Erion took the compliment with a small nod of humility and immediately discarded it mentally. He wasn’t afflicted by a false sense of modesty. Prince Baldair had an uncanny ability with a sword. It was as though the man turned steel into flesh the second he gripped it, the weapon becoming one with his arm. There was a natural divide between their skill that no amount of training could bridge.
As if somehow knowing that he had just been the topic of conversation, Baldair appeared on the opposite end of the vast, dusty plot that served as the Empire’s training ground. For all appearances, it seemed as though the prince had just barely been bothered to rouse himself. His jerkin hardly concealed the rumple of his shirt, and his hands caught snags as they combed through his straw-colored hair.
And yet, no one took offense. The man could’ve walked onto the field dressed in a burlap sack, staggering drunk and unwashed, and he would’ve been greeted like he was the Father descended upon the world.
Everyone was Baldair’s friend, high and lowborn. There was an ease about him that Erion had never quite seen anywhere else and still had yet to fully dissect, despite being one of the many under his charm. His smile was infectious, to the demise of many a maiden. His booming laughter vibrated one’s bones with the notes of his mirth. He shone like gold in both spirit and appearance, well earning his namesake.
“If it’s not the Golden Prince,” Erion teased, wiping sweat from the back of his neck. No matter how hard he tried to make his family proud, Erion couldn’t seem to muster the sort of focused political calculation they would have encouraged in the presence of Baldair. It was like trying to hide in the light of the sun. What was even more shameful was that he didn’t want to.
“Not you, too.” Baldair clasped Erion’s forearm in greeting. “Everyone seems to be on this ‘Golden Prince’ business now.”
“It fits you well. About as well as Golden Sleeper. Or Maiden Slayer. Or He-Who-Leaves-His-Friends-To-Train-Alone. Or—”
“I understand, I understand!” Baldair held up his hands in forfeit. “But this lass, oh this lass, Erion, you should’ve seen her.” The other man made some vague and indecent gestures through the air. “She was everything.”
“‘Everything’, only for a night.” The prince never held a lady for longer than a season. Frankly, a season would be an impressive amount of time. His bad habits had reached a new low the summer prior, after he had just turned sixteen. He and his elder brother had engaged in the worst sort of sport to see who could have the most women agree to bed them. It was the kind of thing Erion might expect from Baldair, but the Crown Prince’s involvement surprised him. “If you keep this up, your father really will send you to dedicate your life to the Mother as a crone.”
“I’m careful!” Baldair said, as if that somehow excused his actions. “In fact, I didn’t even see her out this morning.”
“If you didn’t, then who?” Erion didn’t even know why he asked. He already knew the answer.
“I had Jax take care of it. He has this new secret passage that—”
“Jax is not your errand boy.” Erion didn’t know what horrified him more: the fact that he had openly interrupted the prince, the fact that the prince didn’t care, or the fact that Erion couldn’t seem to muster any kind of remorse for the action. They bantered as friends, which was the appearance he was supposed to give. But that friendship ran much deeper, and it felt cheapened by the fact that it also furthered his family’s political pursuits.
“I know,” Baldair’s tone had gone somber, genuine concern for their absent friend shining through. The prince had cared for Jax on Erion’s word. A thirteen-year-old going to trial for a man he’d barely met, on the word of another. Erion still barely understood what compelled Baldair that night, or how he had earned the esteem of someone with loyalties that ran so deep and true.
Erion’s mother had made it quite clear what her stance was on the situation. Jax should have been forgotten the moment he had committed that horrible crime and lost his title. The Le’Dans do not associate with murderers. But Baldair’s compassion emboldened Erion’s own, even still. It was a noble rebellion.
“I thought involving him in everything I did would make him feel more… welcome,” Baldair continued. “It’s better than him being shut up in the Tower.”
“Why don’t you involve him in more normal ways, like training?” Erion sighed. Baldair’s intentions were clearly in the right place, but his execution left something to be desired.
