I smiled back, but didn’t say anything. Not because I didn’t have an answer, but because she was so radiant then, I couldn’t ruin the moment for her.
I wasn’t suddenly changed, nor had I regained my ability to feel warmth. I can’t even claim that any part of it was altruistic or out of concern for the people I yet hoped to one day rule. I did it for Kiara, so she wouldn’t feel like she was alone, so she would continue to hold out some hope for me.
So where was the beast then?
Waiting and watching from its lair, patiently weaving a trap with seduction and confidently arming it with the bait of false promise.
“I’ve had an idea,” Kiara informed me one morning over breakfast a few weeks later.
I stopped, spoon halfway to my mouth. “What kind of idea?” I asked warily.
“You’ll like it,” Kiara reassured me. “And if not, you must pretend to, because I am mistress of this castle, after all.”
I returned the spoon to my plate untouched and unconvinced. “Don’t make me regret the appointment,” I warned, “or we shall organize a committee and vote the position away.”
“And who will chair this committee?” she inquired.
“Myself,” I paused. “Kellan, Ms. Potsdam, and Jaxel. And Alvie shall cast the deciding vote.”
“Then I have all the votes!” she exclaimed.
“It’s a fix!” I cried in mock indignation.
Kiara waved her hand as if to wipe my worry away. “The position stands,” she concluded. “And as such, I have decided that when winter has finally melted away and spring has blossomed again, we shall have a party.”
“Then I pray for a long winter that turns right into summer.”
“Azahr!” she admonished. “Just listen.”
“I fear what follows,” I teased.
Kiara smiled even as she shook her head at me, her soft brown ringlets bouncing merrily. “Really, everything is so gloomy these days,” she said. “With the war and the villagers so worried for their loved ones, we need to give them something to celebrate. We need to welcome in some of the outside world.”
“We have windows all about the castle,” I drily pointed out. “Many are even designed for that exact purpose.”
Kiara giggled despite herself. “I’ve made up my mind and there’s nothing you can do about it,” she informed me. “We shall have a party and that is final.”
“And who shall we invite to this illuminating affair?” I asked, genuinely curious about who and how she would convince anyone to come here.
“Some of the local villagers,” Kiara immediately replied. “The more prominent ones, of course, but specifically the ones whose men went off to fight, because they need it most.”
I couldn’t deny her any of those points. “So this is to be a work party,” I figured.
“The host and hostess must always work to ensure their guests are happy and comfortable,” Kiara reminded me. “Though that mustn’t preclude them from having a lovely time as well.”
“It hardly seems worthwhile to turn the castle over just for some poor villagers when a nice outdoor picnic would suffice,” I countered.
“Then we shall invite some of the local noblemen, as well!” she immediately rejoined, shooting me a look that said she didn’t appreciate my deprecations. “After all, your birthday is in the spring and that should be excuse enough. Please, Azahr, your people need it. War is not easy.”
My face fell and worry seeped in remembering how the last party planned for such an occasion hadn’t occurred. The birthday the following year was all but forgotten, save the back corner of one of the gardens where I had dismantled a heavy marble fountain barehanded before kicking a hole through the low stone wall behind it. But she was right, I would be twenty soon. At least with her it couldn’t be worse than the past two years. Or so I hoped.
“Mixing noblemen and commoners?” I questioned instead.
“Think how well it will reflect on you!” Kiara exclaimed.
Seeing the look on my face, she raised a hand to preempt my protestations. “You don’t think it’s a good idea, but,” she reasoned calmly, “the truth of your situation is not entirely known. If people, noble and common alike, were to see you doing well, they will talk, and your family will hear about it. That could only be of benefit to you.”
“Then perhaps I’ll consider considering it.”
“Azhar!” she admonished. Then, “Perhaps we should invite your sis—”
“No,” I said in a tone that brooked no room for argument. “They are not to come here at all.”
