Chapter Eleven #2
Pel didn’t think it was odd at all, but he’d never felt the urge to drink to excess.
Thankfully, his father had mostly given Pel up for a lost cause and didn’t push him too much.
Bavil got a lot more of it—but he’d perfected the manner of looking as though he was drinking more than he actually was.
Pel might disapprove of his brother’s behavior in a lot of ways, but he was always willing to distract their father for a moment so that Bav could either add water or pour out some of the alcohol.
One day, Bavil was going to inherit the throne, and while Pel had serious concerns, the drinking, at least, wasn’t one of them. So even if Bavil thought the way Forex did on too many matters of policy, just that was an improvement.
And King Forex could rule for decades more. The Fealty of the people tended to confer a longer life span on the ruler—though not indefinite and not entirely predictably.
“You stopped drinking,” Pel pointed out.
Pel saw it every time they went out. Torex almost always had fella-root with the villagers—and a few days after his confession, he even had milk with some children.
When one of them had told him that milk was still warm if you drank it as soon as it came out from the cow, Torex had affected a look of complete shock and surprise. “No. Really?”
The children had assured him yes.
“I don’t believe it!”
A chorus of little voices told him, “We’ll prove it!”
And together, they’d pulled the High Prince of the United Realms out to the barn. Pel had been hard pressed not to laugh, and the grin that Torex had shot him when he returned—conceding defeat gracefully—had been impossible to resist.
Torex was very good with children, even when they were young and awkward and sometimes asked rude or impertinent questions.
This tended to embarrass the parents in question, but Torex always waved this aside with a smile.
“I remember being their age. I wanted to know everything, and it never occurred to me that there was perhaps a reason why no one else was asking.”
As when they wanted to know if he had children of his own, and when he confessed that he didn’t, they wanted to know what was wrong with him.
Royals tended to bond later in their lives than common folk did, but no adult would have dreamed of pointing that out to the Prince.
“I’m very slow,” Torex had told them with perfect gravity. “I haven’t found the right person yet.”
This had, predictably, devolved into a discussion of all the ways the children thought that he could find people faster.
They’d ranged from farm animals being used to sniff out the best options to wandering through the woods—because that was always how you found people in adventure stories—and a giant contest where people came to compete.
This then caused a lot of argument amongst the children because some thought it should be a whole bunch of people coming to compete for Prince Torex but others thought that Torex should be competing to show off for the others, but it wasn’t clear who he should be competing with.
Torex assured them he appreciated their suggestion and would consider it carefully.
“Don’t wait too long!” a little girl with a gap-toothed smile told him cheerfully. “If you get too old, no one will want you!”
She was shushed, but Torex just laughed.
“Is that true?” Pel asked as they left. “You’re looking for the right person?”
“I’m determined not to wind up with the wrong person!” he snapped.
Pel flinched, taken aback by the unexpected flair of anger. Torex sucked in a breath, blew it out, and then muttered, “Sorry. For some reason, I believe that I should be able to choose my own future.”
Pel had watched Bavil ruin the carefully orchestrated bond his father had wanted for him, and he wondered for the first time if his brother had done it deliberately.
Pel had never thought of it like that before.
But if that were the case, why hadn't Bavil just told Pel that, rather than acting as though he didn’t care about any of it, as though Marwila’s feelings didn’t matter, and Bavil’s behavior was blameless and acceptable?
“That’s not always how life works,” Pel pointed out.
Torex’s lips tipped up, though the smile didn’t reach his eyes. “Tell me about it.”
There was pressure even being the least-wanted of King Forex’s children. Pel imagined it got a whole lot worse when you were the brother of the High King.
“May I ask you a question?” Pel said.
Torex looked at him sideways. “When do you not ask me questions?”
Pel hesitated for a moment, recognizing that he wasn’t a child and that he might not have the same leeway as they did. But nothing ventured, nothing gained. He wasn’t compelling the man to answer.
“Does anyone else know that you’re here?” he asked finally.
Torex regarded him for a long moment, and then one corner of his lips tipped up in a crooked grin. “Or have I run away?”
“I didn’t say that,” Pel said carefully.
The other man didn’t seem angry, though, just… a little contemplative. He was far more thoughtful than Pel had expected. He wondered who the wrong person was for Torex. Or did he simply not want to bond with anyone? And maybe the High King wouldn’t allow that?
Even Pel had been sent out on that useless mission to try to attract Princess Terila’s interest, yet another way that he’d failed his father.
Pel wasn’t convinced that even Bavil would have been enough for her, but it had been made abundantly plain to him that being Unremarkable made his attentions an insult.
Torex sighed. “Let’s just say that the King issued an order that was more open to interpretation than he realized.”
Pel suppressed a laugh with an effort, but Torex raised an eyebrow.
“I’ve done that before. I mean ‘drink more’ doesn’t actually specify what liquid you’re supposed to drink, right?”
And Torex’s face suddenly relaxed, and he grinned wide. “Exactly.”
Pel felt his stomach flip, and he chided himself. That was just how Torex smiled. It absolutely was not personal.
Torex was spending a lot of time with him, probably because Pel was the safest of the royal siblings. He was hiding out here, getting away from his brother and his orders, and no one would bat an eye at him spending time with Pel. They probably wouldn’t even notice.
“I needed to get away for a while,” Torex admitted.
Pel nodded. He’d certainly felt the urge to flee from the castle, but he didn’t have anywhere else to go, not since Bavil had enraged Sovereign Gornexi so thoroughly. Pel didn’t want to test if that ire extended to him.
It didn’t help that King Forex was as heavy-handed as ever, sending Bavil off to “fix it” and then being enraged when Bavil had come back and confessed that Gornexi hadn’t softened towards them. Pel thought they were lucky that Gornexi hadn’t run Bavil through with their sword.
