Chapter Text
The sky over Insomnia’s midsummer festival was heavy with fat, leaden storm clouds, which loomed in a threatening mass over the spires of the Citadel. They scudded through scraps of blue to cast patches of shadow over the crowd below, and lent their own ominous rumbles to the hammer of feet and the hum of traffic. Deep in the press of bodies, Cor Leonis squinted at them, his small face screwed up in thought.
He had to admit that as far as eight year-olds went, he wasn’t that impressive. He had his mother’s brown hair and his father’s eyes, which were dark and hooded and a little too intense, and he was just this side of scrawny. When his mother was alive, she used to call him “homely,” which after a few years on his own, Cor had learned was just another word for plain. Other kids in the lower city could smile and fawn and get a few coins of charity just for existing, but Cor was blessed with a sullen glare that never went away, so he had to find another path.
Right now, it was a lucrative one. People in Insomnia tended to guard their pockets and purses pretty well throughout the year, but when summer festivals came around, they hid their money in the same places every time: Boot flaps, sashes, and sleeves. It was definitely easier than the goldfish game by the food stalls, though Cor did spend a few precious coins on that just because. Not like he had anything to keep a fish in.
He worked his way through the crowd, slipping through brightly-clad festival-goers like a grubby shadow, and came at last to his favorite part of the city: The courtyard in front of the Citadel. The people there didn’t pay attention at all, so Cor got all the way to the front of the crowd, right at the velvet rope separating them from the carpeted path leading to the main doors.
Cor clutched the rope in both hands. Not even thirty feet away, walking down the steps of the Citadel, was the royal family. The queen was all in blue, a hand on the swell of her belly, with a crown that arced like lightning in a spiral behind her head. The king had grey threading through his dark hair, and his black cape brushed at his heels as he walked alongside his wife. To his left, a boy of about thirteen followed a step behind, his shoulders straight, chin up, looking every inch the perfect, unapproachable prince.
They were like something out of a painting. Too polished, like dolls someone had let out of a cabinet to be admired. Cor lifted himself up on his toes as they stopped, flanked by their guards, to speak to some sort of priest dressed in white. Next to the priest was a girl about the prince’s age, with thick black hair and eyes that smiled even when her mouth did not. She curtseyed to the king and queen, then turned to the prince and tilted her head.
The prince’s face flushed an uneven scarlet.
Cor grinned. This was better than a theater. Who was she? What was she saying? Why was the king laughing? Cor inched closer, pushing against the rope, and that’s when he saw it.
Light, flickering where light had no reason to be, in the darkness of a pillar.
He moved without thinking. Blades shrieked out of their sheaths as Cor ducked under the rope and went pelting towards the light. A hand grabbed him by the arm—Cor shouted, pointing towards the flickering dot in the shadow, and slammed his foot down on his captor’s toes. The man let go, and Cor took off again.
As he passed the royal family, he saw that everyone, even the strange girl with the priest, was staring at him in shock.
Everyone except the queen.
She had turned to face the same light that Cor saw, and her face went pale and slack. She called out a name—her accent was too thick for Cor to understand—and slid an arm over the king’s shoulder, pushing him back. Cor looked away when he heard the sickening crack of gunfire, and a scream rose from the crowd, discordant and terrible.
He kept running. The guards of King Mors were fast, but Cor was faster, years of hiding from the lawkeepers of the city pushing him further than those who never had to run to survive. He reached the spot of shadow, and didn’t even stop when he saw the gun, abandoned on the stone. The man who’d held it was darting around the bend towards the Citadel hedge maze, and Cor ignored the pounding of his heart and scrambled after him. The maze was open to the public most of the year, and Cor knew what most strangers wouldn’t, that there were little pools and fountains scattered throughout, ready to trip you up…
There! A crash, and a muffled curse. Cor used a lamppost to push himself in the direction of the noise, and went barreling into a tall, gangly man in grey and white, who swore and flailed as they both went tumbling into a fountain.
The man kicked, and his heel collided with Cor’s jaw. Cor growled and clamped his teeth over the man’s arm. “What the hell? The Crownsguard hires fucking kids now?”
