Alwyn Triscan
His Highness was not in Zestier... again.
The thought settled in my chest like a stone dropped into still water, rippling outward, touching everything. And this time, Lord Albold and Lord Ashton were gone too.
I had seen them leave together—not speaking, not looking at each other, but leaving together nonetheless—and I had wondered what could have finally bridged the distance between them.
Whatever it was, it had taken them away from the Royal Capital, away from the training courtyards, away from me.
Which meant I was left alone today, in the last days of winter, with the snow that had covered the Royal Capital in a white blanket for weeks now finally beginning to recede.
The gardens of the Royal Palace were waking slowly, the way all things wake from a long sleep.
Patches of bare earth showed through the melting snow, dark and damp and waiting. The branches of the Watchful Willows were still bare, their skeletal forms tracing patterns against the grey sky that I had been learning to read for years.
I stood in the usual courtyard where Lord Ashton and Lord Albold sparred with His Highness, and, from time to time, with me—thanks only to His Highness, like everything good that had ever happened to me.
That was the truth of my life, the foundation upon which everything else was built. Before His Highness, I had been nothing. A commoner boy with a sister who worked in the palace, who had brought me with her when I was younger than I could even remember, who had given me a life I had no right to expect.
And then His Highness had looked at me, had seen something worth teaching, worth awakening, worth standing beside, and everything had changed.
Today was my day of training with the Thorncurve, the longbow crafted here in Elenoir. It was almost taller than me, which had caused His Highness to doubt my training with this weapon when he first saw me practicing it.
I remembered the look on his face—that particular expression he wore when he was trying to decide whether to protect me from myself or let me make my own mistakes. He had let me make my own mistakes.
He always let me make my own mistakes, and I loved him for it, and I would spend the rest of my life trying to be worthy of that trust. I could not let doubts stop me. Not even if those doubts came from my prince.
From the quiver on my back, I took an arrow and tensed it on the string of the Thorncurve—a string made with the hair of an Elenoi Highcolt, strong and supple, singing when I drew it back.
The arrows I used for training were crafted by me using plant magic to shape the best sticks I found fallen across the royal gardens, the ones the gardeners had not already cleaned away.
I would walk the paths in the early morning, before the sun had burned through the mist, and I would search for the branches that had fallen in the night, the ones that still held some of the strength they had carried when they were part of something living.
I would take them back to my room, and I would shape them with my magic, and I would make them into something that could fly.
It was not anything like His Highness's arrows, conjured from small chunks of dirt and rock and other sediments with a flick of his hand, appearing in his palm like they had been waiting there all along.
Mine were simple sticks, empowered by plant magic, held together by the same force that made the trees of the Elshire grow tall and strong.
I kept my back straight, the way I had seen the soldiers of the Leafguard do when they practiced their shootings on the walls of the Alabaster Ring.
I had watched them for hours, memorizing their stances, their breathing, the way they became still before they released. Because unlike the Courtblade and the Branchberd, I did not have anyone who could teach me how to use the Thorncurve.
I had only my own eyes, my own hands, my own stubborn refusal to be less than what I needed to become.
While my one and only dream was to become part of the Royal Police so that I could stay at His Highness's side forever, I still respected the Leafguard very much.
If the Royal Police was the shield of Zestier, then the Leafguard was its sword. Even if both armed bodies had a strictly defensive role, there was something in the way the Leafguard held themselves that spoke of a purpose beyond protection.
They were not the proper army of Elenoir—the Treeful Phalanx—the one reformed by King Emeritus Virion Eralith and directly commanded by the king himself.
But they were the ones who stood between the city and everything that might harm it.
I released the string of my Thorncurve, and the arrow flew toward the practice dummy, hitting it in the neck with a sound that was solid and final.
I went to the next dummy, this one covered in a simple bark armor so I could test myself against an armored target. This time the neck was covered, so I aimed slightly higher, adjusted for the armor, for the angle, for the thousand small variables that made the difference between a hit and a miss. I released. The arrow hit between the eyes.
