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That Garon had loved Katerina was no secret in Nohr: he had adored her fiercely, courted her ferociously, doted upon her with an open-hearted affection almost unbecoming of his station. For a king to love his queen so much was unheard of, in those days; it captured the hearts of the people with such intensity that they momentarily forgot their hunger and their misery.
And for all his love she gave him a weakling for a firstborn, then died delivering a stillbirth; and Garon mourned her for weeks, after which he announced that his son Alexander -- named for the Nohrian general-prince of myth -- would henceforth be known as Xander, only part of a legacy. Xander grew into that half-love as anyone would, grew shy and spindly and asthmatic, would flinch at the slightest shift in tone. He was an introvert, a letdown, a profoundly unattractive youth, all freckle and bone and no king, no king at all.
So it was to his great surprise -- and certainly to the surprise of the whole court, every aristocrat and servant and concubine, if not to the surprise of the whole nation -- when his father called him in for an audience at the ripe old age of thirteen, and presented to him the left hand of Nohr.
“Father,” Xander says, kneeling and cold and afraid before the throne, cursing the way his child’s voice cracks. “I beg your pardon, but I cannot accept this gift.”
“Nonsense.” Garon’s voice is stern and unwavering. Xander does not dare look up to meet his gaze, but imagines him as he always is: his entire being wearing his shame, the glory of Nohr tapered to the narrow point of its king disappointed by its crown prince, a father disappointed by his son. “Siegfried will lend its power to those worthy of it.”
“I am not worthy.”
“Just take the damn sword, boy.”
Xander looks up. Garon is stonefaced. He can only imagine what Siegfried does to those who it deems unworthy: the fury of a dragon-god is no laughing matter. Garon knows as well as Xander does what happens next, and Xander is left to decide whether to disobey or die. The coin is tossed, and he chooses the former. “I will not, Father. I am not ready.”
“By the Gods, you will be ready.” Garon sheathes the sword, and its barely-perceptible hum is momentarily stilled. “Or by your sixteenth birthday I will force it into your hands, regardless.”
So Siegfried is moved to Xander’s quarters, laid on his bed on the lover’s side in a grim parody of the spouse Xander will likely never have. He dares not touch it for fear of his life, sleeps fitfully at his writing-desk that night, dreams of an intolerable weight draped on his shoulders and Garon succeeded by the daughter of his second wife -- or any of the children of his mistresses, Camilla or Adria or Tabor or Gemma or Leo or little baby Nadir, child of Garon’s favourite concubine.
He wakes to a blanket on his shoulders and hot tea, Hyperion with a soft expression standing at his post.
“There was no need,” Xander says, though some ridiculously human part of him does appreciate the way it chases away the cold. “I am not a boy who needs to be cared for.”
“It is my duty and honour to take care of milord’s health,” Hyperion responds, with perfect timing and cadence.
Suddenly, ridiculously, Xander wishes that Hyperion would ask to speak freely. His retainer is a third son of a minor nobleman, shut out of his inheritance by two older brothers, leaving him with nothing but his education and his formidable skill in combat. He was sent to Garon as repayment for outstanding taxes, and given to Xander as an insult. He is devilishly handsome and a brilliant tactician and kind to animals and well-spoken and loyal and charming and humble and beloved by all the aristocracy. He is fifteen. It is in violation of the Dusk Dragon’s Imperative that a prince should feel so woefully inferior to his retainer, but it is impossible for Xander to feel anything else.
Venetia arrives with breakfast. Xander has trouble stomaching meats and fats before noon, and often breakfast is porridge and tea, or toasted bread if he’s feeling up to it. She places the tray on his desk and allows her gaze to slide to the sword on his bed.
“Milord,” she starts, then holds her tongue. She, like Hyperion, is distressingly loyal, the eldest daughter of a freed gladiator -- Xander had pulled her from her childhood home into his service, and she seems grateful for the opportunity.
He does adore them, in some meaningful way; they are the closest thing he has to family.
Breakfast does not go down easily. There’s a lump in his throat that he has trouble swallowing around, an anxiety that makes everything unpalatable. Siegfried, on his bed, purrs malevolently. Something must be done about this. To Hyperion: “Do I have any appointments this morning?”
