by Chii Rempel
Xander eyes me with a measuring glance. “Indeed, you have.”
I have no idea what to say to that, so I watch the water bravely fight its way over the unyielding ground. A little drop falls on my arm, causing me to look up. It seems the storm has followed the wind’s calling.
“So, what does your uncle-father have to say?” I ask, daring to look back at Xander.
His usually deep green eyes seem pale in the dull light, his porcelain skin even paler in contrast to his black attire. But his locks remain just as golden. Nothing has ever managed to dim their light.
Xander drops his arms next to mine. “He wants to send me away. I guess I don’t fit into his kingly plans.”
I turn to face him properly. “He can’t do that.”
“He can. He’s going to be king.”
“Well okay, he can, but I won’t let him. Not if you don’t want to go. You don’t want to, do you?”
“I … I don’t know. I didn’t think I did, but maybe it would be for the best. I wouldn’t have to see his face daily.”
“You mean you would run like a scared cat and give him free reign over everything.”
“… it sounds undignified the way you put it.”
“Of course it does! Heavens, Xander, you can’t just let him ruin your life. If you want it ruined, you should be doing it yourself, not listening to that immoral prick.”
His face remains stern for a second, then he bursts out laughing.
“Fucking hells, you should see your face, Xavier. Don’t look so bloody grim. I might have considered following his order had I been alone. But I have Arcadia,” he pauses shortly to take a breath, “and I have you. I could never leave you. You’d be a mess without me.” Then he bloody winks at me. Sometimes, I really hate that idiot.
While I am still deciding whether to feel embarrassed or relieved, another drop falls on me. And another. And another. The sky is getting darker by the second, striking up the symphony of the upcoming storm.
“We should go back,” I say.
“What, afraid of getting a little wet?” Xander muses.
“I am already wet, if you haven’t noticed.”
“Oh, I have noticed.”
I don’t know what to do with that comment. He can’t actually be flirting with me. What is the protocol here? Am I allowed to flirt back, even if he’s joking? Will he think I’m joking too, even though I mean it? What if he realises that I’m not joking and freaks out? Why is this so difficult?
Soft drums of thunder interrupt my inner crisis. I throw Xander a glance and find him looking towards the sky. I can’t read his expression. More and more drops start falling, coming down fast and relentless. He lets his head fall back, closing his eyes, visibly enjoying the feeling of cold water on his skin. I could watch him all day. I shouldn’t.
“Last one at Trelburg has to polish the weapons,” I yell, waking Xander from his daydream and make a run for the castle.
7
Xander
We’re soaked through and through when we reach the castle. It’s like somebody left the tap open and the sky is leaking. Running is not really my speciality, so of course Xavier is there way before me. I knew I would lose as soon as he said the words, but of course I had to follow him. It’s us, it’s what we do. One of us starts something childish or stupid – most of the times it’s both – and the other follows suit. That’s how we work, and we work pretty damn good.
My breath is going hard and I have to lean on my knees to regain any sense of posture. Right now, I hate our little arrangement quite a bit.
“You know,” I say between breaths, “that was a stupid bet. I can just ask somebody to do the work for me.”
Xavier just shakes his head and gives me a lopsided grin. He doesn’t look one bit bothered by the running, the bastard.
“I’ll personally make sure that you don’t.”
“That’s not fair. I didn’t even accept the bet, you just started running.”
“You could have stayed.”
“Then you would’ve looked like an idiot, running like a madman all by yourself.”
“So obviously you had to follow me, because you just couldn’t let me have all the fame to myself.”
“Obviously.”
I straighten myself up and comb my hair back with my fingers. My coat and shirt stick to me uncomfortably, the thick black material is absorbing the water like a sponge.
“I guess I’ll be needing another bath,” I mutter, as I squeeze my sleeves and start to tremble. The wind certainly is cold. The storm has brought an unusual darkness with it, denying the day its time with the sun. Fitting, regarding how this day has treated me so far. Good thing I was prepared for disappointment. Although, the way Xavier’s shirt sticks to every of his muscles is turning out to be a little compensation for that.
“I should go see my father,” Xavier exhales. “I bet I’ll be doing rounds till midnight.”
I throw him a sympathetic glance. It’s my fault, I keep getting him into trouble. Maybe going to boarding school would be the best move … He’d be free from my nonsense and could deal with his own problems, instead of being dragged into mine. But who am I kidding? I’m way too dependent on him to leave.
The warmth of the castle is a welcoming change after dealing with the force of nature. After my second bath this day I feel thoroughly soaked. Only now do I realise that I haven’t eaten all day and it’s starting to take its toll. My stomach rumbles and I feel the beginning of a headache. I consider asking the servants to bring something to my room, but they already think I’m too spoiled. Well, I am, there is no denying that, but I should get in their good graces once in a while. Maybe Arcadia will bring me something. She’d never think me anything but spoiled, that ship has sailed a long time ago.