I went to the next target, one completely covered in bark. A target like that would never present itself in a real fight—no one wore armor that covered their entire body—but practicing against harder adversaries was a better training.
If I could find the weakness in this, I could find the weakness in anything. I released another arrow, and it flew, and it hit where the bark was easier to penetrate, where the seams would be, where a real enemy would be vulnerable.
The bark was meant to imitate the armors most commonly found in Dicathen and their characteristics. I had studied how they were made, had read the books His Highness had recommended, had asked the questions he had taught me to ask.
I knew where to hit with a bow to exploit their weaknesses, and I practiced that knowledge until it became part of me.
I raised my head. On the branches of the Watchful Willows, I had placed small targets at various distances from me.
The light of the sun filtering through the canopies and the ever-present mist of the Elshire Forest—which, while softer, was still present in Zestier in the mornings—created an effect that made my sight many times worse.
That was the point. If I could hit my targets in these conditions, I could hit them in almost any conditions. I had placed the targets at increasing lengths from me: fifty meters, one hundred meters, two hundred meters.
I had to compensate my shots for the vertical height the arrows would need to travel to reach the targets on the branches, calculate the presence of leaves and other obstacles in between, adjust for the wind that moved through the canopies.
I augmented my body with mana to improve my sight—just a little, just enough to sharpen the edges of the world—and shot the first arrow. Center.
The second arrow followed, its flight smoother now, my body remembering what it had learned. Center.
The third arrow, the farthest, the hardest, the one that would have been impossible for me a year ago. I drew, I breathed, I released. Center.
"Good aim you have there."
I jumped, startled by the voice, and turned around. Behind me, as if he had been there since I had started training, stood Elder Virion Eralith himself.
Former king of Elenoir. His Highness's grandfather. A living legend, the kind of figure that appeared in the stories the bards sang in the taverns of the Grand Nectary, the kind of hero that children pretended to be when they played at war in the courtyards of their estates.
"L-Lord Elder Virion!" I greeted, bowing my head so low that I could see my own boots, my own hands still holding the Thorncurve, my own heart hammering against my ribs.
I had been living in the Royal Palace since before I had memory, since Alea had brought me with her when I was younger than I could even remember. But I had never been so close to Elder Virion.
The former king of Elenoir was famous as a living legend. All of Elenoir's youth—Lord Ashton and Lord Albold counted—would do anything to be in the presence of a national hero like him.
And I was standing here, with my simple arrows and my self-taught techniques and my plant-magic sticks, and he was looking at me like I was something worth looking at.
Elder Virion raised his head and looked at the targets I had placed in the branches. His eyes were sharp, assessing, the eyes of someone who had spent a lifetime understanding what weapons could do. "You placed them yourself, Alwyn?"
I froze. "Y-you know my name, Elder?" I asked, still keeping my head low.
How could he know my name? I was no one. I was a commoner boy whose sister worked in the palace, whose only claim to anything was that His Highness had decided I was worth teaching. I had done nothing. I was nothing.
"What? You think I don't know the names of those who live in my home?" Elder Virion asked, and his voice was not angry, not impatient, just... matter-of-fact. "And the name of the boy who made my granddaughter awaken as a mage? At four?"
My blood froze. The words landed in my chest like a physical blow, knocking the breath from my lungs. All these years, I had thought it was a secret, something only His and Her Highness and I and perhaps Alea knew.
But Elder Virion had known. And he had said nothing. He had done nothing. He had simply... waited?
"Lord Elder—I!" I started, the words tumbling out of me, desperate, apologetic, afraid.
Elder Virion stopped me with a wave of his hand.
"Bah, don't think too hard about it," he said, and there was something in his voice that might have been amusement, or dismissal, or the particular patience of someone who had lived long enough to know that some things were not worth getting angry about. "It was five years ago. Don't you think I would have done something if I was angry?"
"Yes... Elder," I replied, my head still low, my hands still gripping the Thorncurve, my heart still hammering.
