by Dan Wingreen
And judging by the look on said prince's face, he knew it, too.
"Elias…"
Elias smiled. "I'll finish the final draft when we arrive at Mournhelm, and then you can use your magic to duplicate it. I've already asked the Librarian to make room for it in the library, along with any other books of yours. He's also agreed to send copies to libraries in other kingdoms, along with his personal recommendation and seal of approval as a legitimate historical work. All you have to do is make enough copies, and you'll be on your way to being the foremost Mournhelmian scholar on the continent."
He looked into deep blue eyes and placed his hand on top of the Prince's.
"You're giving me a life I could only have dreamed of, Highness. The least I can do is help give you your dream in return."
The Dark Prince swallowed roughly, then turned his hand over and laced their fingers together.
"Thank you, Elias," he said, his voice suspiciously watery.
"You're welcome, Highness."
The Prince let out a shaky laugh, then glanced away quickly and wiped at his eyes with his free hand before pulling Elias into a kiss that had nothing to do with lust. It was brief, and when they pulled away from each other, Elias saw nothing but happiness in the Prince's eyes. An emotion he was sure was mirrored in his own.
"Call me Hubert," the Prince said softly.
Elias tilted his head in confusion. "What?"
The Prince grinned. "It's my name. Hubert North. Junior, I suppose, though I greatly prefer 'the second'. Sounds more imperial, and though my only empire may be a literary one, I refuse to suffer the indignity of being known as Emperor Junior. Even if only you and father are allowed to use my name."
"Your name is Hubert North?"
The Prince nodded. "The second."
Elias stared at him in complete incredulity. It was just so…common. Especially for a Dark Prince. Especially for the Dark Prince. Even the Crown Prince's proper name was more regal.
And why does that name seem so familiar?
Elias's eyes widened as he made the connection. "Those were the Dark King's books?"
The Prince raised an eyebrow. "You've lost me."
"The first day we met, you were looking for books written by Hubert North. Hubert North is the Dark King?"
It actually made sense, now that he thought about it. Hubert North was a scholar who had lived around two hundred years ago and specialized in researching and recovering ancient artifacts most thought were lost to time, if they'd ever existed at all. If ever there was an historian who was going to discover the Mournhelm, it would have been him.
He was also Ellingish. Which also made sense, given how Mournhelm seemed to follow several of Ellington's customs. It also explained the Dark Prince's perfect accent.
"You remember the first time we met?" the Prince asked.
Elias was drawn out of his revelations. "What? Yes, of course."
The Dark Prince—Elias couldn't quite think of him as Hubert yet—grinned. "I knew you were infatuated with me from the first moment we met."
Elias couldn't hold back his laughter. "Oh, I assure you, I despised you in the beginning, Highness. You are just too infuriating to ever forget."
"Hubert." The Dark Prince corrected him cheerfully. "'I despised you in the beginning, Hubert'."
Elias shook his head. "You don't look like a Hubert."
"Ah, but that's why it's such a perfect name. It's devious, like a Dark Prince should be. No one would ever suspect a Hubert could be so charming and attractive."
"Or modest."
"Or such a skilled lover." The Prince leaned in so close Elias could feel his breath on his lips. "I could probably make you scream my name in less than five minutes."
Elias's breath caught in his throat at the determined gleam in the Prince's deep blue eyes and, as he felt his heart start to race, he once again had the feeling he was looking at an image of his future, frozen in time. He could so easily picture a life of banter and teasing just like this. A life of laughter and lust and love and happiness he could never have had with anyone else. He saw it as if it were laid out in front of him. A hundred different princes and a hundred different Eliases, all wearing the exact same expression of love and contentment.
A portrait of his life as the husband of Hubert North. The second.
"I'm looking forward to it."
Epilogue
History, as they say, is written by the victors. And while the implications of such a saying are clear, when the victorious army boasts a scholar zealously dedicated to truth and fact as the consort of its leader, any history penned by said consort must be given the appropriate benefit of the doubt. But even the most thorough and dedicated history, penned by the most determined and unbiased of scholars, cannot be expected to relay every experience of every person who lived during any particular point in time. It is, sadly, inevitable that certain events will fall through the cracks.
Events such as the fate of a member of the Royal Drammatical Couriers who, after a drunken revel through the deepest, coldest part of the castle, stumbled upon the love of his life hard at work in her morgue, and abruptly turned in his fashionable uniform to pursue the art of medical examination. It is said there were never as few unsolved murders in the castle for as long as the husband and wife duo plied their trade, just as it is said there was scarcely a night when the sounds of singing could not be heard echoing throughout the catacombs; one voice clear and pitch perfect, the other harsh and reluctant, though somehow captivating nonetheless.
