Kheldar’s Captain of the Royal Guard
"You tell me, Rosto," he shakes in little shivers that grow to a full mane-tossing shake, the Crown Prince’s utterance of his name in casual reference always making the skin at his withers twitch. This time, it was strong enough to travel down his spine - it was likely the permanence. They both would be needing to adjust to it, at least once the Crown Prince was made aware or preemptively discovered the deception that none but his sister had been the wiser for.
His usually high-held head was long since lowered to be level with his back, ears to the side in the very semblance of their miltiary-march days. He snorts hard, the harbinger of a second loud snort that proceeded the mention of the King. He was likely dead by now, even if they’d withheld against a siege. He tosses his head suddenly, decidedly taking charge of the circumstances that the Crown Prince so flippantly left to his own devices. "We have." He says it a little sharply, but he had been so good in deceiving his liege long enough now to have a bitter taste on his tongue for it. Bitterness in the morning was a bit more than he could bear.
The trust between the two of them was the stuff of legends in their home. They were spoken of as if they were the faux Royal We, the term constructed by nobility to be simply ‘The Prince’. So much the same person that anyone who saw one of them in the Kingdom would be sure that the other wasn’t a furlong from there. So much the same person that it was oft said, only part in jest, that if one were to be wed - the other might be the chosen spouse… or if a woman wished to get one half’s attention, she need only pay passing affections to the other.
They had never spoken aloud of their connection, of the brotherhood that extended so much deeper than something bought in war or by oath or for sake of birth. Would, sometimes Rosto considered in the dark of night, that one of them had been born mare and not the headier stuff of stallions.
The memory of falling to foreknee before him, long other foreleg extended far ahead of himself, is yet vibrant in his mind. Bloody, mud-laden, only just rescued from another deadly command sent by Kheldar’s own father… the exchange of his oath for a life in this black beasts personal service… the time where their eyes met and both knew for certain that his own ‘my lord’ meant ‘my love’ and they need never articulate such intimacy aloud. Kheldar’s eyes had expressed as much passion as his own two words had done.
It was before so many other things that bound them tighter, so many revelations on Kheldar’s part that had shown more of Rosto’s stained soul than he’d shown to anyone of real importance. Surely, as the Prince of the Kingdom’s underbelly, others were aware that he could and would do atrocities in the name of a greater good, in the name of the People at large… but when he’d killed the frivolous Marsden for the Hunt’s dangerous turn in a duel…
He knew that the same astonished, vaguely appalled, expression would show itself.
He drops his head insolently, snatching at the grass at their feet with such animosity that one might have taken him as offended by the sustaining blades. He shakes his head to rip up each bite like a terrier, his lack of Princedom itching him in all the worst ways. He had always maintained a nearly flawless network of informers to keep the Crown Prince safe - it had indeed saved his life this time even - and it felt wrong that he should have nothing but his own eyes, ears, and nose now. "You have seen it. We are to the end of the world on these islands. There is no further to go than here. I am certain there is a place here with the Jewel your father sought. It has been no where else we’ve passed..." he basically mutters.
OF THE LOST ISLANDS WILDS
▻ 6 years - iberian mutt - sooty bay tobiano rabicano Sabino - 16.1 hh ◅