"And raise your head!" Elder Virion exclaimed, and there was a sharpness in his voice now, a command that cut through my fear. "I am talking with you, not with your hair."
"Yes!" I said, raising my head, meeting his eyes for the first time.
They were the same teal as His Highness's, as Her Highness's, that particular shade that marked the Eralith bloodline. But where His Highness's eyes held depths I had never been able to fathom, Elder Virion's were bright, sharp, amused.
"Good," Elder Virion said. "Now take your Thorncurve again. Pretend I am not here."
"Yes, Elder!" I said, and I turned back to my targets, ignoring the questions that swirled in my head, the impossibility of what was happening, the fact that the former king of Elenoir was sitting on a bench behind me watching me practice.
I had to become worthy of standing by His Highness's side. That was more important to me than even paying the due respect to his grandfather. More important than understanding why he was here.
I continued my usual routine of Thorncurve training, ignoring the hero who sat on the bench nearby, his eyes on me. I drew, I released, I drew again. The arrows flew. The targets were hit. The world narrowed to the string against my fingers, the sight along the shaft, the arc of flight that carried my hopes into the center of the mark.
After an hour and thirty minutes—which I kept track of thanks to a flock of songbirds that acted as a clock for the gardeners and other workers in the gardens of the Royal Palace, something Her Highness's robin pet had taught them—I was done.
"You train with other weapons too, right?" Elder Virion asked when he noticed I was done.
"Yes!" I replied, still holding the Thorncurve, still standing straight.
"What do you think about becoming my student?"
The question was so unexpected, so impossible, that for a moment I did not understand it.
"No," I replied. The word came out before I could stop it, before I could think, before I could measure the consequences of refusing a living legend.
The hand of Elder Virion came down on my hair, ruffling it, mussing it, treating it like I was a child who had said something foolish.
"What does 'no' mean, brat?" He asked, and his voice was caught somewhere between frustration and surprise. "Did you not hear me?"
"Yes, Elder," I replied, as Elder Virion continued to move my hair, as if he could shake the answer out of me. "But there are people more worthy than me to be your students. Lord Albold Chaffer and Lord Ashton Auddyr, for example."
"Don't you think that is for me to decide?" Elder Virion retorted, composing himself, his hand falling away from my hair, his eyes sharp on my face.
"I did not mean it that way, Elder!" I apologized, the words rushing out of me, desperate to explain, to make him understand. "But it is what I believe!"
"You and Corvis are similar, yet polar opposites," Elder Virion murmured, and there was something in his voice I could not name. "You see, brat, I do not accept 'no' as an answer so easily. Especially not from someone I have intention to train personally."
He looked at me for a long moment, and I felt the weight of his attention pressing against my chest, my throat.
"Let's make a deal, okay?" He asked, and he reached behind him, taking another Thorncurve—one he must have retrieved while I was in the middle of training, while I was so focused on my targets that I had not noticed him leave and return.
"Let's have a challenge. We are going to shoot three times at your target. I will not use magic, and I will put a blindfold over my eyes. If you win, you will become my student. Deal?"
I stared at him, my mind struggling to catch up with what he was saying. "Should it not be the contrary, Elder?"
"I do not want to bully a nine-year-old brat!" Elder Virion exclaimed. "But if you accept it, you are not going to purposely lose. You are going to give your all. If you really believe you are not worthy, then you are going to lose, and we will both forget this peculiar day in a month or so, am I right?"
The smirk on Elder Virion's lips would make one question if this was a war hero, or just an old elf who liked to joke too much.
From how lightly he took life, I had a hard time thinking of him as His Highness's grandfather. But from the way he looked at me... like I was... his... peer... it was the same look as His Highness.
"I accept, Elder," I said, tensing the cord of my Thorncurve again.
I was tired, but I would give my all. I would give everything I had, everything I was, everything I hoped to become.
Because if I won, I would become his student. And if I lost... if I lost, I would have proven that I was right about myself. That I was not worthy. That I was just a commoner boy who had been given more than he deserved.
I drew the arrow, and I breathed, and I aimed.