Events such as the rise to prominence of Errol Dunbar, the most skilled and accomplished artist and illuminist in the history of Ellington. It is said he honed his skills during his time as a scribe in the Great Library, studying the paintings and illuminations of the masters of ages past, while neglecting the menial scribe work he was assigned. Of course, whispers such as those are the purview of nobility, whilst the gossip of his more common admirers usually focused on the curiosity of one who is rich, famous, and handsome, yet had never been known to take so much as a single lover. Rumors abounded of secret harems or reproductive deformity, but almost none spoke of a man who left the castle some two years after the departure of the Dark Prince, nursing a heart so broken it was a wonder he ever survived. And, years later, after the more momentous events which followed the Return of the Dark Prince, almost none understood the true import of the man who suddenly came to live with Dunbar, or why this man never allowed himself to be seen in the light of day without a heavy cloak veiling his face with the deepest of shadows—though never quite deep enough to hide his golden curls or heavy enough to bend his regal bearing.
As for the events which are more well-known? Much has been written about them over the years and centuries following the Two Day War, yet for over a thousand years the books written by the Dark Consort have been held up as the only true accounting of that time, despite the efforts of many to rewrite history for their own ends.
The years that followed after the Dark Prince took a scholar named Elias Sutterby back to the Dark Kingdom of Mournhelm were not kind to the White Kingdom of Ellington. Within the first year, the King took ill, and within a month that illness had taken his life, leaving the Crown Prince to ascend to the throne. Those who thought they knew the new king and had prepared for a reign all expected to be disastrous, found themselves appalled at how they had underestimated the self-destructive incompetence of their new ruler. Heartbroken over Elias's rejection, unprepared for the loss of his father, and dealing with the slow but inevitable unraveling of his newfound romance with someone well below the new king's station, there had perhaps never been a person less suited for a throne.
Within five months, every noble who had ever slighted him found themselves punished in petty, childish ways. Rumors were assumed to be facts, and spread through the court where anyone with a grudge could take their pound of flesh. Office holders, such as Commander Spellings, were stripped of their authority if they so much as questioned a royal order. Corruptio
n, which had previously been politely ignored, was now encouraged, as long as those who were corrupt plied the new king with flattering lies of his wisdom and kindness, and tales of treachery by those whose advice he would have done well to heed. During this troubled time, the only person who could get him to see reason—however temporarily—was his lover. Yet he was only one man, and every man has a breaking point. The King's lover's came when the King, under pressure to secure the future of his line, decided to take to wife the daughter of the Earl of Redmond. Devastated, and unable to get the King to see reason, the man fled the castle in the middle of a moonless night, taking nothing with him but three identical sets of robes and a broken heart.
Five days later, Ellington held the only wedding during which the King cried tears of loneliness.
The King's—and the kingdom's—deterioration sped quickly after the royal wedding. Though his inability to perform in the bedchamber was caused by his lack of attraction to his wife—and women in general—he quickly blamed her family for producing a woman he could not lay with and had them imprisoned and stripped of their lands and titles. In a fit of rage, the nobility threatened war if they were not immediately released, thus seemingly confirming the untrue suspicions his unscrupulous advisers had been fostering for months. In a stroke of unexpected tactical thinking, the King released his wife's family and restored them to their previous status, placating the nobility with apologies and lavish parties, all while he raised and armed the royal army for war.
Remembering the words of both his former best friend and his father, the King appealed to the old friendship between the Kings of Ellington and the Great Dragon, which lived in the mountains. The dragon, remembering the insults heaped upon it during the King's sixteenth birthday, refused outright. The King, predictably, reacted poorly and with little thought ordered his newly outfitted army to attack the dragon's home.
Three hours after the attack saw the King's army utterly destroyed, and the castle and the City of White ablaze with dragon fire. After seeing this latest example of how his king's folly brought nothing but pain and hardship to his country, Champion of the Realm, Sir Elbert Knight—who, unbeknownst to all, had become close with several members of the Mournhelmian nobility during the months he spent there—attempted to organize what resistance he could after writing to his friends in Mournhelm, begging for their assistance. He was discovered shortly thereafter and executed as a traitor, but events that wouldn't be so easily stopped were already set in motion.
The Dark King, who had long been watching Ellington, had finally seen his patience and years of planning pay off. The inevitable failure of the young king's rule was complete, and the army he had been amassing for over a decade was no longer a conquering force, but a legion of liberators, ready to swoop in and save the people of Ellington from a mad despot.
After all, as the Dark Prince had once told Elias long before their courtship began, the best way to rule a population was to make sure their lives were better off than they were before. And it wasn't hard at all to improve the lives of a people living in a burning kingdom with no champion.
