Whose Loyalty?

Monty looked Nikolai straight in the eye, his smile slowly evaporating.

"Am I not looking at you the same way right now?"

Starfaller shook his head.

His expression darkened. "We were supposed to be the most loyal, purest, and most glorious White Blade Guard..."

"We once fought side by side with passion, pride, and abandon, shedding blood for Exeter."

"What exactly brought us to this point?"

Monty cut him off.

"You still don't understand, Thorn?"

"Yes, we really were the most loyal, purest, and most glorious White Blade Guard," he said in a low voice, sounding like the hopeless struggle of a dying patient:

"But look at those shining names throughout the Guard's history. Which one of them didn't come from noble stock, with pure blood? Even for nobles, joining the White Blade Guard to serve the king was an honor."

Monty slowly raised his gaze.

"But when Caslan broke tradition and began selecting White Blade Guard members from among commoners, when he opened his keen eyes and carefully chose us lowborns from among the soldiers who had seen battle, training us to become the Dragon's Royal Guard..."

Monty let out a long sigh. "That was when everything changed. The outcome had already been decided."

"We were fundamentally incompatible with those hereditary noble rulers."

Nikolai stood there in stunned silence.

Monty chuckled softly as he recalled the past. "I remember it very clearly. On our first day standing guard at the Imperial Council, whether they were nobles with titles and fiefdoms, bureaucrats with only honorary titles, or even the old guards of noble birth, not one of them thought much of us—the defilers of the White Blade. That was what they called us."

He gave Nikolai a meaningful look. "We could never fit in."

Nikolai lowered his head.

"Isaiah understood