“Sorcerers never come out here.” The prince motioned over the packed earth of the training ground.
“You are a prince. You could change that.” Erion never thought he’d need to remind a member of the royal family of their status.
“There’d be a riot.” Baldair shook his head. “Can you imagine? So soon after the war? This isn’t the West, Erion; sorcerers have never been welcome here.”
Erion looked across the field with a sigh. It wasn’t untrue, but that didn’t stop him lamenting the fact that this is where Jax ended up. A convicted criminal, foreigner, and sorcerer, the perfect recipe for a truly unwanted wretch.
“I can just see the chaos it’d make if a sorcerer came out here. It’d look like—”
“—like that,” Erion finished for him, pointing at a shadow that had descended upon the field like a dark omen.
“Baldair!” An angry shout echoed to them from the imposing sorcerer storming in their direction.
Prince Aldrik approached them with Jax trailing lazily a few steps behind. The prince’s mere presence split men and women from the greenest to eldest. They parted, not from respect, but from fear. It was awash across their faces, the emotion coloring their eyes. The whispers of the prince’s potentially questionable involvement in the War of the Crystal Caverns had spread faster than the Emperor could squelch them.
The prince did little to help the situation. His demeanor had utterly changed over the war. Many wrote it off as the natural maturation of a prince after his first battle, the raw truths of war and life and death that had changed him. But Erion saw something deeper. He saw a reflection of Jax in the elder prince’s eyes. A sort of broken from which there may be no repair, only a new design of the heart.
“Aldrik, it is far too early for me to hear your voice.” Baldair yawned dramatically as his brother approached. “It’ll give me splitting head pains for the remainder of the day.”
“Your mere existence gives me splitting head pains,” Aldrik growled, clenching his fists.
Erion shifted his hand back to the pommel of his sword. It was a gesture of solidarity to Baldair. But the truth was, if Aldrik pulled out his flames, there would be nothing his steel could do against them. For all Baldair was with a sword, Aldrik was with magic.
And his mother would never forgive him for fighting against the Crown Prince of the Empire.
“What do you want, black sheep?”
Erion had hoped Baldair’s uninspired moniker for his brother would’ve faded with time, but it seemed to persist.
Aldrik ignored the jab. “It is bad enough that you disgrace yourself and half the women of the court with your antics. But the Tower is not your personal thoroughfare for ushering out your scandals.”
“The Tower?” Baldair hummed innocently.
“Baldair… Jax, you didn’t…” Erion whispered, looking between the two princes and then to his fellow Westerner. When the prince said he had secured Jax’s involvement in spiriting away his night’s tryst, he had assumed it to be through the normal measures.
“I didn’t do anything.” Baldair shrugged. “Jax, did Melina make it out all right?”
“She did,” Jax affirmed. “Though she had quite a fright.”
“I don’t think he knows how to be anything but a fright.” Baldair threw a rude gesture toward his elder brother. “I suppose I can thank you, dear brother, for there being no encores. Just because you can’t get a woman in your bed doesn’t mean you have to scare them from mine.”
“This is not a joke, Baldair.” Aldrik took a step closer, physically forcing himself back into the forefront of the conversation. “The security of the Tower is important. If she remembers that passage and—”
“Jax, do you think she’d remember this passage?”
“Stop interrupting me,” Aldrik snarled.
“The world does not hold its breath for you, Aldrik.”
“Nor does it bend to your foolish whims.” Fire crackled around the prince’s knuckles. Erion eyed Baldair cautiously. He could get away with much as Aldrik’s brother, but he was toeing up to a line. “I should have the Minister of Sorcery decide punishment for you, both of you.” Aldrik eyed Jax.
“Oh, just call him Victor. We all know you’re close.” Baldair rolled his eyes dramatically. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you’d orchestrated the whole War of the Crystal Caverns for the sake of getting your friend in power.”
