Alpheo would have lied if he claimed the sight before him stirred nothing.
There, kneeling on the carpeted floor of his command tent, was Arnold, heir to a princedom, scion of a royal line, lowered by his own will to the posture of a supplicant. No shackles bound him, no sword was leveled at his throat. He had come to his knees freely, for no reason but to plead for help from the very man who had taken everything from him.
That had to, of course, tickle Alpheo's prick, a flicker that was, however, not born from cruelty but instead from the knowledge that he would have no trouble from Herculia again.
It was one thing to break a man in battle; it was another entirely to have him kneel willingly afterward.
Thalien, for his part, looked at his brother with an expression halfway between disbelief and awe, as though he could not decide whether this was reality or some strange dream.
