Sander spent the following two days sorting through meetings with advisors and plans to have Elias reinstated as heir. He addressed the nation and explained that Elias had recovered and would be resuming his title immediately. Elias took the podium for several minutes to reassure the public as well, which was more to assert the monarchy’s stability than anything else. Sander wanted to leave nothing to chance and hoped to avoid any new coup attempts in the near future.

Within the week Elias had been officially reinstated, the remaining coup members had been found and arrested, and life at Kallaster began to resemble something more normal.

If the life of a royal family could ever be considered normal.

Several mornings after Elias’s reinstatement, Sander rose before the sun and dressed for a hard day’s work: beaten buckskin pants, thickly treaded boots, and a faded blue cotton shirt that had been the color of a robin’s egg a hundred washings before. He scraped half his hair back and secured it with a small band.

After a brief kiss to Chey’s temple, he left her in bed and descended the halls of Kallaster on quiet feet.

Moments later he was in the clearing behind the castle where he’d been when the whole ordeal began. Someone had thought to put his ax back near the pile of wood he’d been chopping, a thoughtful act that did not go unnoticed.

Although darkness shrouded the land, there was enough residual light to see by. He picked up the ax, tested the grip in his hand, and had just hefted the blade over his head when a voice surprised him from behind.

“Old men shouldn’t strain themselves like that.”

Sander laughed and turned to bring Elias into view. His son had donned similar clothing, as if he’d known of the plans to chop wood. Which was impossible; he hadn’t told anyone, not even Chey, of his agenda.

“And young men with wrist injuries shouldn’t even think of wielding an ax,” Sander retorted. He rested the wooden handle on his shoulder, the sharp edge of the blade tilted toward the dark sky.

“Who said I was offering to do hard labor?” Elias asked. His lips twitched as if warding off a smile. “I’m here to oversee the effort.”

“So I shouldn’t be straining myself, yet you’re here to oversee? That’s a contradiction.”

“Not when you have help,” Leander said.

Sander snapped a look in the other direction. Leander and Jeremiah had appeared on the sly. He laughed when he spotted the axes in their hands.

“I’m not sure you’re both up to the task I’ve set for myself today,” Sander said. He swung a hand toward the large pile of unchopped wood. “There’s probably a good six or seven hours of labor here.”

Leander snorted. Jeremiah laughed.

Elias laughed as well and perched himself on an upright trunk. “Should we take bets on who cuts the most the fastest?”

Competitive to the bone, Sander didn’t bother to wait for the semantics to be worked out. He swung the ax high.

Three blades landed almost simultaneously in different pieces of wood.

The unofficial race was on.

---

The End