Chapter Text
Canyons could be felt more than heard, even inside the castle’s thick walls. One of their maids sobbed under a table as Seokjin pulled Jungkook closer to him. The piano they were under wasn’t the sturdiest of covers, but it was the best option they had, and it proved to be good cover so far, when the chandelier rattled too much and it fell down on them the piano covered them well enough.
“Jin, are dad and Hyunil winning?” his younger brother asked him, so innocently and so full of hope, he wanted to lie just to let the light in the eyes of his brother shine a little longer.
But life was cruel, and lying would prove to be un-useful when the enemy barreled down into the castle and maimed both of them right in the middle of their father’s music room. He knew they weren’t winning, the battle had been going for longer than the hour his older brother had told them he was expecting, and he could feel the canyons drawing closer and closer to the castle’s inner gate. To know their death was getting closer, it made his body shake with fear and his hands curl and uncurl from around his younger brother’s smaller form.
“I don’t think so, Kookie.” He said after gulping down a nervous bump in his throat.
Some minutes passed until a sound different than canyons rattled through the room.
“Retreat!” Seokjin heard and his heart ached with fear, “Retreat!”
“My dear princes!” a bloody-looking official thundered into the room, “we must leave immediately! The battle’s been lost and it won’t be long until the Kratos’ army comes in!”
The official helped them from under the piano and actually carried a barefooted Jungkook and Seokjin so their feet wouldn’t get hurt from all the broken glass and porcelain on the floor. The maid was unlucky enough to be born a peasant and not have the preferential treatment the princes did, so she had to rush through the sharpness all by herself, leaving a trail of blood behind her.
They passed through corridors and destroyed rooms and actually went down a row of stairs before they spotted the enemy in front of them.
“My princes,” The officer solemnly said as he laid them on the ground and took out his sword, “I’ll take care of them, but I need you to escape from the castle…”
Seokjin nodded as he took a too-heavy and shaky Jungkook into his arms and ran into the opposite corridor. His brother was getting too heavy to carry, with just eleven years on his back he was already growing up to be tall, just as it was expected of their family line. Seokjin was happy his brother was growing up so well, but he didn’t stop himself from swearing a little as he lifted the boy in his arms and tried running without dropping him of tripping over his feet. When he turned his head back he saw the Kratosian soldiers outnumbering their friend. He recognized his older brother’s room and hastily came in.
“Jungkook, I need you to listen to me…”
OOO
“We have found one of the remaining princes, Your Majesty.” One of the sweaty soldiers of the usurper’s army said as he was roughly pushed into the main dining room, he hissed as some glass shards got stuck deeper in the soft flesh of his feet, “Prince Seokjin of Erilith.”
When he raised his eyes from his bleeding feet he saw various Kratosian soldiers around the room, and by the medals and ribbons on their chests he could see they were high ranking officials. They all turned around to see him up and down, all except one. A young man was standing by a window, his hair disheveled and slicked with a pinkish substance and his clothes just as high ranking as the other individuals in the room: all black with golden trims on the edges, and a long red cape hanging from his shoulders. When the man turned around to look at him, a shiver went up Seokjin’s spine; the young man’s face was stained with blood, and the substance on his hair was most likely blood as well. By the calm and composed look on his face, it was probably someone else’s blood. Erilithian blood.
“Just one?” the dark figure asked with an eyebrow raised as he sat on the head of the table, “What about the younger one?”
“The searching party is looking for him as we speak,” an older man said as he stood by the blood stained man. “What shall we do with this prince meanwhile, my king?”
The bloody man was Yoongi the Ruthless, king of Kratos and the Highlands.
The king then stared into Seokjin’s eyes so deeply he got lost in a trance, was he going to get beheaded today? Or perhaps be hanged like a peasant? Venom perhaps? His trance of dark thoughts got broken when the king’s already sleepy eyes narrowed in thought.
“Shall we have breakfast, prince Seokjin?” The Kratosian king lazily smiled at him from the other side of the castle’s grand dining table, and then signaled some of his men to bring maidens to serve them some food. Then he commanded, “Everyone but my royal advisors, out.”
As men and women walked out of the room, the king extended an arm towards him and curled his fore and middle finger twice, “take a seat, your Highness.”
His feet were in the most terrible pain they had never been in before, but he felt actually numb in fear as he sat by the king’s left side, facing two men and a woman opposite of him.
