The King's Guard

Chapter 14

The lecture room smelled faintly of chalk dust and stale coffee. Darius stood at the front with his arms crossed, and his expression as unreadable as ever. His low and firm voice filled the space without needing to rise.

“Teams fail because people assume they can carry their weight alone,” he said. “Squads fall apart when egos speak louder than strategy. And when that happens, people die.”

Kael sat between Reyna and Jared, staring at the scuffed table in front of them. He’d heard versions of this speech before, but never with the same weight Darius gave it. Something about the man’s cold manner stripped away the fluff and left only bone.

“Some of you think you can handle this on instinct,” Darius continued. “You can’t. You either become a unit, or you’ll become a liability. Simple as that.”

The silence that followed was deliberate. Darius scanned the room like he was waiting for someone to challenge him. No one did.

When the session ended, the squad filed out without a word. Outside, the early evening wind caught Kael’s coat. The Academy’s grounds were grey with the threat of rain, and he could feel the tension settling again between him and Jared.

They walked in the same direction because they had to, but it was the kind of silence that was anything but peaceful. Kael stayed close to Reyna instead. Jared didn’t speak. His quiet presence was enough.

“You think Darius was talking to us specifically?” Kael asked her, keeping his voice low.

Reyna didn’t answer at once. Her gaze flicked forward, tracking Jared’s shoulders as he moved a few paces ahead. Her breath curled in the chill air.

“Probably,” she said finally. “We’ve been lagging behind in the cohesion metrics. He doesn’t like that.”

Kael gave a dry exhale, rubbing the back of his neck. “I’ve noticed something weird about Jared.”

Reyna tilted her head, eyes narrowing slightly. “Like what?”

“He’s… deliberate,” Kael muttered, his tone caught somewhere between curiosity and suspicion. “He lags during certain drills. Takes a little longer to respond to specific commands. It’s subtle, but it’s not random.”

Reyna didn’t speak right away. Her brows drew in, but her stride never slowed. The wind tugged at her hair, and for a moment, she looked like she was weighing something she wasn’t ready to say aloud.

“You think he’s doing it on purpose?” she asked eventually.

Kael nodded once. “I don’t know why, but it’s like he wants to throw things off just enough to be noticed, but not enough to be blamed.”

Reyna frowned, pressing her lips into a tight line. Her eyes remained on Jared.

A few steps ahead, as if he’d caught the edges of their words or just sensed the weight of them, Jared glanced over his shoulder. His eyes met Kael’s, unreadable as always, and then he turned away and kept walking.

Later that evening, they had sparring drills in the lower arena. The space was empty apart from the echo of movement and the occasional hiss of mana discharge. The Academy’s lighting panels flickered slightly overhead.

Darius watched from a raised platform while Kael, Reyna, and Jared took their places. It was their third round together. The last two had gone poorly: disjointed dodges, missed signals, and Kael’s Rift ability reacting sluggishly.

“Focus,” Darius said. “Begin.”

Kael tried to centre himself, exhaling through his nose as he settled into stance. But from the first shift of motion, he knew his weight was wrong, and his balance was off. Reyna darted beside him, sharp and precise as always, her eyes locked on invisible lines of threat. Jared, however, lagged. His steps dragged half a beat behind. His shoulders were tight, his form uneven. Twice, when Kael pivoted into a feint, Jared slid in front of him instead of sweeping wide, nearly cutting him off entirely.

Kael stumbled to the side, barely catching his footing before he crashed into Reyna. She glanced at him briefly, assessing him, but said nothing.

They made it through the round, if only technically.

“Again.” Darius said flatly.

Kael wiped sweat from his brow with the back of his glove. His jaw was tight. “You’re late on your left pivot,” he said to Jared, his voice low but pointed.

Jared pulled off his sparring cowl, shaking sweat from his fringe. “You’re relying too much on your Rift again,” he shot back with a defensive tone. “I’m adjusting to compensate.”

Kael narrowed his eyes. “You were meant to flank, not rotate. We agreed on the triangle sequence, but you simply ignored it.”

Jared gave a short laugh, not amused. “If a pattern doesn’t work in real time, I’m not sticking to it. I’d rather move than freeze waiting for you to blink out of the way.”

Kael took a step forward. “You don’t get to rewrite the plan mid-drill. You’re not the leader of this team.”

“No,” Jared said, squaring up now. “But I’m not here to clean up after you, either.”

For a heartbeat, the space between them felt charged.

Reyna moved between them, hand lightly raised but eyes sharp. “That’s enough now.”

Kael clenched his fists at his sides. He didn’t trust himself to speak. Jared muttered something under his breath, too low to catch.

Darius didn’t intervene or even glance their way. He stared out across the arena like they were noise in the background of something more important.

“Run it again,” Darius said, then turned his back on them, as if they weren’t worth watching.

Back in their quarters, Kael sat at the edge of his bunk, boots still on, staring at the opposite wall.

Jared was already in his own corner, polishing his gear with mechanical precision. The room was dim, lit only by the soft blue of the wall lights.

“You’re doing it on purpose,” Kael said. Not a question. A statement.

Jared didn’t stop moving. “Doing what?”

