For his entire life, the world had seen the Prince of Yarzat as a shifting collection of masks: the Fox, the War Prince, the Peasant's Dog. To Basil, he was simply the man who huddled over parchment in a candlelit workroom, the father who walked the palace gardens with a gentle hand on Basil's shoulder and a voice full of lessons disguised as idle observations.
With that weary smile of his, that was as light as it was heavy.
It had been agonizing to see the light go out of his father's eyes after Egil's death. Basil had never felt a sharper surge of purpose than the day he finally brought his own small flame to his father's side, a single candle trying to chase away the shadows of a collapsing world.
There was so much darkness in his father's life, a creeping gloom that the world seemed determined to deepen, and Basil felt that he and his uncles were the only ones holding the line.
It was them against the world.