“Prince Seokjin of the fair and noble lands of Erilith,” the king said as two scared maids placed a jar of wine and some fruits and pastries on the table. The king whispered something into the ear of a maid and then proceeded to serve himself a glass of wine, “The sweet darling of the Moonfall castle. I’ve heard a lot about you, but I mean, who hasn’t heard of the prince whose whispers make flowers bloom instantly. Rumor has it the Gods saw something in your future and gave you that one special gift to help you accomplish that future. A special gift for a destined individual. Pretty funny, considering that I saw no flowers at the castle grounds.”
The king then took a swing of his glass and chuckled, probably still high in his victory. One of his advisors, the one with a trimmed beard, coughed lowly and reached to fill Jin’s own glass.
“It was quite a surprise, we weren’t expecting an orbital amount of flowers, of course not. But the… lack of colorful bulbs took us by surprise.” The bearded man said.
“Do you even have a gift or is it all product of your crazy father’s attempts to make you seem more advantageous?” the woman with the high ponytail asked.
“Chaeyoung, don’t be rude. We must give old king Jangsik the benefit of the doubt, he was crazy, but he was no liar. Crown prince Hyunil on the other hand…”
“Enough of bad talking the dead,” the king said as he grabbed one of the pastries, “Even if we all know old king Jangsik was too much over his head, and Hyunil was a little bit too much of a compulsive liar we shouldn’t…”
Seokjin stopped paying attention by then. His father and brother were dead, probably slayed during the battle. That left him as the heir in line for the crown, and Jungkook as crowned prince. It was too dangerous, being so high on the chain in this moment, with the conquering king of Kratos sitting right beside him, victorious and more powerful than Seokjin right in his own castle. He was captive and Jungkook in danger; he couldn’t let them take his brother, that was if he wasn’t killed before he could do something for his younger brother.
The king clapped loudly in front of his face, taking him away from the possible inner breakdown he was having. Jin took a shaky breath and he noticed tears flowing from his eyes. He turned his head away from the king and his advisors when his tears didn’t stop.
“Did you hear what we were asking you, prince Seokjin of Erilith?” the bearded man asked him.
Jin shook his head lightly. “I’m sorry, I did not.”
“We want you to show us your Gods’ gift.” King Yoongi said with a clear tone, “Show us your gift is true or death might be in store for you.”
The maid that left before was holding out a porcelain pot filled with earth to him. He didn’t even notice she was back, she must’ve came in when he was lost in his thoughts. He gently grabbed the pot from her shaky hands and held it against his chest with a hand while he clumsily slipped his magic binder off his wrist with the other.
He could feel a small tug of life in the earth of the pot, probably a weed, but he wouldn’t impress the king with a weed, he needed to make that weed into something more astonishing, so his head would stay right where it belonged.
He stared at the king with teary eyes as he covered his mouth and brought his lips closer to the earth in the pot.
“I want you to become a stunning rose, worth of a king.” He silently mouthed to the little speck of life inside of the pot, and left it on the table in front of the king.
The king stared at the pot for some seconds, and when nothing happened he stared back at him with narrowed eyes. The man opened his mouth to probably call him a bad joke, but then the earth on the white pot started to move.
A small green steam appeared, but then it grew thicker and leaves came out of it along with a small leafy button that soon fattened its belly and passed through a variety of colors before it set into a vivant blue shade, almost purple. As the color still pulsed through the small veins of the petals, the big shrub shook open lazily, and waved around one last time before it went still.
“Amazing.” The last of the advisors, actually clean and well shaven, said as he stood up closer to the king to take a better look.
“You have just proven to be gifted, and by doing so you also saved your own life. It is of bad omen for a king to kill a gifted outside the battlefield after all. The Gods have been gentle with you.” the woman said as she stared at the flower in the pot. “But now you need to prove something else… Take it as your second test.”
The bearded man smiled at him, “we had been talking with our king before you came inside the room, prince Seokjin. As his royal advisors we take note of every single detail that might damage or strengthen his reign, and we do know that, even though old king Jangsik was a madman and crown prince Hyunil was an ill liar, you were -and are- the most favored prince of Erilith. But you have never wanted to step up as king, have you?”
“Which made us bring the idea of a union.” The woman said.
“A royal marriage?” he asked as he stared at his lap.
“More like concubinage,” the king said as he softly played around with the rose’s petals, “I do not wish to take you as my official royal consort.”
