20. Token of Devotion #2
The way Damien said this was too curt, not even attempting to speculate when our lives were at stake. It was like he was hiding something.
“What are you not telling me?” I asked. “Why are the Sacred Guards working with vampires? Were they targeting me ... or you?”
Damien glanced at me, as though pondering whether he should divulge more.
“They are targeting you, aren’t they? Just like the sea serpent in the lake ...” I pressed on. “Someone in the court, someone powerful, wants you dead.”
Damien rubbed his face, but eventually slumped his shoulders, as though giving in. “I did tell you that my father and my mother’s marriage was purely political and in name only, right?”
I nodded, remembering what he said on that island.
He continued, “Of all three children my father has, I was the only one my mother gave birth to. I was an unexpected child, because my mother was supposed to be infertile. And ... my brother, Valerian, was the son of my father and one of the oracles, who is the current Prime Oracle of the Sanctum, Cyrien.”
My eyes widened. What? Wasn’t an oracle supposed to stay a virgin for life? How could they give birth to a king’s cub?
“Obviously, an oracle shouldn’t have a child.
They’d be executed if discovered. When my brother was born, they thought my mother couldn’t have a child of her own, so they let her claim Valerian as her own, so my father’s lover and his son could be safe.
Valerian was supposed to be my father’s heir, until I accidentally happened.
” His smile carried a bitter note. “My mother obviously wanted me to be the heir, because technically, I’m the only legit son. ”
“And the Prime Oracle wants to remove you so his son can be the future king?” I started to grasp all the related details. “And he probably sent one of his loyal bodyguards, along with a hired vampire assassin, to take you out?”
“We don’t know that. Maybe they were sent by the vampires. I rejected their gift, and you’ve killed Count Kaelith’s second-in-command,” Damien said with a shrug.
“Then how do you explain the ring?”
“Maybe it’s fake. Or maybe he stole it.”
I frowned. At this point, I could tell he was trying to convince himself that the assassin had nothing to do with his brother Valerian, even though it was the most reasonable deduction.
However, I guess I could somewhat understand his sentiment. If someone showed me evidence that Leif was trying to kill me, I wouldn’t believe it, either.
Just then, Alma returned. She looked relieved when she saw that Damien was awake and appeared to be free of pain.
From the way they spoke, Damien had a very close relationship with her.
She was probably a Royal Physician when Damien was a little cub, and had watched him suffer through those poison trials and grow up to be a strong, formidable warrior.
We planned to return to the palace before lunch and see what had happened to those two assassins’ bodies. While getting dressed and preparing to leave, I drew my red garnet knife from my belt and silently handed it to Damien.
He was buttoning a clean tunic Alma had found for him. Seeing my gesture, his expression softened.
“You can keep it. It was yours anyway,” he said.
I didn’t take it back. On the contrary, I pressed it on his chest insistently. “No. You won. It’s yours now.”
“Well, to be fair, you’d already beaten four or five opponents that first night. I might not be able to hold you down that long if you weren’t exhausted.”
“Still.” I took a deep breath and said resolutely, “I want you to have it.”
“Why?” He blinked, perplexed.
“You’ve come close to being murdered twice. You need a good, light weapon on you,” I said, as though the Prince of Nocturne couldn’t afford a much better dagger than this one. I paused for a moment before adding, “It’ll protect you for me.”
My mother had once uttered the same words when she placed the most resplendent knife in my palms, her smile beautiful and fuzzy in my distant memory.
Since the assassination had failed twice, perhaps it ... or she, was also protecting Damien?
Damien seemed to read something in my face, and he pressed his hand over mine, holding the knife through my fingers with a soulful gaze.
“I’ll keep it close to me, all the time,” he said solemnly, as though making a vow.
By the time Damien and I left Alma’s house, the entire city of Erevos had sunk into chaos. Soldiers and royal guards flooded the streets, searching for their beloved prince door to door.
They had discovered the two assassins’ bodies in the morning, and apparently, some royal guard had also identified the scent of Damien’s blood, which was left on the broken arrow.
The entire court was freaking out that Damien had disappeared.
The queen almost rode out of the palace to search for her son.
The throng of guards crowded Damien like a black maelstrom, and I was pushed to the side like a bystander. I saw Damien looking around for me, but then, I thought it might be best if people were too preoccupied to notice I had been with him this whole time, so I stayed back.
Even though most people wouldn’t immediately associate two dishevelled alphas appearing together early in the morning with words like “tryst” or “love affair,” it was still better not to call attention to it.
I quietly faded into the background, watching as the flood of guards and his companions swept him away, out of my reach.
I knew he would be alright. The queen and the king would be so relieved and exhilarated that their son was safe, and the court physicians would fuss over him for the rest of the day.
They would ask him what happened, and he would tell them a concoction of truth and lies, with more of the latter in the parts that involved me.
An emptiness expanded in my chest as I found my own way back to the palace. Was this the true reality between Damien and me? Even though I bore his mark, I couldn’t stay at his side, couldn’t show how much I worried about him, couldn’t tell others to fuck off and leave us alone.
But then, I felt stupid for even having such maudlin thoughts.
I returned as quickly and as unobtrusively as possible, but Leif had already been worried sick.
No one had told him about the assassins and Damien’s disappearance, but he had guessed something had happened, seeing and hearing all the commotions.
And when he couldn’t find me in my room, he probably assumed the worst and tried to run out to find me.
When I returned, he was arguing fiercely with the chamberlain, who tried to stop him from leaving his chamber.
“If anything happens to the future Jarl of Winterthrope, I’ll hold you personally responsible if you don’t step away now!” My little brother managed to look terrifying with his fair features scrunched into a snarl. “Let me go out!”
“As I have explained before, it’s not safe for you to leave the living quarters at this moment. We are doing all we can to locate Lord Fenris.”
“What EXACTLY did you do to locate him?!” Leif retorted sharply.
“Come on, Leif, cut the man some slack. They couldn’t even find their prince, not to mention a random northman,” I said, approaching them with a subtle smirk.
Though I was rather proud of Leif putting the snobbish chamberlain in his place, I didn’t want him to get into more trouble, especially after the whole ordeal with Allan Eclipse.
“Fenris!!!” Leif exclaimed and rushed to me, grabbing my arms and scanning me over. Relief and anger mingled in his baby blue eyes. “Where the hell did you go?! Wait ... are you hurt?”
“Just some scratches, I’m fine.” I reassured him with an indulgent smile.
For the next hour, Leif interrogated my whereabouts. I told him a half-true story: I was practicing at Wolf Run. Damien came to practice, too, wanting to avoid the crowd. We sparred, then the assassins attacked us. Damien was wounded, so I took him to a physician.
This was the story Damien and I had agreed upon, so we would tell the same story to different people on different occasions.
Leif believed my words, and I could tell his body unclenched when hearing that Damien was also safe.
Damien’s Diary Entry, Day 18
July 1, New Moon,
I haven’t found time to write anything recently, but now I finally have time, after almost dying from another assassination attempt.
I was distracted by the skirmishing along our eastern border.
It started small: A Solstia farmer accused our soldiers of killing all his sheep.
It was downright laughable. Some humans couldn’t tell the difference between werewolves and wild wolves.
Did they truly believe we would starve our soldiers enough that they’d go out and kill some domestic animals?