With my bathrobe hanging lazily over my shoulders I go back to my room. The skull immediately draws my attention, sitting comfortably over the fireplace, like it was meant to sit there. Like it didn’t belong to a living, breathing human being once. I’m still no closer to finding out where it came from. Somebody must have left it there in the gardens, whether accidentally or deliberately remains a mystery. It could have been left specifically for Xavier to find, or simply for anybody to find and be rid of it. Questions over questions and no answers in sight. I wonder what the servants thought upon seeing it. Maybe some of them know something? I hear it is always the servants who know a place’s deepest secrets.
I put a hand on the cold bone and look into the black holes that used to be its eyes. Everything boils down to this. To this nameless thing, stripped of gender and wealth, title and class. In the end, we’re all the same. We return to the dirt we came from, no matter if it was mud or gold.
“If you could just speak, my friend, you would save me a sleepless night or two,” I say, gliding my fingers over the top of the head.
“The dead should remain silent.” Arcadias voice startles me so much that I jump. I turn to throw her an accusing look.
“Whoa, cover yourself, loverboy.”
I have no intentions of doing anything of the sort. “I believe I can wear whatever I want in my own rooms, since it is you who always trespasses unannounced.”
“I am your fiancée, I’m allowed to trespass.”
“Well, as my fiancée, you’re also allowed to see me naked.”
“Not before the wedding, you brute. Where’s your sense of modesty?”
“Where you left your sense of taste, my dear.”
A sharp laugh escapes Arcadia’s lips. “Just because I don’t share your unhealthy obsession with dead poetry doesn’t give you the right to judge my taste in literature.”
Shaking her head, she walks past me to plant herself on her usual spot on my divan, but not without slapping my butt with the book in her hand first.
“It’s not dead, it’s classic,” I argue, walking over to my wardrobe. As my perfect outfit for today has been royally ruined by the sky’s demonstration of power, I have to pick
something else to wear. Luckily, I have enough clothes to vest half the town – and most importantly, I have enough black clothes. Today is a day for black, I’ll stick to that. My wardrobe is actually quite simple for a prince. I don’t like fancy ornaments or exotic colours, what I wear is elegant and efficient. And either black or gold.
I decide on simple black pants and a tunic embroidered with raven-wings on the back, that I lay out on my bed. While I go to fix my hair – my locks are a mess when left unattended – I realise that Arcadia has been staring at the skull.
“It’s fascinating, isn’t it?” I ask.
She takes a while to answer, like I just woke her from a dream. But when she turns to me, there’s the usual confident expression on her face. “Fascinating is not the word I would use. Creepy maybe, macabre definitely. I’m trying to understand why you’re keeping it.”
“It’s a link to my father.”
“No, it’s a link to a drunken night and an unlucky find of Xavier’s.” Her book forgotten on the cushions, she gets up and comes over to me. “Xan, you should report it. It could be a murder, you’re not helping anybody by keeping it to yourself. And even if – and that’s a very big if – Xavier actually saw the ghost of your father, what does a stray skull have to do with him? It can’t be his, he was cremated.”
There’s a truth to her words that I don’t like. It’s not that I’m not aware that she’s right, it’s just that I don’t want to hear it. The truth is a cruel thing, unmasked and distinct, and I am not ready to give up the shelter of potential yet.
Before I can say anything that I will later regret, a knock on the door disturbs my thoughts. Arcadia and I both look at it like caught in some secret act, but the tension in the room evaporates immediately, leaving the feeling of relief after settling a dispute, without us ever having had one. I throw her an amused glance, which she returns with a smile of her own, before walking to the door. Rearranging my bathrobe, I open the door with the serious face of a disrupted prince.
Sylva greets me with a matching expression of her own, looking more than displeased to see me in this state of undress.
“Am I interrupting something, my Lord?” she asks, throwing a condemning look at Arcadia behind me.
“Most certainly,” I claim, resisting the urge to accidently let my robe fall open and stun the old maid into silence with the sight of my glorious naked body. I’m not sure her withered heart would survive so much excitement.
“It is not proper for a lady to be in a man’s chambers without supervision,” she grunts.
“And it is not proper for an old wench to stick her nose into other people’s business. Especially when those people are princes.” I lean forward until I’m eye to eye with her and wink. She hates that, wholeheartedly. I can see her eyebrow twitch from the effort of keeping a professional face. Sylva is nothing but professional. And I am anything but a model prince.
“Is there anything you wanted? Or were you just here to marvel at my face?”
That seems to bring her back to the matter at hand and she blinks slowly, before a look of wicked contempt passes her eyes. I don’t like that look. That look usually means nothing good for me.
“The Lady Maleth is waiting for you in the dining room, she wishes to speak to you about the young Mr. Colson.”
“Xavier?” I ask surprised.
Sylva nods sharply. “I expect you intend to dress properly, before going downstairs. Nevertheless, I will speak to the king about a valet. A prince should always have a valet.”
“I’m not a fucking puppet, I don’t need anybody to dress me,” I retort, but she is already leaving. With an annoyed huff I shut the door and let my bathrobe slide completely from my shoulders. It glides soundlessly to the floor.
“Alexander!” Arcadia complains.
“Don’t pretend you don’t like it,” I answer.
