Chapter Two
The castle guards did their best to be inconspicuous. They stood in the shadows, patrolled quietly, and kept a low profile. Everyone else ignored them or genuinely forgot about their existence.
But I never did.
I counted six guards between my father’s office and my bedroom, the usual amount. Less would indicate something happening in another part of the castle. More would mean they were keeping an eye on me.
“Keep up the good work, Gerald,” I said to the guard stationed near my door.
His face remained blank as he said, “Yes, Your Highness.”
I suppressed a flinch and closed the door behind me.
Then I began the complicated process of locking my family and the guards out.
Although my fathers respected my privacy, my family and the guards had a key to my room in case of emergencies.
Dad had advocated to give me my own residence when I turned eighteen, like the tower he disappeared to every few days, but Father rejected that idea immediately.
Something about ‘we don’t want him developing your bad habits.
’ Since he spent almost as many nights in that tower as Dad did, I didn’t think he had much room to talk.
I had to find my own way to ensure privacy.
Under my bed, in a locked trunk, there were two black sheets that weighed more than a foal.
I dragged the first one out and over to the door.
A series of metal hooks framed the top. Lifting the curtain above my head took some effort, but once it was balanced on the hooks, it settled over the door in a veil of darkness and silence.
The ambient noise in the room cut in half.
Even if someone pressed their ear to the door, they wouldn’t hear me.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t hear them approaching either. One time, Dad had come to find me and apparently spent two full minutes knocking. Anyone else would have called the guards and busted my door down. Instead, he winked at me at dinner like we shared a secret.
I dragged the second curtain over to the window and arranged it to block out the natural light and remaining ambient noise. The silence was palpable, pressing in on me, until I moved, and the slight scrape of my feet rang in my ears.
At the bottom of the trunk was a mirror. I pulled it out and set it up against the wall.
The second I let go, it tilted ominously forward.
Shit, shit, shit. I scrambled to catch it, grunting when the obnoxious gilded frame thumped against my shoulder. I shifted it back into place, then to the side, trying to lean it against the wall. The stupid fucking thing wouldn’t stay put, and I did not want to replace it.
Again.
Sweat beading my brow, I finally just held the damn mirror against the wall with one hand.
I took a deep breath and let the air settle in my lungs before speaking.
“I call on the Lord of Grimnight as your—” the next part stuck in my throat, but I pushed past the discomfort to complete the summons “—as your loyal son.”
I waited.
And waited.
Annnnd waited.
Five minutes later, my own freckled face continued staring back at me. “Dammit, Old Man, answer your mirror!”
My reflection rippled like a stone tossed in a lake, and the image changed.
The background shifted from my darkened bedroom, lit only with a few dim candles, to a mage’s study.
Books and half-finished projects crowded every surface.
Something bubbled ominously in the background, either a magic potion or burnt coffee.
The figure standing before me wore a black cloak with a hood obscuring their face. The cloak sat askew on their shoulders, clearly thrown on in a hurry. A hint of striped pajamas peeked out from underneath the cloak until they fixed it.
A stranger meeting them on the street would have turned in the other direction, eager to avoid whatever disaster they brought.
But it was hard to be intimidated by someone who you knew had just rolled out of bed.
“Ahh, my treasure,” they hissed.
I pursed my lips, unhappy with the possessive. Like I was an object rather than a person. “Can you take off the cloak, Old Man? I feel like I’m talking to a bedsheet.”
“I will not,” he replied, straightening to his full height—which was less impressive when the reflection started at his knees and was only three feet tall.
The mirror was supposed to be hung on the wall, so that we could look each other in the eye, but I stopped doing that after the last time it fell and shattered on the ground. I’d found broken glass for weeks afterwards, usually in my feet.
“And will you stop calling me Old Man?” he grumbled. “I’m barely fifty.”
I arched an eyebrow at him.
After a moment, he said, “Fine, I’m almost sixty, but I’m not old. Sixty is the new thirty. Besides, you should address me respectfully.”
“I’m not calling you ‘my lord’ or ‘my liege’ like one of your minions.”
“Then call me ‘Father.’”
The gilded frame dug into my clenched hand. “I can’t call you Father because that’s what I call Brendon, and I don’t want to confuse you two in my head.”
“What about ‘Dad?’”
“That’s what I call Rick.”
“I am your real father! I deserve the first choice of names! Not these scraps you offer me.”
Here we go again. For someone who gave up his only child as part of a long-con, he sure liked reminding me of our blood relationship every chance we spoke. When he’d sent me out the door with that fake letter from my ‘mother’, he’d reminded me, “No matter what, I will always be your real father.”
The problem was: this scheme had taken longer than he’d expected. After twelve years, I’d spent more time with Brendon and Rick as my fathers than I’d ever spent with him.
