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Kurt could feel it before they even came into view - the weight of it in the air, the alien prickle of it across the back of his neck. He’d gotten used to that feeling in the months since he’d started his training, he’d had to, but that didn’t stop the goosebumps from spreading down his arms.
Magic.
Kurt had never even met a mage before he arrived at the castle, at least not one that he knew about. His village was both very small and entirely mundane - or, it had been. Nothing remarkable had ever happened there, right up until the day it disappeared.
Kurt had been a full day’s ride away, but he’d felt when it happened. The aftershocks had knocked him to his knees. It was pure luck that he hadn’t been there, at his father’s side, when everything he’d ever known had quite literally been crushed into the ground by forces none of them had any hope of understanding.
The risk of living in a border town.
It had taken him a long time to learn not to recoil at the feeling of magic in the air. It had taken everything from him, after all.
Now, though, he smiled. He leaned against a tree at the edge of the mages’ training grounds, content to watch the spectacle. The field was empty but for Blaine and Sebastian, and now Kurt. Blaine’s doing, Kurt knew - Sebastian’s ego would be much better satisfied to train in front of a crowd of awed admirers.
They were the only level four mages in the battalion, and probably the country. Including the Mage Master herself. Blaine was probably right that the other trainees would find it intimidating to watch them train at full power.
They didn’t seem to see Kurt, and Kurt knew better than to make himself known. A training exercise it may have been, but the danger of distraction was just as real here as it would be on the battlefield.
Blaine stood at one end of the field, and Sebastian at the other. The air between them seemed to be alive, rippling with power. They had been at it for a while, it seemed. Sebastian was red-faced and panting slightly, showing signs of exertion that he’d never otherwise allow himself. Everything in him was focused on Blaine. He lifted his arm, seemed to grab something from the air, seemed to throw it - and then Kurt’s heart stopped, because the air was thick with gold-tipped arrows, hurtling toward Blaine at terrifying speed.
Blaine didn’t flinch. He didn’t move at all. If Kurt had been closer, he may have seen a tell-tale squint, but from this distance, there was nothing to betray that he was even a living human, much less an active participant in a mage duel.
The arrows were no more than a foot away from Blaine’s face when they abruptly fell to the ground, as if they had struck a barrier. They had, of course, a wall that hadn’t been there a moment ago, made of a clear, solid substance that sparkled in the sunlight and that Kurt suspected was really and truly diamond. It disappeared a moment later, ground to dust and carried away on the wind. Blaine hadn’t moved a muscle.
Sebastian geared up to do something else, movements obvious and bordering on sloppy, but the ground bucked up beneath him, knocking him to his ass. A glittering wave of dust descended on him before he could manage to scramble to his feet, forming and reforming until Sebastian was bound up in elegant little cords of diamond rope. Sebastian let out a sound of frustration that quickly morphed into a laugh.
“I yield!” he yelled.
The ropes dissolved in an instant, and Sebastian heaved himself back to his feet. Blaine was already jogging over, teasing grin at his lips.
Sebastian shook his head.
“That was a dirty move,” he drawled, impressed.
“Well, maybe it will teach you a little something about the value of subtlety.”
Sebastian smirked.
“Not my strong suit, I admit.”
He stepped closer, into Blaine’s space, a brazen move that forced Blaine to crane his neck to maintain eye contact. Blaine looked away, mirth leeching out of his smile, but he didn’t step back. A hot spike of something vaguely resembling anger drove itself into Kurt’s stomach. He had no right to feel anything of the sort. He clenched his fists and stayed where he was.
“Raw power won’t be enough against Tyberion’s mages,” said Blaine firmly. He looked back up at Sebastian, safe behind the wall of his authority.
Sebastian stared at him, more frustrated than really made sense. For all that he seemed to spend every waking moment coming up with new and increasingly outrageous ways to flirt with Blaine, he had to be just as aware as Kurt that his efforts were ultimately futile. Blaine may not have been an entirely conventional royal, but royal he was.
“No need for the lecture, Highness.”
“Sebastian - ”
“Not from you anyway. The sentiment is a tad hollow coming from the biggest hypocrite I know.”
Blaine’s eyes widened incredulously.
“Hypocrite? How am I a hypocrite?”
Sebastian raised an eyebrow in infuriating amusement. He leaned closer, clearly hoping to cultivate dramatic impact.
“You’re holding back.”
