Areti had no plan when he reached Kallus, running solely on a few hours of sleep and the adrenaline from his confrontation with Petros a week ago. It was a long time to stew on his words, but he hadn’t been able to push them from his mind. There was more he had wished to say, but he had forgotten them all in the heat of the moment. 

Not that he would say any of it to Ambrus. The last thing he wanted was a repeat of his conversation with Petros. That had been hard enough; to do it a second time would be near impossible. He had no doubt that Ambrus would request some kind of explanation from him, but with the anger that flooded his veins and controlled his every movement, it would be easy enough to deny him.

The way he stormed through the camp didn’t look out of place. Others rushed around him, barely paying attention to where they were going or who they were passing. Something was going on, another battle on the horizon, most likely. It wouldn’t be the first time he had arrived at a camp in the midst of a battle, but it did mean that he had considerably less time to do what he needed to.

His original plan had been to see the generals and then Ambrus, mainly to give him time to prepare himself. That wouldn’t be possible anymore. 

Areti changed direction midway to the general’s tent and froze at the sight that lay before him. There was a battle raging, closer than he had ever seen before. Far beyond the camp were the blood-splattered fields of Kallus and the ant-like soldiers that scurried across them. It was hard to make out anymore than that, the organised chaos making it near impossible to tell who was winning. 

Fear sunk through him, threatening to keep him frozen on the prickly grass. If Ambrus was out there… Areti shook his head. If Ambrus was out there already, then he would leave the letter and go. Maybe that was easier. And next time he came to Kallus, he would quickly check that he wasn’t on the list of the dead. That was a promise he would keep, even if he couldn’t keep any others. 

As he drew closer to Ambrus’s tent, the sounds of screams reached his ears. They were faint and indiscernible from each other, but still made Areti sick to his stomach. He knew what they were. War cries. The final sound made before death. Fear. Injury. He might have been trained for battle, but he was grateful to have never truly experienced it. 

He couldn’t tell if it was a good thing or a bad thing that Ambrus stood in the tent when he reached it. Like the rest of the camp, it was crowded and busy, every warrior desperate to get their armour on in record time. 

Ambrus stood at the end of the tent, doing up the last of his buckles with a precision and determination Areti had never seen on him before. Even despite the battle raging nearby, Areti’s stomach rumbled with the awful anxiety that had followed him from Pethra. He should be more concerned with the war, and not his personal problems. Ambrus and Petros had changed him far too much. 

“Areti!” 

He hadn’t even noticed when Ambrus had turned towards him, too lost in his own thoughts. The air between them was thick and Ambrus’s relieved smile made his nausea worsen tenfold. Then Ambrus looked away, jaw clenched and eyes surveying the rush of movement in the tent, and he bit out a sharp curse. 

“As much as I would love to talk with you right now, I’m sure you noticed what’s going on out there,” he said, standing before Areti before he could do anything about it. “Are you… Will you stay? Until the battle’s over? Then we can-”

“No,” he said, voice flat and stomach churning. 

“What?” Ambrus asked. To his surprise, Areti’s hands didn’t shake when he pulled out the letter, the one he had the most trouble not reading during his travels. But even with his feelings, he was a messenger. He was never one to betray anyone’s privacy, no matter what they did to him. 

Ambrus took it, eyebrows furrowed in confusion. Perhaps it was cruel to give him such a thing moments before he went to battle, but Areti’s mind was clouded, foggy with anger and hurt. He needed to get it over and done with. 

“I can’t be your messenger anymore,” he explained and swallowed thickly. “I will not say anymore than that. I’ve told Petros enough, I don’t think I could go through it again-”

Ambrus grabbed his shoulder, eyes searching for something and far more expressive than Petros’s “Wait, no, Areti-”

“Petros has explained in their letter. Read it when you make it back from the battle,” he told him, looking away from the confusion and what looked like anguish in Ambrus’s eyes. “I will not be here. I’m… I’m sorry.”

He whirled around and stalked out of the tent a second later. Someone shoved into him on their way past and he stumbled back, but they were gone a moment later, blending into the loud chaos of the camp before Areti could say anything. 

He had been kinder to Ambrus than he meant to be, but there was a battle raging and Ambrus still had to fight. 

Gods, what if his rejection of him distracted him in the moment, and got him killed? Areti would never forgive himself if that happened. He should have waited, should have left the letter for him to find later. What had he been thinking?

A hand on his shoulder turned him around and he came face to face with the tear-filled eyes of Ambrus. “Areti, you’re leaving? Just like that?” he asked. His voice was raspy, thick, filled with something Areti couldn’t read. “I don’t understand! I think… I think you owe me some kind of explanation here.”

Areti choked, a hysterical laugh bubbling from his throat. “Owe you? I have given you so much of myself and got nothing in return. I don’t owe you anything anymore!”

The words tore their way through him, leaving him feeling raw and empty. He felt almost as shocked as Ambrus looked, dizzy enough to fall over if he had been walking. His words were the truth, as much as he hated saying them. Too much of himself had gone into their arrangement, and he was so tired. 

“What do you mean, you got nothing?” Ambrus asked and shook his head, the hand on his shoulder tightening to an almost painful degree. “I thought this was what you wanted!”

“Are you truly so blind-”

“Is this because of what happened last time you were here?” 

