The war had turned uglier than anyone anticipated. What began as a border dispute along Zhipher's eastern edge had metastasized into something far more dangerous once word spread that Princess Penelope, the king's own sister, had herself been behind the invading force, and that she had taken the support of Seraphine for snatching the throne for herself..
It was, by every account reaching the capital, a civil war wearing the mask of a foreign conflict, and it demanded far more than the modest force originally dispatched. Alastor rode out within days of Caelestis and Hael's departure, shedding the last of his ceremonial hesitation the moment his mother's words had taken root, no longer content to wait quietly for a throne that might not survive intact if he didn't fight for it directly.