Aldrik straightened away, as though narrowly missing a blow. The momentarily wounded expression could not be missed, despite all the apparent training he had tried to put his face through. He drew his height, revealing that while he was but half Baldair’s width, he was a good two heads taller.
“What?” Baldair had also assessed his brother’s physical shift. “Are you looking for a fight? We are on the training grounds.” The younger prince gripped his sword.
“Just agree with him and say you won’t do it again,” Erion urged. He looked around the field, hearing the whispers and seeing the stares. Diffusing the situation would not only look good on him, but it would certainly help Baldair. It would be a political victory he didn’t have to feel guilty about after
the fact.
“No, I’m not going to be like everyone else, cowering before him.” Baldair was utterly unreasonable when it came to Aldrik, and the reverse was equally true.
“It’s called respect,” Aldrik insisted.
“It’s called fear.”
The elder prince’s scowl deepened.
“Prince Aldrik,” Erion interrupted boldly. He’d gotten nowhere with the younger, so he’d try with the elder.
Aldrik eyed Erion but permitted the interruption. Erion’s father had warned him to stay away from the Crown Prince. If Erion was to keep proximity to power for the family, he should do so only with Baldair. It seemed counter-intuitive, as Aldrik was the heir, but Erion didn’t question his father. There was an urgency to his demands that Erion didn’t take lightly.
However, Erion had also mustered a sort of kinship with the Crown Prince, albeit of an odd and unexpected sort. In the West, their families had been in conflict for generations. But perhaps it was that shared history that gave them common footing.
They both bore trademark Western hair, along with the strong cheekbones and jaw that those of the Ci’Dan and Le’Dan families were known for. They were both out of the norm in the South, a hybrid of two worlds with one parent from each. Aldrik’s ghost-like skin fit in with the Southerners, but his dark eyes did not. Erion contended with the reverse.
“Would my word that, at least for the remainder of the summer while I am here, I will personally ensure that no future antics involve the Tower be enough for you?”
“What?” Baldair made a noise of frustration. “You are not my keeper.”
Aldrik considered Erion for a long moment, shifting his gaze to a glare when it turned back to his brother. “I suppose there is at least someone I can trust,” he sneered. “Fine, Erion, if you wish it, any further involvement of my Tower will fall on your head. Perhaps someone else shouldering the punishment will be enough to keep my brother from making foolish decisions.”
“I’m a prince, and I’ll well do what I want!”
“Baldair, please.” The prince was going to ruin the escape route Erion had just opened.
“You are nothing more than my spare,” Aldrik jeered. “So act as the spare should and wait to see if the world will ever have need of you.”
Baldair nearly boiled over.
“Let’s go.” Erion dragged the younger prince away, deeming the situation beyond words and at the point of physical force. They didn’t have anywhere else to be, but they needed to be anywhere in the world but in front of the Crown Prince.
Jax followed after a hard look from Aldrik that had the echo of words previously spoken.
“You’re just jealous. Jealous that no one would ever love a wretch like you.” Baldair was relentless.
“Don’t push this.” Erion looked back to Aldrik nervously, expecting an explosion of fire. But the Crown Prince had, indeed, grown. He was more trained in his emotions, more measured in his responses. He assessed Baldair as though his younger brother was nothing more than a random servant—a rat casting an insult before a god.
He was every bit a model lord, fearsome and detached. It was something Erion had always been taught to praise, and it made him appreciate the unorthodox royal he had aligned himself with all the more. The emotions Baldair wore on his sleeve were just as admirable in a different way, Erion had found.
The distant, shrouded eyes of the Crown Prince gave one last look that was louder than a final word as they disappeared into the palace.
“You really don’t learn, do you?” Erion breathed a sigh of relief the moment the prince’s presence had vanished.
“I’ve learned that my brother becomes more of an ass the closer he gets to the crown.” Baldair pulled his arm from the grasp Erion had been half-dragging him along with. “Just imagine what we’re in for when he actually gets it.”
“And you.” Erion turned to face Jax. “Why would you even think to bring her through the Tower?”