Cor’s vision went white as he was slammed back into the cobbles of the path. Hell. He hadn’t really thought about what he’d do when he caught the guy. He dug his nails into the soft flesh of the man’s inner elbow, and got a blow to the ear for his efforts. Dizziness threatened to overwhelm him—Cor held on, and spat out the taste of blood as he lifted his head.
“You tried to turn a gun on the royal family,” Cor said, and then all his breath left him as a sharp, hot pain flared in his side. His fingers slipped from the man’s arm, and he fell, impossibly far, and the crack of his head hitting the ground was muffled around the searing sting of the man’s knife as it jostled against his hipbone, pulling the wound wider. He tried to sit up, but he could barely feel his fingers, and he couldn’t even get up the breath to scream his frustration as the man stood, as he turned to run, as he—
Went down in a crackle of violet and white electrical spots.
It was like Cor was sitting under a glass bowl. The sound of voices came out muzzy and low, and the hand that reached for him seemed to warp and shift in size. A face he vaguely knew stared down at him, speaking in that funny, incoherent baritone, and even though the eyes were all wrong and he’d never had a beard so far as he remembered, Cor knew who it was.
“Dad,” he said, and his father’s face went pinched and tight as he sank, helpless, into the dark.
---
Cor woke surrounded by softness. The lights were dim, a fire crackled and spat somewhere out of view, and he was surrounded by blankets thicker than his arm. For a dead man, he couldn’t deny that he was doing pretty well for himself. He sat up, and winced at the flare of pain in his side.
That wasn’t right. Dead people weren’t supposed to feel pain.
“Took you long enough,” said a cracking, boyish voice at his side. Cor jumped, and turned to find the prince of Lucis sitting in a chair next to what had to be the most luxurious bed Cor had ever seen. Which Cor was lying in.
“Your majesty!” he said, and frantically scooted towards the end of the bed. The prince grabbed his wrist, surprisingly strong for such a skinny teenager, and pulled him back.
“It’s highness,” said the prince. “But I think it’s okay if you call me Regis when no one’s around.”
Cor tried not to stare. Calling the prince by his first name was asking too much. “Yes, your… um.”
“Usually,” the prince—no, Regis—said, smiling just a little, “you’re supposed to give your name when someone gives you theirs.”
“Oh. It’s Cor. Cor Leonis.”
“Nice,” said Regis. He let go of Cor’s wrist, and stood. “How are you feeling? Dad had to use an elixir on you to stitch the wound shut, you know. What on earth were you doing, running after a man with a gun? Do they grow them reckless in the city? Aulea’s the same, I swear, it’s like there’s something in the water—“
“I… we’re supposed to boil water…” Cor said, more than a little dazed. Regis’ mouth opened, and he covered his eyes with a hand. When he took his hand away, he was standing straighter, once again a portrait of a prince rather than a curious, overexcited kid.
“I hope you know that you have done the royal family of Lucis a great service, Cor Leonis,” he said, and his voice took on an odd, formal tone. “If you hadn’t intervened when you did, it is likely that the king would have been killed.”
“No.” Cor’s hands clenched on the blankets. “But, but I mean. He had all those guards, one of them would’ve—“
“None of them saw what you did,” Regis said, his mask slipping. “And they certainly weren’t as fast.” He tugged at his collar. “I’ll need to tell the king that you’re awake. Do you need anything? Water, food, a potion?”
“What’s a potion?” Cor asked. Regis gave him a strange, distant look.
“Nothing, really,” he said. “But… before I go, I… I really am grateful, you know. The king isn’t just, well, the king. Not to me.”
Cor thought of the stories people told of the king in the city, the paintings that hung up on the walls of bars and diners, the magical light of the wall that shielded the city and the outlying region of Leide from Imperial fire.
“Me, neither,” he said.
Regis pulled the blankets back over Cor’s legs. “You’re a stand-up guy, Cor Leonis,” he said.
“You’re not so bad yourself, Regis,” Cor said, and the prince smiled and, to Cor’s dismay, reached out to ruffle his hair.