My outfit is the only comfortable thing I have going for me, as I make my way downstairs to the dining room. I can only guess what my mother wants to discuss with me about Xavier, but whatever it is, I bet it’s not good. There’s a small voice in my head screaming she knows, she knows you’re in love with him but that’s impossible, nobody knows except for Arcadia and I intend to leave it that way.
I spot Ansgar standing at the double door, motionless like a statue. His uniform is in meticulous order. He looks like the work of a newly discovered artist, who writes himself into history with this marvellous piece of art.
He gives me a smile as I reach him.
“She’s in a bad mood, my Lord,” he says.
“I’m in a bad mood myself,” I answer.
He blinks at me, before saying: “I’d be happy to change that.”
I eye him questioningly. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t mean it that way. But there’s a little gleam in his eyes that makes me wonder. Still, I would never consider doing something … inappropriate with Ansgar. Not because he’s a servant – I couldn’t care less about that – but because I am quite ridiculously in love with someone else.
My mother is sitting alone at the grand table, sipping tea from a little golden-framed cup. It’s the second time this day one of my … I don’t even know what to call them together, guardians, parent plus filthy traitor … wants to speak to me alone. Normally, they avoid having a conversation with me without the other. Together, they can form an impregnable wall of condescension. Alone, they are just people yielding power they don’t know can be overthrown.
“Alexander.”
Her patronising tone makes me remain silent. If I answered, I’d only start the conversation with a fight. Maybe there is still a chance to have a normal talk with someone in this castle without immediately opening the gates of hell. I don’t remember when I started dreading my mother so much. It wasn’t always like this between us, but it couldn’t have only started a month ago, could it? It feels like I haven’t had a proper conversation – a conversation where I’ve felt treated like an equal – with her in ages.
I pull out a chair and sit down comfortably, leaning one elbow on the table and cross my legs. My mother eyes my position disapprovingly but decides to keep quiet about it.
“Do you care for a cup of tea?” she asks.
“No, thanks. I’d much rather have something to eat.”
“You should have joined us for dinner, then.”
“I was busy.”
“Running around with the Captain’s son in the rain, as I’ve heard.”
“Distracting myself from wanting to throttle Claudius.”
Her eye twitches. “You are in no position to call your king by his first name.”
“Not my king and not your business. I can call him whatever I like, he’s not my father.”
Putting down her cup, my mother lets out a dramatic sigh. “He was right, you are becoming impertinent. You are undisciplined and disobedient.” She locks eyes with me and for the first time in forever, I catch a glimpse of the mother I used to love. “I didn’t want to admit it, but we would do best to send you to Withberg. It’ll be good for you. You might come back a proper gentleman.”
Anger flares in me like wildfire. I let my fist drop loudly on the wooden table and rise from the chair, a look of betrayal written clearly on my face. “Of course, you side with him again. Of course you do. Did you even once think about how I might feel? Why I might act like I do? Did you consider that I might still be hurting over the loss of my father – your oh so beloved husband that you’ve seemed to have forgotten rather quickly. But guess what, I haven’t, okay? I miss him. You want me to be a proper gentleman? Act like a proper lady and wife, then I will consider changing my attitude.”
With this I storm out and don’t look back.
8
Arcadia
Xan has locked himself inside his chambers for hours now and refuses to come out. I’ve managed to get him to accept some food I’ve grabbed from the kitchens, but he won’t let me in. He won’t talk to me. I thumb through the pages of the astronomy book in
my hands, but the letters have no intention to form words in my head right now. After reading the same page for the third time, I decide to give up, so I close the book and let my head fall back against the wall, where I’m crouching beside Xan’s door on the floor. I think I know what happened – my father was hinting at some changes in our arrangement, something about postponing the wedding. I think they want to send Xan away. They’d destroy him if they separated him from his home now. From us. Xavier and I are all he has right now, it would kill him to be alone.
“Still not coming out, is he?” Xavier strides towards me and slides down to the floor beside me, two steaming cups of tea in his hand. He passes me one of it with a worried face. “I wish he’d talk to us.”
I accept it thankfully, breathing in the relaxing, herbal aroma. “He’ll talk to us eventually. You know how he is when he is sulking.”
A small smile passes Xavier’s lips. “Yeah, I know.”
Not for the first time do I wonder how long it will still take for him to realise his feelings for Xan. Because I can’t be wrong, he definitely has feelings, and not entirely of the platonic kind. The expression on Xavier’s face when we talk about our hopeless prince is too fond and the looks he gives him when they are together – it’s like Xan is the sun and Xavier made himself the moon, always observing and always out of reach. He’s not even trying to hide that he’s looking. It’s astounding that Xan hasn’t realised it with how much he is looking back. I guess they are both too blinded by their own feelings to admit they could be reciprocated.
“Xavier?” I decide to ask.
“Hm?” He’s looking up from his cup with distant eyes. I pull him back to me with a smile.
“I’ve never had the chance to ask why you’ve been drinking the other night, the night you found the … head. It usually has a reason when you drink yourself into oblivion.”
He clears his throat. “It does,” he says and takes a sip of tea. “It did.”
I wait for him to elaborate on his answer, but his eyes are fixated on the ceiling as if it is the most interesting thing he’s seen in days. I sigh.