Possession

Shulitu's cheeks were flushed, and his chest felt tight. He had never been this exhausted, nor had he ever held on this stubbornly.

He refused to enter a tent. Out in the open, he stood with dozens of officers, facing the unpredictable soldiers of the Imperial Guard. Torches blazed all around them as the soldiers debated the hostages' fate right in front of them.

The Imperial Guard was no monolith. The other several ten-thousand-man armies had also returned one after another, and each group had slightly different ideas. The crucial question was whether the young prince Shulitu and the Wing Guard Silver Eagle would live or die. Some soldiers insisted they be killed, because Shulitu had sheltered the noble officers, while Silver Eagle had taken part in the fake corpse affair. Others did not want to add to the bloodshed for no reason, especially since the young prince was the Old Khan King's great-grandson, not yet an adult, and should not have to shed blood.

Shulitu thought his presence would give his supporters some confidence and put pressure on the others, so he refused to enter a tent. When the person at the center of it all was out of sight, people found it easier to make cruel decisions. He had learned that from experience.

His grandfather had once wanted to kill him, but changed his mind at the last moment when he looked into Shulitu's eyes. Even the Dragon King's strategist was the same. One reason he refused to go to the battlefield in person was that it let him decide the fates of tens of thousands of soldiers without hesitation.

Shulitu felt a sense of duty. He glanced back at the officers behind him. "I heard the Dragon King has returned. He'll find a way."

A Zheba and