The streets were packed with life as two figures emerged from a shadowed hallway, slipping seamlessly into the crowd.
Well — "seamlessly" was generous.
They wore silken cloaks — expensive, but not flashy enough to draw attention at a glance. Beneath them, plain clothes, the sort you could find in any decent market stall. Aiden and Elliott had changed in one of the palace's side chambers before slipping out through a back entrance that led into a narrow alleyway. From there, the alley opened into the outer procession road near the palace.
The atmosphere could only be described as bustling, colorful chaos. Elliott expected the people to be solemn. For the celebrations to be a tad bit understated because of the war looming ahead. As it turns out, he was very wrong.
People thronged the streets, laughing, haggling, shouting over one another. Shopkeepers bustled about, setting up their stalls for the big day — the Ascension. It was still a day before the ritual, but the celebrations had already bled into every corner of the city.
Elliott found himself... almost overwhelmed. It was just so much. Fire-eaters spat plumes of gold into the air, drawing delighted shrieks from children who chased the floating sparks. Vendors bellowed over the noise, hawking everything from candied fruits to blessed charms to — for some reason — love potions.
"Are you okay?" Aiden asked, noting the older man's wide-eyed, owlish stare.
"Mhm," Elliott hummed, though his attention was still scattered across the chaos. "Just... a little overwhelmed."
Aiden sighed — part exasperation, part fondness. Of course Elliott was bad at blending in. The man stood there frozen, looking like a startled deer that had been dropped in the middle of a parade.
"You're gawking," Aiden muttered, grabbing him by the sleeve and pulling him aside just in time as a carriage rattled past where Elliott had been standing.
"No I'm not," Elliott replied, still gawking.
Aiden pulled the hood over the emperor's face, trying to at least conceal his far-too-curious eyes.
Elliott immediately yanked it back up, affronted. "Excuse you — that covers my eyes. And I'm not gawking. I've just... never been to a festival before."
Aiden gave him a withering look. "...You are the festival."
"I'm the ritual," Elliott corrected. "I've never been to the festivities. Not at the street level, anyway."
They walked for a while, weaving between stalls and carts. That was when Aiden realized the true scope of his mistake.
If he hadn't thought this was a bad idea before, he definitely did now. This was Elliott's idea — his insistence on fulfilling some ancient promise to "show Aiden the festival." But in practice, Aiden wasn't being shown anything. He was herding a wide-eyed, hopelessly conspicuous emperor through the crowd like a shepherd with a particularly wayward lamb.
Elliott stopped for everything. A fire-breather, a silk vendor, a painted wooden toy soldier, a man selling sweetened nuts — it was as if every object in the street was a rare treasure worthy of investigation. Their disguises were foolproof in theory. In practice? Not even close.
A disguise wasn't just about clothing — it was about demeanor. Elliott was failing spectacularly at the "act like a normal person" part. You didn't need to be a master spy to look at him and realize this man had never walked among commoners a day in his life.
And Aiden wasn't entirely innocent either. He might not gawk, but his height made him stand out, and his natural glare was the sort of thing that made people instinctively move out of the way. If Elliott was a fish out of water, Aiden was a crocodile out of water — Maybe more intimidating but equally misplaced, equally obvious.
Eventually, the stares became too much, and Aiden dragged Elliott into a side alley.
"You're terrible at this," he hissed, pulling the hood back over Elliott's eyes.
Elliott blinked indignantly, shoving the hood up so his offended expression could be seen. "Terrible at what?" he demanded.
Aiden didn't blink. "At being normal. Inconspicuous. Incognito, as you so excitedly put it earlier."
Elliott, of course, would not stand for such baseless slander. "I am normal!"
Aiden gestured toward the crowd outside. "That's normal. You? You walk like you've got a crown glued to your head and like you own the streets."
Elliott crossed his arms. "I do own the streets. Technically. And I do have a crown. It's metaphorical. It's called class."
"Being terrible at acting normal is what it's called."
---------
After the rather disastrous start to their outing, they abandoned that route and instead wandered down a side path — one that eventually spilled into the Sun Gardens.
The Sun Gardens were a spectacle in themselves. Lush, sprawling lawns wound along a riverbank, dotted with marble fountains that caught the sunlight and threw it back in dazzling arcs. Flowerbeds bloomed in a deliberate chaos of colors, and tall, carefully placed trees gave just enough shade to make the heat bearable without blocking the sweeping view of the grounds.
And, of course, the gardens weren't untouched by the Ascension festivities. Banners of white and gold fluttered above the paths, each one shimmering faintly in the breeze. The air was thick with the scents of street snacks — fried pastries, honeyed nuts, and something smoky and spiced that made Elliott's stomach grumble. The sky overhead was alive with movement.
Kites.
