by Dan Wingreen
There was almost a childlike earnestness in the way the Dark Prince asked his question. It was that, combined with the fact it was well past midnight and Elias hadn't had much sleep over the past several days, which had him answering with an almost unheard of level of honesty as he looked into the Prince's eyes.
"As I said."
He turned once again, and walked out of the room. Just before the door closed, softly spoken words drifted towards him on the still night air.
"Seems I'm not the only one with expectations to live down to."
Chapter 9
Elias and the Dark Prince fell into a pattern over the next week and a half.
Their days were spent separate, with the Prince spending his Elias-free time doing all sorts of courtly nonsense Elias couldn't possibly care less about, and Elias spending his daylight hours sleeping in—late nights were becoming common—before heading to the library to finish up a few minor projects he'd let slip due to lack of interest. While technically he had agreed to put all his other projects on hold, he'd found during the first day after making the new agreement that there was almost nothing he could do with his notes during the day, and Elias did not do idle well. Besides, he couldn't imagine the Prince caring one way or another whether Elias finished his essay on the alchemical abilities of fossilized tree bark, or his scathing criticism of Modernist Astrological Art Theory.
Their nights, however, were infinitely more productive and, despite everything, were quickly becoming the highlight of Elias's waking hours.
The Dark Prince, though infuriating, was a font of knowledge Elias never dreamed he'd have access to. A font which seemed very eager to open up about anything Elias wanted to know after that first night. Even if he tried his best to be annoying while doing it.
"Of course, no matter how great your Great Library is, the information in it about my kingdom and the Mournhelm itself is laughably incorrect and almost painfully inconsistent."
To that, Elias had raised an eyebrow. "You say that like you think me unaware."
"Oh, I know you're aware, but I wonder just how aware you are of how terrible your sources are?"
This conversation happened during their third evening since the Agreement, as the Dark Prince insisted on calling it, and it was one of the increasingly rare times when Elias could hold back from giving the Prince the reaction he sought.
"Of course, I am," he said evenly. "I've read more than enough history to know that all it takes is the hint of a dark past and a name, which could be construed, by someone of a nervous disposition, to be evil, for an object to be labeled as the next coming of the Runestaff of Agamemnon. Every book in our library which mentions the Helm uses secondary sources at best, and they all have the alarming tendency to reference each other in their bibliographies."
The Prince had looked rather put out. "Why must you ruin my fun, Elias?"
Elias had just stared back impassively, secretly enjoying the way the Dark Prince, supposedly the literal spawn of evil, pouted like a child denied a sweet.
Although he did recover quickly.
"Does that at least mean you'll believe what I tell you?" he asked a moment later, a small smirk on his lips.
It was a smirk Elias found himself almost wanting to return. It had become somewhat of a game over the evenings they'd spent together for Elias to question the validity of everything the Prince told him. Not that Elias wasn't skeptical in truth, but he was able to admit, after the first day, he did it as much to be contrary as he did to determine if he could believe the Prince.
It seemed he was right about certain royal attitudes being transmissible.
"Of course not."
The Dark Prince grinned, and then launched into the history of the Mournhelm itself; abridged, of course. And like he had for the past three nights, Elias listened raptly and believed mostly.
It turned out, not so surprisingly, that the Mournhelm originated in the kingdom that shared its name. Thousands of years ago, in what certain scholars tend to call the "Unknowable Age", in an effort to deflect blame for their thin historical texts away from their poor dedication to research, the evil elf named Ebonrell crowned himself the first Dark King, after successfully committing the genocide of his entire race and scorching much of their once green and lush kingdom nearly to dust with the fires of his volcanoes. He, in turn, was eventually overthrown by an uprising of his human slaves and they, in turn, were subjugated by the alchemists among their number who, also in turn, created the Mournhelm in the fires of Ebonrell's volcanoes, the Mournful Trio—"Are you starting to notice a pattern, Elias?"—so they could have access to elven magic. Then they promptly killed each other off fighting over it. The Helm was lost deep in a dungeon until the Dark Prince's father, who was an adventuring scholar in his youth, uncovered it, raised his fortress with its magic, and became the new Dark King. He then gained control of the creatures which populated the land and ruled the remaining human population, bringing them out of poverty and hardship—"if not the gloomy atmosphere".
It was, Elias thought conservatively, quite possibly the greatest historical discovery of the last hundred years. While many less lazy scholars had discovered a wealth of information on the so-called Unknowable Age, there was almost nothing known about the race of elves other than they existed once, they no longer exist, and Ebonrell was the name of one of their most powerful leaders. If everything the Dark Prince said was true, Elias had just been given the answer to one of the greatest questions that historians had ever asked, and it was given him by a smirking royal who sounded like he was reciting a particularly boring school lesson.
"And can you actually prove any of this?" Elias asked, his throat dry.
"Of course. There are books back at my father's fortress from those days. I'll see if I can get him to lend you some of them."
Needless to say, that was the last night Elias was at all reluctant to work on the Prince's book. In fact, when he wasn't working on it, his days seemed to positively drag.
