“Of course you do have the power, but if you’ve learned about history, you’ll know that sometimes, no amount of power could save you from whatever Fortune decides to throw your way.”
Alarick watched his friend and long-time confidante, cocking his head as he pondered. “You’ve been in a situation like this before, haven’t you?” he asked after a moment’s pause.
“In a way, I suppose.”
“You can see into the future?”
Amara chuckled, shaking her head. “I’m no fortune-teller, Love, but I can sense danger, whether or not it’ll happen, based on the present.” She paused and waved a hand in a vague gesture, as though she were struggling to find the right words. “What happens now—what you do now—will always have consequences. Basic law of cause and effect.”
“You never told me your story. All I know about you is that you come to me when no one else is around, and you seem to understand me more than I understand myself. Were you in trouble in the past? Is that why you’re scarred?”
“Why talk about me? It’s all too late for that, Love. Worry about yourself.”
“I’m the prince!”
“I was a princess. It didn’t help me.”
Amara looked at him, stricken, before turning away and fading into the shadows. The last words she uttered before leaving Alarick alone were, “I’d have liked to have loved. Promise me to exercise caution in what you do, and you won’t be denied your dreams.”
When Alarick finally settled into bed moments later, he continued to puzzle over Amara’s odd and rather extreme warning. But memories of the kiss he shared with Roald easily swept everything aside, and Alarick drifted off with Roald’s name on his lips, Roald’s face the last—and only—image in his mind.
Chapter Five
Alarick turned eighteen. He was thrown into combat training at fifteen, unsurprisingly, for Lambrecht claimed to be eager to see his “adopted” son rise well above the ranks in the battlefield.
“Let’s see if he’s made of sterner stuff than that, shall we?” he said with a wicked gleam in his eyes, mimicking one of Bittan von Eisenberg’s famously affected gestures with his lace handkerchief loosely held in a limp hand, while the small group of visiting nobles gathered in the gold and white salon with him broke out in mocking laughter.
“Perhaps he’ll prance his way into battle!” someone said.
“Or swoon to distract enemies!”
“No, he’ll blind them with gaudy suits!”
“Offer his pretty, firm little ass in lieu of surrender!”
Lambrecht, relishing the attention and certainly well on his way to drinking himself under the nearest ornate table, waved a languid hand theatrically. “The boy’s my son! No one would dare laugh at him! Be quiet, all of you!”
Of course, that only elicited another round of raucous laughter among those gathered. Repetitive questions as to why Lambrecht refused to simply send the little bastard prince away were dismissed, but just about everyone assembled that time knew in their hearts that Lambrecht kept Alarick around as a way of tormenting Ulrike—a daily living reminder of her sins. Kings, after all, could do whatever they damned well pleased without the annoyance of rebuke from anyone with whom he surrounded himself.
“Not his son!” the mad queen screamed from her bedroom window in the meantime. “Never his!”
Her maids-in-waiting had grown quite tired of running after their confused sovereign, but someone surely needed to keep her in line. Locking her away in any of the third storey rooms was the last resort, which had become more and more common lately. Tired and exasperated murmurs of “Why can’t she just throw herself out the damned window and be done with it?” among these ladies were tolerated by and large, and no threats of execution for treason were made against them.
If at all, Lambrecht appeared to enjoy these complaints and vindictive wishes. “Now, now,” he’d tell whoever brought these dark mutterings to his attention—usually newly hired servants, who’d yet to be taught the high art of heartlessness in court. “You know what these poor women endure day after day. Allow them some room to unburden themselves in whichever manner suits them.” He’d smile dispassionately. “Do you really think them to be so cruel as to mean what they say?”
But even he had limited reserves of patience for a sick woman, and he at length ordered the queen to be moved indefinitely to her beloved cottage in the wooded garden.
“She loves it there, anyway,” he said, chuckling at his cleverness. “That was where she enjoyed her most productive hours. It’d be cruel to deny an ill queen her smallest pleasures, don’t you think?”
