The room where Anastas was born smelled of hot water, lavender, and something metallic—barely perceptible, yet unsettling. Later, he would realize it was the smell of blood mixed with the herbal infusion the midwife used to wash her hands. It was raining that day, and heavy drops beat dully against the leaded panes of the windows, as if trying to penetrate inside, into the warm and bright Bennet ancestral estate. The building itself, constructed of light stone, towered over the district, imposing in its stature: dark oak beams, high ceilings, and endless enfilades of rooms were majestic.
The birth of Anastas began with silence; he did not cry.
"Is he breathing?" asked his mother anxiously, lying exhausted on the pillows.
The midwife nodded, lifting the infant to the light.
"He is breathing. He just… isn't crying."
His eyes opened at once. The gaze was cloudy, infantile, and yet there was something unusual in it, uncharacteristic of a newborn. He looked at faces, examined everything around him, as if trying to understand where he was.
This strange detachment became his faithful companion. In the first months of his life, Anastas almost never cried. Darkness did not frighten him, sudden sounds did not disturb him, he rarely reached out to people. He could be left alone in the cradle or on the rug by the fireplace. The nanny once whispered to the maid: "It is easy with him. So unusual." There was none of the habitual fuss with him; at times, the household felt that it was not an infant resting in the cradle, but a tiny adult forced to endure his own helplessness.
Anastas began to sit and walk early, but he never hurried, for he knew there was no need to rush. In his movements, there was no fuss—only caution. He held toys as if they might break, and never broke them on purpose. Sometimes he would freeze in the middle of the room, staring into the void, as if at that moment an epiphany came to him or he deftly fished a forgotten fragment from memory. In such moments, his breathing became deeper, and his fingers curled, as if gripping the hilt of an invisible sword.
His mother noticed this and felt an inexplicable anxiety every time.
"What are you thinking about?" she would ask, catching him in such contemplation.
Anastas would raise his eyes to her, too deep for his age.
"I don't know."
It was the truth. Words could not yet keep pace with what lived inside.
He quickly learned to read, but children's books left him indifferent. He listened to fairy tales about princes and feats with polite indifference; he was more interested in sciences, strategy, and… practice.
"How do you know this maneuver?" the fencing master asked one day, when six-year-old Anastas precisely, albeit clumsily, repeated a complex defensive stance.
The boy shrugged.
"I learned it."
"Where?"
A long pause followed.
"I don't remember."
He often answered this way. It was convenient and saved him from questions for which he had no justified answers.
At night, when the house sank into sleep, the silence became heavy. Anastas woke without a scream, sat up in bed, and stared into the darkness for a long time. He knew on the level of sensation: something was lost. Someone was lost. He feared it was forever. Being the youngest child in the family, he had an older brother and sisters, and was grateful to fate for at least this—that he did not need to bear the burden of the heir. But even this brought no peace.
And he also kept other children away. Fear was to blame for everything. He saw them drawn to him, but kept his distance, knowing that attachment is a hook followed inevitably by pain. He had already gone through this. He just couldn't remember exactly when.
Years at the estate turned his life into a series of rituals. Anastas was born into a family of English aristocrats, and he was given everything: spacious halls, the best horses, a rich library. To him, all this was simultaneously familiar and alien. The past lives of a king and a warrior had made him disciplined and observant. Formal education—grammar, philosophy, diplomacy—was merely a superficial reminder of rules he had already mastered once on battlefields and in throne rooms.
And yet, these boundaries felt like a gilded cage. While those around him lived at the slow pace of social receptions, inside him burned the familiar adrenaline and sense of responsibility that could not be quelled.
Then came adolescence. Anastas shot up, became angular and sharp. His face lost its childish softness, acquiring a restrained severity.
The only places of power were the stables and the fencing hall.
He still chose solitude, walking along the boundary of the estate where the forest met the fields. But the silence he had so carefully built around himself cracked one ordinary overcast day.
Thomas appeared in his life suddenly.
"What are you always thinking about?"
Anastas turned sharply, his hand instinctively twitching toward his hip, seeking a sword. Before him stood a youth—younger than him, slender, with tousled hair and interested eyes.
"Who are you?" Anastas asked coldly.
"Thomas Parker. I live in the neighboring estate now. Your family was at our reception; why didn't you come?"
Anastas tried to push him away with his habitual coldness, but Thomas did not leave. He began to appear regularly: by the stables, in the garden, in the library. He spoke a lot, but not intrusively, and, most surprisingly, he was not afraid of Anastas's detachment.
"Easier doesn't mean better," he said one day in response to another statement by Anastas that he was better off alone.
"So says a man who has not yet lost," Anastas chuckled.
"And you—have lost?"
The question hung in the air like heavy lead.
"Go home," said Anastas, waving the question away.
Thomas stood up, brushed off his hands.
"I will come tomorrow."
And he came. And then again and again.
Gradually, their presence in each other's lives became habitual. They argued about books and morality, and Anastas caught himself smiling sometimes—not outwardly, but somewhere deep inside. This was frightening.
One day, returning from the stables late in the evening, they were caught in a downpour. Thomas laughed, soaked through, and Anastas silently threw his own cloak over his shoulders.
"You'll freeze," the youth was surprised.
"I am used to it," Anastas replied, and only then realized how true that was.
That night he could not sleep. Memory stirred with a searing feeling: it had happened before. A friend. Loyalty. Laughter. And following it—inevitable blood. He sat up in bed, gripping the sheet until his knuckles were white. Names surfaced in his memory: Houwei, Jihua, Athit… Their tragedies were his burden.
"Do not repeat mistakes," he ordered himself. "Attachment is pain delayed in time."
But in the morning, Thomas stood at the gates again, squinting in the sun. And Anastas, looking at him from the window, understood: he was already too late with this decision. The inner fire of the king and the warrior could not be extinguished by feigned indifference. He was ready to protect again. He was ready to feel again. And although aristocratic life had taught him to keep a straight face, it could not break his habit of loving to the end—even if silence always waited at the end.