Chapter Three
THE EXECUTION WAS not, in fact, quick. Eric should have read the damnable message himself. Even the crowd that had assembled to watch in the city square with boisterous anticipation seemed nauseated by the end.
He’d witnessed hangings before, just a couple, from a safe distance.
They’d been swift, the trapdoor opening and the bodies dropping, and he’d been barely able to tell if the bodies died immediately as they swayed in the aftermath.
But the sentence for a traitor was being flayed, drawn and hanged.
It had just taken so long. He hadn’t known one person could hold so much blood. And the sounds. Everything squished.
If it had been anyone else at all, Eric wouldn’t have watched.
He would not have even attended. But he had needed to be there, to show that he wasn’t considering treason, to show his loyalty to the crown.
If he even let his eyes stray or his face slip out of his carefully constructed mask, someone out there watching would accuse him of sympathizing with the traitor and he would immediately be under suspicion himself.
He’d swallowed down more than one mouthful of bile.
At least Petra hadn’t been here to see it all.
No one suspected her of high treason, and even if they had she was an unmarried, newly poor gentlewoman, hardly a threat.
A few of their friends were here, somewhere.
Marty had sent him a note, letting him know they’d come to support him but he’d never made it to meet up them before he’d been intercepted by a young servant in the king’s colors, politely inviting him to stand up on the king’s platform. The best view in the square.
Ixthan resembled his father in stature. They were both tall and broad at the shoulder, and King Ruben had a thick beard and mustache, neatly trimmed, and equally bushy eyebrows. His resting expression had always struck Eric as intimidating, and he suspected the king encouraged that view of him.
Now though, Eric appreciated the king’s impassive demeanor.
He didn’t look happy, or angry, or triumphant, or much of anything as the fleshy parts of Eric’s father made wet, flapping noises in the wind.
He reached out, ignoring Eric’s flinch, and squeezed him on the shoulder. “Are you headed back to the palace?”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
“Then ride with me.” It was a summons, not an invitation.
Eric inclined his head. He cast one last look out through the crowd, his eyes averting the wooden platform where the whole procedure had happened, and managed to catch Marty’s eyes in the crowd as he gestured to the others, a group of four.
They were too far away for Eric to see their expressions clearly but he made the slightest tilt of his head towards the king and they waved him off, understanding.
He’d rather have gone to a tavern with them and drowned his feelings.
Eric was not strangers with the king, not after having grown up with Ix.
This man had witnessed Eric falling off his horse as a child; he’d seen Eric fumble his first court appearance; he’d wished Eric a happy birthday when he reached manhood and gifted him a fine rapier, one he still used.
And yet, he was still the king. The carriage rattled through the streets, the wheels unnaturally loud against their overt silence.
“So, you are Earl now,” said the king eventually, his eyes boring into Eric.
“Am I, Your Majesty?” said Eric with real surprise. He’d honestly expected the title to be stripped from their family too. “That is, I’m — truly, deeply thankful.”
“There will be sanctions, of course.”
“Yes, of course, Sire.” That was to be expected.
He understood immediately. It was presented as an act of grace, for Eric to be able to keep the family land, but then he could be taxed through the nose so that all gains made from the land went to the king, partly as punishment and partly to make sure that no wayward noble thinking of rebelling had any means of raising the funds. Still, it was better than he’d hoped.
“Father and I hadn’t spoken for years,” said Eric, surprising himself.
He hadn’t meant to say that, didn’t know why he did when the king’s demeanor hardly invited conversation.
Maybe he just wanted to be clear he hadn’t known anything about his father’s sedition, wanted it known he hadn’t even approved of the man before he turned traitor. “If we had, perhaps I would have—”
He faltered.
The king watched him for a moment. “Eric. I spoke with your father many times in the last few years. Perhaps you think I should have suspected something earlier, too.”
“Oh! No, Your Majesty,” said Eric, startled.
“Then blame not yourself.”
Gratitude or relief or something of the sort stuck in his throat. Eric blinked away the sudden wetness in his eyes.
“Ixthan didn’t come,” observed King Ruben, after a moment.