“No, milord.”
“Saddle my horse.”
“Yes, milord.”
Venetia carries a crossbow and Hyperion carries a longsword and Xander carries nothing. He needs to think, and he thinks best in the saddle; they ride out through miles of forest darker than his mood as he tries to come to terms with the situation.
-- Garon must believe in him. You don’t leave regalia in your child’s bedroom without expecting some sort of positive result. If Xander is unworthy he must make himself worthy, rather than wait for the gods to bless him with some unknown quality. But -- what makes one worthy of regalia, of princehood, of kingship? He doesn’t know. He needs to study. He needs to double his studies. He needs to increase his training. He has the blood of a king of Nohr, damn it! He’ll meet his father’s challenge head-on, prove to the whole world that the blood of the Dusk Dragon is more powerful than one failure of a prince. He must. There is no other option, no easy way out, no end but glory or death.
They return to Krakenburg just as the midmorning bell is ringing, and Xander calls for a second breakfast of bacon and hen’s eggs; he holds it down by sheer force of will, drags himself to the training hall and runs himself ragged. He had avoided weight-training as a child for fear of making a fool of himself in public, but at the centre of fear he finds purpose and through purpose, meaning. Hyperion stands quietly by and says nothing. He silently offers water as Xander requires it.
When his legs and arms are completely numb he forces himself to his room where he calls for a midday meal that includes fresh game with his usual vegetables and water -- it’s a side of venison seasoned with something Nestrian, and he almost enjoys himself. When he is done he heads to the library and pulls every book he can find on his father’s bloodline, reads until he’s ready to stomach a dinner of rabbit stew and machette, heads back to the training hall and swings his sword until darkness rushes up to seize him.
He wakes on his couch early the next morning, unbelievably sore in every inch of his body, with a pounding headache and the sour taste of bile at the back of his throat, and if that needs to be his life from then on so be it.
(Then Leo’s mother murders Nadir, and Nadir’s mother orders a hit on Leo, but in an ironic case of poor timing and communication the assassin takes out Gemma, whose mother petitions Garon to have Nadir’s mother stripped of status in retaliation -- and Garon, hardly entertained by the whole situation, offers Gemma’s mother her wish if she kills Nadir’s mother in hand-to-hand combat. The women are given battleaxes and are made to fight in their court dresses; the scene in the colosseum is grisly. Camilla’s mother drapes herself on Garon’s shoulder, only to be rebuked for a new favourite, a blonde who is already pregnant. Xander watches it from his seat without interest because he was ordered to be there, heartsore and nauseous, dearly missing Azura and Nadir and the late Queen Arete, dead of heartache.
He’d heard that Azura was alive in Hoshido. He’d also heard that Garon had taken a Hoshidan dragonet, Sumeragi’s bastard child, and declared it a member of the Nohrian royal family before locking it in the Northern Fortress for its own safety.)
“Milord,” Venetia starts again, six months into the new routine, as he trains with a weighted sword. Siegfried still sleeps on Xander’s bed. Xander sleeps, fitfully and with frequent interruptions, on his couch or at his desk or in the library or on one memorable occasion, in a storage closet behind the training grounds.
He waits for her to ask permission to finish her thought and when she does not, gives it: “What is it, Venetia?”
“Milord, you are being courted.”
Xander’s fingers go numb, and he almost drops the training blade. “Pardon?”
“You received a letter this morning.” He hands her the sword to replace on its shelf. She gives him a letter set with a wax seal of a minor aristocratic house, and another seal depicting a mimosa flower -- denoting a family offering their firstborn daughter to a lord.
He breaks the seal. “Why did this --” He’s beset with a sudden dizziness. “-- Why did this not go through my father?”
“It did. He passes it to you with his approval.”
He should be overjoyed. Instead he feels that odd intersection of panic and numbness that may as well be his signature emotion. “Venetia.” He struggles to find the right words, lost in the weight on his tongue. “Venetia, I feel rather unwell.”
She breathes in, sharply, through her nose. “Shall I escort you to your chambers?”
“Please.”