Dozens upon dozens of them — paper suns painted in gold, crimson, and deep orange — spinning and spiraling against the brilliant blue. Their glittering tails shimmered like the trailing fire of comets. Kite flying wasn't just entertainment here; it was tradition. Every solar festival was tied to the practice, but the Ascension was the largest solar festival of all, and so the skies were practically ablaze with color.
Elliott's steps slowed to a stop. His gaze was locked upward. It wasn't the first time he'd seen sun kites, of course — but never from this vantage point. From the Sun Gardens, you could see nearly all of them being flown at once, as if the entire horizon had been draped in colourful specks.
On the edges of the paths, stalls had been set up in neat lines, their vendors calling out to anyone who lingered too long. One of them spotted Elliott staring at the sky, his awe plain as day, and immediately seized the opportunity.
"Sun kites! Sun kites for only one silver!" the man shouted.
Elliott instinctively glanced at him. The vendor, a weathered man in his fifties, waved him over with a knowing grin. Elliott didn't even hesitate.
"I saw you watching the kites with awe, young man," the seller said as Elliott approached. "Buy one — or better yet, two. One for yourself, one for your companion. It's auspicious to fly a kite during the festival. If your kite soars high, it means the sun god has blessed you."
Elliott's lips twitched in amusement. That was little more than a well-aged myth. Kite height had far more to do with wind currents, air pressure, and ground elevation than divine approval. But he didn't say that. Instead, he simply nodded.
"Give me two of them. And two rolls of flying thread," he said, pointing to a pair of larger, gilded kites.
The vendor's eyes lit up like a man who had just found a gold vein in his garden. He fetched the kites from where they hung, already guessing his customer wasn't an ordinary man. Probably some rich lord slumming it for the day.
"They're 5 silvers each," the seller began smoothly, "but I'll make you a deal—"
"Keep the change!" Elliott called over his shoulder, already walking away with the kites. He had dropped a single gold coin on the counter before the man could even finish his pitch.
By the time Aiden noticed Elliott had slipped away, the blonde had reappeared at his side with two kites and matching string rolls in hand.
A groan left Aiden before he could stop it. He hadn't even blinked, and somehow Elliott had vanished and made a purchase. For a man of his age, Elliott had instincts that could rival a thief or an eel — slippery, quick, and entirely too confident about it.
"Where did you even get those?" Aiden asked suspiciously.
"A vendor. Obviously," Elliott replied, as if the answer was self-evident and not deeply concerning.
Aiden narrowed his eyes. "...And how much did you pay?"
"One gold! For all this!" Elliott said brightly — like he'd just secured some cunning bargain instead of, you know, overpaying more than 10 times the going rate.
Aiden rubbed his forehead. He was almost ready to reprimand him, but Elliott looked so absurdly pleased with himself that the words caught in his throat. Fine. Let him think two kites cost a gold coin. If it bought that smile, it was a cheap enough price.
Instead, he settled for, "You don't even know how to fly a kite. Neither do I."
Elliott looked unbothered. "Oh, come on. Not knowing something doesn't mean we can't learn. Besides, it's just kite flying! Hundreds of people here are doing it. Kids are doing it!"
He gestured toward a cluster of children who were, in fact, flying their kites with enviable ease. Two boys — one with a permanently runny nose, the other with dried ice cream streaked on his chin — were locked in an intense aerial duel, their kites weaving and snapping at each other in a battle to cut the opponent's thread.
That gave Aiden a small spark of confidence. If Snot-Nose and Ice Cream Chin could do it, so could he. He was a decorated warrior. A master tactician. A war strategist who could hit a target blindfolded from fifty paces.
How hard could flying a kite possibly be?
...As it turned out, after fifteen minutes of increasingly humiliating attempts, the answer was: very hard.
The kite refused to cooperate. Every launch ended in disaster — lurching sideways, spinning like a drunken bird, then nose-diving into the grass. On the latest attempt, it went down in an unceremonious plunge straight into a fountain.
And so they stood, side by side, staring at the soggy wreckage floating in the water.
"I don't think we can fly this anymore," Elliott said solemnly, as though delivering some tragic news instead of stating the blindingly obvious.
Aiden scowled. "It was defective from the start. That's why it wouldn't fly."
Elliott had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing at the sheer defensiveness in that statement. His gaze drifted back to the children, whose kites danced effortlessly in the wind — dipping, weaving, darting like living things. Meanwhile, Aiden and Elliott's lay crumpled and waterlogged like the corpse of a very unblessed offering.
A little girl across the way had clearly noticed their struggle. She grinned — wickedly — and made her kite perform a series of flashy loops and swoops. It was taunting Aiden. No question about it.
Look at that big boy, her smirk seemed to say. Jealous?
Aiden's eye twitched. He was not going to rise to the bait of some child who still wet her bed and had her hair tied in pigtails by her mother.
And if his fists clenched ever so slightly... well, that was between him and the sun god.