His friends certainly agreed, and it was to the court’s great relief that Ulrike was whisked away in the night.
Alarick, in the meantime, showed enough interest in combat to hone his skills, and he was successful in what he did. How could he not be? He was the prince, after all, and princes never failed. Never.
And he always got his way in things.
“I only want Roald,” he said. He refused everyone else for his training partner. To him his wishes made perfect sense. Why not train with his best friend? Someone he trusted with his life? Someone, he deeply believed, was his equal in everything?
His demands puzzled his weapons master, who saw that Roald was one of the weaker students when it came to hand-to-hand combat maneuvers. “Surely you want someone who’s more your equal in fighting level, Your Highness?” the man asked.
“No, just Roald.” Alarick ignored his superior and turned to his friend, beckoning to him with a smile. “Come!” he called out, brandishing his sword. “Let’s see how long you last!”
“You’re an arrogant bastard,” Roald whispered, grinning, as he drew his weapon.
Roald never complained when he was defeated again and again, though the prince was one year his junior, a fact for which Roald had always been teased by his peers during these exercises. He seemed to enjoy it, actually, lying on the ground with Alarick standing above him, his sword touching Roald’s throat. When no one was looking, Roald would grow bolder, suggestively dragging a finger along the flat surface of Alarick’s blade, a faint smile curling his full lips. The prince’s eyes would narrow; they’d sparkle. Unspoken messages tended to be heard loudly and clearly between the two.
The weapons master, a bit of an idiot, never cared for the arrangement and attempted to argue some sense into the prince.
“You’re too mismatched, Your Royal Highness!”
“Then work on Roald till he’s at my level,” Alarick retorted before turning away and leading his friend out. Why were adults so excruciatingly thick? Why would an eighteen-year-old boy’s reasoning be more grounded in logic compared to his grizzled masters?
Why, even Roald’s father eyed the two with increasing concern whenever he visited the compound to check up on his son’s progress. Alarick had seen the way the viscount would watch them as they practiced, his eyes fixed and determined as he followed every movement. The way the old man’s jaw visibly clenched, the way his complexion turned white (sometimes red), the way his hands balled into fists—the simmering agitation was palpable even from a good enough distance.
After their practice, Roald would be called away, and Alarick would watch father and son engage each other in a hushed argument. It would obviously be about Roald and Alarick, judging from the way Roald’s father would gesticulate in Alarick’s direction without looking at the prince. Indeed, he wouldn’t dare. The argument would always end with Roald openly rebelling against his father and walking away with a dismissive wave of a hand. It was a bold gesture of defiance and disrespect, for which Roald paid once he returned home.
“I wish you wouldn’t challenge him like that,” Alarick said, frowning at the bruises on his friend’s arms and sometimes face.
“He understands nothing,” Roald replied. Sometimes he’d break out in bitter laughter. Sometimes he’d fume the same way as his father—with clenched jaw, balled fists, and changing complexion. �
�Don’t interfere, Alarick. This is between me and him.”
It was tempting to step in between feuding father and son, and it would be so easy to do that as well, being the prince. Alarick respected Roald’s wishes, however, and fought to remain civil with the viscount.
The two friends had now moved on from the watering-hole to the small glade they’d decided to mark for their own in the pleasure garden. Situated somewhere east of the watering-hole, the glade seemed to be made by unearthly beings, for the small clearing was alive with lush, deep green grass and a circle of trees and flowering shrubs, whose foliage and blooms showered the perimeter of the clearing with vibrant colors. The sun’s light touched everything with magical golden fingers, turning the glade into a vividly hued paradise.
There Alarick and Roald spent most of their spare hours, talking, sleeping, and simply watching the sky as they stretched out over the grass. There they explored each other as well. Conversations recounting that day’s adventures faltered and died. Quiet moments turned awkward. Hands touched, tentatively at first and growing bolder by the second when no resistance met their movements. Soon they were kissing. One boy atop the other. One boy sitting on the other’s lap. One boy simply leaning close. Both knew the next logical step, but neither felt bold enough to take it, at least not yet.