“I – no.” Eric hadn’t asked him to. He’d hoped that Ix would offer to accompany him, but if Eric were being truthful to himself, he’d already known that Ix wasn’t the type to offer.
Usually it was this defiance of human social norms that Eric liked about him, that thrill of when Ixthan knew his behavior wasn’t the done thing and yet went ahead and did it anyway.
The look in other people’s eyes when he made them uncomfortable or said the unspoken out loud.
It was just that today, of all days, he could have done with some quiet murmured I’m sorry for your loss and He was a good man and other comforting, meaningless human platitudes that weren’t even true.
At least Marty, Gareth and the others had been there.
“Hm,” said the king, entirely inscrutable, and fell silent again for the rest of the ride.
The king, of course, could also do whatever he wanted, social cues be damned.
He likely knew how meaningless it was to offer his condolences to Eric when he was the one who signed the death warrant in the first place.
By the time Eric got back to the New Palace, a blanket of exhaustion had settled over him.
When he lay down on the bed though, his mind wouldn’t let him sleep, reliving his father’s final moments over and over.
He sat up eventually, startled to find himself having sweated through his shirt, and dragged himself into a hot spring bath instead.
This was one of the extravagant benefits of living in Ix’s rooms in the palace, the water magically kept any temperature he so wished.
He went for just shy of scalding. It was enough to get his blood pumping again so he didn’t look like a corpse, and then he hauled himself to Ix’s study for a distraction.
Ix was still at the mirror, tracing more unknown symbols around the edge of it. They looked different to the ones from yesterday, although Eric couldn’t be certain. Though the mirror glowed, there was no sign of wispy presences only visible on the other side which was a small mercy.
“Did you win yet?” said Eric, more out of habit than any real enthusiasm.
“I’m close,” said Ix, narrowing his eyes critically. “Damian said he first saw the human world through a mirror.”
All of those were words Eric understood separately, and yet he hadn’t the faintest what Ix was going on about. “Who saw a what?”
“Damian. Earl Lymond.” Ix’s words sounded hazy and unintelligible by the time they reached him, as if his head was bound in cheesecloth. Strange. Eric shook his head to clear his ears.
“Oh, yes. Lymond, wonderful man. Can’t believe he’s still not engaged after three years,” he said.
Well, Eric had no room to throw stones in that department.
He’d had a wife lined up for him for over a decade and yet he was completely inexperienced in courtship, so Lymond wasn’t the only one of their group who was still an eligible bachelor.
“Three years?” said Ixthan, halting with his hand still raised against the mirror. “Oh, he got you too.”
Ixthan put down his stick of charcoal, the powdered black dust puffing cleanly itself off his fingertips when he clicked his fingers as if they dared not sully his hands.
As he walked towards Eric, he pulled his brows together and bared the slightly too-sharp tips of his teeth.
His mage-face, Eric called it in the privacy of his own mind.
That moment of distilled concentration hung in the air, right before he released his magic, suddenly focused on Eric. He shivered involuntarily.
The distance between them vanished, Ixthan leaning in so close that Eric could feel his breath, always cold no matter the season, graze along his cheekbone.
He didn’t dare move. From this close, he could see each individual eyelash, impossibly dark, the gold ring around the outside of Ix’s amber irises.
Ix made a twisting motion with his fist, as if tugging something out of Eric’s chest. Eric gasped; a knot he didn’t even know was there unfurled.
“How long have you known Lymond?” asked Ix softly.
“I –” Eric knew the answer was three years, and yet now it didn’t feel true.
He had impressions of Damian, the Earl of Lymond at all of Ix’s parties, could recall conversations with him and details about him, and yet these impressions were vague and didn’t superimpose on his memory in the same way.
He found with some surprise that he couldn’t recall Lymond at all aside from a couple of times this winter. “What happened?”
“Come here,” said Ix, holding out a necklace.
As he reached out to put it on for Eric, Ix’s fingers grazed the skin of Eric’s neck and Eric’s mind went blank.
It wasn’t until the necklace was fastened and Ix stepped back that Eric could breathe again.
He’d bitten his lip, so as to not say anything horrendously stupid, but Ix could no doubt see the way his body reacted.
“The stone is infused with my magic, it’ll stop you from being affected by him. Or any other magic.”