Oskar returned to Potsdam late on the ninth of July, riding from Berlin with Shadowmane beneath him and the Eternal Guard following close behind.
The journey was slower than it might once have been. White bandages still crossed Shadowmane's black flank and one foreleg, while Oskar's own wounds remained hidden beneath a clean military uniform whose stiff fabric occasionally pulled unpleasantly against stitches and bruised flesh. Neither horse nor rider looked entirely healed, yet both carried themselves with enough stubborn dignity that most people watching from the roadside seemed willing to pretend otherwise.
Tomorrow Oskar would ride east.
Tonight, however, Berlin and Potsdam seemed determined to remind him exactly what he would be leaving behind.
People gathered wherever word of his passing spread. Workers stopped on their way home from factories, shopkeepers stepped from their doors and veterans removed their caps as he approached. Mothers lifted children so they could see over the shoulders of the crowd, while young men carrying enlistment papers pressed fists against their hearts and called his name. Oskar waved occasionally and nodded far more often, touched by their enthusiasm even as it left something uncomfortable twisting inside him.
These were the people who had chosen to trust him. The same men cheering from the pavement might soon be fighting beneath his command, while the women beside them could be receiving black-bordered letters before the year was finished. Oskar could only hope that whatever decisions he made in the coming weeks would allow as many of them as possible to return home again.
His thoughts had become sufficiently grim that he almost welcomed the distraction when two particularly beautiful women appeared farther along the road.
At first that was all he noticed.
Both were blonde, their hair tied high into playful twin tails, and both had dressed for the summer rather than the approaching war. Their light dresses followed generous curves that immediately caught his eye, especially the full breasts and narrow waists that neither garment made much attempt to hide. One woman was taller and carried herself with an effortless, almost aristocratic poise, while the other was smaller, more restless and visibly struggling not to laugh at something.
Oskar stared for perhaps half a second too long before recognition struck him.
Patricia.
Elise.
His expression changed immediately.
Oh, shit.
Then he noticed the children.
Three toddlers remained gathered around their skirts, while three much smaller infants were secured against their mothers in slings. One baby fussed sleepily against Patricia's chest and kept grabbing at the neckline of her dress with determined little fingers. Another had somehow gotten hold of one of Elise's twin tails and was pulling it with enough enthusiasm to make her wince while still smiling.
Then the children noticed the procession.
Their attention shifted first to Shadowmane, who probably looked less like an ordinary horse from their perspective than some enormous black creature out of a fairy tale. Then they noticed the Eternal Guard riding behind him in their dark uniforms, weapons polished and faces severe.
Finally they looked at Oskar.
The babies simply stared.
So did Oskar.
Pale hair. Blue eyes. Familiar little shapes around the face and brow that made something inside him sink before reason had even caught up.
They had babies.
His babies.
Patricia noticed his expression and smiled with unmistakable satisfaction. Elise looked even more delighted, as though the two women had spent the entire afternoon waiting specifically for this moment.
"Oskar!" Elise called brightly in unmistakable British English. "We love you!"
Heads turned almost immediately.
Oskar's eyes narrowed.
Two British women openly shouting affection toward the German Crown Prince in the middle of Potsdam was already enough to attract attention. The six suspiciously pale-haired children gathered around them did not improve matters.
Patricia laughed at his expression and lifted one of the toddlers beneath the arms.
"Say hello!"
The little boy stared up at Oskar and Shadowmane without any apparent fear. After a moment he raised one hand and waved enthusiastically.
"Hello! I'm Arthur!"
Oskar almost stopped the horse.
Arthur.
So that was one of their names.
For one brief and painfully tempting moment, he wanted to dismount. He wanted to walk across the pavement, take the boy into his arms and learn the names of the others. He wanted to know who cried most often, who refused to sleep, who had spoken first and what ridiculous little things made each of them laugh.
He wanted, very simply, to be their father.
But there were too many people watching.
Too many cameras.
Too many newspapers.
Patricia and Elise seemed to understand that boundary as well. Neither woman attempted to approach him, content instead to stand where they were and tease him from a distance.
Elise suddenly raised a newspaper above her head.
"We made this for you!"
Oskar's attention shifted toward the front page.
Then his stomach dropped for an entirely different reason.
