The Roles of a King

Concordia, Seven Hundred Years Before

Thaelen watched as the party approaching from Concordia neared the wall, riding through the ruins of the encampment and under the torchlight shed from the walkway above, his palms resting on the stone. Alyra, Hod, Magnus, and about twenty soldiers. Too few to be the reinforcements that he had requested.

Dread sat heavy in his stomach.

“Thaelen?” Harithen looked at him in concern. “Perhaps the army follows behind?”

“There is no army coming,” Thaelen said darkly. “This is an intervention.”

“An intervention?”

“Hmm, an interference by officials in the will of the king,” Thaelen considered the implications that Sigrid was not amongst them. “They have come to tell me that they are refusing this war.”

“But… You are a king! How can they refuse your command?”

Harry seemed to think that the position of king was the same as that of a God, Thaelen thought dryly. Perhaps it was amongst humans. He did not know. “Amongst the Concordia, there is the king,” he sai