Chapter 9
He was sixteen, seated on a bench in his mother’s magical greenhouse.
These days, he only had a few penance marks a month. Not because he was better, but because he was wiser.
His mother’s threat had been clear.
Even a prince could pay enough times to meet the end of himself.
But...Kinlear was also clever enough to see the other side of the threat.
To know that one couldn’t be punished, if one couldn’t be caught, and so he’d learned to take the servant’s passages for his gallivanting across Touvre.
The servants kept their mouths shut, so long as he supplied them with expensive trinkets. ..
Of which a prince had plenty.
Still, he’d done his best to be good and true. He wasn’t a monster like the one in his mind. He recited his prayers, and each week, he read over the laws for his kind. He tried to deny every pleasure...to which he failed....and he begged the gods for healing...to which they failed.
He’d done all he could to be pious.
The way Arawn was.
It was never enough.
So, he wrote to her.
When he was down, when he felt brave enough to share the darkest parts of his soul...he wrote to Soraya to keep himself sane.
Dear Sora,
Sometimes, I feel like I was born in the shadows. Like the world is out there, so godsdamned close I can see it, taste it, and it is beautiful beyond belief.
But no matter how hard I try to get there...it moves on past me, always just beyond my reach.
Do you ever feel like that? Like you’ve been forced to walk in the shadows, and you don’t know if you’ll ever be given the chance to dance in the light?
Yours,
Kinlear Laroux
When she wrote him back, it was beautiful.
Brilliant enough that he carried the letter with him on his hardest days.
Kinny,
I think everyone feels that way at one point or another. It’s what we choose to do with our time in the shadows, and who we spend it with, that brings us one step closer to the light of day.
Life is short, and we’re not promised tomorrow, so why should we have to wait for the sun to shine before we get our chance to live?
If you’re a shadow, I’m a shadow, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
So, dance, Kinlear Laroux.
Dance in the darkness with me.
-Soraya
Time moved on.
And in his dreams, he still died.
But he didn’t fear the monster near as much. Not like he had as a child. Their game of chase became a song, a dance, a pattern Kinlear knew to always remain true.
He slept...he died.
He woke, and he was a spare prince again, with a cane in one hand and a vial upon his neck. That little treasure had been the most anticlimactic birthday present he’d ever received.
Medicine.
Winterwine would have been better, for at least it made things more fun.
Still, the vial was his only defense against the incessant glass that grated his lungs. He carried it with him even on the good days, when he felt like things were better. When he had the tiniest glimmer of hope that maybe...he’d been healed.
It was a day like today. A day when--
Splat.
Kinlear looked to his shoulder and frowned.
“Lovely,” he said to no one. A bird had just shat on his shoulder. “Just lovely, you little winged bastard.”
A tiny finch landed on the bench beside him, as if it were happy to take the credit.
His mother’s enormous greenhouse was bursting at the seams with the tiny birds. It made sense, for Touvre was the safest place to be, in all Lordach.
Flowers and fruit trees filled the entire dome with the sweet smell of spring. Realmists walked about in beautiful, stitched garb in teals and pale peaches and delicate, cloudless sky-blue, tending to the plants. A far cry from the stark whiteness of the north.
Here, it was easy to forget about every threat. Every beat of war.
Shadow wolves couldn’t reach them in this place...at least not yet.
Touvre was soft. Delicate.
Safe.
But Kinlear saw his mother’s home for what it truly was:
A gilded cage.
The finch tweeted as if it agreed.
“I bet it’s nice to have wings,” Kinlear said. “Go anywhere you want. Do anything, without fear of falling.”
Or failing, he thought. It was his greatest accomplishment, if you asked his mother.
The finch was gold, its tiny feathers a perfect little echo of the war eagles back home. Gods, he missed hearing their cries as they dove from the cliffside each night, fearless Riders on their backs. He’d dreamt, long ago, of becoming one. Riders were never seen as weak.
They were unstoppable...like the heroes in his favorite books.
But at this rate, he doubted he’d ever be allowed to look at a war eagle again, especially if his mother had anything to do with it.
Kinlear sighed. “I suppose you’re the closest I’ll get to the war eagles, now, aren’t you?”
The finch chirruped and flew away.
“You weren’t good company anyhow!”
A chuckle sounded from behind him, along with the rapping of a cane.
“Yelling at the birds now are we, Little Prince?”
He glanced up to find his tutor, Magus, standing over him.