Kiara fell quiet. She looked down and took a deep breath, gathering courage for what she wanted to say next.
“Perhaps my sisters then?” she asked. “Father probably wouldn’t like to come back, but I should very much like for them to see how I’m faring so they can tell Father I’m well. I write to him often enough, but he rarely replies and I suspect he doesn’t trust my letters are entirely true.” She glanced at me, her face flushing in apology.
“And your mother?” I finally ventured to ask the question that had been nagging me since I realized she never mentioned her.
Kiara shook her head. “She passed just a few months after I was born,” she explained. “I think it the reason my sisters have always treated me differently. That, and I suspect they blame me for our forced…relocation.”
I shook my head without saying anything in response. I really couldn’t disagree with the way Kiara had framed things, not just the idea of inviting her sisters, but the whole affair. As much as I didn’t want anyone to trample on my solitary refuge, I could understand Kiara’s desire to open the doors wide, at least once. Even as I feared that I wouldn’t make it through the whole party without the darkness seeping in, without my fury kicking up a destructive gale, I wanted to do this for her.
“As it doesn’t appear I can dissuade you,” I began, “you’ll need to draft a guest list and consider designs for the invitation.”
A wide smile overtook Kiara’s face, and I would willingly toss reason aside again just to see it. “A first draft,” she announced, placing a folded piece of paper on the table.
I picked up the square and unfolded it. At the top of the page was my personal crest, set against a backdrop of long, twirling curlicues that branched out to frame either side of the page corner to corner.
My perusal was interrupted by Jaxel’s sudden appearance in the doorway. “Your Highness,” he said with a bow.
“Yes?”
“There’s a man here looking for Prince Azhar,” he reported.
“Prince Azahr isn’t here,” I said dismissively.
“He’s rather insistent,” Jaxel added, his face betraying nothing, but his eyes watching closely for any signs of impending anger. “He claims to be an old friend.”
“I have no friends,” I snapped impatiently. I really wanted to keep talking with Kiara and was getting rather tempted to unleash the beast on the bothersome man.
“He has a bat,” Jaxel said, uncharacteristically unnerved. “A rather large one.”
My head instantly snapped up. “Where is he?”
Instead of leading me to the parlor, where I would have expected to meet a waiting guest, Jaxel ushered me toward the front door, indication that he hadn’t even allowed the man to step inside. Kellan had been left to guard him. Both actions were curious, but they quickly became amusing when I recognized who awaited me.
“I should thank you for waiting patiently outside, instead of slaughtering my guards from insult,” I said in greeting.
The Huntsman grinned. “Death is only delivered when necessary, Your Highness,” he replied.
I wasn’t entirely sure what he meant by that, but I wasn’t about to question him, not while he was still made to wait outside at least. I extended a friendly hand and he took it warmly in his, proving he didn’t fear my touch. Aside from the bat surfing the air above us, he carried only a small satchel, his only visible weapons the bow and arrow
s slung across his back and the sharp hunting knife strapped to his thigh. I knew enough about Huntsmen to not be fooled into thinking that was all he traveled with. Surely there were more knives and other lethal objects hidden about his person.
I kept a close eye on him, even as I led him into my study, hoping to keep him away from Kiara. True, I could probably do little to stop the man if he decided on another course, but that didn’t mean I needed to place the very temptation right before him. I offered him a chair and made sure to take the one behind my desk, if only because it was reassuring to have the heavy object between us.
“Some refreshment?” I suggested.
“Not yet,” was his reply.
“How did you find me?” I questioned, my curiosity resting more in the wonder that he had seen fit to seek me out, and not that he had succeeded.
“Yarrow suggested I come this way,” he replied.
“How does he fare?”
“He was well last I saw him,” the Huntsman replied.
“When was that?” I asked.
The Huntsman merely smiled, all the answer I would get. “He sent a message for you,” he told me instead.