She offers her arm for support. He declines it, straightens his back and puts one foot in front of the other until he’s safe in his own room behind a door that closes out the rest of the world, then sinks onto his couch inelegantly. He is bone-tired. He is terrified of the implications of the letter. He wishes, suddenly, ridiculously, heretically, that he might be another Nohrian peasant miserably tilling their field day in and day out, with no sword or country to earn, free to choose who they do or do not court.
“I’ll sleep in my bed,” he says, fiercely beyond caring whether he lives or dies. Venetia says nothing about the fact that it is just after midday or that Siegfried is still exactly where Garon left it, just assumes her post by the bedside and with her brow knitted in concern.
Xander sleeps through one unbroken nightmare about mouths and wakes up in the heart of the night, ravenous and sweating through his shirt.
Siegfried is still there, the godsdamned sword, glowing a beautiful Nohrian violet. Garon had wielded it when he was Xander’s age, and Garon’s father before him, and Garon’s father’s mother before them -- a conqueror queen named Larisa, who had brought the Ice Tribes into the embrace of Windmere and drove the Wolfskin out to their mountain -- and the lineage of the sword kept going, all the way back to when the First Dragons gave it to the cavalier named Nohr, the first king of their country and the sworn enemy of the swordsman Hoshido, who swallowed dragons’ blood and swore fealty to their old gods. Xander knows its history well. He has committed to memory the story of the sword named Victory and Protection. Its provenance is brutality, the fine art of death; its lives claimed must be in the tens of thousands.
“Damn it all,” Xander says, to the night and to the concept of justice, rolls over and reaches for the blade.
“Milord,” comes a voice from beside his bed; Hyperion is ever dutiful at his post. An uncomfortably long pause, during which Xander’s hand hovers over the sword, then: “May I speak freely?”
“Please do.”
“You are unwell. You have been ever since the king gave you Siegfried.”
“He did not give it to me. I am earning the right to hold the sword.”
“The sword is your birthright, milord, by virtue of being the firstborn son of the king. You do not have to earn it.”
“Then I am earning the right to be the firstborn son of the king!”
“Milord, you are a fool.”
Xander turns, shocked, to look at Hyperion. Even in the dim violet light there is colour high in Hyperion’s cheeks as he refuses to meet Xander’s eye -- he’s as scandalized as Xander is, and knows that he is putting his life on the line to say such a thing to the crown prince.
He’s right, of course.
“Is it.” He swallows. “Is it -- obvious, Hyperion?”
“That you are --”
“-- That I am unwell.”
“It is not physically apparent. To anyone who does not know you well, you would seem -- healthy. Vibrant. Thriving.”
“Ah.”
“-- But I see a -- misery in you, milord. You garner no enjoyment from anything you do. It is difficult as your retainer to watch you punish yourself so.”
“It is the duty of a prince to project the image of vitality. My well-being or happiness is of secondary concern.”
“Can a prince not be well, as well as look well? Milord, this cannot continue.”
“It must.”
“I will petition the king myself to get you to stop, if that is what it takes.”
He would forfeit his life if he did that. “You will do no such thing, Hyperion.” And to illustrate his point -- that a prince ought to martyr oneself before their retainer -- Xander rolls over and closes his hand around Siegfried’s hilt.
Nothing happens. There is no earth-shattering change in him, no monumental turning-over. He is neither punished nor rewarded. It’s warm to the touch, but not scalding; feels magical in nature, but not overwhelming; his father was right, it really is just a damn sword. Why on earth had he convinced himself that this was beyond his capabilities? Why was the concept of inheriting regalia so -- terrifying?
And then it hits him, all at once, the turning-over of one emotion to reveal another: beneath the fear there is guilt and dread; the horrible way he had been punishing himself was to mask a deep sense of inadequacy; he was not driven by duty, but self-pity; Hyperion was right, he is profoundly unwell.
“I --” a lump worms its way up his throat. He is loathe to cry in front of anyone, but if he must, he will cry in front of Hyperion. “-- I will rest tomorrow. Send my regrets to the family who proposed their daughter to me. When I wake, please bring me something easy to eat.”
“Milord,” Hyperion responds.