Blaine’s mouth dropped open, clearly caught off-guard.
“What - what are you talking about?” he managed.
“Don’t do that, don’t pretend like you don’t know. I can feel it, Blaine. You can hide from everyone else, but you can’t hide from me.”
“I - I don’t - ”
“What we just did? It nearly tapped me dry. You could have been asleep for all the effort it cost you. Your magic - it’s - you have more power in one fingertip than I have in my whole body. You have so much, it wants to burst right through your skin. You radiate with it. Everyone can feel it, they’re drawn to it, they can feel how incredible you are. They just don’t know what it is. I do.”
Until this moment, Kurt had no idea what earnest looked like on Sebastian’s face. Blaine didn’t seem quite capable of looking away. Kurt hated himself for hating him for it.
“I can’t,” said Blaine quietly, like it hurt.
“Of course you can.”
Blaine shook his head.
“You don’t understand.”
“Clearly.” Sebastian crossed his arms over his chest, frustration naked on his face and in his body. “You’re the only hope we have of winning this war, and you’re running scared.”
“That’s not fair. Wars aren’t won by just one person - we’ll win because we’re smarter, and we’ve worked harder, and because we care about what we’re fighting to protect - ”
Sebastian scoffed, cutting him off.
“Tyberion is the most powerful mage in recorded human history. Forget his battalion, he could take out our little army of misfits all by himself without breaking a sweat. And he will, unless - ”
“I can’t.”
“Now isn’t the time to indulge those daddy issues of yours, Highness.”
Blaine clenched his jaw.
“Leave it,” he said, in a tone he used so rarely it caught Kurt by surprise - the tone of someone who expected his orders to be followed without question.
Sebastian didn’t look at all ready to back down.
It was well past time to intervene.
Kurt stepped hastily out from the shadowed shelter of his tree and cleared his throat. The two of them whipped around to face him, nearly in unison. Sebastian scowled. Blaine smiled.
“Kurt!” he called in greeting. The only sign that he was anything but perfectly content was the lingering tension in his shoulders. Kurt might not have seen it if he hadn’t known to look. Kurt strode toward them, ignoring the daggers in Sebastian’s gaze.
“I thought I might find you here,” he said, leaning into Blaine’s hug of greeting. He smelled of magic - floral and acrid.
“What, are you stalking him now?”
Sebastian’s smirk was nothing short of pernicious. Blaine leveled him a look that he seemed to hope would be quelling. Sebastian’s smirk only deepened. Kurt ignored him.
“You ready to go?”
Blaine glanced at Sebastian, who looked like he might protest if given half a chance. Blaine didn’t give him one.
“Yeah,” he said brightly. “We just finished.”
He grabbed Kurt by the hand and led him away from the field, in the direction of the castle. Kurt looked over his shoulder, but Sebastian had already disappeared.
“What was that about?”
“Just Sebastian being Sebastian.”
Blaine’s tone was careful, and did not invite follow-up questions. Kurt let it go. For now. He wasn’t sure what to think, or what to ask. If what Sebastian was true…
Kurt didn’t understand magic innately, not the way a mage would, or even someone who had grown up around it like most of his fellow trainees. He’d learned a lot, of course, thanks in no small part to Blaine’s patient teaching, but he still found himself in the dark more often than not. This, though - this, he understood.
Tyberion, the Tyrant King of Thantos, had killed Kurt’s family, his friends, everyone who had made up his world, and he’d done it without warning. In the blink of an eye. It wasn’t supposed to be possible. Nothing and no one could have stopped him, and he could do it again.
Blaine, beloved son of the Queen of Anders, had had to fight centuries of tradition to be allowed to train his magical talent at all. Actually participating in conflict of any kind would never even be under consideration. He was second in line for the throne, too precious to risk.
And he was their only hope.
Kurt squeezed Blaine’s hand, still firmly in his. Blaine glanced at him and smiled.
“How was training?” he asked.
“Pretty great, actually. Santana told me she’s recommending me for the archers’ corps.”
Blaine stopped, and the pride shining through those amber eyes of his rekindled some of the elation that had had Kurt floating through the afternoon.
“Kurt, that’s amazing! You must have really impressed her.”
“I guess I have a knack for it.”
As well as a knack for being unseated from his horse in the heat of close combat. But that was neither here nor there.
