I didn't understand.
No one did.
There was still so much to be done, most places having been touched by the war in one way or another. Reconstruction was slow, as most preferred to look to their own ravaged homes and families than to roads and government buildings. Everyone was busy; my spies barely had time to sleep, and I forgot what being rested felt like. Too busy to stop and think, to wonder, consider.
In the midst of it all he came back, with a small smile that seemed painfully controlled, completely out of place.
Some thought him heartless, to smile so quickly, but Mother and I worried. It wasn't a real smile, most of the time. More like muscles being moved into an awkward position, a routine practice for something expected. Like the recruits he had standing around the courtyard for hours holding water-heavy buckets to strengthen their arms, shoulders and backs.
Practice.
To smile.
No, there hadn't been anything to smile about for some time, and I could hardly point to myself as an example, but it seemed so wrong. This man, this half-breed, had proven to the world that sometimes being half and half meant nothing. He had been the fiercest soldier the kingdom had seen in some time…
The Lion of Luttenberg.
Running around with a practicing smile on his lips.
I didn't understand.
The castle was being reordered, those loyal to Stoffel being tossed unceremoniously out onto their backsides, the guard put through increasingly rigorous activities.
I had more than one soldier request to enter my personal unit to avoid his command, and not for the old reason of his blood. They couldn't handle it. He'd become sterner, stricter, demanding a perfection most couldn't achieve.
A discussion with him hadn't helped, though he'd agreed to change his methods a bit.
He did—he was always a man of his word, even when he was barely more than a boy. He had his close guard, and then the general guard. He even changed their uniforms to reflect, until being dressed in brown was a mark of strength and honor. The Lion's unofficial armor; worn to blend into the shadows and watch, wait.
For what, I didn't know when I had a moment to think about the changes in my younger brother. My youngest brother was throwing frequent fits, now that there was no one in danger of their lives in the hospital, in the barracks, and he felt it alright to show his arrogance again as he pushed how far we would let him go when he wasn't the youngest son of a Queen.
I was never good with dealing with such. Thankfully, he didn't try to push me too far, though he never gave in without a bit of a fight.
Gunter, too, changed after the war. He gave up teaching, which I know he'd loved, to become more of a scholar than ever before. He only drew a sword to spar with Conrart, and their rare spars drew crowds when I had enough patience not to yell down at them to get back to work.
Neither fought all out in those spars, so no one ever knew who would win. Conrart was changed, his fierce fire banked, just waiting.
I had been buried in paperwork for so long I felt disoriented when I emerged and found people speaking a foreign language. Or so it seemed. Words like 'cool' and 'awesome' and 'really' were being flashed about with far greater frequency than I could ever recall. The stiffer formality of the speech in general seemed to have relaxed, as well.
I chalked it up to Stoffel being gone and the residents of the castle being far more at ease now that they knew they wouldn't be thrown out or sent to die because they were related, however distantly, to a human or someone else who had offended the moron.
As things settled down, I saw less and less of the brother who'd gone to war, the Lion, and more of a seemingly tame soldier. He was still incredible with a sword, innate talent and years of work making him the undisputed best in the Kingdom, but the fire that burned in his eyes was gone.
I didn't consider it a bad change, though Mother lamented his shortened hair, but it wasn't a change I understood. He'd survived, he'd come out of an impossible battle with no more than three scars and a task from the original King to show for it. Most men would have become more arrogant, more wild, fierce and unwilling to be overlooked.
Yes, a lot of those he'd cared about had died, but no one could claim otherwise. Gunter lost a nephew he'd been considering adopting as his heir, I lost my lover. Everyone lost, everyone moved on.
I just didn't understand.
But I'd learned when young and brash, fierce with anger and pain, that time changed everything. Time brought the mighty down and lifted the weak to their own strength.
So I decided to give him time, to let more time pass, to get the kingdom as on track as it could be when it was running on the remnants of Mother's name carried by her eldest son, rather than the King we'd been told was off somewhere, eventually to come to us.
When Gunter and Conrart disappeared for a day, we received word that the King was coming.
A boy tumbled into the dust before me, called and cared for by those two men, and the world shifted again. This child was to be our King? He couldn't even ride a horse, and he knew nothing!
My irritated fury at the appointment of such a King kept me blinded for a while.
Until Conrart rode into the courtyard, Lion eyes blazing more fiercely than I'd ever seen. I answered his questions about the security of his Majesty even as I pondered that.
The irritation died when I remembered. His majesty's speech—he used those words that had become more abundant in our speech those few years after the war. He spoke with more informality than we had been accustomed to.
And he was frightened enough of the world as it was.
He clung to the gentle soldier, the man with the small, lingering smile.
I remembered Conrart apologizing to me that he listened to his majesty, not to me.
I watched the Lion of Luttenberg blaze off to ensure the safety of his king. Welcome home, little brother, I thought, a smile slowly stretching muscles unaccustomed to such movement.