Chapter Two #2
The longer Eric thought about it, the more he felt cheered.
He ought to be more upset about being spurned, but he was released from his silent obligation to Lydia through no fault of his own, and he found himself sincerely wishing her the best in return.
As he absently finished his second cup of tea – still scalding, still over-brewed and bitter – Ixthan was nowhere to be seen. Odd.
Eric chewed the remainder of his sausage slowly as he tried to think back what had happened in his mind.
He’d been staring into the distance again as he mulled over Lydia’s words, and Ix must have left without a word in one of the moments when his mind scattered.
Had Ix said anything? Had Eric said anything?
He didn’t recall it. He shook his head. His mind wasn’t usually this hazy, he hadn’t realized that his father’s trial would impact him this much.
It didn’t take long for Eric to finish his plate, he had no real appetite anyway, so he went looking for Ix in his study after.
He knew better than to knock. If Ix was in the middle of some difficult magic working, the knocking would interrupt him more than merely easing the door open.
So he peered around the door and then slid in when he spotted Ixthan polishing a mirror.
Ixthan’s study was far more impressive than most noblemen’s writing rooms, this room being where he studied his magic.
And even knowing this put Eric in a position of privilege: very few people knew that the demon prince had to practice his magic.
Everyone assumed it came to him naturally, as with all demons.
They’d never discussed it at length but Eric knew, as did everyone at court, that the Princes Ixthan and Ceronzar had grown up here, in the human realm, confined by the restraints of their mostly-human bodies.
The only people who could teach them were human mages, who learned at the king’s Magisterium.
Ceron found it disdainful to be taught by people who were even less demon than he, and had shunned it.
Ix, on the other hand, knew everything the mages did and then some, but he preferred to conduct his own experiments in here instead of taking classes at the Magisterium.
Eric would find him in the study regularly, juggling fire, or turning wood into gold and other such arcane acts.
The habit of not disturbing Ix while magicking had arisen after he’d turned and nearly sprayed Eric with a thousand splinters of glass he was trying to turn into snow. Never mind that they’d been seven.
“Did you say something? I didn’t hear it,” said Eric sheepishly when Ix paused in his work.
“No, we were silent,” said Ixthan. And then let it fall uncomfortably quiet again.
“If you don’t want me here, I can leave.” The words had been on the tip of his tongue a while, waiting for the moment Ixthan got tired of sharing his rooms with Eric indefinitely.
Ixthan stopped what he was doing, the blackened, sharpened tips of his fingers still raised to the mirror. He turned around and looked at Eric properly. “I didn’t say that. If you don’t want me here, I can leave.”
“What?” Eric blinked in surprise. They were having two different conversations now. It used to happen a lot when they were children, when Eric was starting to learn the socially acceptable ways to phrase things and Ix found delight in being obscenely brusque.
“Usually when you’re like this, you prefer to be alone,” said Ixthan critically.
“I – oh. No.” Eric felt stupid now. He scrubbed at his face with his hands as he recalled, vividly, the day he’d found out about his father’s treason.
He’d been at his family house, and the hours after the news had felt endless, with the king’s guards and bailiff coming to seize the property, lawyers with questions he didn’t know the answer to, the neighbors peeking over with their questions, Petra crying silently on the stairs, all the servants hovering, waiting to be told what to do.
He’d eventually run out without even a coat on and arrived at the palace and begged Ix for an empty room where he didn’t have to deal with anyone at all, at least for a few hours. He wondered how Ix recalled that day.
“Thank you. Sorry. I mean – I don’t know. Let me start again. I don’t want to be alone, but I don’t make good company right now,” said Eric gratefully. “Do you mind if I just… sit here?”
“At least come out of the doorway,” said Ix, thankfully ignoring Eric’s incoherent word jumble and pointing at an armchair.
Eric lowered himself into the overstuffed velvet monstrosity and watched him practice his magic in companionable silence.
That was better. It surely eased something in Eric’s chest to know that Ix wasn’t annoyed at him, had never been, it had been a figment of his stressed mind.
A lot of watching Ix practice magic was just watching Ix standing with his arm out.
He wasn’t complaining. Ix always kept the fire ragingly hot and his shirtsleeves were rolled up to reveal toned forearms. Given Eric was his main partner for most sports and activities, it was distressingly unfair that Ix could pack muscles on top of his muscles while Eric always looked as though a stiff breeze might topple him.
Sometimes, Eric thought Ix didn’t notice his staring, too caught up in whatever magic was happening that he could see and Eric could not.
But there were other times where he’d catch Ix looking back at him, his eyes dragging up and down Eric’s form.
On those days, Eric liked to alternate between wondering whether Ix could feel the same about him as Eric did him or whether he was doing it to mock Eric.
