The first lap was a public failure, short steps. Belly bouncing painfully, reminding me of the challenge that lay in front of me. Thighs screaming as skin rubbed raw. My breathing turned wet and ugly almost immediately. I could feel people leaning in, tracking every stumble, jeering at me as if I wasn't a prince.
The second lap was slower. On the third, my ankle rolled, and I nearly went down again. A murmur rippled through the crowd. By the fourth, the potion was fading, and I winced when the pain rushed in to replace it. Sweat poured off me. My shirt clung tight, outlining every roll.
I was no longer a person to them; I was entertainment. ''Only seven more, Your Highness!'' One of the soldiers shouted, causing the crowd to roar.
Laughter followed. Comfortable and certainly owed thanks to the old Arthur's reputation, but it still bothered me, even though it wasn't me but the idiotic prince's body I inhabited, I just had to deal with it until I get stronger. I made it to six before my knee finally gave. I hit the gravel hard, palms tearing open, face grinding into dirt.
I stayed there, chest heaving, tasting blood. While wallowing in my fall, Selene didn't let me rest as she handed me another potion with a strange expression on her face. ''Here, drink.''
I didn't resist. I didn't have it in me. The second potion slammed my heart into a violent rhythm. Pain sharpened instead of dulling. Everything hurt, but she was brutal and wouldn't let me rest as she kicked me in the side to get me moving. ''Continue moving, it will do you good.''
I crawled upright. Literally crawled at first, then forced myself vertical because crawling was slower and would piss Selene off. Following that, the seventh lap was a struggle for me as sweat covered my body. I found the eighth to be a lurch. But on the ninth, I collapsed flat on my back, staring at the sky, my belly rising and falling like it might split open.
The sun burned down on me. No one spoke. They just watched me breathe. The third vial tasted bitter and wrong. It whipped movement back into me. I finished the ninth lap on borrowed motion and sheer refusal. The tenth blurred. Gravel. Breath. Heat. The eleventh ended with bile on the path.
I gagged and kept moving. Stopping wasn't allowed. I crossed the twelfth lap on my hands and knees. When I reached the line, I collapsed forward and stayed there, shaking so hard the stones rattled beneath me. The yard was silent except for my breathing. Selene stood over me.
''You failed,'' she said evenly. ''Slow. Ugly. Potion-dependent prince.''
Then, after a pause. ''But you didn't quit.''
She offered her hand. I took it because falling again would've broken something. ''You're still fat,'' she said, steadying me just long enough to keep me upright. ''Still weak, but I can work with you.''
Afterwards, she let go of me as she began walking away. ''Tomorrow. Dawn. No potions unless you earn them.''
Selene walked away, barking orders to the surrounding Lion Guards. The crowd dispersed slowly, satisfied. I felt wrung out, emptied, discarded. I noticed Lily stayed behind. I felt her before I saw her, standing just close enough to be deliberate. When I looked up, her eyes were narrowed with a sadistic smile on her face as she approached.
She took her time looking at me. The blood. The vomit. The way my hands shook. The way my body sagged under its own weight. ''You were awful,'' she sneered.
I swallowed at her words. She leaned in just a fraction, voice low. ''But you kept going, which I must admit, surprised me.''
Her gaze lingered on my trembling legs, my heaving chest, my ruined dignity. ''I love watching this,'' she whispered. ''Watching you suffer. Watching you refuse to stop makes it all better.''
Then she straightened and walked away, light-footed, satisfied. I stayed on my knees long after everyone was gone. Then I slowly stood. No one bothered helping, but I heard the snickers; even Lily was smiling at my struggle. I took one step even though the pain and breathing made it hard.
Fucking body is already failing me! I internally raged at myself.
But I took another step forward even when I couldn't. I didn't go back to my room. I didn't trust my legs to manage the stairs, and I didn't trust myself to lie down yet, not with my heart still beating like it wanted to escape my chest. If I stopped moving entirely, I wasn't sure I'd start again.
So I drifted toward the tavern's hall instead. It was already alive with noise. I slipped in through the side, not the front, past the smoke-stained beams and the smell of bread and grease, keeping my head down. A few people noticed anyway. They always did. I felt their eyes snag on me, then follow.
No one said anything, only watched me, and I felt all eyes were on me. The kitchen was cooler. Stone floor. Hanging herbs. A long table dusted with flour. A pair of cooks glanced up when I staggered in, took in the state of me, blood on my hands, dirt ground into my knees, sweat-darkened clothes clinging to every inch, and then deliberately looked away.
One of them slid a chipped mug full of water across the table without a word. I wrapped both hands around it because one wasn't steady enough. My fingers trembled so badly the surface rippled before I even lifted it. The first swallow nearly sent me coughing; it was cold, clean, shocking, but then I drank like I hadn't had water in days.
It ran down my chin. I didn't bother wiping it away as I downed the drink. I leaned my hip against the table and let my weight settle there, chest still heaving, pulse loud in my ears. Every muscle buzzed with exhausted aftershock, like they were arguing about whether they still belonged to me.
While standing there, I remembered what was happening in a few hours. Garrick's training, bless me, White and Black.
The thought hit harder than any potion. Selene was brutal, but she was precise. Pain with rules. Failure measured, catalogued, corrected. I understood her kind of cruelty. It was sharp, impersonal, and almost honest. Garrick was… different. Where she broke you down to see what remained, he tested whether you'd ever had anything there to begin with.
