He had never wanted it to happen. He never did.
Alpheo would have liked nothing more than to grow old beside the bastard, to laugh at the same dumb cock jokes until their teeth fell out, to ride into a hundred more victories side-by-side. But wanting a thing had precious little recourse over the brutal realities of the world.
"There are only a few souls I have known for so long," the King murmured, his voice hollow, his eyes staring down at his right palm, the hand that had cradled Egil's blood-matted hair in those final, desperate minutes. "I truly appreciated him. As a man, as a fighter... I really did. Though I never had the grace to tell him."
He closed his hand into a tight, trembling fist. "We had our dark spots, aye. We brought out a great deal of the rot in each other... but I like to think we brought out the good, too. Perhaps that was because, deep down in the dark, we understood one another completely.