“It’s called passionately conversing,” Kinlear said. “I used to sneak into the war eagles’ domain and speak to them. They understand things, you know.” He ignored his dark curls as they fell into his eyes. “A finch is as close as I’ll ever get to the war eagles now, if I’m never to return north.”
“Never?” Magus cocked his head, his milky white eyes catching the sunlight. The old man was blind, but it didn’t mean he could not see. “Never seems like quite a long time, if you ask me.”
He chuckled as a finch landed on his bald head, as if the bird mistook it for a stone. Gods, the man was strange. He was perhaps the most interesting creature Kinlear had ever come across...and they lived in a land of shadow wolves.
Magus smiled knowingly. “It also seems to me that you’ve given up, Little Prince...when right here may be exactly where you’re supposed to be.”
Kinlear glowered. “I don’t want any more of your sage wisdom, Magus,” he said, rapping his cane on the cracked stones beneath his boots. His had a war eagle for the handle. Magus’ was made with twisting trails of stars. “I just want to go home.”
“Ah, yes. Back to that frigid wasteland in the north, where you can freeze your underweight ass off and be overlooked by the heroic twin,” Magus said, and chuckled as yet another finch joined the first one atop his head.
A few servant children giggled as they passed by. But Magus paid them no mind. He’d never given a damn what people thought of him.
“I take offense to that,” Kinlear said. “And besides, Arawn is—"
“I don’t give a war bear’s breath what your brother is,” Magus cut him off. “I care about you seeing the value in yourself. And if that means — oh!” He paused, chuckling. “It seems you’ve been shat on. What a day.”
A ripple of anger went through Kinlear. “I wasn’t going to point it out, but thank you, Magus, for being so attentive, as usual.”
“Clean yourself up, then.”
The old Scribe tossed him a worn handkerchief. The stitching on the edges was that of strangely shaped leaves in brilliant oranges and reds and yellows, backed by smooth, rolling mountains.
It was nothing at all like the jagged cliffs of north Lordach, nor the towering Sawteeth far beyond.
The rumor was, Magus was Unconsecrated. A rare thing, to be born beyond the Citadel, but it meant he was a Sacred...
Who’d spent his life somewhere else.
Where that elsewhere was, exactly, Kinlear couldn’t be certain.
But Magus knew strange things. Distant things...as if he’d come from far, far away.
He claimed he’d traveled across the Sundered Sea, even as far south as Amandor, the Southern Continent. Ancient lore told tales of other mages there called the Verdant...an entire bloodline of people long disappeared from this realm.
Kinlear liked to imagine, somewhere out there, the Verdant still existed.
Perhaps Magus even was one.
He laughed inwardly at that, as the old man whistled a tune beside him, and more birds landed on his shoulders and head, as if he hadn’t a care in the world.
“Shall I leave you to wallow in self-pity?” Magus asked him now. “Or would you like to discuss something of true worth today?”
He sniffed the air, as Kinlear cleaned the bird waste from his shoulder. “Like what?”
More servants skirted past, carrying baskets full of perfectly ripened fruit and vegetables. They always averted their gazes when they saw Kinlear and his tutor...as if it were catchable to wield a cane.
“We’re not diseased,” Kinlear said beneath his breath.
Though...actually, he supposed he was.
“Not I,” Magus said, confirming his thoughts. “But everyone suffers from something, Little Prince.”
It would have been nice if the healers had put a name to Kinlear’s illness, but alas, he supposed it made him more of a mystery within.
Magus’s history was a mystery, too...for the man wasn’t born without his sight. He’d told Kinlear as much, but never the full tale of what happened to cause it.
“So,” Kinlear asked. “What will we learn today?”
“We’ll practice silence,” Magus said. “Something you struggle to achieve. Sit in the beauty of this day, Little Prince, and I’ll speak when my next words are ready.”
So together they sat, as a delicate, magical wind stirred the trees around them. The air was thick with fragrant flowers and fruit ripening just in time for the queen to open the palace gates.
It would happen tomorrow, when everyone from near and far traveled to Touvre to fill their baskets with rations.
The shadow wolves were doing their best to ruin every viable crop in the kingdom.
Kinlear often went with his mother to help.
To see the faces of his people...all of whom had lost something in this endless war.
He wanted to be a part of it, like Arawn and Soraya.
He didn’t want to just sit.
“Well?” Kinlear asked. “I’m ready, Magus. Please.”
He removed his Scribe’s blade, eager to begin working on something more aggressive, like combative runes. He’d need them when he went back north, where hopefully, he would be assigned to help prepare Arawn for battle.