Chapter Text
Young men stand in uniform lines to the General’s tent, all weighed down with packs similar to my own. After walking through the maze of sunflowers to the encampment, I try hard to blend in and hurriedly join the back of a line.
A man in front of me, no older than 20, speaks quietly to another man. “Who do you think you’ll be assigned to?”
The other man, slightly older, shakes his head. “I don’t know, man. I just hope I’m placed with one of the King’s guards.” His copper hair shines in the sun as he flashes crooked teeth. “Fast track to a cushy career.”
The men slap hands and snicker together. I roll my eyes and look around them at the tent. There must be a hundred men in front of me in line, all shuffling toward the General’s tent, where they will receive their assignments and enlistment confirmations.
The letter in my pack sits heavy, the wax seal proclaiming the sunflower signet of the King. I grabbed the letter from my brother’s room two days ago, right after I raided his wardrobe for suitable attire and stole rations from the kitchen.
My mother must be worried sick. My brother must be murderous.
The one blessing in disguise is that the letter is not addressed to anyone specifically. It reads:
By Royal Declaration and Requirement,
One son of each household residing in the Courageous Kingdom of Vansilos shall report immediately to the training grounds of the Great King Antol Vansill Sorensen III. War has been declared upon Endichros and a mandatory draft has been enacted. Serve your kingdom with pride and courage.
The letter is signed with King Antol’s emblem, a sunflower with a snake winding through it. Each royal has their own unique emblem, all incorporating a sunflower somehow.
While the letter does not go into detail about what will happen if one “son” from each household fails to report for the draft, King Antol has never shied away from public executions. They are held weekly in the square back home, even though my small village is hours away from the capital where the royals reside.
The line takes hours to finally move enough for me to step inside of the General’s tent. He is an older man with firm eyes and a set jaw. A badge on his chest says GEN Connor Hulder. He looks exhausted, with stress having turned his eyes bloodshot.
“Come in, soldier,” he barks.
I walk forward quietly, trying to keep my face straight and my shoulders square.
“Name,” he says, glancing over a stack of papers in his hand, hundreds of names in list format on the pages.
“Emory Madden, sir.” I try to say it quietly and with a deeper voice.
I’m risking everything by being here. My heart races in my chest as General Hulder’s eyes rise from the papers at the sound of my voice.
His lip curls. “You’re a long way from home, kid. How old are you?” His green eyes scan me up and down critically.
I try to breathe evenly and not hunch my shoulders to hide my chest. Not that I have much to work with in the first place, but the wrappings around my ribcage completely conceal anything that may give me away. “I am twenty-three years old, sir.”
His stern brow furrows. “Twenty-three? You don’t look a day over fourteen.”
I swallow thickly as he walks out from behind the desk he was stooping over, circling me. “I have my birth records, sir.”
General Hulder stops in front of me and meets my eyes with a cold gaze. “Lying to an officer of King Antol is a crime punishable by execution, Mr. Madden.”
I swing the pack off of my shoulders and bend down to pull the draft letter and my birth records from the front pocket. I hand the forms to him and say, “Here, sir.”
He glances over the forms with a critical eye, taking several long moments to flare his nostrils with slow breaths. He then hands the papers back to me and circles behind the desk. “Well, I’ll be damned. You are of age.”
“Yes, sir,” I say quietly. My hands shake as I lace them together behind my back. I think my heart is going to beat out of my chest.
Am I already caught out?
But General Hulder just picks up a stamp and slams it down on some papers on the desk a few times, flipping through pages until he finally hands me a paper. His eyes are still firm as he says, “Your training assignment. The tents are numbered numerically, then alphabetically. Report to your training leader immediately. They will give you your schedule and get you in uniform.”
As his eyes scan down my borrowed clothes once more, I clutch the paper with his stamp of enlistment on it and bob my head in a nod. “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”
I turn to leave. “Just a second, soldier,” he barks. The breath in my chest freezes as I turn back around. General Hulder stares at me for a moment, then says, “Learn to toughen up. You act like a little girl.”
The comment is almost comical in the way it makes my blood ice over. I manage to stammer out, “Yes, sir,” once more before I all but run from the General’s tent.
*****
The tent I am assigned to is on the outskirts of the encampment, near a small lake and the canteen. I know my face is pallid as I pull open the tent flap and edge inside.
There are two sets of bunkbeds and one standalone cot inside the tent. Three men stand in various states of undress, talking quietly amongst themselves. They don’t seem to notice me.