Areti choked. “No!” he cried. Yes. Maybe. It had to be a part of it, he was sure. “I’m just done, can’t you accept that? If you want an explanation, read Petros’s letter. I have to go.”

Ambrus tried to pull him back but he wrenched away from the hand, hating the sneer that pulled at his lips. “Wait, please, I want you to explain,” Ambrus said, hand hovering in the empty air between them. He opened his mouth to speak again, to demand something more that Areti couldn’t give him, but someone called out behind them. 

“Ambrus! What are you doing? We have to go!”

The battle. Somehow, he had forgotten in the mess of their conversation. The screams and faint clash of metal reached his ears a second later and he winced. He had distracted a warrior from his duty with his meaningless dribble. Scrunching his eyes closed, he took another step away and took a deep breath. 

“You need to go” he whispered and against his better judgement, spoke again. “Please, stay alive.”

“Will I see you again?” Ambrus asked, his voice small and his gaze darting over to where the other warriors waited. 

Areti tried to answer, he truly did, but the words wouldn’t come out. Instead, he turned and wandered down between the tents before anything else could be said. Ambrus would be fine, he had to be. He was a strong warrior, and had survived long enough as it was. Even with additional emotional baggage, he would make it out of the fight alive. 

Tears clouded Areti’s vision. He wiped them away with the back of his hand. He should have done better, but he didn’t know how. It was too late to take it back. There was no way to do it again. All he could do was move forward and pray for the best. 

There was a shrine between Kallus and Petros. He could make an offering to Eros, ask for forgiveness, or wisdom. Both, if he was feeling particularly greedy, which given his feelings towards two different people, he was. Hopefully the Gods would forgive him for his trespasses. Hopefully, they would forgive Ambrus and Petros as well. 

With the sound of screams echoing in his ears, Areti shoved open the main tent in the middle of the camp with little care for what he interrupted. The generals were whispering to each other, panicked expressions on each and every face. Areti took a brief look at the war map in the middle of the tent and blanched at the sight before him.

The little figurines he had long since learned signified their enemy had multiplied since the last time he was there. They surrounded the slate grey of their own, outnumbered them five to one. Only someone completely oblivious to the inner workings of war wouldn’t know what it meant. The Kallus troops were losing.

And he had just sent an emotional Ambrus out there to die. 

The ragged squeak he made in the back of his throat caught the attention of the generals, who whipped around to face him as if he were their enemy. “Can we help you?” one general asked, but there was no strength in their voice. They were scared. They were losing, and they were scared of it. 

If they lost Kallus, what would happen to the rest of the country? Pethra would be on high alert and inevitably attacked. Could Petros hold their own after months of not fighting? Could Pethra as a whole?

His hands shook when he handed over the information he’d been given from the castle, but the generals barely glanced at it, exhaustion in their eyes and the lines on their faces. Another waved him closer and, for the first time in months, Areti was terrified of the information he was about to receive. 

“I ask you to move quickly, messenger. The moment I am done speaking, you are to leave here,” the general said. Areti swallowed and forced himself to nod. “In the coming moments, we will order a retreat. If we are lucky, we will keep Kallus, but many of us doubt it. Our enemy will come for Pethra. Warn them. Make sure they’re prepared. Do you understand?”

Pieces of parchment were thrust into his hands, barely folded and disordered, but Areti placed them in his bag with little more than a nod. They would hold more details, and he would read them during the week between Kallus and Pethra, if he made it that far. If their enemy broke through Kallus’s defences, he might not ever see the castle again.

“What are you waiting for?” the general in front of him snapped, shoving at his shoulder with a beefy hand. “Go! Run!”

Areti scampered from the tent and out into the chaos of the camp. Bodies, covered with hard armour, pushed and shoved at him, turning him around until he was lost in the labyrinth of tents. Faint screams mixed with the barking orders of faceless soldiers. Soon, they would all be yelling at each other to run, to retreat, to save themselves. 

He had to go. Areti turned himself in the opposite direction of the screams and bolted, willing his godly ancestor to bless him with a speed he had never experienced. The tents became a blur of red and beige canvas, the warriors indistinguishable. Kallus, the last place any of them expected, was falling. Ambrus would retreat. He wouldn’t have even made it to the battle, surely. He would be fine. He had to be.

It shouldn’t have taken him that long to get out of the camp, but it felt like both hours and seconds. When he finally slowed, his bag slapping his thigh hard enough to leave a red mark, the tents were far in the distance. What didn’t leave him were the sound of screams. Not orders to retreat, but the screams of the dying, far louder than they had been when he’d been in the camp. 

He turned, face pale and stomach aching with anxiety, and gasped at the sight of fire licking at the furthest tents. They were supposed to have retreated. They were supposed to be safe, on their way to Pethra with the enemy taking control of Kallus, not dying in their tents in a cowardly attack. 

Areti choked on his breath, on his tears, on the urge to run and not look back. Pethra needed his information, he had to go. But people were dying. Ambrus was in there somewhere, fighting… dying. Gods, he had sent Ambrus to his death after yelling at him. His anger was still there, simmering below the fear and despair. 

Those feelings answered the question he held at the forefront of his mind. Areti groaned in despair, the sharp noise barely audible over those of the army, and ignored the papers that fluttered in the bottom of his bag. He had to find Ambrus, had to save him, had to bring him back to Pethra where he’d be safe. 

Hating himself, hating Petros and Ambrus while also loving them, Areti ran back towards the burning camp.