Instead their hands—earlier gripping heavy, sturdy weapons of war—fumbled clumsily with strings, lace, or ribbons, moving between layers of fabric. Fine, delicate movements rendered their fingers awkward and inarticulate. They stifled embarrassed laughter with mouths and tongues as they touched sensitive body parts, grazing stiffened nipples with nervous fingers, stroking flanks and thighs with clammy hands. Breeches and stockings pulled down and bunching around knees or lower legs, the young lovers took each other’s erections in hand, one boy following his partner’s lead as they stroked and pleasured. Once a rhythm was set, however, the self-consciousness faded and vanished. Nature took over. Hips moved with fists. Breaths turned ragged; eager tongues and lips muffled soft moans.
They groaned their release just as the birds abandoned their perches in a wild fluttering of wings. Branches trembled, and more leaves and petals peppered the ground. Within moments the glade was silent again save for the tired breathing of two spent youths.
Lying against Roald, Alarick enjoyed the slow, languorous wave that took him back to earth, his ear pressed against his lover’s chest. There was something comforting in the slowing of Roald’s heart. Its fierce rhythm gradually easing to one less frantic, it was like listening to Alarick’s own spirit soar to the heavens and then glide gently back down, covered in bits of cloud that faded in a breath the closer he got to the ground.
The feel of Roald’s fingers idly stroking his hair lulled him to a state of lazy bliss, and Alarick watched the calm scene around them with half-closed eyes and a faint smile of triumph. Within minutes, idle touches once again fanned the embers, and the two would shift positions so that each eagerly feasted on his lover’s hardness, their moans of pleasure mingling with the wet sounds of suckling, the restless movements of heads and hips giving way to spasms and muffled cries as they drank each other’s release. Alarick would spend the moments following his second orgasm with a lazy swiping of his tongue over Roald’s flaccid length, feeling a bit dizzy and drowsy and more than content to be lost in the wild with his lover. Then he gave the slippery head of Roald’s penis a loving kiss before turning around and settling himself back in Roald’s arms.
Later that evening, Amara made her appearance.
“You and your friend’s love makes the dead jealous,” she said as they sat across from each other at the small table. This time around, they chose not to play their usual game.
“It does?” Alarick grinned, blushing. He couldn’t help himself.
Amara, half-cloaked in shadows, smiled back. “They’d find a way to challenge you—eat away at your dreams till you’ve got nothing left but their ghosts.”
“Why’s that? The dead had enjoyed their lives, and now it’s someone else’s turn.”
Amara’s gaze dropped to Alarick’s hands, which rested on the table. She covered them with her own, the chill of her touch rippling through Alarick, and her momentary silence as she watched her hands envelop his felt pregnant.
“When you die violently and suddenly, you take quite a bit of a burden with you to the next life,” she said. She looked back at him. “Rage, despair, envy, greed, what have you—if you allow them to shape your existence beyond this life, you doom yourself to a, well, pretty wretched eternity.” She smiled wryly. “And some of the dead simply can’t bear the fact that they can’t have what they used to enjoy, alive. If they used to wield magic when they breathed, death turned them into ghosts with darker powers that can be used against the living.”
Alarick raised a brow. “This sounds more like something that superstitious crones would say before giving you an armful of useless trinkets to ward off the dead with.”
“Does it?”
“It does,” Alarick said with greater conviction as he pulled his hands from Amara’s grasp. “And I don’t believe that the dead can come back and punish the living for enjoying what they can no longer have. It’s more like something that you tell wayward children to keep them in line, but everyone knows it’s not true.”