“Dragging the team down just enough. You’re not incompetent, but you want us to look like we are.”

Jared met his eyes, finally. “Maybe I just don’t like following someone who can’t control his own abilities.”

Kael stood up. “You think I asked for this? You think I wanted to be stuck in a squad with someone who keeps sabotaging our chances?”

Jared chuckled softly. “You’re just mad because I don’t pretend you’re special.”

“You don’t have to like me. But we’re stuck together. So either you stop playing games, or I’ll make sure Darius knows.”

“Darius already knows,” Jared said quietly. “He doesn’t care.”

That silenced Kael. Not because it wasn’t true, but because it was.

Training continued the next day with formation trials in simulated terrain. It was a rocky and narrow course with shifting elevation and unstable platforms: designed quite deliberately to compromise balance both physical and tactical. The air inside the simulator dome held the sharp tang of ozone, and the occasional crackle of the holographic terrain folding in on itself created a persistent undercurrent of unease.

This time, Reyna took point. Her gestures were crisp and economical, relaying commands silently with the clarity of muscle memory. Kael stayed on her right flank with a pace behind, keeping low and mirroring her movements with measured precision. His boots gripped the uneven ground with care, every step calculated.

Jared took rear position, and again, Kael noticed the hesitations. At each cross-section, where timing and line-of-sight coordination were vital, Jared fell half a beat behind. Not dramatically so, but enough to bend the rhythm of their formation. A ripple that threw off spacing and tempo.

They cleared the first incline, ducked behind a flickering stone projection, and paused for a silent count of three. Reyna’s brow furrowed as she tapped her wristpad to review the formation pattern.

“We’re off again,” she muttered under her breath, glancing sideways. “Jared’s line is wrong. He’s lagging the pivot point.”

Kael crouched beside her, breathing steadily through his nose. “I told you. It’s consistent. Always during critical repositioning.”

She rubbed the back of her glove across her cheek, frustration flickering in her eyes. “We’ll talk to Darius after this.”

But the terrain module didn’t give them a reprieve. The final sector forced them through a series of narrow footholds and an overhead crawl, with reactive hazards thrown in to simulate real-world unpredictability. By the time they reached the edge of the pit, pulse monitors flashing amber, their cohesion rating had already sunk lower than the previous day’s.

Darius stood just outside the bounds, his arms folded across his chest, his expression carved from ice. His coat billowed slightly in the filtered breeze of the ventilation system, and the sharp line of his jaw gave away nothing.

“You were worse than last time,” he said flatly, voice cutting through the post-trial silence. “And I’m not interested in excuses.”

Kael stepped forward instinctively, fists clenching slightly. “With respect, sir, we…”

“Save it,” Darius snapped, cutting across him without raising his voice. “You think I don’t know what’s happening?”

No one spoke. The silence stretched more tightly, the hum of the terrain system powering down suddenly sounding too loud.

Darius looked from Reyna to Jared to Kael. His unblinking gaze lingered on the three of them.

“Fix it or I’ll request a reshuffle.”

Then he turned, coat flaring behind him, and walked away without another word.

That night, Kael wandered outside the dormitory block. He ended up near the edge of the practice fields, where the sky was low with clouds and the stars were faint.

Reyna found him there, sitting on one of the concrete benches.

“You okay?” she asked.

He didn’t answer for a while. “I thought being here would be different.”

“It is different.”

“Not better.”

She sat beside him. “Jared’s not your enemy.”

“He’s not a teammate either.”

“No,” she said. “But maybe that’s the point. Maybe Darius wants to see if we can function with someone like him.”

Kael shook his head. “Or maybe he just wants to see which of us breaks first.”

Reyna didn’t deny it. “If that’s the case, then we survive it. Together.”

Kael looked at her. “Do you trust me?”

“I do.”

He wanted to believe that was enough.

Over the next week, drills became more intense. Darius didn’t change the squads. He didn’t intervene in arguments. He only watched, and slowly, the tension shifted.

Jared stopped arguing. He didn’t improve, but he also didn’t push back. It was almost worse… his silence was harder to read.

One afternoon, during a basic relay exercise, Kael noticed something. Jared had faked a misstep, but the error led to an actual advantage in the formation. It wasn’t sabotage this time. It was subtle redirection.

Afterward, Kael caught up with him. “You’re adjusting the patterns mid-drill. Again.”

Jared didn’t stop walking. “I’m compensating for the real weaknesses.”

“You mean me.”

Jared shrugged. “You’re unstable. So I adapt. That’s what we’re supposed to do.”

“You could’ve told me that instead of throwing off the whole team.”

“You weren’t ready to hear it.”

Kael stared at him. “You’re still not trying to make this work.”

“No. But I’m not trying to make it fail either. That’s your mistake.”

By week’s end, Darius summoned them privately. He looked over their reports, glanced at their faces, and said only: “Better.”

Kael wasn’t sure what that meant.

But he did know one thing: Jared wasn’t trying to be liked. He was trying to win. And maybe, just maybe, that was something they could build from.

Reyna still stood in the middle. Kael still carried his doubts. Jared still played by his own rules.

But something had shifted.

Even if it wasn’t trust, it was something close enough to start with.