Ulbarich wanted nothing more than to seize the Prince's shoulder and draw him back of this. It was one thing to suggest that a Prince ought not to be informed about the doings in his kingdom. It was another thing entirely to put that same Prince in the room with a man who'd just attempted to kill a Captain of the army. If the man was willing to roll the dice on a Captain, how would he feel about the chance to kill a Prince? Yet there they were, Prince and Captain both, hustling down a narrow corridor of stone into dungeons that Princes had not seen in many a year. These were not the clean, bright blue stones of the city's jailers. These were a forbidding gray, caked with moss where water trailed down the walls, dank and dark as the day was long. The only light came from torches, and so the gray sometimes faded to orange in wide hideous circles on the wall. It smelled of smoke and oil and death. Not the sort of place one made a habit of visiting.

( The business was important, indeed. )

From the time he was a boy, he'd been raised with one thought in mind. Do not be selfish. Do not set yourself on the path of the undesirable. Make your heart not a fortress of greed. Ilúvatar had taken to those lessons because a knight was meant to be all of those things. He was meant to be a sacrifice to his people, a defender and champion of his people. His people were any of the innocents who shrank away from the defense of their lives. His people were the ones who had nothing. It was for them that he must live his life. And yet here he was, a goblet before him, staring at the sun-haired beauty as though he'd never seen someone so perfect in all of his life.

( He did not think that he had. )