They continued on their way, this time at a less harried pace, and Blaine listened attentively as Kurt recounted the other, more mundane details of his day. He reciprocated with some prime gossip regarding the latest romantic entanglements of the mage trainee group. He didn’t say anything about Sebastian, but Kurt didn’t expect him to. Maybe didn’t want him to.
Kurt found it difficult to notice anything but Blaine, and his eyes, and the life in his smile and his laugh and his body, so he didn’t realize they’d reached the upper barracks until Blaine unceremoniously let go of his hand. He knew why - there were people here, people who could see and who couldn’t hold their tongues. It hadn’t been fully conscious, it never was, but Kurt missed it immediately. The only point of connection they would allow themselves.
“Are you hungry?” asked Blaine, as they approached the mess hall.
Kurt was, but he wasn’t ready to join the others. Not yet.
“I wouldn’t mind stretching my legs first,” he said.
Blaine smiled, and nodded, and changed directions. He knew Kurt would follow.
The royal rose garden was a thing of beauty all year round, but especially now, in the warmth of the June sun. It was vast, and well-tended, and it was Blaine’s favorite place in the world. Blaine seemed to grow pensive as they approached, smiles burning out quicker than they usually did. Kurt held his tongue, sensing that Blaine would not react well to being pressed.
Blaine glanced at Kurt and waved his hand - purely for Kurt’s benefit, he knew - and Kurt felt it, a thickening of the air. He could see it, too, like looking through a thick glass pane. It would be enough to muffle their words to anyone who might catch them unaware.
Still, Blaine said nothing. He stopped, leaned down to inspect a blossom that had started to droop and go brown. Under his touch, it rejuvenated. He smiled, satisfied, and inhaled deeply. Its color was closer to gold, now, than the pale yellow of its mates. Blaine kept strolling along the well-groomed path, and Kurt followed. He brushed his fingers over the golden blossom, half-expecting it to give off sparks. It felt like any other rose he had ever touched.
“Cooper’s birthday is next month,” said Blaine suddenly.
Kurt knew that. Everyone knew that. Aside from the ever-looming war, it was the most-discussed topic in the barracks.
“And his coronation,” he added mildly.
“Yes, that too.”
“How are…preparations coming along?”
“Is he prepared, you mean?”
Blaine raised a wry eyebrow, and Kurt nodded, conceding. It was no use, trying to be delicate about the matter. Blaine certainly didn’t seem offended.
“I think so,” said Blaine carefully. “As much as anyone could be. He’s been training for this his entire life. I mean, I know he has a certain reputation, but he does really care about his people. He’ll take this seriously.”
Anyone would have been forgiven for thinking that Blaine was the elder brother, the way he talked about their future king. If age were measured in anything other than years, he would be.
“How is your mother faring?”
Blaine’s face fell. He sighed so sadly that Kurt wished he could take the question back.
“She has her good days.”
Kurt took his hand and squeezed it.
“What do the healers say?”
“That it’s unlike anything they’ve ever seen,” said Blaine darkly.
Kurt knew what he was implying - the Queen’s mysterious ailment was widely rumored to be magical in nature.
“Is it - I mean, have you - ” Kurt stopped, unsure how to finish.
“No. I don’t know. Tyberion has done so much that we thought impossible, who’s to say?”
Kurt nodded. He flashed to what Sebastian had said not an hour earlier - you’re holding back. He said nothing. Blaine glanced at him, and maybe he could read something of Kurt’s thoughts on his face, because he stopped, and his eyes narrowed, and he dropped Kurt’s hand to fold his arms protectively over his chest.
“I won’t be allowed to fight him,” he said. “I won’t be allowed anywhere near him. You know that, right? After the coronation, I won’t even be allowed to train.”
“What? Why?”
“I’ll be the crown prince, won’t I? At least, until Cooper manages to get married and father a legitimate heir. The council would lock me in the dungeons before they let me so much as look at a battlefield.”
“So let them. You can’t tell me this castle has a dungeon that can hold you.”
“That’s not the point.”
“Of course it is! Blaine, you - you have a gift. If there’s even a chance you can use it to stop him - ”
“It’s not that simple!”
“I understand that you don’t want to disappoint your family, Blaine, but your people are out there, vulnerable, and they’re counting on you too.”
Blaine’s eyes were big and hurt and maybe a little bit wild with the desperation of a creature who’d been backed into a corner.
“You don’t understand anything. You don’t.”
“Then explain it.”
