XVI
Truthfully, James had been too jumpy and uneasy to even consider sleep. He was sure nothing would have felt better than sinking into a mattress for the first time in weeks but his body needed to keep moving. It was taking all his will to stop himself from running away.
?"You're like a lost lamb." James commented, even if he was smiling on the outside he felt sorely hostile to his annoying shadow.
?He had decided to leave his room and go for yet another walk, much to Thomas' displeasure. James had to give credit where it was due, Thomas was so patient with him that it was painful; any normal person would have snapped by that point.
?"I'm sorry you feel that way." Thomas plainly apologised.
?No he wasn't.
?James continued paced the corridors, much to the surprise of the servants that rounded the corner.
?"Ah, good morning, sir, you're awake." the footman stuttered, clearly unsure how to address him.
?"What does he want?" James cut straight to the point.
?The poor servant flinched, James hadn't stopped his angst from sharpening his tone.
?"His Majesty wishes to see you in his study, we're here to guide you."
?"No, thank you." James declined, firmly. One lost lamb following him around was enough, any more of them and he might become venomous. "Thomas will show me, I'm sure."
?The servants looked to Thomas for guidance, receiving a nod from him. That was good enough and they scuttled away like a herd of sheep.
?James took a quick breather, looking out the window as if he could calm his body with the illusion of freedom, the waking city stretched out before him.
?"What was Alex doing earlier?" James asked, it had been playing on his mind for a while now.
?"I couldn't tell you if I knew."
?That meant Thomas didn't know, which meant it was unlikely official business relating to him. He was thankful that some people didn't think before they spoke— it gave so much information to James.
?What had caught James' attention the most was the wound on Alex's cheek, it looked as if he'd been assaulted. It pissed him off.
?"His cheek?" James turned around to gauge Thomas' shuttered expression.
?"Not for me to say."
?He'd find out soon anyway.
?James sighed, long and hard, willing his stiff body to relax. The last thing he wanted was to meet King William whilst agitated. He needed to be more careful than a feather on water from this point on.
?Once James was ready, Thomas led him through the palace, the sight of bustling maids and civil servants felt so natural that James' stomach twisted from the nostalgia.
Even if he was back in a place like this, he was still the James that spent years living amongst commoners, that was for sure.
Scarily, though, there was a small part of him, deep in his gut, that wanted to break out of its cage.
The familiarity of it all compromised his identity.
?He could as well have been a young boy, leisurely walking through his home, at that moment.
?James tested his tongue in his mouth, he'd spent so much time talking in a common accent that he worried he'd lost his old voice.
He bit it in frustration. If he was going to get any respect in this place, he was going to have to use his old noble drawl.
Thankfully, he'd had Alex around for long enough to intimately remember how to pronounce every syllable— even swear words, though it was greatly unusual for a noble to use them.
He supposed he just pissed Alex off that much.
?He corrected his posture as they walked, carefully allowing his thorough-bred arrogance to manoeuvre himself, each step punctuated with purpose.
?Thomas stopped and knocked on a door, receiving a low; "Come in". He held the door open for James but did not follow him inside, clicking it shut behind him.
?"Your Majesty." James greeted, tasting the foreign familiar way his mouth moved over the words. He wasn't sure he liked it.
?The king was sitting at his grand dark wood desk, the window shuttered closed behind him for privacy, leaving the room too dim for James' comfort.
He felt a flare of regret burn him, every time he'd used that solution his eyes had permanently dimmed colour, it left James in an almost grey world— the colours only just recognisable to him when he concentrated.
All of that was necessary to hide, but it meant nothing if he got caught in the end.
?Duke Chamberlain stood near the king's desk, as well as another man that James didn't recognise.
?"Julian." King William acknowledged, James grit his teeth at the name, "This is Harrison, my closest aide. All information in this palace goes through him, he's a valuable asset."
?Harrison bowed to James and he found the interaction bitter. No one had bowed to him since he was a child, it was an act of forced submission simply by birthright. Life on the streets had changed his attitude forever.
?"When will I get Eris back?" James asked, point blank. He wasn't interested in dancing around subjects like nobles typically do, much to the duke's displeasure.
?"We need to decide what we're going to do before we can talk about that." the king told him. "The situation has only got more complicated since you've appeared, alive."
?"I'm not sure why you say that, Your Majesty." James gently approached the topic. "I can follow through with your request and you can finish what you wished to do. Then, I'll be on my way."
?The king slowly shook his head, his old wrinkled eyes weary.
?"You're a rightful heir to the throne." King William explained. "Once we kill Fabian— if we can kill Fabian, that is— then someone else is going to have to rule in his place. Otherwise it'll be chaos."
