Chapter 325: Take Responsibility.

Chapter 325: Chapter 325: Take Responsibility.

Once upon a time, this was the exact sort of mess that was to be expected of Khobi Frost.

And once upon a time, it would have been ever so convenient to just chalk it up to his rebellious ways and let him take the fall for it.

No one would have batted and eye if His Majesty had decided to just lock him up and throw away the key and call it a day.

​But things are different, now. Rogard and Loac had made it very clear that that was just not acceptable.

Loac in particular had had some rather choice words for his uncle. And while Gurdet had pretended otherwise, Bongo knows that they resonated –if not the words themselves, then the change in his nephew that they represented.

​It wasn’t Khobi’s fault; Rogard had been very clear about that. It was his father and his business, and Khobi had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

​(Or the right place, even. Bongo has never seen the young Lord Rogard look quite so terrible. He’s been watching Khobi Frost long enough to know that he’s not the kind of person who could just sit idly by when his friend needed him.).

​Friend.

​How things change.

If someone had told Bongo at the close of summer that the day would come when Khobi Frost and Rogard Spidra would stand by side as friends, and that his prince, the very one who kept even his own family at arms length would be there alongside them, well, he would have laughed in their faces and told them that was impossible.

And yet here they are. Khobi has come a long way from the ball of anger and resentment he was when Briyagi left him here to languish.

Sure, he’s still a force of nature, but it’s amazing what a little warmth and an outstretched hand can do.

Seeing the men who once despised him and who he despised in turn defend him and stand beside him –hearing how he wanted to protect them and couldn’t stand idly by when they were in trouble, well .

​Khojin Frost would be very proud.

​Oh, the irony, that Silas Luminus sent him here to rot and he instead grew roots and flourished.

​It’s a bit of a pickle he’s gotten himself in, but at the end of the day, for all his threats (both blatant and thinly-veiled) and as petty and as fickle as Gurdet can be, he is a good king.

Bongo has diligently served him for many years now, and while he loves his job and his king dearly, when he rose to his current position he hadn’t anticipated just how much of his job and how much of his time would be spent trying to convince people that he doesn’t always have ulterior motives.

​That is to say, a considerable amount.

​(Usually he does, but that’s hardly the point.)

​Prisoner or not, if what they said was true –that the Lord Rogard had snapped and set his guards on his own son –Khobi and Loac had done nothing that Gurdet’s own men wouldn’t have done in the same situation.

And while there’s something to be said for the destruction, Bongo can respect that, at least.

​And he believes them.

​Because while the Lord Rogard is claiming that his son had been the one to attack him and that he had merely summoned his guards out of fear for his life, something about his story had made Bongo uneasy, in the same way that the man himself has always made him a little uneasy.

Sure, at face value it was simple and plausible –sons did fly into fits of rage at their fathers, after all –but the best of lies, as Gurdet has often reminded him, always were.

​There were too many questions; too many holes, even for Bongo who had never been as much of a sceptic as his king.

If it was self-defence, he had mused, speaking aloud the very questions that his king had no doubt been pondering himself; why the scale? Why hadn’t he summoned the castle guards as any man fearful for his life would? Why pursue him, and with such force?

​" You want to believe them ," Gurdet had said; neither question nor accusation, and while Bongo had neither confirmed nor denied it, he knew he understood.

​He didn’t just want to believe them.

He did .

​Bongo has known Lord Rogard for many years now, and has never quite warmed to the man where other noble houses fell over each other to fawn on him.

There was a time when he could well have been King, had the late Queen chosen differently, and while he maintained otherwise it was one of those poorly kept secrets that he had never quite forgiven Gurdet for taking that from him.

And Gurdet might have been able to overlook the subtle undermining and him continuing to covet the crown –if nothing else, ambition respects ambition –if the good Lord Rogard hadn’t so brazenly tried to obtain it by chasing his daughter.

And then , when she refused him, sent his son in his place.

​For all he likes to pretends otherwise, Bongo has been watching and serving this family for long enough to know that Gurdet Horang loves his daughter dearly.

More than anything else, even.

And that someone would chase her simply for her crown, well, that had never sat right with him.

​(Bongo would never point out the hypocrisy in that. Gurdet doesn’t much care for self-reflection.)

​Privately, he suspects that Gurdet is glad that Loac punched him. And normally that sort of violence couldn’t be overlooked, even for the prince, but Lord Rogard had made it easier by doing something terribly stupid.

​The fuss with his son aside, you don’t go around attacking castle guards. Especially not the one whose intentions for the princess had just been quite publicly announced.

If things go well –and Bongo’s seen the way the princess looks at him –Montrel could well be the future king. And attacking the potential future king is, well, damning for a reputation to say the least.

​The opposite could be said for protecting him.

​( Such a lovely narrative, don’t you think, Bongo? )

​Someone will be held accountable for the violence, but it won’t be them.