Chapter 2
I need a distraction.
Normally, I’d stuff my nose in a book, but not even sending my thoughts away to my favorite fictional worlds will undo the reality already sinking its roots into my very being.
Instead, I find myself at the training grounds, which are empty.
Convenient .
It’s been some time since I’ve wielded a bow and arrow, but the lack of practice will do just fine to occupy my thoughts.
I draw the string of a golden longbow to my cheek, my fingers shifting slightly over the bamboo arrow resting on the leather grip.
I know I should protect my arms from the string’s painful whip and my hands from the strenuous precision they’re required to maintain, but I hardly had time to snag a bracer or finger tabs between Bernadette’s cruel announcement and the abrupt meeting my father called into session before the midday meal.
The sun mocks me, streaking my body with its glower as I desperately train my focus on the stump of a once-majestic oak.
My heart quickens and my breath shortens as frustrated tears threaten to burst from my eyes. The arrow shivers against white knuckles, the string dampens beneath sweaty fingers.
I release the tension, and the arrow misses its target, zipping through a bush beyond the tree line.
A growl rips from my throat, but I can’t name the emotion backing it.
I swing my arm down, and the strap of my leather quiver slides off easily, thumping against the ground.
Lightweight arrows spill across the short grass.
The bow drops from my open hand and lands with a thud.
I fall onto my back, my arms extending out to my sides.
Xavelor has been defeated.
I shake my head as tears spill over my ears, further dampening my sweaty hair.
For Xavelor to have been defeated would mean our kingdom has been conquered .
Since the dawn of Arioch’s reign over a thousand years ago, our kingdom has proved itself to be the strongest. Xavelor recently turned twenty-four, which meant that after this final battle, he would peacefully take our father’s place.
With his strength and experience, he couldn’t have been easily cut down.
The funny thing is, I’m not sad. No, far from it.
I am merely angry at myself.
I can string a bow and aim, but I’m not trained in the arts of swords and strategy.
I was never viewed as worth training. Tucked beneath the carefully embroidered covers of the dirty quilt of Faundor royalty, I am the blemish.
The oily festering of skin under a sweaty brow that no one seeks nor can help the existence of.
My brother’s fading shadow.
The sky is a frightening blue, the sun white. I do not yet know the consequences of my brother’s death, but for the moment, I don’t wish to.
I try not to be upset with him for dying on the day of my mother’s death.
I try not to imagine the mask my father will don when he shares the news.
And most of all, I try to forget I’m anything more than the sum of my pathetic parts, or that my future will change at all thanks to the cruel twist of fate’s blunted knife.
The tears dry to my cheekbones. It feels good to cry, pathetic as it is to do so.
I smile at the feathery clouds scraping over the sun’s unrelenting glow.
Bernadette calls my name. It’s distant. Soft. Respectful. Patient.
I close my eyes and breathe in the rush of air that coaxes me to my feet.
I can predict her words before she speaks them, but I politely allow her to announce the words that chill me to my bones.
Her footsteps stop, and she leans over me. A light breeze sends strands of gray across her forehead. Her eyes are soft, her expression deep-set with mourning. I wonder how I hadn’t seen it there when she came to me before. It is now so obvious, so heart-wrenching, that more tears threaten to fall.
“I am to escort you to His Majesty’s council meeting.”
“Prince Xavelor Faundor, the warrior who was to be crowned the new king at the Feast of Undying, has been defeated,” King Azriel thunders, sending the news like crackled lightning across the long table of high nobility—it strikes them at staggered intervals.
For a moment, the small meeting room is silent. Then, outrage erupts from each until two speak above the rest.
“He can’t be dead,” a long-nosed noble quips. “He’s your son .”
“Indeed,” another says, spectacles slipping down from the greasy heat. “Who is to take the throne? Who is to lead our people?”
My father, Azriel Faundor, flicks his black eyes to me, his nostrils flaring as though he’s about to spit on everyone he speaks over. “You seem to forget I have another son.”
