“Well, yes,” said the spokesperson for the boys. “That does seem to be the case, but...”
Perhaps because the boys had been taking their work so seriously, there was now little left to do.
“But we’re going to the fighting soon,” he finished.
“And that’s exactly why we’re telling you to go,” said the knight. “Of course, we’ll do all we can to keep you safe, but you never know what’ll happen in battle. You need to have these fun experiences while you can. Sure, war is coming, but does that mean you have to avoid every bit of joy and live the rest of your life in boredom? No one knows what the future has in store for us, but I bet we’ll still win even if you guys goof off a little bit. We adults don’t mind; we’re telling you to go.”
The older knights had paid the squires a visit just to grant (or practically order) them permission. Plus, even with the war preparations, the boys still had a certain amount of free time. And so they gladly accepted the knights’ kind offer.
“Okay!” one of the squires cried.
Another said, “Sweet, let’s go!”
“Now don’t go getting too excited and wreck anything,” the knights warned, “or else our commanders will have our heads.”
“Okay!” the boys swore.
Four days before Roy’s army set off, Queen and his friends went to the circus together and had a grand old time.
“Wow! That was incredible!” cried Remie. “Did you see the lion?”
“Yeah,” said Slad. “It was like a cat, but enormous!”
Slad and Remie could not hide their excitement. Queen, watching them, was glad he came along, but his happiness soon evaporated when he looked up at the moon and thought, I wish Fie could have come with us too.
Stop thinking about her, he reprimanded himself. Didn’t I promise to stop worrying the others? He let out a small sigh.
Then Gormus said to him, “I dropped something. Will you come with me to get it?”
“Sure.”
Gormus called to the others, “Hey, Queen and I are going back to grab something I dropped.”
“Got it! We’ll wait for you at the food stands!”
“Sounds good.”
Queen followed Gormus who, for some reason, skirted the entrance to the circus tent and led them to a deserted spot. With the performance complete and the resultant hubbub subsided, the only sounds Queen could hear were the crew members quietly clearing up after the show. Here, Gormus turned around and said, looking baffled, “You don’t need to force yourself like this. You don’t have to come out with the others if you don’t want to, and it’s okay to be depressed. Don’t feel like you need to hide it.”
Gormus must have noticed what Queen was going through, which Queen felt grateful for, but it also bothered him that someone was still worried about him despite his best efforts. If Fie were there, she would have told him how to handle this awkward situation. But she was not. It was up to him to do a better job at being attentive to other people’s feelings, Queen reflected.
“Okay...” he said.
The two stood there for a few moments in silence, watching the starry sky.
Finally, Gormus muttered, “Are the stories about you and Heath dating true...?”
When he examined his true feelings, he realized that, deep down, he had been purposefully avoiding this topic of conversation. Whoever dated whom was none of his business, so he had worked to avoid the gossip as much as possible, claiming that this was for Queen’s sake, but...perhaps it was also for his own.
Queen turned bright red and stammered out, “Y-Yeah.”
No way, Gormus thought. A storm of complex emotions assailed him, including ones that astonished even him. He knew Queen couldn’t tell a lie to save his life, which meant he knew all along that the rumors must have been true, but to hear it from Queen’s mouth was another story.
Gormus immediately stopped trying to probe into what these emotions meant. I don’t need to know all the details, he thought, especially not now. There’s something more important anyway. Right now, he needed to help a certain person both Heath and he considered a dear friend: Queen.
Queen was socially inept enough to not ask for help even when his close friend was right in front of him, with no one else around. Yet even if he could not, something still had to be done. Gormus had spent over a year with Heath and Queen, which meant that, lacking the resident idiot, the task of helping Queen fell to him.
“This is coming from a place of being Heath’s friend, okay?” he said. “Heath’s the biggest idiot I’ve ever met, a horrible show-off, and a greedy little bastard to boot. But he’s not the kind of person who would ever break up with his sweetheart for no reason. So calm down and wait for him, okay?”
Queen’s eyes widened momentarily before he returned to his usual blank look, this time with an extra smile.
“Yes, that’s true,” he said. A light flickered in his eyes for one brief moment before it went out again, only to be replaced by sorrow. “But I can think of plenty of good reasons to break up with me. I’m still just a kid, and we were having an affair, and I’m nowhere near as mature and appealing as His Majesty the King. Besides, I told her back when we started dating that I’d protect her, but I can’t protect her from anything.”
Gormus couldn’t exactly refute any of those points. “Well, uh...” he said. “Don’t let it get to you, okay?”