I held out my hand to take the expected note, but the Huntsman shook his head. He studied me a moment over steepled fingers. More than anyone, he knew what the beast was capable of, having seen it for himself that night in the woods when my rage brought down two adult ogres unassisted. That alone must have told him all he needed to know about the brute of a man before him. A beast who tried to pass as a man.
From the look in his purple-ringed slate-gray eyes, I doubted he’d missed anything from the moment he’d stepped foot on the grounds till I ushered him into my office. The subtle, almost invisible flicker in his gaze told me he was still gathering information, just from his chair across from me. I was certain he’d already figured out there was a lady in the castle. He wouldn’t have been much of a Huntsman if he hadn’t.
There was something about the man before me that spoke to the beast, something calling it to come nearer. Perhaps, it was only my imagination, a figment produced because I was so desperate for someone to understand what I was going through. Perhaps it was only a sense that the vicious beast and the dangerous Huntsman were kindred spirits, of a sort.
“Yarrow tucked his message into a short parable,” he began with a wry grin.
“I’m listening,” I prompted.
“A butcher once tossed a bone to his faithful dog, who was quite pleased with the treat he’d received. He scampered off to enjoy it and soon came across a small footbridge spanning a creek,” the Huntsman dutifully relayed. “Glancing down, the dog noticed another dog looking up at him, and it, too, clutched a bone in its teeth. Why have one, when I can have two? the dog thought.
“It feinted left and feinted right, but the other dog followed his every move. The dog stilled then suddenly sprang forward, opening his mouth to steal the bone from between the other dog’s very teeth. He dropped his own bone seconds before he hit the water, after which he had to pedal hard to keep from drowning.
“Once safely on shore, the dog looked back and realized his foolishness caused him to lose his treat, let alone miss gaining a second. It had even endangered his life,” he concluded.
“I admit I’m uncertain as to why Yarrow sent this story to me,” I said after some reflection.
The Huntsman smiled. I wondered if a man like him could ever feel real joy, could ever laugh from pure delight, after all he’d seen and been through. We had much in common, the Huntsman and the beast. At the least, neither of us knew much of life’s pleasures anymore as they’d been sufficiently tainted by the lives we led.
“I believe Yarrow is saying that if the prince thinks he can simultaneously hold onto both sides of himself, and all each has to offer, then he will only end up swimming for his life.”
“I hardly think so,” I scoffed.
Surely I wasn’t so foolish. Kiara lived in the same castle as the beast. She was here with me, and she was fighting for me. She was even getting me to consider giving a party, for my birthday of all things, surrounding myself with feasting and people and music.
The Huntsman disagreed. “Has the prince thought of what will be the day he realizes he’s lunging for his own reflection? When he tries to take more, only to lose what he already has?” he questioned. “The beast cannot coexist with the humanity you still cling to. They negate each other by their very nature. You see the reflection and think it bigger, with more to offer, but forget it’s only a wishful projection; intangible and insubstantial. It can never be satisfied, and you’ll sacrifice all that is good in trying to appease it unless you let it go completely, which,” he added quickly, “is what I believe Yarrow wished to convey.”
“Why did Yarrow tell you to come here?”
The Huntsman paused. “He suggested it as a place to spend a few nights indoors,” he replied. “He was quite certain of His Highness’s hospitality.”
How he managed to add in those last few words without the slightest trace of irony is a feat still beyond my ken.
Now it was my turn to study him. I never had the skills of a Huntsman, but I did have elite training and experience with people and politics. The Huntsman gave nothing away in his expression or demeanor, but I knew a carefully worded statement when I heard one. It was the very way people had been talking to me for years, since my anger first started showing itself in torrents of verbal and physical abuse.
“If you wish to spend the night under my roof,” I said firmly, “then I would know your name.”
The Huntsman hesitated, seemed ready to deflect, then thought better of it. “Daimyon,” he conceded. Then, after a pause, added in a much quieter voice, “It’s a name best left unspoken.”
