Chapter Three- The utioner Prince
When I return from taking Briar home, I go in search of the Prince while pondering how I can get her and her family back to Incendria to keep them safe.
I find Thorne in his bed chambers burning the parchment from Dreven.
The parchment containing the name of whoever he is to kill tonight, falling away as if the poor soul has a chance.
Thorne stretches across his bed, pushing his fingers through his hair.
He doesn’t know I watch from the rafters, thinking about
everything I know about the Shadowfalls.
The legend of ‘The Executioner Prince’ arose as most legends do—a mixture of truth and hysteria.
Thorne Shadowfall is one of five Shadowfall children. The third, to be exact. The oldest Shadowfall is Aleksander, who leads armies in the wastelands between Kingdoms, fighting a war that has raged for hundreds of years.
Princess Asterin, the only girl born to the King and Queen, is the second child.
She’s viciously stubborn and has no qualms with making a scene to argue with her father, nobility, or her siblings.
Mostly she refuses to marry, stating that tying her life to one person forever is utterly boring.
I agree with her; in fact, I quite like the Princess.
Although, she unfortunately turns her nose up at the knights who would try to woo her.
Any effort for the dark-haired beauty would be for not. Besides, she’s still one of them.
Thorne is two years younger than Asterin’s twenty-eight but he has a good many years on the youngest Shadowfalls.
Julien and Julius, sixteen-year-old trouble-making twins with everything handed to them on a silver platter.
Watching the family perform as a unified front could give the court jesters a run for their money.
Watching them parade as a united family could give the court jesters a run for their money.
Beneath it, they’re no better than the most fractured households rotting in the slums. But they perform, and they do it well.
But Thorne Shadowfall is different. His court speaks of him in hushed tones, passing countless names for him between themselves like currency.
The list is ever-growing for the silver-haired prince who stands proud amongst his onyx-haired siblings.
Bastard Prince, Executioner Prince, Blightborn, Imposter…
I’ve heard them all while scouting for information on him.
It is true that his appearance stands out from the rest. His black haired family couldn’t be more different than him.
Where he’s pale, they’re tan. Where he’s lean, they’re stocky.
He appears to have been crafted from marble while they look like every other resident of Netherhelm—just with crowns instead of burdens and blight on their heads.
King Dreven Shadowfall and his oldest son are the worst of them.
Money and power can give the most mediocre of man the illusion of fame and adoration from those weeping at his feet. I simply wish to vanquish them all.
There are whispers throughout the kingdom, claims of a pale specter glimpsed before a merchant’s untimely death, of fleeting conversations recalled in villages where traitors soon hang. It is an open secret among the people: when King Dreven denies a trial, death himself arrives instead.
No one really knows the truth of Prince Thorne Shadowfall, though many claim to.
I am the outlier, the one outside the royal family who knows him.
I carry the intricacies of his identity within the folds of my soul like a thief would trinkets in a trench coat.
I’d wager that I know him better than the King knows how to draw breath.
How he performs in bed, notwithstanding.
The sad truth is that I slept with him within my first week of being here. It’s the weakest and most reckless thing I’ve ever done.
Of course Prince Thorne knew me. He knew I had just entered the knighthood, he knew I took it very seriously.
He had no qualms with sleeping with a member of his court.
He still doesn’t. His bed is regularly warmed by courtesans, noble ladies, and noblemen alike.
His siblings are the same way, the way they choose to pass their time has no bearing on me.
It wouldn’t have mattered if I was just a knight, perhaps it could have called my nobility into question if someone found out but…
Sleeping with someone I’m meant to kill has proven the greatest method of my own self destruction to date.
Which is saying a lot because self destruction is kind of my whole thing.
I turn my attention to the task at hand. Thinking about what we discovered about each other that fateful night will only serve to distract me. He could have, should have, had me executed. But he didn’t. He will come to find that if only he had, it very well might have saved his life.
My attention returns to Thorne when he stands and pulls on his black cloak. He’s doing this now then. I sigh.
