The other maidens echoed her. "True born, true heir."

Jake looked at them kneeling in the dirt.

He looked at Ankerita and Maudlina, who were standing nearby with matching expressions of interest and something that might have been approval.

He looked at Eskar, who was standing by the carriages with his mouth hanging open.

"Can everyone please get up and go back to what they were doing?" Jake said tiredly.

The Dragon Maidens rose. But they were looking at him differently now. Like something had been confirmed. Like a question they’d been holding had been answered.

People started moving again. Back to their tasks. Setting up tents. Tending fires. But they kept glancing at Jake. Kept talking in low voices about what they’d just seen.

He dismissed the system screens and closed his eyes and tried to process the fact that he could apparently talk to snakes now and snakes recognized him as some kind of monarch and this was just his life now.

Ankerita appeared at his side. She was looking at him with those sharp, assessing eyes.

"The python bowed to you," she said.

"Yes," Jake agreed.

"Pythons don’t bow to people."

"I noticed that seemed unusual."

"What did you do?"

Jake thought about this question. He thought about the system and the screens and the title and the fact that he hadn’t done anything at all. The python had just arrived and recognized him as something and responded accordingly.

"Nothing," he said.

"It just... knew."

Maudlina had joined them now. She was looking at Jake with that bright, curious expression that suggested she was filing this incident away for later examination and probably had a dozen theories already forming.

"It seems like you have a talent for taming beasts, Jake. Your father would be proud of you."

Jake could only smile as he walked back to the tree and sat under it.

*

Night fell over the camp slowly.

The fires were burning. Food was being cooked. People were settling in for the evening.

Jake had eaten something. He couldn’t remember what. His mind was still turning over everything the system had shown him and everything that had happened with the python.

He got up from his spot by the fire, as he couldn’t focus right now and he wanted to see Chelsea. She had come after she heard the news and left after checking on him and he hadn’t seen her or Granny. And he didn’t know what she was doing to make her so busy.

He walked through the camp until he found Eskar.

Eskar was sitting near the horse line. Checking saddles and equipment with the methodical attention of a man who needed something to do with his hands. He looked up when Jake approached. His expression was carefully guarded.

"Walk with me," Jake said.

It wasn’t a request.

Eskar stood up without a word and followed.

They walked to the edge of camp. Past the tents. Past the fires. Toward where the larger tents had been set up for the women. Chelsea’s tent was near the center of that area. Clean and well-maintained. A lantern burning inside that cast soft light through the canvas.

Jake stopped about ten meters away from it.

He turned to Eskar.

"Keep watch here," he said quietly.

"Don’t let anyone come near. Don’t let anyone see who goes in or out."

Eskar looked at him. Then at the tent, then back at Jake.

His face did something complicated. A mix of understanding and resignation and something darker that he was keeping buried.

"You want me to stand guard," Eskar said slowly. His voice was flat.

"While you visit your aunt’s tent. At night. And keep everyone away."

"Yes," Jake said simply.

Eskar’s jaw tightened.

"Do you have a problem with that?"

"No."

"Then do as you are told, coward."

Jake could see him processing it. Could see the thoughts moving across his face. The realization of what he was being asked to do. What he was being made complicit in. What his role had become.

Errand boy.

Guard dog.

The man who stood watch while the young master he’d betrayed did whatever the young master wanted to do and couldn’t complain because a complaint would get him killed.

Eskar looked at the ground. 𝕗𝚛𝚎𝚎𝐰𝗲𝗯𝗻𝚘𝚟𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝕞

His hands clenched into fists at his sides.

Jake could see him wrestling with it. With the specific humiliation of being ordered around by someone he’d known as a child. Someone he’d pointed at and condemned at a rest stop two days ago.

When Eskar looked up again, his face was carefully blank.

"How long?" he asked.

"As long as it takes," Jake said.

Eskar nodded once, stiffly.

"Understood," he said.

He moved to a position between the tent and the rest of the camp. Turned his back to the tent. Faced outward. Took up the stance of a man on watch.

Jake looked at his broad back for a moment.

Eskar stood there in the darkness and Jake could feel the weight of what he was carrying.

The shame, the anger. The complete inability to do anything about either of those things because the power balance had shifted and shifted hard and there was nothing Eskar could do except what he was told.

Jake felt no particular satisfaction in it.

He felt no pity either.

He walked past Eskar toward Chelsea’s tent.

Behind him, Eskar stood guard in the darkness and probably wished very much that he could bury himself in the ground rather than be standing exactly where he was standing, doing exactly what he was doing, for exactly the person he was doing it for.

But he stood there anyway.

Because Jake had told him to.

And because he was, after everything, still alive, and staying alive meant doing what the young master wanted.

The night was quiet around them except for the distant sounds of the camp settling in.

Jake reached the tent entrance.

He paused for just a moment.

Then he pushed the flap aside and went in.