I stared at him a moment, not quite able to discern what he was hinting at or why I should be able to decipher his cryptic statement. I let my mind wander as it searched for any connecting pieces and it left me breathless when it came back.
“The Huntsman who fell out of favor with his queen,” I realized.
“Queen Stella has seen fit to place a rather large bounty on my head,” Daimyon admitted. “Though it’s her primary objective to remove it from my neck at earliest convenience.”
Some of the details of his story were still vague to me, but I knew that at the age of thirteen he’d been the youngest Huntsman to ever serve the queen. For over two years, he’d served her faithfully, distinguishing himself as a man far more capable than the limit of his age would suggest. Then, a year before I graduated the Academy, he had done something to anger his queen. Some claimed he’d refused an order, though no one was quite sure what, so Calladium was no longer safe for him. I now realized I had first met him in the forest mere months after his fall from grace, his exile occurring shortly before my birthday.
“Where have you been until now?” I asked, astonished that the renegade Huntsman sought shelter at my very doorstep. We certainly had more in common than I had heretofore imagined.
“The Dark Forest,” Daimyon told me, and even he couldn’t entirely hide the way his face clouded at the mention. I’d seen for myself how the Dark Forest was a place where beleaguered souls went to die only to be resurrected by the toxic breath of evil. “But as I seek to maintain my soul, I’ve been wandering other lands as well. Yarrow suggested I come here. Thought a kingdom with a banished prince would be an ideal place to lay low for a while, at least until winter thaws. Of course, only if His Highness permits?”
Ostensibly, that meant he’d be well on his way before Kiara’s party, which should help him avoid being seen or recognized then. I wasn’t entirely certain which was worse, harboring a fugitive Huntsman and provoking the wrath of Queen Stella, thereby creating a possibly dangerous and political debacle, or refusing a man who really didn’t have to ask for what he wanted.
I had only just begun to nod when a woman’s screech had us leaping to our feet and reaching for our weapons. Well, I cast about anxiously f
or something I could use, while the knife from Daimyon’s thigh magically materialized in his hand. Daimyon’s body stilled as he listened for something. Then he relaxed his stance and the knife returned to its place.
A sly smile stole across his face when he turned to me and said, “Forgive the intrusion, Highness, but it seems my companion has found yours.”
Kiara, as expected, was outwardly gracious and welcoming of the man who was to be our guest for the rest of winter. Daimyon could make himself rather unremarkable and forgettable when he so desired, so I’m not sure what it was, perhaps the set of his steel gray eyes or that someone so young had hair uncannily reminiscent of a wolf’s streaked fur coat, but Kiara took a few steps closer to me when I introduced them. A naïve, but verily heartwarming assumption that I stood a chance against him. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that even my hulking frame would do little to stop a determined Huntsman, though I would most certainly try.
As it turned out, the bat had merely frightened Kiara when it flew in to say hello. By the time we both rushed into the room—well, Daimyon strolled, I entered with greater urgency—we found her ducking behind a couch, the bat eyeing her curiously as it hovered overhead. Daimyon’s presence seemed enough to call the bat away, and he was even chivalrous enough to offer Kiara a hand up.
“I apologize,” he said with a warmth to his voice I didn’t think him capable of. “I’ll send Bram outside if you wish.”
“Bram?” Kiara questioned.
Daimyon gestured to the upside-down bat taking the measure of the ceiling.
Kiara glanced at me, stepped closer to me again, a move I’m sure wasn’t lost on the ever-astute Huntsman, who really did appear contrite over the incident. No doubt his monstrous bat had been scouting the castle for him. I had no idea how it relayed any information, no Huntsman ever spoke about the bond with his animal brother, but somehow Daimyon just knew.
“Daimyon is an old friend,” I explained to Kiara. “He’ll be staying here a while, if that’s all right, until winter no longer interferes with his travels.”
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