Mastering umbraveil would be ideal but right now, Shadow Walking is all I have.
Not invisible, but silent and one with the shadows if I’m careful.
I sigh slowly, my eyes scanning my surroundings—his surroundings.
Shadow Walking isn’t as easy as it sounds, a rare ability taught by only one mage in the Ruinspire Peaks.
It was there, during such tumultuous training, that I finally befriended my familiar.
I was fourteen and in desperate need of a method to control my ever-increasing well of power.
So came Crowley, the raven with a crow’s name—an ongoing joke with myself.
He is currently soaring far above Prince Thorne, the King’s blood still on his talons.
Crowley allows me to see more of Thorne’s surroundings than I typically would by just following him.
The large onyx bird swings low, quickly glancing back so that I can see the concentration in Thorne’s eyes as he walks.
He briefly blinks up at the bird, perhaps wondering if it’s the one who attacked his father.
We move along the cobblestone streets in silence. A couple of ladies on the porch of a brothel holler for Thorne’s attention but he only pulls his hood further down and stalks on. Crowley flaps his wings and checks behind me for any sign that I’m being followed. That would be wholly inconvenient.
The Market District lies at the foot of the palace in the village of Whitmire, the heart of commerce for the Kingdom of Netherhelm.
The Market is accessible to all of the other villages—Eldershade, Dawnfalcon, and Groveridge—and is massive in its construction.
Buildings lean into one another for support, tattered tents cover stalls that have stood with rotating merchants since I was a child.
The Market District is crawling with equal parts merchants making an honest living and thieves making a dishonest one. Mostly though, common folk mill about as they carry on their daily affairs. Late at night, you'll find people shopping for their next fix or looking to pick pockets.
A wave of frigid air from the east skitters across my skin.
We pass one of the cathedrals, the low hum of the Masked Templars invoking Xeusis striking a chord of familiarity within me.
My chest tightens at the thought of the Templars, spelled never to stop humming the melody that keeps Xeusis’s energy alive.
Thorne kneels on one knee and places a hand over his heart to honor the Xeusis statue.
He drops two copper coins in the lazy river and watches as they swirl around the statue before moving through a massive garden between us and the cathedral proper.
I call forth a pair of small green garden snakes who coil down my arms and onto the statue.
Xeusis’s love for his serpents, those creatures that have protected his resting place for hundreds of years, must always be honored, even if most people fail to do so.
The serpents greet him, crawling up gauntlets on his hands, over his arms, then up and around the stone tendrils of long inky hair.
The Titans once stood at about fourteen feet tall, so this statue, being life-sized, towers above my six foot two stature.
I glance backward to ensure Thorne is still within view.
Surely enough, he’s taken up conversation with a merchant who seems enamored with him.
Upon the statue’s breast plate is the crest of Netherhelm, Xeusis's beloved Kingdom he built before his fall. Just as the other Titans did, it was his last gift to his people before the inevitable end. I swallow against the emotion it drags out of me and turn from him.
“May the shadows herald your return,” I murmur the usual praise and move in the direction of my target through the Market District.
Suddenly, I feel like I’m eight again, my small hand in my mother’s as she shows me all of the merchant’s stands and store fronts. I always thought I’d end up as some kind of merchant in the biggest market in the kingdom.
I wanted to have my own herb stand, my own gardens, because my mother loved to garden.
It’s crazy how much possibility I thought I had when I was a child.
The world seemed so big, right until it wasn't. Right until King Dreven executed my mother. Now, I don’t grow anything, I don’t produce.
I kill, I consume, I cleanse. Killing, purging, taking…
that’s it. I’m never going to be a damned merchant.
The Market District isn’t busy now; sleep has claimed most people.
I continue after Thorne, his innate grace and smooth stride making self-doubt seem foreign.
Everything about him, from his ivory locks to his controlled breathing, are as familiar to me now as my own reflection.
Perhaps from watching him too closely, perhaps because of the way I realize I enjoy studying him.