“Names aside, I have something to report.”
He stopped whining and leaned closer to the mirror. Then backed up because leaning closer only gave him a better view of the embroidery on my waistcoat rather than my face. “What news have you brought me?”
“I know how they keep the Kingdom Defense Spell active.”
Before the morning meeting with my fathers, I’d known two things about the spell. What it did—keep the evil mages out. And how it did it—by creating an illusory pocket dimension superimposed over the primary dimension, where everyone appeared miserable, and the Desolated Lands matched their names.
My old man had learned the happy, prosperous truth of the five kingdoms when he’d met my mother, who had been exiled for studying the ‘wrong’ kind of magic.
Unfortunately, knowing the truth didn’t get him any closer to the real kingdoms. No matter how many years he spent traveling through them, he saw only what their names promised: desolation.
Then another nanny suddenly quit, and he had to bring me along on his next attempt.
While I was with him, he realized we were experiencing two different places.
Where he saw ruins, I saw happy homes. When he smelled the putrid rot of garbage in the streets, I smelled fresh baked bread.
The baker even gave me a little hand pie and, with a pitying look, told me to let her know if I needed any help.
I still wasn’t sure if she could see my father, confused and frustrated, or if she thought I’d been narrating my surroundings to myself.
The old man realized that the magic keeping him out didn’t work on me, and from there he started scheming.
A few spells and a carefully crafted backstory later, I infiltrated the Desolated Lands as Brendon Banes’ long-lost son. My mission was to learn everything I could about the defense spell so that the old man could tear it down.
After twelve years, I finally had the information the old man wanted.
“Tell me,” he demanded, his hands curling in front of him as if he could grasp the future and strangle it into submission.
“Tell me how I can destroy the defense spell and conquer the Desolated Lands!” His voice echoed through the room.
If it weren’t for the enchanted curtains, the entire castle would have heard him.
I hesitated. What I really wanted to tell him was: “Go fuck yourself.” But I needed his plot to work as much as he did. “The spell is held together by the five kingdoms uniting, either in marriage or by bonding over a quest.”
“Yesss. I see it now. So simple, yet so powerful.” He steepled his fingers and tapped them together in anticipation. “How do I break it?”
“The royals of every generation have to renew it.” The next words clogged in my throat, but I forced them out in a nonchalant tone. “Since I’m not actually a royal of Bane, it’s done. There’s nothing else you need to do; the spell will eventually fall apart.”
“Eventually?” he sneered. “I will not wait for eventually. I have waited long enough! I want to see it fall now!”
“So I can come home or so you can get to conquering?” I muttered.
“What did you say?” His voice changed, the evil replaced with genuine confusion.
“Nothing.”
“No, tell me, it might be important.”
“It wasn’t.”
He mulled over that for a moment before saying, “If you’re sure.
Where was I?” He tossed his head back and cackled maniacally.
Then the sound cut off abruptly. “Wait, no. I wasn’t there yet.
Let’s see … waited long enough … fall now.
Oh, right!” He cleared his throat and said, “You are the key player in this performance. You will sabotage the spell from the inside, and then! I will take over the Desolated Lands!”
I wish I’d never agreed to help him. Children did stupid things for their parent’s approval. “I could convince everyone to go for the marriage idea? Then never show up to the altar? That would probably break the spell.”
“That’s not good enough! They might have time to figure out a replacement.”
Which is why I suggested it. If my fathers could find a workaround once, they could do it again. “What do you suggest?”
“The quest! You must guide these royal champions on a quest to their doom.”
Acid stung my throat, and I forcefully swallowed it down. “You want me to kill them?”
He paused, sensing my dread and reluctance, then rushed to say, “No, no, you don’t have to do anything that makes you uncomfortable, son. I will lay the traps, and you will guide the royal champions into them. They don’t have to die. They just have to abandon all hope.”
“So, you’re not going to kill them?”
“No! Not intentionally. Well, maybe a few of them.”
I glared at him, refusing to budge on this point.
Finally, he sighed in exasperation. “I promise not to kill any of them. Just guarantee that they set out on a quest and fail it. How you accomplish your mission is up to you.”
If I did as he asked, I could finally go home.
If I refused, I could stay in Bane … until the spell failed anyway, and Father realized I wasn’t his son.
I’d lose this home, and the old man might be so furious at my initial refusal that he wouldn’t take me back.
Either way, evil would pour back into the Desolated Lands.
At least this way, the villain conquering them would be one I already knew.
“What quest should I suggest to them?” I asked, my own voice seeming miles away.
The Lord of Grimnight chuckled darkly. “You will tell them to defeat me. Bring these royal champions straight to my lair, so I may seal their fates myself!”