Chapter 3 Toran
Toran
Toran Roada hated silence.
It reminded him too much of the ocean. Too much of what it was like to be knocked under the waves. Reminded him too much of—
No, he wouldn’t think of that.
Toran reached inside his pocket but came up empty. “Where’s my flask?”
Beside him, Quint didn’t answer.
Toran whirled on his best friend. “Your captain asked you a question, Lieutenant Pram,” he bit out, anger at being woken in the middle of the night slipping loose.
He’d been dragged from his bed and forced to follow Quint down the long castle halls.
The headache pulsing behind his eyes wasn’t helping matters. “You’re expected to answer.”
Quint straightened so he stood a good half head taller than Toran. “Not if refusing is in your best interests.”
“I’ll decide what’s in my best interests.”
So he’d frequented the Guard’s Pub over the last couple months. There was no harm in having a few drinks every now and then.
Quint’s hand came down on his shoulder, heavy and secure in a way Toran no longer remembered how to be. “You’re not the only one who lost someone, you know.”
The words were like bile in Toran’s throat. He swallowed hard.
Quint was right. He was always right.
“Let’s go,” Quint said.
They walked side by side down the castle hall in silence, every step a reminder of the asshole Toran had become.
He didn’t realize Quint had stopped walking until he was several steps past him.
He glanced up from his slippered feet and back toward his friend, noticing for the first time that they were in the North Wing.
“Why did you get me out of bed?” he asked.
They stood in front of a delicately carved wooden door. The hall on either side of the door seemed to stretch. He remembered running down this very hall with Kassily and Kalden—the Crown Prince’s younger siblings—the children screeching with delight at his antics.
He didn’t remember how to be the Toran who made them smile, the one who could smile himself.
Quint gestured to the door. “The King wants to see you. Now.”
Everything in him screeched to a halt. The King.
He’d been waiting months for this moment, ever since his failure in Aeos had come to light. Still, as Quint swung open the door to the King’s study, pity in his eyes, Toran couldn’t help but feel like he was a piece of bait about to be strung out.
He shook his head. He’d already been caught. All that was left was for him to be skewered.
The King had always been good to him—had taken Toran in and treated him as one of his own after he’d lost his mother. But even the King was giving up on him. Took him long enough.
Let it happen, he thought. Let the King strip me of my titles. It was no less than he deserved. At least then he’d be free to sleep and drink until his heart was well and truly drowned.
Toran stepped inside, halting in the center of the room. It was cold, as if someone had left a window open, and empty.
He stood in the middle of the circular study, with its stained glass and ornate bookcases and many portraits. And emptiness.
Quint shut the door, locking Toran in. A mistake.
Quint had left him in an empty room with a liquor cabinet taller than the bookshelves. One stocked full of all the alcohol Toran could ever want.
Bottles of Lush wine and Kehrn whiskey and Kave rum. The best of the best. And, of course, set right in the middle, a large bottle of Keslo liquor. If he was getting the boot, he might as well take a parting gift.
He made for the desk. He felt the eyes of a stained-glass image—a roaring lion, sigil of House Alakar—on him as he rifled through the desk drawers in search of something to use as a lock pick.
Someone had stashed a letter opener in the third drawer. Not ideal. Still, he stumbled over to the rows of liquor, his dry mouth cracking at the sight behind the glass. Sliding the tip of the letter opener into the small keyhole, he wiggled the end.
Nothing happened.
He wiggled it some more. Tilted the letter opener this way and that. Nothing.
All he wanted was the alcohol behind the glass. And the letter opener just wasn’t—he grunted as he twisted the thin bit of silver again—doing the trick.
A lock clicked and, for the briefest second, he thought he’d succeeded. But then voices carried through the study door. The King had arrived.
He raced back to the desk, flinging open the drawer and tossing the letter opener inside. The handle moved just as he shoved the drawer shut with a knee and threw himself down in the King’s chair. He leaned his head back and propped his feet on the polished desk.
The King strode in, muttering something that sounded an awful lot like “that boy.”
Toran couldn’t help his grin. There was only one person King Harkett ever referred to as “that boy.” Kohen—his firstborn son.
The Crown Prince had always been everything you’d expect a prince to be.