“And I was ready to kick his ass, I swear to gods!” A man with blond hair and brown eyes laughs. He is not wearing a shirt, his abdominal muscles clenching as he chuckles to himself.
Another man with pouty lips and short, dark brown hair laughs quietly along with him. He sits on the bottom bunk across from the blond man, a stack of clothing laid out on the bed in front of him. “You have absolutely no self-control, Seth,” he teases.
The blond man, Seth, cackles and swings himself up onto the top bunk. “It’s not me, man! It all those milk fed pricks at academy that always start it!”
“Can I help you?” A man with dark hair and black eyes demands, pulling my attention away from the blond. The man stands from the standalone cot, muscles coiling tight as he towers over me.
I swallow and show him the enlistment paper in my hands, noticing that the other two men go silent. “I think I’m bunking here?”
Tall, dark, and sulky grabs the paper with a thin hand and glances over it. “We’re full.”
I blink at him, then at the two untouched beds in the tent. “I… uh, well, General Hulder gave me that…” I point at the paper.
Seth clears his throat and offers me a grin when I look at him. “This bed is open.” He points to the bottom bunk under him. “Ignore Grumpy Puss over there—he’s on his monthlies again.”
Seth and the brunet across from his laugh like he said the funniest thing in the world.
I don’t think it’s funny at all, but I don’t comment.
I just grab the paper back from Grumpy Puss and edge around him to the open bed. I toss my pack onto the mattress under Seth and offer him my hand. “Emory Madden. Nice to meet you.”
Seth slaps a handshake on me and grins again, a longer canine poking his lower lip. “Seth Waite. This is Xander Conran,” he nods at the brunet on the bed across from me, who smiles slightly, “and that’s Kade Cross.” Seth leans over the edge of the bunk to mock-whisper, “Kade is really a big teddy bear on the inside, but his face is permanently stuck that way.” He makes an exaggerated frown at me. Xander snorts and folds a shirt in his lap.
Kade tsks and rolls his eyes. “Just wait until Lach gets back. He’s going to ream your ass for letting the kid in here.” It annoys me that he speaks over my head to Seth, about me.
“I’m not a kid. I’d bet I’m older than most of you, if not the same age,” I challenge quietly as I take a seat on the bottom bunk.
Kade narrows his dark eyes at me, then looks away in disinterest. “Age doesn’t change the fact that your balls haven’t dropped, Madden.”
I… honestly don’t have a response for that. He’s technically right, just not in the way he thinks.
The tent flap opens and a man with wild black hair stomps in with a mountain of folded fabric in his arms. “Got the uniforms. Ugh, you would not believe what Father just lettered me—” He cuts off when his grey eyes meet mine.
I try not to stare. He is also tall—let’s face it, all of the men in this tent, likely this entire encampment, are taller than me. But this man carries himself differently; there’s a sort of extra care in the way his shoulders are squared, in the set of his jaw.
“I’m Emory,” I offer in the silence.
The new man blinks, but it is Kade who speaks. “Hulder assigned him to bunk with us.” He says it as if it is a personal slight.
Xander says, “Lach, you just missed the most enthralling conversation in which Kade speculated that Emory’s balls have not dropped yet.” I’m almost shocked that he continues with, “I, personally, don’t care if Emory’s balls have dropped or not. But Kade is very invested.”
Kade sputters angrily while Seth keels over with laughter, barely hanging onto the bunk rail to keep himself from falling off.
A small grin snakes onto my face, but it dies when Lach says, “I will have a conversation with Hulder. There are to be no commoners assigned here.” He turns to leave.
I mutter under my breath right before he is out of the tent, “Way to sound like an uppity douchebag.”
It feels like the tent freezes over. Lach turns slowly, cold grey eyes meeting mine with a glare so deadly, I feel like I could actually be in danger. He steps toward the bunks with calculated steps. “What did you just say?”
Sensing that I fucked up, I stay silent. I struggle to meet his eyes as he comes closer, stopping right in front of me. The scent of orange mint drifts toward me as Lach raises his chin and glares down at me.
I feel small. Smaller.
“Uh, Emory?” Seth, of course, interrupts. “Let me introduce you—this is Lach. Prince Lachlin Vansill Sorensen. First Prince of Vansilos.”
Staring into Lachlin’s eyes, I mutter, “Well, shit.”
Kade snorts derisively.