?James' heart dropped. "Surely you don't mean me?"
?"Why not you?" the duke chimed in, "There's no one better. Your legitimacy would never come into question so there'd never be a fight for succession amongst your distant relatives. It would make the transition as peaceful as possible."
?James didn't know what to say. He'd lost all interest in succession the day the palace had burned down, he avoided that place like the plague.
He was happy to do his royal duty by cleaning up the streets for the better of the people, but politics was entirely out of the question for him, he was more than happy for Fabian to do that instead.
?"I think you should tell us what happened that day."
?It was inevitable that King William would ask, he was friends with his father after all.
James had never told a soul what he'd seen and, at some point in his life, he started to doubt if it all had actually ever happened.
It felt so far away that he wasn't sure if he was truly Julian or if he was just a scared orphan boy that made up that fantasy to survive.
Only the repulsive looking burn marks on his arm kept him grounded in reality.
?He didn't want to say it out loud, because that would make it real. But, the genuine grief in the king's eyes was enough to tighten his chest. His parents' death didn't affect him alone.
?"It..." James paused, screwing his eyes shut and taking a steady breath, before continuing again; "It wasn't a regular assassination. There were soldiers there. The kingdom's soldiers."
?The shock hung in the tension in the air, but no one said a word, so James continued.
?"I saw Fabian standing there." The images of fire and blood were etched behind his eyelids, every blink a painful reminder.
"The soldiers never attacked him, even though they killed every single servant they came across.
I never actually saw what killed my parents in the end, the maids were helping me flee. "
?"You're certain?" the duke snapped in, his words sharp and heavy with the implication that James was giving them.
?James hesitated, but nodded in jerky movements. "I wasn't sure I saw correctly at first." he confessed. "But, the attack on red eyes confirmed it for me. That was personal. He knew I had escaped and that was his solution to shutting me up permanently."
?He thought about Milo, a poor boy that suffered only misfortune because of Fabian's paranoia. James brought his glare up to King William, keeping his hot fury tampered down. "I want to know why you never prevented that. Hundreds of innocent people died because of that damned law."
?Pain crossed the king's face. "I honestly tried all I could," he insisted, "we all thought it was strange, but it wasn't all Fabian, the temple got involved too. We could do nothing against the temple, it became a religious issue, not a war issue. You know our power only goes so far."
?"Even so." James gritted out, "Your knights are corrupt enough to partake in child trafficking— by the way—yet you never attempted to prevent them from enforcing that particular law?
I'm sure they would've loved the reduced paperwork.
You could have managed your own territory differently if you really tried. You just didn't."
?The king's face hardened. "You know it's not that simple."
?"Don't I?" James felt a sick smile tug his cheeks. "All it takes is a few words to the right people. If Fabian didn't fight fair, why did you?"
?James knew he could be imprisoned for his insolence, but years of building resentment and hatred for what people have allowed the empire to become was enough to make anyone snap.
Throwing him in jail wouldn't change the fact that every single person in that room had failed to do their duty. James was just the messenger.
?"Duke Chamberlain." James went on.
?The duke spared him a glance.
?"You should probably listen to your son's concerns more seriously. Your parishes have no law nor order and your son is having to run around juggling plates and stay on top of your men's messes. I'm surprised he hasn't killed any of his colleagues yet, because I certainly would've."
?The duke spilled a scoff. "What would a criminal know about law and order?"
?"That's enough." the king hissed.
?"I'm concerned we're drifting away from the point." Harrison hurried, speaking for the first time. "This meeting is to incorporate Julian into the plan, not to worry about what the knights are doing."
?James didn't argue, even if a 'fuck you' was on the tip of his tongue. No one ever worried about what the knights were doing. That was the problem.
?"I'm sorry," he wasn't, "but I'm really not interested in usurping Fabian. I'm not interested in power. Especially when I don't even know why you want him dead."
?The king leaned back in his chair, his eyes trained on his empty desk.
James wondered if King William was considering how much to reveal.
Even if they'd always hated each other, Fabian was his blood-related brother, which in itself posed a risk to King William.
There was no way for anyone in the room to know how loyal James was to him; he'd left him alive all this time after all, despite what he did.
?"A war is brewing." the king revealed, finally. "Your brother is the one instigating it, along with Theos royalty. We're not yet sure how deep this goes."
?James inclined his head in thought. "With Ashad again?"
?"No, not Ashad. Espar."
?James winced from the suggestion alone. The Espar Empire was a colossal force in the north, its men and women tough as iron and as resilient as stone. Thankfully, they'd been on unsteady but consistently neutral terms with the Khearian Kingdom so far.
