy.
Drayce tilted his head slightly, the motion slow and deliberate. His voice came soft almost gentle,
"You like it, then?" Dracye said, surprising everyone.
"...Wh..what?"
The boy also blinked, startled. The question didn't match the menace in the air. For a heartbeat, he faltered because Drayce was smiling. That mellow expression and a faint upward curl of his lips, subtle and unreadable almost felt… human.
"The pendent, do you like it?" Drayce pressed again, with a pleasant smile.
He hesitated, then nodded quickly.
"Y-yes, My lord… it's—it's beautiful…"
This earned him a laugh from Drayce, in a quiet, broken sound like ice cracking underfoot. Too cold to be kind. Then his smile dropped. And those golden eyes, once almost curious, turned razor sharp.
"Then you can have it."
The boy blinked again, confused and caught off-guard with sudden turn of events.
"What, r...really— you're really kind, my lo-?"
"Of course," Drayce said, his tone disturbingly calm. He leaned in slightly towards the boy, like he was offering a secret, his voice low and steady. "But in return…"
A second of silence after, he said
"I'll be taking your hands."
The world seemed to stop for the boy. But the nobles near Drayce were not surprised as if they expected nothing less.
The boy's breath hitched then caught completely.
"W-what…?"
His voice broke, his eyes widened in raw disbelief, searching Drayce's face for some trace of humor or mercy or anything. But there was nothing.
And then the fear crashed in.
"Please—please, no—" The scout's words tumbled out, frantic, gasping. "I didn't know it was yours—I swear—I didn't mean to—I wasn't trying to—please, just let me go—I am so-sorry, ha-have mercy!"
Panic overtook him, as he was about to lose everything. He was crying now, tears streaking the grime on his cheeks, body wracked with tremors as the full weight of his mistake and who he'd made it in front of sank in. His words tumbled out like a flood, desperate and messy, the kind of begging that came not from pride, but from pure, animal terror.
He was crying like an infant now. But Drayce? He simply watched. There was no shift in expression. No flicker of sympathy.
"I—I'll never do it again—please—I beg you" the scout sobbed, his voice breaking.
Drayce cut in, smooth as glass, flashing his smile,
"Of course you won't. You won't have hands to do it with."
Then, without another glance at the boy, he turned to one of his guards.
"Do it cleanly."
He stepped forward to leave then paused, as if remembering something trivial.
"Ah. And give him back the trinket afterward. He said he liked it."
And with that, Drayce walked away. What was left was the quiet rustle of his cloak behind him dark and elegant, sweeping like a storm cloud stitched from silk.