They talked about Hellic, too – how much he had loved the prize mare Ren had bought him for his fifteenth birthday, and the time they had tried to throw apples over the castle spires and Hellic had accidentally tossed an apple through his father's open window, hitting him in the back of the head during an important business meeting.

Talking about Hellic was cathartic. It felt good to replace the thoughts of him bleeding out on the marble floor with better, happier memories. Ren found he could smile, even laugh at the dramatic way Niklas retold their stories.

As usual, Anik rode ahead of them, not sparing them either a glance or a word. Ren didn't care. Anik could do as he liked.

They stopped a few hours earlier than usual to make camp for the night. Anik said Ren's horse would need extra rest now that it had to carry two people instead of one. He also complained about the extra mouth to feed and noted that their food rations wouldn't stretch as far, especially now that it would be getting colder and they would need all the energy they could get.

Ren couldn't find it in him to be bothered by Anik's hard tone now that Niklas was with him. Niklas' presence soothed Ren's temper. They had been best friends for as long as Ren could remember, had been raised together. Niklas was one year older than Ren, and the son of a powerful Skarlan lord. Orphaned early in life, infant Niklas had been gifted to the court of Frayne from Skarlan as a sign of peace, along with the three big cats that Ren's family kept in the dungeons. In exchange, Ren's mother, the queen, then princess of Frayne, had visited the Skarlan capital of Iskaal to relay Frayne's appreciation of the truce, along with a gift of five pure-bred Fraynean horses.

It was there, away from the supervision of her parents, that the princess had lain with a slave, and nine months later given birth to Ren. Ren didn't like to think about that part of the story. When he was young, the other children would tease him about it, call him half a slave with dirty blood. They said his father was a Lowlander, and would try to prove it by taunting him into starting a fight. Ren had always resisted. He had grown up handsome, elegant, and graceful, and he was thankful for that, even if his light head of hair made him stand out from the rest of his family. Maybe that was why he and Niklas had always gotten along so well – they shared the burden of a distrusted heritage. At least Ren had been able to shake most of that reputation as he grew older and made a good name for himself in court. Niklas had never been quite so lucky.