Eventually, I found my composure again, with a sudden and overwhelming desire to end this conversation. How else would I be able to strangle an answer out of my priest?
"Well," I exhaled, spreading my palms in an arbitrating fashion. "Then if you are not here to converse about your vicar brother, I suppose my next assumption would be bring me to commend you and your men for challenging the vicious schemes of the ice season simply to pay tribute to the late King Bozhidar, but I fear my words would be wasted, and I'm not in that habit."
His eyes scoured over my face before he posed a loose smirk.
"You know," he observed. "You bear a striking resemblance to him. It is rather unsettling."
'Striking resemblance' did not even begin to describe the similarities between my father and I. I was his spitting image, so much so that when Vitale came across an oil painting of my father's younger years, he had assumed it was a portrait of me.
"Unsettling, you say?" I parried. "I couldn't fathom as to why. You fled at the ripe age of twelve, stowed away in your grandfather's carriages like a common object. You would not know unsettling, Casterian, even if it spat in your face."
His sangfroid was rather impressive, though it would've been utterly pathetic had he continued, time and again, to fall for my quilled torments.
"I suppose," he replied, clearing his throat. "It's only normal for a child no older than fifteen and a half summers to be so laughably ignorant to the heavy burden of a man's war."
I cocked a brow. How could this absolute buffoon be trusted to run an entire nation - be it Casteria or Rodakrov - if he did not even know his adversary's proper age?
I was born in the unforgiving belly of the ice season. In less than two months, I would turn sixteen winters.
But, then again, it wasn't as if I had high hopes for the pest to begin with.
"I would hardly consider the Casterian Conflict to be a 'man's war'." I shifted in my seat, resting my right ankle upon my left knee. "More similar, I'd say, to a generations long tantrum in which your namesake refuses to accept that fact the Eurakos will not bend to imperial rule. King Praxicles would sooner draw and quarter himself than bow before the likes of an Aquiladessi. And anyway, what sort of burden could it truly be if the commander of the Primus Cavalry, himself, could withdraw from the battlefront so as to simply journey to the Mad Lands?"
I victoriously stopped my commentary when I heard his slow, deep inhale.
"I come here," he spoke through his clenched teeth. I watched with giddy as the muscles in his jaw jumped with each word. "To take what is mine, boy."
"To take what is yours? I see." I sighed a breath of faux boredom - a trait I had come to acquired and put to use by my father's side. "Well, please enlighten me. What possibly might that be?"
The pest stood abruptly, toppling the chair under him. This time, his outburst was expected. My muscles remained as still as ever, and the only thing that pounded in my ear was the desire to hunt him down. But Rostya knew the difference between fear and excitement, thus, he remained in place, languorously drawing his rough tongue over his forepaws.
"Are you a witless imbecile? I am here to take the fucking throne of Rodakrov!"
It would've been more exciting if his anger was out of character, but alas.
While this was my first time having the absolute displeasure of meeting the man, my father - while he was still amongst the living - made positive that I was well-versed in all current affairs. And as a high-ranking officer in a military who was constantly locking horns with their southern neighbors, Eurakos, this pest's name was most assuredly known throughout the continent. His name, and his short fuse.
I furrowed my brow, tutting at him in reprimand.
"Quite a temper, you have there. The reports from the battlefront are, indeed, accurate, then."
He hesitated.
"As are the claims of your height – or, shall I say, lack-there-of."
"You dare mock me?" He growled, enraged to a whole new realm. Having fun on his family's behalf was one thing, I supposed, but to then turn round and have it on his? What a prideful man he was.
I lifted my palms to him, a white flag.
"You misread my intent, entirely," I promised. "Still, you cannot expect me to abdicate my throne in favor of you."
"No." His golden glare was a burning one. "Abdicate, Nikolai, would imply that it was yours to begin with. Such is not the case. You have never been heir apparent. What you have been doing for the past few days was simply acting as an interim moderator. A placeholder while awaiting the true heir to make his way. And now, here I stand, before you."
"Zhakoni coveca ne gozhe zhakoni pririvo*," I murmured in old Krovic, knowing full well the imp before me couldn't speak a lick of it. "You forfeited any claim to the throne you had when you fled the kingdom. And when you refused to return, the late king disowned you and the other cowards you call brothers."
"Disowned? Our father was a lunatic, stricken by sickness of the mind," he laughed, grinning at me as if he just found out I was a child who was living within a fairytale. "You do not truly believe that anything he said held sway over matters of the state."
"King Bozhidar," I bit, refusing to acknowledge any relation to that golden bastard. "Reigned successfully over Rodakrov for twenty-nine years, nineteen of which madness ravished him, and yet here we sit, in the unconquered castle of a capital feared by all across the continent."
"By the grace of god, we sit here," the pest rebuffed, acting as if he suddenly held the upper hand. "The throne of Rodakrov is mine, Nikolai, and I will have it."
I studied him and his revolting Casterian features. How mad father must've truly been to taint the Kazbirati lineage with that vulgar, holy gold.
