Basil felt fundamentally altered, as if the boy who would have fled into that medical tent in a cloud of shame had been stripped away replaced by someone sturdier.He was proud of himself , one could say.
Though he gave no hint of it as he just followed.
They walked through the camp in a companionable silence, the air cool against their faces as the tents of the camp rose and swayed around them. Before they had left the healers' care, Alpheo had finally allowed his bandages to be changed. Basil had caught a glimpse of the wound.
To say his father's ear had been "nicked" , as the prince liked to refer to the wound, was like comparing a hummingbird to a vulture; three-quarters of the flesh was simply gone. Only the dark cavern of the ear canal and a lonely scrap of the lobe remained.
The surgeons promised that, in time, his hearing would return to that side, but Basil didn't need a doctor to tell him what his father had truly bought with that flesh.