Blaine paused, closed his eyes, seemed to regroup. Seemed to give up. When he opened his eyes, the fight had left him. That wildness, though, the wildness of desperation - that was still there. It was enough to give Kurt’s heart a squeeze.
“You’re right,” said Blaine. “The dungeons wouldn’t hold me. Nothing could, nothing they could fashion. That’s - you can’t - ” He stopped. He sighed and started again. “I remember, there’s this passage in a book I read when I was little, before I started training. The Art of Mastering Your Magic. The author was describing what it felt like to have magic - a ‘pool of possibility,’ she called it, right at the center of you. Always there for you to draw on, as long as you’re careful not to drain it dry. I loved that passage, not because it made sense to me, but because - well, because it gave me something to tell people, when they asked.” Kurt found himself gaping - it sounded an awful lot like what Blaine had told him, as a matter of fact. “I knew I couldn’t tell the truth. Even then, I knew that.”
“The truth?”
“I have oceans of magic inside me, Kurt. Fathoms deep, so deep I’ve never touched the bottom. I don’t even know if there is one. I could do anything - that’s what it feels like. I really think there’s nothing I couldn’t do. And it wants me to. It wants to be free, to burst right out of me and shape the world the way I see it. To turn it into something beautiful. I hate keeping it inside. You have no idea how much it takes from me, every day, just to keep it from drowning me.”
Kurt swallowed. He needed to, or he wouldn’t be able to keep the horror from his voice.
“So why do you do it?”
“Because I - because - don’t you see how dangerous it would be? Don’t you see how dangerous I could be? No one should have limitless power, no one person is meant to.”
“But if you’re using it to do good - ”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Of course it does.”
“Power corrupts, Kurt - that’s what it does.”
“You’re the best person I know.” He meant it. He needed Blaine to believe it. “I don’t think there’s enough power in the world to change that.”
Blaine’s gaze was hungry, greedy for the faith Kurt felt with his whole heart.
He looked down.
“Tyberion was a good person, once.”
“You’re not him. You couldn’t be.”
“He’s my uncle.”
Blaine had never said that before, not to Kurt. Probably for the same reason that he said it with such disgust, now. It wasn’t considered polite to mention the King Consort’s connection to Thantos.
“So? My uncle used to pick his teeth with shards of chicken bone at the dinner table. Does that make me a boor?”
“That’s different.”
“No, it’s not. Blaine, tell me - if you could do anything, anything at all, regardless of your station, what would you do?”
“I - I don’t - ”
“Yes, you do. You told me yourself, just a moment ago. You said it - you would make the world beautiful.”
Blaine nodded. He didn’t seem capable of speech.
“You have a good heart, Blaine. The world deserves to see it.”
Kurt pressed his hand to Blaine’s chest. Blaine's heart was beating strong and fast against his ribs. Kurt felt his own speed up to match. Blaine seemed transfixed, unable to look away, and Kurt didn’t want him to.
Blaine was so open right now - hurt, yes, and vulnerable, but more open than Kurt had ever seen him. Blaine had a role, and he played it well. He had to. But here, now, he needed Kurt, and Kurt knew there was nothing Blaine could ask that he wouldn’t do.
Blaine swallowed.
“What if I can’t do it?”
“You can.”
“My family will try and stop me. Everyone will try and stop me.”
“Let them.”
Blaine ducked his head and gave a faint laugh of disbelief - at Kurt’s audacity, perhaps, or his own in listening to him. It seemed to bolster him. When he met Kurt’s gaze, he looked resolute.
He put his hand over Kurt’s, still on his chest. It drew his body closer to Kurt’s. Kurt could almost feel him, like a buzz seeping through his skin and into his bones.
“You’re amazing, Kurt Hummel.”
Kurt couldn’t breathe - it felt like his breath had literally been stolen. The warmth of fondness in Blaine’s gaze would have been enough on its own. Kurt wanted - there was too much he wanted, and nothing that he could take.
Blaine let go. He stepped away.
He was the prince again.
Kurt caught his breath.
They were silent as they left the garden, Blaine lost in his thoughts and Kurt lost in contemplating Blaine.
A glint of light caught Kurt’s eye, and he turned to follow it. The garden looked suddenly, subtly different. The flowers were bigger, more lush, more vibrant. They, all of them, reminded him of the little golden blossom Blaine had given new life to just minutes ago. They seemed to sparkle in the dying sunlight, like jewels.
Blaine was smiling.
It was beautiful.