"You keep referring to your father as evil," he stated several nights later, "yet he seems to have gone out of his way to raise the standard of living for his subjects instead of oppressing them or torturing them or other such evil nonsense. Why?"
"Oh, the torture happens, Elias, don't think it doesn't, but only to those who deserve it and even then it's rare because most of the population is content. That's also why my father worked so hard to improve his subjects' lives. It's much easier to rule over a group of people who have it better than they used to than it is to rule a group of people who are being tortured while their king drinks blood and cackles on his throne of skulls."
Elias even found he was interested in the Prince's life as well.
"So, you never knew your mother?" he asked, his face completely blank as an old twinge of pain flared up in his chest.
"No." The Dark Prince shrugged easily. "My father wanted a child, so he found a healthy, attractive woman who was happy to do her duty to her king then be on her way. He paid her handsomely after my birth."
Elias frowned. He wiped the expression away quickly before the Dark Prince could notice. "So you never missed her?"
"How can I miss someone I never met?" the Prince had asked in return. "If you're asking if I ever felt the lack of a mother, then the answer is no. It's hard to miss something you've never had; even harder when half the kingdom is made up of species with wildly different family structures. I was never even aware that I was lacking anything until I was told exactly how the reproductive process works." He smirked slightly, but if he thought to make a comment, he managed to contain himself. "My father raised me well enough, and there were ample maids and Erinyes nurses to take over when he was busy, although I was never quite able to get used to the Erinyes' breath."
Elias didn't know what to say to that.
"You seem surprised," the Prince had said.
He gave Elias one of those strange looks Elias had been noticing more and more as they spent time together. He had no
idea what they meant, but they always made him feel equal measures of caution and what could almost be called wistfulness.
"You shouldn't be. There is sometimes much more to a person than a name or a glance can tell you."
And that was what brought Elias to his most surprising realization. It wasn't just the great historical knowledge, or the culture of a foreign land, or the scholarly interest in the Dark Prince's life that Elias found himself drawn to. It was also the Prince himself.
For every ten teasing statements or mocking laughs, for every five off-color comments or criticisms of Elias's attitudes, there was one hint of…something else, something more than his title or the way he presented himself. Something genuine. There was a thoughtfulness to the Prince that Elias was unused to in nobility. A desire to know the why of things, instead of just that they were still working well enough so he could ignore them. He had a sense of humor beyond laughing at other people's—Elias's in particular—expense, one that had surprised laughter out of Elias on more than one occasion. Small hints of someone Elias might not completely disdain. There were moments when Elias actually enjoyed the time he spent in the Dark Prince's company. Moments when he could almost see the appeal of friendship for the sake of friendship, of spending time with another person because he wanted to, and not because he had to.
That was not to say every moment spent with the Dark Prince was enjoyable. Far from it, actually. As informative as their evenings were, and as surprisingly agreeable as the Prince could be on occasion, he was still absolutely infuriating most of the time. Everything about nobility that Elias scorned and refused to waste his time on—the arrogance, the vanity, the conceit—were all very much present in the Dark Prince. That, and the fact Elias seemed to have less and less control over his reactions to the Prince as time went by, often left Elias completely off balance. Where his emotions in the past had mostly resembled a rock, unyielding and unchanging except by the slow erosion of a steady wind, when he was with the Dark Prince, they more resembled a small fishing boat caught in a storm which had sprung up out of nowhere. And he still had no idea why. For the first time since he was a child, he was unsure of himself.
And that was what Elias hated most of all.
* * * *
Elias was not what one would call a vain man, but he did pride himself on being neat. In a profession where he was constantly in danger of ruining his clothes with a spilled inkwell or, even worse, smudging ink that had not yet dried with an errant sleeve and rendering his hard work useless, staying neat was something of a necessity. Even when the last thing he wanted to do was waste his time cleaning and tying his overlong hair back with three ribbons—"All the best scholars have long hair, boy!" the Head Librarian had told him when he was very young, "No one takes you seriously if you look like a soldier just back from the wars."—or properly arranging the inexplicably complicated scholar's robes so they hung just right. On this particular morning his routine was even more bothersome that usual.
He finally, after his last meeting with the Dark Prince, had enough written down that he could get started with the preliminary arranging of his first draft and start taking notes on what to include and what to leave out. After spending the last week and a half trying to pass the days with what amounted to busywork, of all things, Elias was more than eager to return to doing something productive.
Which was why he never noticed the nervous Crown Prince standing just outside his room.
"Elias!"
Elias froze just ever so barely managing not to scream aloud. He spun, the bottom of his robes twisting around his legs just enough so that tripping over them was a possibility, and glared at the Crown Prince. Said prince, who had apparently been leaning against the wall next to the door Elias had just exited from, rushed over to him.
"Elias!" he said again. He opened his mouth, then froze, seeming to realize that something was off with Elias. "Did I startle you?"
"No," Elias snapped as his heartbeat slowed to something approaching normality.
