Amery

I stand in the road outside Hodgson’s estate, Artair with his back to me. He’s urged me to follow him, but he’s not waiting around. He starts away, and after a moment’s consideration, I find myself trotting after him.

My mind goes back to all that’s just transpired, the fight that I somehow barely managed to stop, and the two lives I managed to save. Well, three lives, if I count Artair’s.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Just because I stopped the fight doesn’t mean his days on the estate will be rosy.

Artair has come to this place on the king’s orders, to train under General Hodgson together with a few dozen elites, handpicked from thousands of applicants.

Their training is rigorous and truly Spartan, overseen not just by the exacting general, but by two highly sadistic knight commanders who’ve run the gauntlet before. Their ‘push you until you break’ methods, though controversial, produce consistent results, and every year young men test out of the program as hardened, battle ready Knights of the Silver Crown, warriors renowned across the island and even in the southern continent for their prowess.

In the game Artair’s initiation into these elite ranks is a brutal hazing in which two young men’s lives are lost. Rather than expelling him for this, the general recognizes his raw talent and allows him to stay, but he is never truly accepted by his fellow disciples. They torment and bully him incessantly, trying on multiple occasions to take revenge and murder him, but somehow he pushes on, though still haunted by memories of the men he killed.

But the cruelty of the disciples is nothing compared to the abuse he suffers at the hands of the knight commanders, sadistic bosses A and B who harbor personal grudges against his father the king. They’re not given names or even faces in the game; they’re just a pair of generic looking soldier types, but their atrocities committed against the king’s bastard mentioned just in passing were stomach churning. Torture, starvation, mental abuse, they ticked every box, breaking him day after day, without leaving him even a moment to heal.

This is the environment in which the personality of Artair Cain, the most fearsome villain in Court Captive, is molded. From here he will go on to betray his country in the coming war with the northern nation of Terara, to turn his sword on the very soldiers he once trained alongside, and water the island with the blood of his kinsmen.

An unstoppable juggernaut, a force of nature, he’ll press south to the capitol Moonguard, an unavoidable event at the climax of every character’s story. How each love interest handles this invasion will largely determine whether or not they get a bad or happy ending. I couldn’t count the number of times I watched the character I’d spent days wooing die abruptly at this man’s hands, impaled on the end of his famed greatsword.

“You live here?”

Artair’s deep voice cuts across my thoughts and pulls a shiver from me. We’re entering through the main gate, and he covers ground I know to be unfamiliar to him with great clearing strides.

“In the servant’s quarters,” I answer.

“Where’s the door?”

“Just around the other side of the house.”

He presses on. I notice his line of sight darting from side to side as though expecting a surprise attack. The life he’s led up to this point has taught him to be cautious. But he’s not a coward.

He learned from an early age how to survive. The son of King Raghnall and his father’s mistress, the Teraran princess, his life in the palace has been an unhappy one. His father wanted nothing to do with him, and his mother, already plagued by her own feelings of inadequacy as the ‘other woman,’ never got over it. After pushing him for years to be the best at everything he did and gain his father’s attention, one day she finally gave up and took her own life. Artair blamed himself for this, and his father continued to ignore him.

Alone in the palace, he became little more than a servant to be ordered around. For a while he was forced to serve as his brother’s whipping boy, to be beaten in his place when the tutors lost their patience with the crown prince. Enduring this, running errands, begging for scraps of food from the servants, Artair’s very existence became something of a joke inside the palace, with nobles and commoners alike looking down on this half-breed mongrel, the prince who was not a prince. The boy who no one considered, and nobody loved.

King Raghnall finally taking notice of him, sending him to Hodgson’s estate to become an elite knight was supposed to be Artair’s big break, the start to a happier, more meaningful life. Perhaps he still thinks it will be that way…

If only I could do something more to help this man. If only I could prevent the agony I know awaits him, and spare him his villain’s fate.

Artair stops abruptly, just outside the circle of light at the back door. He turns toward me, leaving his great dark frame outlined in bright light, and his face wreathed in shadow.

“Go in,” he says to me. “You’ll be alright, now.”

“What about you?” I find myself asking.

I can’t see his face, I can’t see his reaction to my question. I guess it’s the first time someone’s worried about him in a long time. I wonder if that makes him feel good, or just incredibly lonely.

“I’ll manage,” is the answer he gives me. Then he surprises me with the word, “Thanks.”

“Thank you,” I answer, my voice quite small.

“For what?” he asks, and I sense his eyes searching me from the shadows.

Suddenly shy beneath that gaze, I lose every thought. What am I thanking him for?

“For coming for me,” I breathe the words softly, and I hear his breath catch. Ah, that wasn’t what I was supposed to say. “I-I mean, escorting me! G-goodnight!” Scrunching up my face I flee abruptly, running straight for the back door, my ears flaming.

I run through the quiet kitchen, down the servant’s hall, and I don’t stop till I reach my room and the door is shut behind me. I fall directly into bed where I roll back and forth with my hands covering my face, gripped by a peculiar, exquisite agony.

No, no, no, no!

I’d settled on the friendship ending—the friendship ending! I’m not supposed to fall for the man after meeting him just once! Am I stupid? Am I insane? God, I wish my heart would stop beating so fast!

I stop rolling and come to my side with a pillow clutched against my middle, staring into the darkness.

He was so big. I can still feel that big arm around me as he threatened the other disciples. And handsome. And that voice, hot and deep and dangerous, like coffee with whiskey and just a hint of sugar. Just the thought of it has me rolling again, clutching my middle and squealing.

This is bad. I need to focus.

Of course he’s handsome, I remind myself, he’s a character in an otome game. I can’t let myself get carried away by his good looks—what I need to do is find a way to help him. After all, even with the fight I stopped tonight, there is no guarantee the story isn’t headed in the exact same direction as before. If I don’t work to help him now, his future of war and bloodshed will involve me as well. Make a wrong decision here, and I could find myself on the wrong side of his famous sword one day. And that is not the ending I signed up for.

But how can I help? What can a common maid do against a small army of trained soldiers determined to destroy him?

A line from the game comes to mind, one I encountered when I played Prince Claude’s path. Claude is Artair’s half brother, the heir to the throne of Contrarian. They met at the climax of Terara’s invasion, with the palace in flames all around them. The glazed mask Artair always wore broke in that moment, and tears streamed from his eyes as he confronted his brother.

“Why didn’t you reach your hand out to me? I could have endured it, if only you’d reached out to me, even once. If I’d had even a single friend…”

They duel after that. If Claude’s relationship is high enough with the female lead, he overcomes his doubts and slays the emotionally compromised Artair. If not, his guilt for Artair’s state consumes him, and his brother slaughters both him and his lover, and decimates Moonguard.

I could have endured it, if only you’d reached out to me…