Xander sits up in bed and sips his tea and considers Siegfried: the scabbard is of an unknown metal in Nohrian violet with striking details in gold; the blade is black as dusk with its cutting edge in white and red; the pommel rolls into the guard with a smooth curve rather than a hard transition, cut from the same piece of metal rather than pieced together, so unlike the swords he’s used to using. There is a ruby-red gemstone laid into the blade whose origin Xander cannot guess at. Siegfried seems, absurdly enough, to be more ceremonial than functional.
He feels himself more ceremonial than functional. Upon waking he’d stumbled to his bathroom to clean his face and teeth, and forced himself to take a hard look in the mirror, where he found Hyperion to be correct on another account: on the surface he might seem harder and handsomer, muscle where there was no muscle before, a new heft to him that might demand a little attention and a modicum of respect. There are also long dark circles under his eyes and frown lines etched between his eyebrows that he did not have before.
There was this sudden realization that hit him, as he regarded those frown lines -- for the first time in his thirteen years he could see his father in him. It’s a thought that comes burdened with a wide variety of emotion.
Is it a son’s duty to become a spitting image of their father?
He spends the day in bed, eating little and reading a novel when he is not distracted by Siegfried. It is a pulpy fantasy about forbidden love, a dracoknight courting an aristocrat. The fierce and dispassionate heroine reminds him of his little sister Camilla, and late in the day he realizes he has no idea whether or not Camilla is still alive. He knows that Nadir and Gemma are gone, as are their mothers; and he recalls hearing that Leo’s mother had died. He should check in on Camilla and Leo and Tabor, and he thinks he might have another, younger sibling, and he should inquire about the dragonet in the Northern Fortress.
(Camilla is alive. She’s nine years old and well-spoken for her age. He finds her in the gardens cutting the thorns off the roses, and she appreciates his company. She invites him to visit the dragonet -- who is not a dragon at all, but a toddler whose Nohrian name is Corrin -- with her when she next visits the Northern Fortress.
Leo, six years old, is a dour young man and a burgeoning student of dark magic. Xander finds him in the infirmary with his tutor, collecting his own blood -- he’s preparing the ink to copy his first Nosferatu.
His newest sibling is a baby girl named Elise. She is blonde like her mother, violet-eyed like her father, with a chipper demeanour. Her mother is preoccupied with absorbing status, and as such Elise is cared for by Xander’s old nanny Cassita, who scolds Xander in a way that only a nanny to a prince can by fretting about his haggard appearance and insisting he take better care of himself. Xander enjoys the moment, hanging his head to hide his smile as he’s chastised by his godmother otherwise occupied by nursing his baby sister.
Tabor is dead. Camilla’s mother kidnapped and killed him before throwing herself into a river.)
Healing is slow, and takes hard work. There are days when he feels fine, eats well and works hard and studies long and plays with Elise and talks with Camilla and checks in on Leo; days when he rides far and speaks well and visits Corrin or patrols the border; and there are days when the sight of his father’s eyes in the mirror leave him so unsettled that he trains until the burn in his arms screams louder than the burning in his mind, and his food tastes rotten in his mouth. On those days Hyperion and Venetia are gentle with him, and he appreciates that love.
Then he is sixteen and his father sends him to a routine skirmish on the Hoshidan border. Xander, overly excited to show those Hoshidans what the firstborn son of Garon can do with Siegfried, makes an absurd number of tactical errors before being forced into a shameful retreat. He’d put too much faith in the sword, thought that it and it alone would be enough to carry the day; his father had placed that faith in him.
There’s something life-altering about lying supine under a blazing Hoshidan sun, your retainer prone over you to protect you from a barrage of arrows, wide-eyed and silenced by pain. Hyperion’s pupils are dilated and his face is white, his mouth frozen open in a scream, an arrow lodged in his throat; to their left Venetia lies crumpled, her arms and legs at ungodsly angles, choking on a lungful of her own blood. In his hands Siegfried is inert and uncaring.
“It’s a beautiful blade,” Corrin says. “May I touch it?”
Corrin is delicate and romantic and painfully naive. Xander should be offended by such a cheerful nature in a member of the royal family, particularly one who was brought into it, rather than being born into it -- but he cannot hate Corrin, whose joy is infectious.
“Certainly,” Xander says.