The rants about Bessar being to blame for everything and the realm owing Tond had gone on for weeks after that.
“I hope that someone else knows that you’re here,” Pel pursued after a moment. “I mean, what if something were to happen?”
“Planning to bump me off?” Torex asked.
Pel rolled his eyes. “You know that’s not what I meant.”
Torex just grinned at him, unrepentant. “I trust that you would send news if anything happened to me.”
“What if something happened to your family?”
Torex scoffed. “What could happen to the High King and his family? They’re the best-guarded people in the entirety of the United Realms.”
“Just in case,” Pel pursued doggedly.
He liked to plan for the worst.
Sighing, Torex admitted, “There are two people who know where I am.”
“But not your brother.” It wasn’t really a question.
Torex said mildly, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m obeying the High King’s orders.”
And then he winked, so unsubtly that Pel had to suppress another laugh.
“Your secret’s safe with me.”
It felt like a weird thing to say as soon as the words left his mouth, but it was… true. Not that he was a correspondent of the High King’s.
But Torex flashed him that obnoxiously bright grin. “Thanks. It’s been… nice to be here.”
Pel eyed him.
Torex laughed. “No, really. Especially after you stopped hitting me.”
“That was one time!” Pel flared up, drawn despite himself, subsiding once Torex laughed merrily.
He was pretty sure that Torex wasn’t ever going to let him forget it, and yet… it felt like friendly teasing, inviting Pel to share in the joke rather than reminding him of his shortcomings, as his father was so fond of doing.
No, this made him feel as though… they were friends?
Pel was arrested by the thought. Pelun of Tond friends with the High Prince of the United Realms?
Surely that was wrong, and yet… they’d been spending weeks visiting the people of Tond, and they’d been doing so with increasing camaraderie.
They didn’t always agree, but they seemed able to have actual conversations now, and Pel had been thoroughly enjoying himself without quite acknowledging that’s what was happening.
They had dinner together every night—though that was probably the least interesting time they spent together, since King Forex was so unpredictable, and Bavil and Larexa seemed often to be trying to impress him.
They spent three or four mornings a week going to see the people.
Pel saw Torex when he trained with the guards, though Bavil was sometimes there as well.
Pel still didn’t love the casual use of so much magic, but he could acknowledge now that Torex was using it to help the others train.
There were too many things that were very attractive about the man, and Pel didn’t want to acknowledge any of them, because he knew he was setting himself up for disillusionment. Torex could have anyone he wanted, and Terila—who was only Illustrious—had rejected Pel out of hand.
Larexa, who’d once claimed that she’d love Pel no matter what, had declared that only someone Extraordinary like herself would do for a bond.
And Bavil, who had once stood up for Pel against their father, had courted Marwila, cheated on her, and dismissed her and her concerns as though she were nothing.
They hadn’t tried to explain anything to Pel when he’d come back from Vayrin licking his wounds from his own rude dismissal.
Pel had been left with a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach and the certainty that he’d grown up, all of a sudden, and seen the world for what it really was. Pel was Unremarkable, which might as well have stood for Unimportant or Uninteresting or Undesirable. He knew it. Everyone knew it.
Except… maybe not Torex? Or maybe he just didn’t know Pel well enough yet. But he seemed truly determined to spend time with him. Even if it was because Pel was safe and wouldn’t lead to a bond or a diplomatic issue, it was… nicer than he expected.
Was it possible that the High Prince was lonely? It seemed ludicrous on the one hand, but the High King had his wife and his new baby. Maybe Torex couldn’t quite figure out where to fit in.
Pel certainly knew that feeling, though comparing them felt dangerous.
Torex might have chosen to run away, but he wasn’t going to stay.
Pel had the terrible feeling that he was going to be even lonelier once the man left…
but he wasn’t willing to give up what they were doing now.
The connection would no doubt fade away once Torex went back home, but Pel was sure that Torex would at least remember what he looked like now.
As they spent more time together and their discussions became more open, Pel ceased to fear that Torex would punish him—or Tond—for any of his opinions. Heading between farms or back to the castle, horses ambling along, had become one of Pel’s favorite times.
Like he was thinking out loud, Torex said, “So are the exiles having trouble growing their own food and sustaining their lifestyle, or have they decided that it’s simply easier to raid Tond?”
Pel considered this. “I would think that the risk outweighs the benefits, but I’ve not seen the conditions in which they’re living. They made it twenty-odd years without more than the occasional raid, and now they’re nearly constant.”
“Did it increase suddenly?” Torex asked.
Pel shook his head. “No, not really. At first, it was a little more frequent in winter, then at the harvest, as if they were preparing for winter. A little more taken, a little more frequently… And now it’s simply all the time.
Not predictably, but scattered across the towns and villages.
The ones near the mountain have been hardest hit, of course. ”
Torex’s eyes strayed to the mountain range, and it looked for a moment as though he shivered.
“Wouldn’t it make sense to try to see what the living conditions are?” Torex asked.
Pelun shook his head, surprised. “That’s against the accords, as I’m sure you know.”
“Very true,” Torex ground out.
Defensively, Pel said, “We would be risking the lives of—”
“I said true!” Torex snapped.
Pel recoiled at the vehement anger, making him rock a little in Extraordinary’s saddle. She snorted at him, and he shifted his weight back to center.
They continued on in silence, and it stretched taut and uncomfortable between them.
Torex seemed to hunch in on himself a little, and then he sucked in a sharp breath and blew it out noisily. “I lost guards over that mountain.” He grimaced, correcting himself harshly. “I sent guards over the mountain. They died.”