Elise threw the newspaper toward him. Her aim was terrible. It opened halfway through the air and fluttered sideways toward the horses until Captain Carter leaned from his saddle and caught it neatly with one hand.
His other hand had already begun moving toward his weapon.
"It is fine," Oskar said.
Carter immediately relaxed and handed the newspaper forward.
Oskar unfolded it while Shadowmane continued at a slow walk.
Then he stared.
The entire front page had been surrendered to Sarajevo.
It was not a photograph but a painted reconstruction of the moment that had already begun passing into legend. Shadowmane reared through smoke and fire, his enormous black body twisted with muscle as his hooves descended upon the assassin beneath him. Behind them lay the shattered royal automobile, with Franz Ferdinand reaching from the wreckage while Sophie collapsed protectively across him.
And dominating the centre of the image was Oskar.
Bare-chested, bloodied and somehow far cleaner than he remembered being.
The remains of his white shirt hung from his shoulders in dramatic strips, while whoever had painted the image had rendered the muscles of his chest, abdomen and arms with an almost embarrassing degree of enthusiasm. His body looked less wounded than carved from stone, every ridge of his abdomen sharply defined beneath blood and soot. Even his torn trousers had been painted with considerably more anatomical attention than he considered necessary.
Light poured through the smoke directly onto him as though heaven itself had chosen the focal point.
Oskar's face slowly flattened.
"Oh God."
He brought the paper closer.
The assassin beneath Shadowmane looked almost absurdly small by comparison.
"They've made me look like some kind of superhuman legend," Oskar muttered. "I'm not actually that large, am I?"
Carter glanced at the image.
"With respect, Your Highness, the scale is fairly accurate."
Oskar slowly turned his head.
"Accurate?"
"Yes, sir."
Carter had not witnessed the actual rescue of Ferdinand, but he had seen the aftermath well enough. When Third Company finally caught up with Oskar on the road toward the hospital, their Crown Prince had been half naked, covered in soot and blood, riddled with bullets and sitting behind a three-year-old girl upon an equally wounded black stallion.
The painting was far cleaner and considerably more flattering.
The proportions, however, were not particularly dishonest.
Oskar looked back at the picture with a faint frown.
He had spent more than a decade inside his own body and rarely considered what it looked like from the outside. To him, he was simply himself: unusually tall, unusually strong and annoyingly difficult to kill.
This image showed something entirely different.
Not a man.
An icon.
"Is this everywhere?" he asked.
"Yes, sir. It spread quickly after Sarajevo."
Oskar exhaled through his nose and folded the newspaper. That explained at least some of the looks he had been receiving during the previous days.
Carter's attention then drifted back toward Patricia and Elise. His brow tightened slightly as he studied them, and after several moments recognition slowly appeared.
He had seen those women before.
Years earlier.
On a ship.
His eyes shifted toward the children, then toward Oskar.
"The women, sir...?"
Oskar did not look at him.
"No."
Carter paused.
"We do not discuss this."
Understanding completed itself across Carter's face.
"Yes, sir."
Nothing more needed to be said.
Shadowmane continued forward, carrying Oskar slowly past the two women. Patricia met his gaze first, still smiling, though the teasing brightness in her expression softened as the distance between them closed. Elise stood beside her with the camera raised, grinning shamelessly before lowering it when Oskar looked directly at her.
The children watched him as well.
Three toddlers stared openly at the enormous prince upon his wounded black horse. The babies seemed caught somewhere between fascination and uncertainty, wide eyes moving from Oskar to the dark Guard surrounding him.
Oskar wanted to reach for them.
To hold them.
To ask their names.
Instead he could only look.
Patricia seemed to understand what he could not say. Elise did too. Neither tried to come closer, and neither shouted again as he passed them.
For a moment Oskar's eyes remained upon the children.
His children.
They deserved eventually to know who their father was. They deserved more than distant glimpses from pavements and stories told by their mothers about a man whose face appeared upon newspapers.
But that decision could not be made here, in front of half of Potsdam.
So Oskar finally faced forward again.
Behind him Patricia and Elise remained beside the road with their children, watching until Shadowmane and the Eternal Guard carried him farther toward the Royal District.
Tomorrow Oskar would ride east.
Tonight, for a few strange minutes, thoughts of armies, Russia and the coming war had been replaced by something much closer to home.