Corrin also has dainty, uncalloused hands. In his youth, Xander might have fretted over whether or not it was appropriate or safe to let hands like those touch Siegfried -- but he has come to understand that, more often than not, a sword is just a sword.
-- Thus, when Corrin holds it, Siegfried takes on that delicacy and romance, that strange and otherworldly beauty that the poets and gossips whisper of in the darkest parts of Windmere. The ruby-red gem, which in Xander’s hands seems otherwise eerie and malevolent, becomes the focus of eye-catching symmetry.
“Brother, you’re staring again,” Corrin says with a gentle smile, thoroughly unaware of the potential for a new Nohr that blooms like a pale spring flower in the halls of the Northern Fortress.
“My apologies.”
“It’s all right.” Corrin places the sword back in Xander’s hands. “I like the gemstone. It’s the same colour as my eyes -- like you carry a piece of me with you beyond the walls of the fortress...”
Something about the way Corrin says that makes something click in Xander’s head, and that evening -- after dinner, of course, the four of them fussing over little Elise like siblings should -- Xander takes his original untranslated copy of On the Regalia of the Kingdom of Nohr to Leo’s tutor, who is otherwise occupied working with Leo on unlocking the secrets of one of Nohr’s other regalia, a blank tome called Brynhildr.
“Hard to say, milord,” the tutor says, when Xander points to the passage that describes Siegfried. “It’s similar to the rune for tiger’s eye, the cousin of quartz -- but there’s a turn in the rune, to the upper right, that is similar to the rune for shapeshifter or, in its anachronistic form, deity.”
“It’s a dragonstone,” Leo says, flatly.
Xander turns to stare at him.
“The histories make reference to dragons who could take the form of humans -- progenitors to the Nohrian royal family. They used dragonstones to hide their true forms. It’s not a huge leap of logic to assume that the Dusk Dragon left one in Siegfried.”
Leo’s right.
Leo’s right! Damn the dawn, how could Xander not have seen earlier? -- But Leo’s always been like that, able to cut through to the true nature of things. It’s why he had ultimately settled on magic over the sword, and why -- no doubt -- he would surpass Xander himself some day, as a statesman and tactician.
Xander opens his mouth to praise him, but Garon’s voice in his head -- do not praise your siblings, lest they grow fat on the flattery of a king -- stills his tongue. “Thank you, I’ll consider that,” he says instead.
“Brother,” Leo says.
“Milord,” Leo’s tutor says.
There’s a light in Corrin’s window as Xander heads out to the courtyard for his nightly training, sets up a dummy and dresses himself in his training gear and asks himself, for the hundredth time, when he’ll be ready to find new retainers -- fools who’d be overeager to throw themselves on a Hoshidan blade for the right to dress a prince. Until then he’ll have to take care of himself.
Though, Camilla will have tea for him when he’s done, and Elise will regale him with the fairy tales she’s read despite being up long past her bedtime, and Leo will smile when he thinks no-one is looking. Despite (and, perhaps, in spite of) everything there is love in Xander’s family, a fierce love that transcends each individual horror they have survived.
Something flares in him at that thought; at the intersection of love and ferocity is a family, fools who really would throw themselves on swords for one another. Garon’s wives are gone, and the king of Nohr had better things to worry about than his children, but they had one another, linked by the blood of the First Dragon.
Was it mere coincidence that Corrin was rumoured to be a dragonet as well? There’s more to family than blood, of course. Xander thinks of Hyperion and Venetia, and --
-- Siegfried roars with a deafening silence that starts in the centre of Xander’s head and ends in his lungs, and every torch in the courtyard is suddenly snuffed out. Something is trying to escape him. He bites down on his tongue, tastes rust and iron, holds Siegfried level with the training dummy and watches, passive and afraid, as it explodes in a shower of bright black fire.
-- I just never wanted you to think that I couldn't figure it out on my own. I just want so badly for you to be proud —
I know. And I am. More than words could ever fully convey. But we both stand to gain, never to lose, from frank and honest discussion. Let us not be strangers, but family. Anything you need, I wish to provide.
-- Thank you, Father. I won't soon forget those words. I...I love you so very much.
I love you too, my son.