Handsome, noble, arrogant. Even charming and downright irresistible—despite his flash of unnaturally white hair, courtesy of the Witch.
It had been the Witch using her magic on his son, however small, that fueled the King’s desire to hunt her down.
And it was the Prince’s white hair that people still whispered about behind his back all these years later.
Tainted by magic.
Witchmarked.
Having spent a majority of his life at the Prince’s back, Toran had heard it all. But his favorite had always been “that boy.” Mostly because he, like the King, never knew what to do with Kohen.
Ever since Toran first arrived in the castle, he and Kohen had been pitted against each other—in their studies, during their training, even at meals they were seated opposite one another, forced to stare down the other as they cleaned their plates.
Toran knew Kohen’s love for him was fleeting at best, especially since the Prince’s own father tended to favor Toran.
At least, the King used to, back when Toran was Orlonea’s “golden boy,” as Kohen so often referred to him.
King Harkett stopped before his desk. The swirling gray clouds in his eyes—eyes he’d bestowed upon all his children—swept over Toran, pausing briefly on his propped feet. But the King said nothing. Simply seated himself in a chair opposite him.
Toran closed his eyes against a hammering in his head. He could use a tonic. Or another drink. “Let’s get this over with.”
The King folded his hands over the front of his coat, eyes studying Toran. “You’re hungover.”
He barked a laugh. “You can’t say you’re surprised. I assume the guards you sent to monitor me reported how much I drank yesterday.”
Only when they were alone did the King allow him to talk like this. Like they were equals. Even if they were not. Even if history might one day see them as such.
No. That wasn’t going to happen. Definitely not now that the King was finally going to renounce him as the Crown.
“An impressive amount, I’m told,” the King admitted.
Toran drank only enough to send him into a dreamless sleep. Eight mugs of ale usually did the trick. Though he might have gone over eight last night. It was getting harder and harder to sink into oblivion. Harder and harder to keep her face from overtaking his mind.
The King ran a hand down the arm of his chair. “But how did you know I was having you watched?”
Toran fought the urge to roll his eyes. “My skills don’t vanish when I’m inebriated.”
He expected the King to chastise him, but the older man only considered him longer. “I instructed them not to dress in uniform.”
“They could have hidden themselves in another room and I still would have found them out from the way their eyes never left my back.”
The gold clasps on the King’s coat caught the light from the lanterns over their heads, reflecting it into Toran’s eyes and reigniting the pain in his head. He pressed his knuckles to his temples.
King Harkett continued to watch him but said nothing more. Toran shifted his gaze to the rows of bottles secured behind the glass. The Kave rum was calling to him.
“When Kohen’s mother died, I acted like nothing happened.
” The King’s voice was low, as if he were speaking to the grave.
“As the King, I was expected to keep going. To run the country because all those people out there needed me. I never once thought about the people inside the castle who might need me.” The King wound his hands over and under one another.
“I never thought about what I might need.”
The King shuddered, and the sight felt achingly familiar to Toran. Such pain would always roil and jerk.
“Kohen looked to me for comfort, and when I didn’t provide, he looked to me for guidance. He was so young, and because of me, he kept all his pain inside. I failed him,” the King admitted. “And I’m sorry it took so long for me to realize I’d done the same thing to you.”
Toran’s nostrils filled with snot. He tilted his chin so it dripped down the back of his throat. He couldn’t let himself feel her loss.
He looked up. Took in the books and the family heirlooms. He looked higher.
Above the bookshelves and the liquor cabinet to the walls that circled high, all the way to the spiral ceiling overhead.
Up there, every piece of exposed stone was covered with a painting of Orlonea’s past rulers.
In every painting, another person stood just off the king or queen’s left shoulder. Their Crown.
Every single Crown looked proud as hell to be standing there. Just as he used to be. Before Aeos. Before he’d gotten his legion killed. And before her.
Lifting his middle finger to the whole lot of paintings, Toran pulled his feet off the desk. “Why did you call me here?”
The King sighed, then straightened. “I have a mission for you.”
He stiffened, the plush fabric beneath him molding to the new position. He couldn’t have heard the King correctly. “A mission?”
“Yes.”