“It doesn’t matter,” Hadjar waved it off. “Well, I made a deal with him that he would give me his heart, and in exchange, I would help him get his revenge.”
Nero looked at his friend’s chest skeptically.
“It’s like a metaphor,” Hadjar explained. “It was a complicated process that I don’t remember too well. So it doesn’t really matter... Then I was found by the villagers. They nursed me back to health. Then I learned from a merchant that Elaine was still alive and went to join the army. You know the rest of my story.”
There was a heavy silence in the dungeon.
“Funny,” Nero drawled, breathing out smoke rings again. “It turns out you are both my friend and my brother twice over. By choice and by blood. And Elaine... To be honest, I’d thought that I could get you two to marry. You’d make a great couple. But you are her brother... You know, this’ll most likely break her heart.”
“Break her heart?” Hadjar asked. “You said your father told you everything.”
“He did,” Nero said with a nod. “He told me everything. I haven’t seen Elaine since that day. According to the servants, she hasn’t even left the tower. So, I have no idea what kind of lies my daddy fed her.”
Nero had always had a difficult relationship with Primus, but Hadjar knew one thing: in spite of everything, Nero loved his father and wouldn’t let anyone kill him.
“Serra and I were locked in our chambers,” Nero suddenly began his story. “The damned Governor placed a magic seal on the door. We couldn’t get out for a week.”
“A week?”
“Yeah. You’ve been here for nine days.”
Hadjar cursed up a storm, which made his friend smile.
“Serra, the love of my life, was able to make something like a ‘hole’ in the spell. I managed to dive through it. Then I found you...”
They fell silent again. Outside the window, the waning moon shone brightly. The chains with blood drenched hooks swung. The two friends smoked. The two brothers. They were perhaps the most important person to each other in this world forgotten by the Gods.
“Life is shit, isn’t it?” Nero smiled sadly.
“Well, it’s certainly not a field of fragrant roses.”
“Do you really need to kill him?”
“Wouldn’t you?”
Nero looked at Nanny’s horrifying remains.
“I would,” he nodded. “But I don’t want to see my brother and the future uncle of my children get burned alive.”
“I can’t give up, buddy,” Hadjar shook his head. “I can’t run. If I do, then you won’t have a friend and brother to go to the Sea of Sand with. I will be like the walking dead. A ghost.”
“Damn it!” Nero couldn’t hold back this time and struck the wall. A crack the width of his palm spread up to the ceiling. “What would you have me do, Hadj?! Watch you burn?”
“We are all burning,” Hadjar smiled, “Each person has to deal with their own fire that life allots them.”
“You are a damned philosopher.”
“And you’re a spoiled prince.”
“Barefooted psychopath.”
Nero turned away and wiped something off his cheek. He rose and headed for the door. Stopping for a moment, he reached for the handle of Moon Beam, but stopped at the last second.
Without turning around, he said: “Live free, my friend.”
“Die well, my brother.”
Chapter 247
It was just as Hadjar had suspected — Primus didn’t dare visit him before his execution. That morning, on the day when the false Prince and traitor General was scheduled to be burnt at the stake, five people entered his cell: four guards from Lidus and a soldier in green armor commanding them.
While the four soldiers shackled Hadjar, the Imperial soldier kept a close eye on them. He kicked Hadjar as often as he could, declaring that the Empire was superior; he repeated that a worm like Hadjar wasn’t worthy of breathing the same air as him several times; then he said something about rural, barefoot savages from Lidus, and so on.
Hadjar ignored all his efforts with a stoic expression, but the guards were very offended. They looked like beaten dogs whining in front of a cruel master. Their hands shook and their expressions were full of pain and regret. When the heavy shackles snapped closed around Hadjar’s wrists and ankles, the guards lifted the prisoner to his feet gently.
“Carry that garbage out,” the Imperial legionnaire ordered.
Throwing a glance full of contempt toward Hadjar, he left the cell first.
The guards led Hadjar to the exit obediently. He could only take small, shuffling steps because of the shackles and chains — both the shackles around his ankles and around his wrists were connected, meaning his hands were forced down and he couldn’t lift them above his belt. Once they got to the exit, one of the guards seemed to tumble and Hadjar felt something small and firm being placed behind his belt.
“That is a pill with a deadly, painless poison,” the guard whispered in his ear. “Sorry, General, that’s all we can do for you.”
Hadjar looked at the guards with surprise, but they averted their eyes. Suddenly, Hadjar realized that they looked like beaten dogs not because of what the legionnaire had said, but because they personally had to lead their idol to his death. Hadjar understood them perfectly. Atikus’ face reappeared before his eyes. Damn that poor General. How long would he be in Hadjar’s thoughts? How long would the memory of him guide the Mad General’s actions?
Hadjar was led along a wide corridor, past many empty cells — Primus, taught by bitter experience, almost never held prisoners, but executed justice quickly and often on the spot. Lidus courts convicted people nine times out of ten. Sometimes, that fact was even a good thing. But only sometimes.
Once past the corridor, they came to a small door. One legionnaire took out a bunch of heavy keys. He toyed with them for