Amara merely listened without moving her own hands away. A curious little smile appeared. “Oh, but the dead are capable of more than you think, Love. Punishment is one thing, yes. Protection is another. That’s the beauty of death, you see. No matter how we all pass on to the next world, we become—in so many ways—dark immortals. We turn into shadow images of our past selves, almost as though we’re looking at ourselves in a cursed mirror. The will to remain attached to the living world transforms us, though not all of us return to haunt you. Most of us simply remain on the other side despite the temptations, but those of us who stay do so for reasons of their own. Do you understand, Nephew?”
Nephew.
Alarick listened to her, amazed, as silence fell on them for a long moment. Why didn’t he even realize this sooner?
“No,” he said, brows rising in growing shock. “I’ve always known that you and I are linked in some way, haven’t I? It’s just that I never really cared to understand.”
He’d always known that his strange confidante was tied to him somehow. But he’d never heard anything about an aunt who’d died—or was killed. Then again, he now realized, he’d been kept in the dark about much of his family’s history. Pampered by nurses and tutors who were paid to keep him healthy and safe and no more, no thought had ever crossed his mind beyond the usual curious inquiries about the queen’s magic mirror or the king’s vast influence past the borders of their kingdom. Then again, he never thought to dig deeply into his past, even with the daily mocking glances from other nobles, the whispered rumors about his questionable birthright, the outright taunts of a few boys his age, who held nothing back when they sneered and called him their “bastard prince.” Alarick grew up in court, and such things were simply par for the course as far as he was concerned. Cruelty amid opulence and beauty was an aristocratic requirement, and one ought to develop a thick enough skin if he wished to survive such a thorny, poisonous environment. His hours, moreover, had all been spent playing, studying, getting into one sort of childish trouble after another, and simply enjoying Amara’s company and nursery stories. All the selfishness of youth had blinded him for years.
“I never asked for your story, though I’ve always wondered,” he said after another shocked pause. “You know so much about my mother, and your appearance…”
“What did you think about me?”
“That you’re—I don’t know—some spirit, yes, possibly a sorceress—a good one,” Alarick said, his words halting and clumsy. “That you were sent to look after me as well, but as to whom you answer to, I can’t say.” He swallowed. “I am grateful, though, that you’ve always been my greatest comfort for as long as I can remember. I doubt
if my mother—well, you know.” He could only shrug weakly.
“I’m tied to you, yes, through blood,” Amara said, her voice gentle and soothing. “And love. I come on my own and choose to look after you on my own, though like other ghosts, there are limits to where I can go. I regret many things, nephew, and much wrong had been done to me. I’m not above avenging myself, but I also know that you’re the only innocent in our family’s long, bloody line—the only innocent who still lives. And what I cherish, I’ll protect.”
Alarick hesitated for a moment before mustering the courage to lean forward and reach out to Amara. His fingers touched cold, scarred skin. It was a familiar sensation that went well back to his childhood. Knowledge now redefined his curiosity, however, edging it with dread. With growing fascination and fear, he took a part of her sleeve between his fingers and rubbed them, noting the threadbare patches and the curious brittleness in certain areas.
He paused and frowned, his gaze lifting and meeting Amara’s. “Show yourself to me, Aunt,” he said. His hushed voice trembled slightly.
Amara leaned forward so that her features emerged from the shadows. Her damaged face changed in those few seconds. Once a half-scarred woman, she now appeared before the horrified and sickened prince as she was, over eighteen years ago—charred, hollow-eyed, her mouth opened in a contorted O of a perpetually silent scream, her figure swathed in countless delicate columns of smoke.
Alarick fell back with a cry.
“The dead will find a way to challenge you,” Amara said, though her voice sounded disembodied now. The burned corpse sitting across the table from Alarick didn’t move. “Jealousy and revenge are powerful forces. Believe me, I know.”
Alarick swallowed a few times before finding his voice. “What happened?”
“I dared to speak the truth to your mother. Honesty isn’t a highly prized virtue in these parts, I’m afraid.” Amara sounded amused. Then she told him her story in plain words and in such an easy, matter-of-fact manner that Alarick’s breath was taken away as he listened. Once she’d finished, it took him a few moments to rally himself and find his voice.
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