All eyes shift immediately to me, even those of the dark-robed court mages who hug the corners.
The attention is so hostile that I can bear it only by gripping the edges of my seat until wood splinters and pierces the flesh of my bloodless fingers.
Even then, the eyes burn into me like the prongs of a branding iron.
None seem to notice my paling face, for after quick seconds pass, they begin to debate this logic, hollering over one another to make their points known.
Yesterday, they were content to ignore me.
They knew of my presence, at how it had to be kept secret even from their loved ones.
Now they shout my name across the table, mixed with my half brother’s.
The two mesh together as well as oil and water.
I close my eyes, letting their screeches numb this strange new reality.
The song my mother used to sing to me plays in my head, its rhythm and haunting melody becoming one with the voices of raging men.
The words to the nursery rhyme have long since left me, but I remember how it sounds.
Her voice, frayed by the many years of her absence, hums softly in my ear, trying to calm my racing heart.
I imagine my fingers shifting along the frets of my lute, following her melody. It does little to calm me.
When my eyes reopen, I dare a look at the king. His mouth turns down, and I’m sure he’s said something to me amidst the chaos, but everything sounds muffled, like I’m underwater. The sensation intensifies as he glares at me, the most attention I’ve received from him in my entire life.
I move my lips, but I’m not sure words come out. I try to say my practiced “Yes, your Majesty,” but no words grace my lips. Instead, it’s like I’m actually drowning; I begin to cough and shake.
Xavelor has been defeated . Bernadette’s shaky voice revisits my thoughts, haunting my memory as it replaces the purpose for my mourning with a sense of betrayal.
I shrink in my seat as the bickering continues, as the nobles discuss my life and my brother’s life, trying to figure out a way to twist two very different threads into one knot.
Some toss around their favorite insult, bastard , as though it makes any difference.
Even with their malice, their sharp tongues, and quick accusations, I’ve survived peacefully behind the protection of the castle’s walls.
As long as my brother returned triumphant from battle, I would remain the illegitimate shadow with no connections, no pride, and no reason to go on living.
And I was…fine being invisible. Resigned to it. Happy, even.
The thought that he’s dead and gone doesn’t settle, and I won’t let it. I can’t let it. If he’s dead… I shake my head, not even knowing where to begin.
Xavelor, the dragon slayer. The warlord.
The promising son of King Azriel. The crown prince.
All titles bestowed upon him since birth were well-deserved and, according to the Ariochan scrolls, as prophesied.
As far as the general public knows, he is the only son of King Azriel.
My birth was scratched from records, my name a punishment to whoever spoke it.
So who am I, to sit with these strategists and military men as though their equal, when I can hardly shoot an arrow?
Still that familiar word eventually cuts through the babble of upraised voices, thick like the core of an oak.
Where it was hushed before, but just loud enough for me to hear, it almost sounds as though now a chant: bastard, bastard, bastard.
While my brother enjoyed many regal, honorable titles in his life, I’ve always been stuck with one lousy label.
..one I didn’t have any control over and one I’ll never be rid of.
I’ve grown numb to the sting of this insult, at least.
As the bickering over my fate descends into shouting matches, my father’s face twists and contorts with anger and annoyance.
His dark eyes finally realign with mine, his hatred obvious.
So focused too. But something else glistens in them, something I’m unable to decipher. As quick as it appears, it vanishes.
He has no reason to harbor any positive feelings toward me, but I have never understood why he holds such grave disdain for me and my mother.
She’s long since died, and only a short few months later, his own wife, Queen Karmin, was killed by an unresolved illness.
I’d been barely seven years old. Hardly capable or desirous of poisoning the late queen.
Maybe they’ll decide to exile me if they’re worried about me taking the throne.
Banishment wouldn’t be so terrible. I’ve crept into the inner villages under the guise of a merchant.
I know the workings of the kingdom and how to properly function as a peasant.
The one thing currently separating me from such a status is my room in the castle and Bernadette, who refuses to serve anyone else.
Perhaps if I were to be sent away, I could take her with me.