I sighed and brought a thoughtful hand to my chin.
"Is that so?" I mused, more to have something said rather than to have something said with actual weight or meaning.
"It is. And you will step aside with honor."
I looked up to him, my brows arched mockingly.
"Your instruction comes with such confidence."
Little did he know that I was fully aware it was backed not by his competence but by his grandfather's, who actually had some to spare. But it was fun to watch the shreds of his hubris coalesce with the shit I was providing him, building up a base him so that when he finally understood the true magnitude of his ignorance, he would find himself in nothing but a sty.
"Confidence should be expected from a monarch, Nikolai." He said it as if that was something I didn't know - as if he truly had a morsel of knowledge that he could provide me that I didn't already glean myself years in the past.
"Repeating your claim will prove as fruitless as discrediting mine."
My answer was not appealing to him, but considering it was the most docile thus far, he soldiered on without a moment more of vacillation.
"I do not wish any ill-will between us, brother," he declared. "Nor any bad blood. But I simply will not tolerate your disrespect."
"Disrespect," I repeated the word, playing with it on my tongue. "You know, that sounds terribly familiar, dear Casterian. Now why is that, I wonder?"
He put his hands upon the top of the table, leaning forward towards me.
"I have heard," he spoke, donning an oddly affable smile. "That it was you that masterminded the snuffing of the Bull's Rebellion, Nikolai. In the empire, we call it Taur Devistato."
"Bull's Devastation," I mumbled. How original. "How flattering."
"So, you speak old Casterian?" His grin only grew, his cordial demeanor taking on an unnerving surge.
"Yes," I responded succinctly, terribly off putted by it. "Taught to me by the Mad King in preparation for a potential Casterian invasion."
My bad mood lifted when his good mood faltered. I doubt, very well, that he was used to somebody actively trying to dismantle him. Not even his brothers, who were likely instructed by their grandfather to resist the temptation to do anything that could potential fracture his delicate yet oversized ego.
"Well," he began again after a fraction of a moment. "Your victory still baffles even Emperor Emerentius."
"Even Emperor Emerentius?" I asked, my face alight with derision. "How utterly astounding."
Gods above, he was forcing my hand at this point, encouraging this clearly regressed form of pillory, but how could refrain from inciting the little creases of ire that formed upon his abhorrent face with every spur? It was an addiction I gladly submitted to.
"How did you do it?" He struggled to prevail, but through his teeth, managed a fairly self-composed sentence.
How I wanted to play with him more, I mused to myself as I studied the eagerness in his eyes. Did he truly think I would be vacuous enough to divulge that information simply because he spread colorful plumes and asked nicely?
But lamentably, I knew that desire would wear thin very quickly, and my playful bats would metamorphize into something meant to stun - something meant to kill. And, thus, I could not yield to it.
Regaining my immediate purpose, I exhaled and settled a newly restored focus upon the bastard.
"Not even King Bozhidar knew the delicacies of my method during the Bull's Rebellion, and he was, by far, more deserving of that intelligence than you. Warranted, too, as it were."
"Brother." The Casterian took up the word softly, as if he were speaking to a petulant, uncooperative child. "If we are to be united under the power of Rodakrov - me as your king and you as a... say... trusted advisor - you must be open with me."
"Advisor? Brother? To a Vuklandic bastard?" I countered, just as soft and just as condescending. "How very scandalous, my dear Rens."
He set his jaw, his laryngeal prominence bobbing as he swallowed whatever cutting statement he wished to make.
"You make it difficult, Nikolai, to enjoy a civil conversation."
I cocked a brow.
"A civil conversation? Was that what your intent here was? It sounded a bit more like a failed attempt at an ultimatum, but fret not, you will have a chance anew."
As he opened his vulgar mouth to dare interrupt me, I continued.
"Let us adjourn for now, shall we? What sort of ill-mannered host would I be to demand an audience with a guest and nary allow him to rest in the rooms that I so generously provided? Hm?" I hummed at him. "And when your clearly wearisome mind has had its much-needed time to recuperate, we shall resume this again, over a warm meal. How does this sound to the commander of the Primus Cavalry?"
The dumb fuck was cornered. He knew what I was offering was reprieve - time to rest and regroup, an opportunity he would be foolish to pass over. Still, he wanted to fight. He wanted to correct me. 'King,' he'd say. 'Not commander of the Primus Cavalry'. But he'd sound just as dense by saying that, as well, since, by doing so, he would be belittling the imperial title.
"That..." He exhaled, his poor, paltry brain grappling with itself. "Yes. That would do."
"Excellent," I grinned, standing. "Vitale, go speak with Milvic. Have him prepare an early supper for us."
I didn't wait for his affirmation, only for Rostya as he stood and stretched.
"Do as you wish until then," I said to the Casterian pest as I crossed for the west door of the Room of Bears, Rostya hot on my heels. "The king grants you free rein of the grounds!"