I'd watched him train others. Not nobles, soldiers. Big men. Confident men. Men who laughed too loudly before stepping onto the mat. They didn't laugh afterwards. He didn't shout. Didn't humiliate openly. He just watched. Waited. Let you exhaust yourself, then ask for more with that calm, expectant look that made refusal feel like a personal failing.
He trained in endurance. Control. Pain tolerance. And I had none of those. I drained the mug and set it down carefully, as if sudden movement might shatter me. My legs shook when I pushed off the table, and I had to pause, breathing through it until the world stopped tilting. Resting before Garrick's session wasn't optional.
He'd said it plainly yesterday, eyes steady on mine. Arrive already tired, he'd said, but not broken. I want to see what you do when you have nothing in reserve.
That thought twisted something cold in my gut. I made my way to the back hallway and lowered myself onto a bench meant for crates, not people. Sitting hurts. Standing hurts. Everything hurt. I let my head fall back against the stone and closed my eyes, just for a moment.
The silence pressed in. Without the crowd, without Selene's voice, without Lily's whisper, I was left alone with the simple fact of my body, how heavy it felt, how foreign. Each breath made my stomach rise and fall, slower now, but still laboured. I could feel bruises blooming under my skin, soreness settling into places I didn't know had names.
Fear crept in once the noise faded. Not sharp fear. Dull, gnawing fear. What if this was as far as I could go? What if today had been everything I had, and Garrick stripped even that away? My hands curled into fists on my thighs. They shook, but they clenched. I thought of the training.
The silence at the end. The way I stood up when no one helped me. I wasn't strong. But I was still here. I decided to meditate before training with the old man. I closed my eyes and centred myself as mana began pouring into my body. Some time later, a bell rang somewhere in the distance, bringing me out of my trance.
It was the signal for afternoon in Riverrun. I knew it was time to suffer even more. I pushed myself upright slowly, carefully, and steadied until the shaking eased enough to walk without embarrassing myself further. Before leaving, I grabbed the mug again and filled it once more, drinking half and splashing the rest on my face.
Cold water stung my scraped palms and cleared the fog from my eyes. I caught my reflection in a darkened pan, flushed, wrecked, eyes too bright, jaw set more from stubbornness than confidence. I stepped back into the corridor and headed for the training hall, heart thudding, legs aching, nerves buzzing.
The corridor spat me out into the rear yard, not the wide, sun-blasted arena where Selene had made me crawl in front of half the guards and town drunks, but a dim, forgotten square hemmed in by low stone walls and scarred dirt. Old boot prints and dark stains marked the ground like battle scars.
Wooden posts stood crooked around the edges, some splintered from blows I didn't want to imagine. In the centre, a single brazier burned low, throwing lazy sparks into the cooling afternoon air. That's when I noticed Garrick was already there. He stood alone near the far wall, arms crossed, back straight as a spear despite the years carved into his face.
The late light caught the silver in his beard and the deep lines around his eyes. When I stepped fully into the yard, he lifted his gaze slowly, taking in every inch of me: the sweat still crusting on my skin, the blood drying black on my palms, the way my shoulders hung like wet rope, the faint tremor that hadn't left my legs since the twelfth lap.
He didn't speak at first. Just watched. Then he exhaled through his nose, not quite a sigh, more like he was acknowledging a fact. ''You look half-dead already,'' he said, voice low and rough as gravel. ''Good. Means you've got nothing left to hide behind.''
I tried for a smile. It pulled at split lips and tasted like blood. ''Thought you'd want me broken before we started.''
''I do,'' he uncrossed his arms and jerked his chin toward the dirt circle in the centre. ''But first, we see if there's anything worth breaking. Drop.''
I blinked. ''Here?''
''Here.''
No further explanation. Just that calm, expectant look that made refusal feel like cowardice. I let myself fall to my knees, slowly, because dropping fast would have hurt more than I could afford. The impact jarred through my already screaming joints. Gravel bit fresh into the torn skin of my palms.
But before he could give the next order, a sharp voice cut through the quiet from the building behind me. ''Hold that thought, old man.''
Selene stepped into the yard. She looked fresh, untouched by the morning's carnage, eyes bright with something dangerously close to amusement. Garrick raised one brow. ''You already had him for breakfast, Captain.''
''And I'm not done digesting the prince,'' she walked past him without breaking stride, stopping directly in front of me. "Up. Now. Burpees. Twenty. Full range. No half-reps.''
I stared up at her, chest still heaving from the earlier collapse. My body screamed at the thought. Burpees. After twelve laps. After vomiting. After crawling. Selene tilted her head, that small, dangerous smile curving her lips. ''You think I'm asking?''
Hearing the tone of her voice, I pushed myself up. Legs shook. Arms shook worse. Every muscle felt like torn cloth. The first burpee was bad: squat down, hands to the dirt, kick back to plank, chest barely brushing the gravel, jump forward, stand, a half-hearted jump at the end. My thighs burned like fire.
My heart slammed against my ribs. ''Again,'' she commanded.
I dropped, and my knees buckled on the jump back, my face nearly kissed the dirt. I forced it through. The third made my stomach lurch; I tasted bile again. Selene circled me like a predator, counting softly under her breath. ''Four… five… six…''
By the eighth, my form was gone. The push-up portion became a sagging collapse, followed by a desperate shove back up. The jump was more of a pathetic hop. Sweat poured into my eyes, stinging the cuts on my face, but I ignored it and pushed through the pain. I needed to improve myself.
''Ten,'' she said, voice flat. ''Keep going.''
I managed twelve before my legs gave out completely. I sprawled in the dirt on the failed thirteenth, gasping, shaking so hard the gravel vibrated under me.