“Your Majesty,” the clean man softly chided to the king, “he is the most favored prince of Erilith, even outside his lands he is well known. When the people hear that you killed both king Jangsik and prince Hyunil, there will be revolts all over the lands. Taking him as a common concubine won’t help. We need the Erilithians to see that you aren’t here to ravage their lands and culture and leave them barehanded, we need them to believe that you can make their families more prosperous and that you appreciate their people as well.”
“I think that my people won’t be happy if I take an Erilithian as my official royal consort, we’ve been in rivalry for longer than two decades by now.” The king growled as he frowned at his advisor.
“The folk of Erilith will be your people as well, be it if you kill both princes or be it if you marry one of them; the only difference will be that in one of these scenarios they actually come to like you and call you their king.” Chaeyoung said.
“You can end this fight and bring a peaceful age for both our kingdom and theirs, your grace.” The bearded man agreed.
OOO
Later that morning, as he was being escorted to a new chamber, the king noticed he was bleeding and sent his personal doctor to aid him. He could do nothing but wince in pain as shards of glass were removed from his flesh and a painful liquid was poured on his feet. It could’ve brought tears out of his eyes, but there was still some adrenaline left in him numbing the pain. Knowing that he was hiding his younger brother and that if he failed protect him the young Erilithian prince could lose his head, was enough to clear his head from pain and focus on not letting anyone get his brother.
“All done,” the old doctor said as he stood from the stool he was sitting on to cradle his feet more comfortably, and took his bulgy bag from the bedside, “that should numb the pain a little. In two day tops you’ll be standing with no pain, young prince.”
“Thank you…”
As the man left, Jin anxiously shifted on the bed he was assigned. He knew by just looking at the small table with a pitch of water and crystal glasses by the feet of the bed, that he was in a guest bedroom, but luckily for him this was an inner chamber, meaning that the secret passages around here were not destroyed by the canyons, unlike the outer chambers. He winced as he stood, but he managed to step into the closet, where he felt around the stone wall for the loose brick he knew every closet in certain rooms had.
“I once knew a man that could build wings to fly…” he sang into the hollow space that the brick left behind, it was a simple melody he taught his little brother for a formal dance his older brother had made for the younger’s birthday some years ago. It was about a young maiden that got turned into a bird by a jealous evil witch, the story was arranged lovingly from the tale of the same name as a song by their older brother, and everyone in the ball cooed at Jungkook as he clumsily sang it. Now it was their code song.
He heard some shifting of feet of the other side after some minutes, and he closed his closet door as his younger brother’s face appeared on the other side of the hole in the wall.
“What’s going on?” his brother frantically said as Seokjin passed him an apple he had managed to smuggle from the dining room earlier, “Can I go out now?”
“No, it’s still very dangerous. I think they might kill you if they see you now, so don’t let them catch you yet.” He said, and then stared at his brother munching on the apple desperately. “I’m sorry I couldn’t bring you more food, b-but the king and his advisors were staring at me like hungry hawks. I’ll bring more food next time, I promise.”
“So you met with the king?” his brother asked wide eyed. “Why didn’t he kill you?”
“I… They told me they were thinking about a royal marriage.”
“The Kratosian king?” his brother angrily spit a seed on the other side when Seokjin nodded, “With who?
He swallowed as his hands played with the helm of the nightgown he had been wearing for a longer time than it was supposed to be worn.
“With me.”
His brother’s eyes grew comically and he looked like a fish out of water for some minutes, “What?”
“Listen Jungkook,” he softly grabbed his brother’s cheeks through the hole, “dad and Hyunil are dead… We have no shelter anymore, no one to help us; and the most important thing is that they want to kill us at the first chance they get. If I marry the king I might change that.”
“How can you even change the fact that those bloodlust savages want to kill us?” his brother asked in an angry tone, but the furrow on his forehead gave his fear away.
“I’m going to convince him.” Seokjin said and tried to muster his most credible face, “I might not make him love me, but I can learn how to persuade him. No one will hurt you, I promise.”
After that Jungkook became really quiet, so he decided it was time to say goodbye. He gave his brother a pair of candles and matchsticks he found in one of the guest room drawers, a warm blanket, a pillow and a glass of water. He ruffled his brother’s hair, and on a last thought gave him a pair of books to amuse himself while hiding.
“I’ll tell you if anything else is said,” he promised as he placed the big brick on the hole, “Don’t let them catch you and stay warm…”