"Are you sure?" the Prince asked. He studied Elias closely, a small frown on his face. "Because you seemed rather startled. But then, you never get startled, so I'm not actually sure what it would look like on you."
"Highness." Elias's distinct lack of patience bled into his tone, which only annoyed him even more. "What are you doing outside my room?"
The hall was somewhat crowded in the morning, but the servants, couriers, and other scholars rushing by gave Elias and the Prince a wide berth.
"What? Oh! Yes!" Immediately the Prince's face twisted into an expression of concern. "Are you all right?"
Elias stared at him. "What?"
The Crown Prince bit his lip in a way that looked endearing on children, yet incredibly ridiculous on a fully grown royal. "Are you all right? I…" He tried to surreptitiously look Elias over, then seemed to realize he'd just been doing it openly a moment before and dropped the pretense. "You look fine, but—"
"Highness," Elias interrupted. "What. Are. You. Doing. Here?"
The Prince blinked in confusion. "Looking you over for damage, of course."
Elias held back a sigh. "And why would I be damaged?"
"Because," the Prince said slowly, "you've been spending your nights in his rooms."
Elias blinked. "You mean the Dark Prince?"
"Yes!" The Crown Prince exploded, his arms flailing wildly. The servants pretended not to notice. "I haven't seen you for weeks! Not since you yelled at me for confronting him about his unacceptable treatment of you. Then I find out that you'd gone back to him and no one has seen you and I thought he must have something on you to force you back into his foul presence and that you must be suffering the most awful of abuses and I will have his head if he's hurt you in any way!"
The Prince paused to gulp down a much needed breath.
"Highness." Elias sighed. He was going to have another headache before this conversation was through, he just knew it. "It hasn't even been two weeks since we last saw each other. We have gone longer without interacting before—"
"Not when you're tutoring me!"
"Your exams are over, Highness. There is nothing to tutor you for."
"What about the retests?"
Elias crossed his arms and looked pointedly up at the Prince over his glasses. "If you'd studied on your own like I told you there shouldn't be any retests."
The Crown Prince had the grace at least to look chagrined. "I am very busy, you know…" He shook his head. "But that doesn't matter! What about your abuse at the hands of that brute?"
"Brute?" Elias raised an eyebrow. "Highness, you outweigh him by at least fifteen pounds."
"Really?" The Prince brightened. "Do you think I could take him?"
"And," Elias said, ignoring the question, "I am not being abused. I am helping him write a book. We've already had a conversation about this."
"Yes, but that was before you were so disconsolate that you refused to leave your room—"
"I was not disconsolate and I only stayed in my room for half a day."
The Crown Prince raised two skeptical eyebrows, but he seemed to at least have the common sense not to press the issue. "Regardless, you've never been so upset that you locked yourself away for any length of time. Not since we were children, Elias. It worried me. Especially when you wouldn't tell me what happened and only yelled at me for trying to stand up for you."
Interfering in things which had nothing to do with him was actually how Elias had put it, but he decided not to make an issue of it. Not if he wanted any chance of getting to the library while it was still light out.
"You have no reason to be worried," Elias said in what he hoped was a placating tone. "The Dark Prince may be many things, but abusive is not one of them."
I wonder exactly how much I'm lying right now…
"But—"
"And if you spin one more inane conspiracy theory about him 'having something on me' or any other such ridiculousness, it will be a lot longer than two week
s before we speak again. You should not make judgments based on hearsay and wild imaginings. It will not serve you well when you are king."
The Prince closed his mouth. He studied Elias again, although he couldn't tell whether the Prince was hoping to find some sign of abuse or mistreatment or not. Finally, and very reluctantly, the Crown Prince nodded.
"All right, Elias. If you say you're all right and that nothing is going on, then I'll believe you."
Elias let out a small, undetectable breath. "Thank you, Highness."
The Crown Prince smiled wryly. "Anything for you, Elias."
Elias barely stopped himself from shaking his head at the Prince's sentimentality. "Then you should let me get back to my work—"
"Anything except that, actually." The Crown Prince's smile stretched into a hopeful grin.
"Excuse me?" Elias raised an eyebrow.
"Well, I can't let you go without inviting you to my birthday ball, now can I?"
"Highness," Elias said patiently. "Since I refuse every year, I would think that would be something you could most definitely do."
"Oh, come now, Elias!" the Prince whined. "After all the stress I've been through these past weeks—"
"A week and four days."
"—I think you owe me one tiny little ball."
"Highness, I despise balls. I despise nobility. And I refuse to be locked in a room with both of those things just because you let your imagination run away from you."
"But you never come!"
"And I see no reason to buck tradition. Good morning, Highness."
With a small bow Elias turned and walked away.
"But what about my retests?" the Prince shouted after him.
"I left you books," Elias said, his voice echoing back through the hall. "Study them on your own."
He turned the corner and picked up his pace. Fortunately, the Prince didn't seem inclined to follow him.
Unfortunately, he wasn't going to be the only impediment on Elias's journey to the library.