“What are you, our mother?” Baldair half laughed.
Erion barely resisted remarking on the fact that it was clear someone needed to be. He certainly had enough mothering to share.
“It was the only path I knew of where no one would see her. And you expressly said no one should see her.” Jax shrugged, mostly unapologetic.
“Can we all agree to rule that path off-limits from now on?” Erion asked with a sigh. “Aldrik was in quite a state about it.”
“He was, wasn’t he?” Baldair’s tone instantly made Erion regret pointing out the fact. “Why do you think that is?”
“He told you, security of the Tower,” Erion echoed the prince’s words.
“Likely because of who he was with,” Jax said at almost the same time.
“Who he was with?” Baldair’s face was alight with malicious glee.
Erion wished he wouldn’t be so delighted by the mere prospect of tormenting his brother.
Jax shrugged. “Didn’t recognize her.”
“Her?”
“As if you’re the only one who has trysts.” Erion shook his head. “Are we really discussing Prince Aldrik’s love life like a gaggle of hens at court?” If the elder prince overheard them, there might be no salvaging the situation. Though Erion hated the fact, the first thing he thought upon hearing the news that the Crown Prince might be involved in was to write back to his mother.
“Father isn’t currently trying to set me up with eligible ladies. Aldrik becoming distracted may be something I need to tell him.”
“Please don’t make this worse.” Erion sighed. “Can we just... eat breakfast?”
“I think I should invite my father.”
Erion was torn between protecting his friend from himself and having a meal with the Emperor. He couldn’t seem to support or discourage either option and was striding down the hall in silence at Baldair’s side. His chest was a knot where his heart should have been.
“That wasn’t the weirdest thing, however.” It was the man who needed the most help who stepped in to save them all.
“What was?” Baldair took the bait.
“Something about a pirate curse…” If Jax was trying to build dramatic tension, he’d succeeded.
“Pirate curse?” Baldair thought a long moment. “Adela Lagmir?”
“So you’ll say her na
me?”
“I’m not a child.” Baldair chuckled bravely. “What does the infamous bane of the seas have to do with anything?”
“Melina noticed her symbol in the room at the end of the passage I found.”
“Room at the end of the passage?” Baldair had stopped walking altogether.
“Can you show it to us?” Erion found the courage to accept the fact that it would be better for the prince if he didn’t see the Emperor when Baldair was of the mind to wage war against Aldrik. There would be other points in the summer when he could meet the Emperor, Erion tried to assure himself. He was doing the right thing for his friend, but it still felt like he had to make allowances.
“If it would please the prince?” Jax deferred to Baldair. He, too, had an instinct when it came to royalty. But unlike Erion’s, which had been trained into him for the betterment of his family, Jax was broken into it.
“A secret room? A symbol of the pirate queen? Of course it would please me!” Baldair laughed. “Don’t you know the story?”
It seemed neither Jax nor Erion could recall what Baldair had deemed the most significant detail.
“She fled the Empire with the ‘crown treasure’ of Lyndum, and it was never recovered.”
3. ERION
THEY WOUND THROUGH the palace toward the upper Imperial chambers. It was a world of carved stone and lead-lined glass windows, double-paned to fight against the mountain air. Tapestries were kept in perfect order, properly spaced, between paintings and sculptures.
It was all very Southern, and even though Erion had been coming to the Imperial Palace for years, it still felt oddly cold. He had been in many a lord’s manor house, even the great Western castle in Norin, growing up. Western styles were wider, more open, embracing the air of the desert and the warmth of the sun. Wood and sandstone were more welcoming to the eye, in his opinion, and even the simpler woven grass mats of the poorer homes felt richer beneath feet than plush carpets.
They tracked around an inner garden. Tall walls and windows looked down upon it and its only entrance—an iron gate. Erion stared at the glass greenhouse through the distortion of the upper windows. It held a quiet apprehension for him in the shape of a memory he was none too fond of from his younger years.