What followed would forever be known as the Two Day War, named so because it took less than forty-eight hours after entering Ellington for the Dark Army to have the kingdom fully under Mournhelmian control, complete with a deposed king in the dungeons, a grateful population cheering Mournhelm's name, and oaths of allegiance from battered and weary nobles who didn't have the strength nor the will to contend for a throne which none had the slightest chance of holding. And so it was that the short reign of the last White King came to an end, and the Dark Prince—whose name has never and will never be put into writing—who led the Mournhelmian army to victory, was crowned the First Dark King of the White Kingdom of Ellington, with his husband Elias Sutterby as his Dark Consort.
Their reign was a long and prosperous one, with more than enough money coming in from trading their overflowing larders—after the disbanding of the agricultural council—to a neighboring Mournhelm—which had long been in need of an outside source of food for its people—to hold them over until the other kingdoms of the continent got over their fear and renewed their own trade agreements with Ellington. Corruption and disloyalty were dealt with harshly, but there were few complaints among the people, especially when the Dark Consort ordered schools and libraries built all across the kingdom, waking the long-forgotten Ellingish tradition of free education and the sacred exchange of knowledge from ages of slumber. Quality of life was greatly improved, even compared to the time before the last White King's rule, and, for the most part, everyone was content. Or as content as people can get, at the very least. Some more than others.
The Head Librarian lived to the improbably old age of one hundred and fifteen, watching over his library and the changes his kingdom underwent with scathing commentary covering a not-so-hidden approval. Especially when the new Dark King made it a crime to so much as write the words Finneas Melquhart.
Lady Elladora, freshly divorced and handed an obscene amount of vacant titles and lands—over the strenuous objections of the Dark Consort—was suddenly the most eligible lady in the entire kingdom, a fact which delighted her, and her father, to no end. She never did convince either of her new rulers to call her their sibling, but she made up for that by eventually marrying the slightly dim, yet strangely fertile, young Duke Hightower—whose father had finally succumbed to the Rot after holding out for an impressive two years—and naming them the godparents of every single one of her eleven children.
Not a single one of their children suffered from the slightest sign of inbreeding.
William Ellington, formerly known as the White King, was tried and found guilty of numerous crimes against his kingdom and people, and was sentenced to execution. Unbeknownst at the time, yet revealed decades later in the Dark Consort's The Entirely Avoidable, Yet Utterly Necessary, Conquest of Ellington; The Revised Edition, was that Elias, after seeing the broken ruin of a man who was completely unrecognizable as his once almost-friend, intervened on his behalf, reducing his sentence to banishment from all lands ruled by either Dark King, on pain of death. They spoke for the first time that day since Elias had left with the Dark Prince, privately, for almost an hour. What passed between them was never recorded, but the former king left the castle with tears in his eyes and determination in his carriage. The guards were ordered not to follow him, so it was never known where he went. Some say he left to revenge himself upon the Great Dragon for causing the chaos that led to his downfall. Some say he was immediately waylaid by vengeful commoners and murdered in a back alley lynching. And some say he never actually left the White City and instead took the advice given to him during that last conversation and went to beg forgiveness from his lover, whoever he may be, so they might live out their lives together in anonymity. Considering his close ties to the Dark Consort, and his high profile involvement in events which were otherwise meticulously documented, it is an historical curiosity that his ultimate fate is completely unknown.
As for the Dark King of Ellington and Elias? They lived and ruled together for decades, their story told and retold with varying degrees of accuracy and added romanticism, much to Elias's disgust and the Dark King's delight. Eventually, they adopted a young boy who had been orphaned in an accident during the reconstruction of the castle, and raised him as their son and heir. The first in a long dynasty of kings—blood-related and adopted, since no heir was ever disqualified from succession for refusing to take a spouse—which ruled Ellington until a time when the world moved beyond the need for kings and rulers. And they loved—and fought—each other, as only they could, for the rest of their lives.
Conspiracy theories of magically induced immortality, faked deaths, and an eternity spent watching their progeny through the ages from the Dark King's fortress in Mournhelm aside, of course. And really, what kind of rational person would believe something so obviously ridiculous?
The End
About the Author
&n
bsp; Dan lives in Ohio (as people do) with his boyfriend, parents, and two rapidly aging dogs. His three favorite things are Star Wars, winter, and bunnies. His least favorite thing is pizza. Since the age of twelve, it's been his dream to write something good enough to get published and, after over a decade of unforgivable procrastination, he actually managed to get it done. Thankfully, what he finally ended up writing turned out much better than the Spider-Man/Eminem fan fiction he wrote in sixth grade. His new dream, which will hopefully take less time to achieve, is to own two Netherland Dwarf bunnies named Bunnedict Thumperbatch and Attila the Bun.
Twitter:
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Email:
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Titles by Dan Wingreen
Available from Fireborn Publishing:
The Autobiography of the Dark Prince as Written by Elias Sutterby
A WIZARD'S QUEST
Awakening Aidan
Awakening Arthur