Chapter 678: Falling stars
Minutes stretched like hours, and hours unraveled into what felt like days.
Arnold sat still beneath the heavy canvas of his tent, its silence pierced only by the occasional creak of leather or the distant clatter of a restless camp.
His eyes drifted again across the familiar fragments of his exile,objects that had not changed in weeks, yet seemed to weigh more with each passing day. The dried ink stains on parchment left from unfinished letters.
He had written them for Cretio and for his daughter; the first died , the other he divorced.
So to whom was he to send any words?
Was there somebody to give him true company? The answer looked to be negative as he gazed around at the loneliness of it all.
The tiny wildflower that had fallen to the rug beneath his cot, forgotten yet strangely enduring. A handful of trinkets and mementos, once comforting, now felt like relics from a life that no longer existed.
And then, always, his gaze found them: the fur-lined gloves resting neatly on the corner of his desk. Worn, weathered, but lovingly kept. Lord Cretio’s gloves. The only physical thing he had left to remember the man who had once called him son.
His jaw tightened, and he looked away, but the ache in his chest remained.
It wasn’t simply grief. Arnold had long learned to carry grief in silence. No, what clawed at him now, day after day, was something darker....betrayal. Shame. The rot of injustice creeping through the roots of a once-proud house.
Lord Cretio had stood beside them when no others would. Loyal through every humiliation, every desperate call to arms. When the nobility whispered, when others in court turned their faces, he remained. Even when Arnold’s father demanded the impossible, Cretio never flinched. He raised banners, sent men, and eventually gave his life to defend the capital.
He died with his honor intact.