?"That doesn't make sense." James mused, "We provide almost all of Espar's food through trade, it's lucrative for us and they're happy fed. There's nothing for us to gain by taking their infertile land, nor do we have any justification to invade them in the first place."
?The king clicked his fingers at something James said. "That is exactly right. But, it's not us that will be invading, which poses the biggest issue for me."
?James' brows knitted together. "Then what?"
?Duke Chamberlain sighed. "They've already started cutting off trade to Espar, violating the trade deal. Eventually, Espar will get upset and hungry enough that they will be the ones doing the invading."
?"But the amount of people that would die—" James spluttered.
?"Exactly." the king agreed. "My people are on the border, it'll be my people that suffer first. For a cause we don't even know of."
?Even if it was selfish of him, James wished he'd never been told any of this.
He'd always held a strong sense of responsibility, despite the confusion of the Jay before him.
He wanted to do something about it, but usurping was too much.
James belonged on the ground, not in an ivory tower spitting orders.
?Perhaps this was his opportunity to repay his family.
?"Give me some time to think about it." he requested. "If you give me Eris back I will assist you in some way, but it's unlikely I'll ever agree to be reinstated into royalty again. I'll make that much clear with you now."
?Conversation over, James was given permission to finally leave that stuffy room. He wasted no time in escaping, sighing once he got past those doors. His body deflated, feeling sorry for himself. Life just wouldn't leave him alone.
?Someone cleared their throat, and it wasn't Thomas.
?Alex was leaning against the wall by the doors, looking tired.
?"What happened to your face?" James blurted.
?Alex glanced at the door in panic and gestured to James to follow him, taking him a distance away where they wouldn't be overheard by its occupants. Thomas was left behind, but James could feel his eyes on them.
?Alex breathed out a bitter chuckle after he stopped, his eyes full of accusation. "This..." Alex waved a hand by his cheek, "was your fault, thank you very much."
?"Oh."
?"Yeah, 'oh'. I got off easy actually, considering you could have fucking murdered the king. Why the fuck did you do that?"
?James bit his lip, strangely interested in the way the muscles in Alex's neck would tense and the apple in his throat would shift with each word. His hand itched to hold it.
?"James."
?James jerked his gaze up to the frustrated, yet confused, expression on the man's face. Right, he was having a conversation. "I was anxious."
?Alex scoffed, his brown eyelashes fluttering. James kept looking in the most distracting of places. Alex had a lot of features that his gaze was getting drawn to, instinctually.
?"Anxious my arse, you can't keep— what the fuck do you keep looking at?"
?James dragged his gaze up again, snapping back to reality. He shrugged innocently, he wasn't entirely sure himself. Alex was just nice to look at.
?He managed to kick his brain to start working again and grasped Alex's shoulder.
"Look, I'm sorry, okay? I panicked, I didn't mean to get you into trouble.
" James found himself sidetracked again, his hands were bandage-free and Alex's warmth leaked through his clothing, James could feel the muscles bunched beneath with his fingers.
He wondered if it was a survival instinct that was making him this way. "You're really strong."
?Alex batted his hand away, most of his frustration replaced with a cautious intrigue, the question hovering between them. James knew he was behaving weirdly, he didn't need Alex's body language to double down on telling him that.
?He received no response to his remark, Alex simply staring back at him. His gaze flickered to Alex's lips before returning, realising their faces were a lot closer than he thought. There was something in Alex's eye that James reciprocated, his pupils dilated.
?His body moved without thinking, pushing Alex an arm's length away by his shoulders, his hands not letting go.
He stared at the floor, his heart making weird jumpy movements, his hands and face hot.
It wasn't fight or flight, he knew that much, but it made him nervous as if it was.
Was he scared by Alex? No, that wasn't it.
?"That's... I'm sorry."
?Alex felt rigid under his palms and he tore his hands away, deciding to keep them to himself. He backed away a step for good measure.
?Alex coughed. "It's okay. It was my fault for not checking. Lesson learned, I suppose..."
?"Right." James nodded once, a jerky movement.
?He decided it was time to leave.
?"Thomas." he called, "I'm going back now."
?He risked another glance at Alex whose face flinched at Thomas' presence, like he'd forgotten the other man was there.
?"I'm sure you have some questions so I'll talk to you sometime." James murmured, too quiet for Thomas to overhear.
?Alex hardly moved, but bowed his head in what James assumed was a nod back.
?He didn't have to answer anything for Alex, but it was something he wanted to do. Maybe he just felt sorry that Alex's dad was a prick, or maybe it was simple respect. He didn't know.
?James fled the scene with his clingy sheep before he did more weird things.