“Did you win?” asked Eric as Ix relaxed and lowered his arms. A bit of a running joke between them, since Eric couldn’t sense or see magic at all and therefore couldn’t tell how well any given magic experiment was going.
“I always win,” said Ix, which he always said but there was a triumphant note in his voice today. “I just need to contain it now.”
Even though the magical terminology made no sense to Eric, he watched as Ix pick a stick of still-burning charcoal straight out of the fire with his bare hands and start inscribing symbols onto the mirror against the far wall.
Eric made a slightly wet choking noise because his blank face was nonexistent.
His reaction made Ix laugh softly at least. “Relax. It’ll wash off.”
“I’m sure it will,” said Eric faintly. That was a full body-length mirror imported across the sea from the Continent, a sheet of flawless glass and hammered silver with emeralds and peridots set into the frame that likely cost more than Eric’s entire family worth at the moment.
The surface of the mirror shimmered, and the reflection became distorted as if they were viewing the room underwater, undulating and dark.
It reminded Eric of those traveling fairs with their tents of tin mirrors that manipulated shape and size, except then he saw movement.
Something dashed across in front of the mirror, but only within the reflection.
He gasped, looking around the room, but the only two moving things in here were him and Ix.
“What was that?” Eric had shot to his feet.
“It can’t cross over,” said Ix, which was probably meant to be reassuring but since Eric hadn’t known there was anything there to cross over, it had the opposite effect.
“Cross over from where?” demanded Eric. “And what is ‘it’?”
“The demon,” said Ixthan, as if it was obvious. “From the demon realm.”
“Why are you summoning demons?” Eric lowered his voice even though there was no one around to hear him. Not only was unauthorized demonic summoning illegal, but that was the specific crime his father was being executed for. If Eric was discovered even near the vicinity of a summoning—
“I’m not,” Ix interrupted his thoughts before they could spiral. “I just said it can’t cross over, remember?”
Eric felt foolish again. He scowled. “What are you doing then?”
“Creating a stable doorway between the demonic realm and ours. It’s not there yet. This is more a window than a door for now,” Ix looked at his work critically, added another symbol in charcoal, and went back to standing with his arm outstretched in silence.
“Why would you want a doorway if you’re not planning on – oh. For you?” Eric asked, his thoughts moving faster than his mouth. He sat back down slowly.
Ever since they’d hit manhood, Ix had spoken about visiting the demon realms. He talked with his mother, a Demon Queen, two or three times a year through a crystal.
Eric had never been witness to one of those private conversations but Ix was always moodier afterwards, throwing himself into his magic and building complex spells that the mages would then spend the next three months trying to copy from afar without asking for his notes.
Ix had plenty of demonic influences in his life, had never shied away from it or pretended to be human.
His rooms were decorated in the style of the demon halls with the geometric lines and strong colors, as well as paintings of strange landscapes, stark black cliffs that stretched upwards with buildings in every direction since demons were not bound to walk on the ground.
Some years back, he and Ix had absconded from court to the southern archipelagos in the Mare Nostrum for the summer; Eric had thought it was just some spur-of-the-moment travel to enjoy a warmer climate, until Ix took him to a specific vineyard he’d discovered could reproduce certain demonic wines.
Likely a dozen times a week, Ix was reminded all the ways he wasn’t fully human or how he would never fully belong in high society here.
Even though he was as much the king’s son as Prince Jasper, he was barred from the line of succession.
At least if he were in the demon realms, he would be among other demons.
And yet, Eric hadn’t genuinely thought that Ix wanted to go.
He’d had never done anything more than mention it occasionally, so Eric had possibly underestimated how strong this desire was.
All his descriptions of the demon realms sounded dreadful.
Cold, violent, a truly unstable place where demons were constantly grappling for power and the right to exist. There was a reason that demons wanted to be here, in the human realm, instead.
Eric watched the mirror more intently, looking for more movement as Ix scowled in concentration and adjusted his spell. When there was a rap on the door, both of them started. “Watch out!”
Ix shot him a scowl, lowering his hands. “I haven’t nearly killed someone for knocking in years.”
A page boy opened the door, nervous and wide-eyed. The servants didn’t often get the chance to see inside the prince’s magic study. And, in hindsight, probably because comments from the demon prince about killing people usually made people nervous.
The usual servants weren’t needed in here, something about the amount of magic in the air meant that dust didn’t dare settle in Ix’s rooms, but it gave the study an air of unnecessary mystique among the rest of the palace populace.
The message was for Eric, which meant it was probably about his father.
He reached out for it but Ix plucked the letter away before he could get at it.
Slitting it open with one too-sharp fingernail, Ix read it swiftly, and made a face.
“Details of the execution. It’ll be in the town square, at sundown. ”
“At least it’ll be quick,” murmured Eric.