Chapter Text
In the land of Nevermore, there is a great city that sits on the shore of the vast ocean like a floating fortress, just across the pond from the land of Eos. It is regarded as a seat of power for one of the branches of the Caelum royal family. It was even in the name of the city.
Scala ad Caelum, the Stairway to the Sky.
The white and gold tiered city went so high into the sky that it seemed like it could touch the heavens. There were even some days if when the cloud cover was low enough that the great clock tower of the royal palace vanished into the clouds, giving it an endless illusion of reaching upwards to the land of the gods. Those fortunate enough to live in this city were treated like nobility by everyone no matter where they went, so long as you lived in the right district that is.
Within the walled city there were five districts raising up in status, connected by steep steps and gondolas. At the top was the Royal Court, and despite being the smallest district it was still quite large due to what it contained. The palace was at the center, home to the royal family of Fleuret, where grand balls and government meetings were held almost daily. Around the court were several large mansions that acted as personal homes of relatives to the royal family and guest houses for special visitors, even if they are rarely used, with some smaller homes housing the most important of the staff, namely the royal aids and personal guards. The rest of the court was filled with large gardens and miniature forests where various rare animals lived peacefully with no fear of being hunted for sport like they would on land. Most of the staff lived outside in one of the lower districts and had to commute to work every day.
The second highest district was the Grand Quarter, where only the wealthy and nobility lived in small lavish manors. Their properties all had beautiful gardens, gold plated name plates at the guarded front door, and their own personal staff. The streets that did not have residents instead had five-star restaurants with waiting lists going back months in advance, and expensive parlors and tailors that no man or woman outside the district – other than the royal family – could afford. Many who lived here were either born into their wealth or were successful business owners who had so much wealth that they had others run the business for them while they collected the munny. They also did not have to worry about transportation as there were carriages waiting for them at a moment’s notice and beautiful gondolas that raised them above the roofs and took them to and from the Royal Court all the way down to the main gate at the bottom. If they did wish to walk for whatever reason, the brickwork streets were wide, pristine, and always lit by glowing magic lanterns.
Next came the merchants district, or the Plaza as most called it. While it didn’t seem like much, taking up a singular ring halfway up the city, it was slightly larger than the Royal Court in the amount of space it had. No one lived here except for the various merchants in their guildhalls. Outside the guildhalls were various stalls and businesses for those too rich for the Commons yet too poor for the Grand Quarter. Anyone was free to come to the Plaza to shop for anything from food to clothing to random trinkets to collect dust on a shelf somewhere. Those who were lucky enough to get a warrant from the palace were even able to open their own stalls to sell their wares at any time. Products from all over Nevermore could be found somewhere along the street, either imported from one of the other royal cities or brought in by traveling merchants from one of the free cities. DreamDolls from Daybreak Town seemed to be all the rage at the time.
Below the Plaza was the Commons, where the working class lived. Or to put it simply where the “plebeians” lived if you were of a higher class. The largest district of them all, it was split up into layers with those higher up and closer to the Plaza getting better homes with better views and cleaner air, and the ones unfortunate to live near the bottom were packed together where it was darker and more rank from the sewers. Here, many people lived in large apartments or share houses or if they could afford it in their own small homes with enough yard space to have a decent vegetable garden. Those “rich” enough to own their own building would turn it into a home business, such as a store or restaurant, or rent out rooms to visitors like an inn. While the Plaza was just one long road that wrapped around the city like a ring and the Grand Quarter had perfectly measured city blocks with straight colorful brickwork, in the Commons there were cobblestone roads and alleyways everywhere. They went in all directions and spread outwards from the base of the city, connecting with other streets like an intricate spider web. Where there weren’t any homes, there were small factories where commoners were paid by the merchants and the wealthy to produce various products such as cloth, glass, varnished wood, you name it. Anything you could imagine that they had little time to make themselves. In the Commons, the main gate to the city could be found, stretching out over a deep canal from the city to the lands of Nevermore.
While being a commoner seemed like a mundane, even hard-knock life, at least they weren’t living in the “slums.”
The slums were the worst place to live within the city, located mostly underground with only a few areas with access to the open sky via the canal. Located deep enough in the city canals so that no one had to see – or smell – the people or buildings and connected to other areas of the slums through the sewers, most of the smaller buildings here were shoddily built with scrap. Many of the larger sturdier ones were packed so tightly together that you could jump from roof to roof or window to window with no worry of slipping and falling to your death. Living spaces that could accommodate one person in the Commons had to house at least 5 people down here and depending on your luck you might be able to keep your home for a few days, maybe even weeks so long as no one came and threw you out. Or killed you. Down here gangs and criminals ran rampant, sex workers and drug dealers in the back alleys, and those brave enough to venture out to the lowest layer of the Commons would sit along the streets and beg for coin before the guards came by and threw them down the canal, hoping you died from the fall so that they didn’t have to deal with you ever again. It was a completely lawless district.
And that is where our story finally begins.
***
To put it simply, Sora was as blind as a bat.
It happened when he was a child, around 8 years old, without his parents’ supervision. He had tried to cast a magic spell to create a light bright enough to incinerate a bag of garbage that he knew would just sit and stink up the front porch within the day. While the magic did the job it did so a little too well. His parents in the next room heard their son scream in pain, and they came rushing in just in time to see the remains of the trash disappear as Sora rolled on the ground, gripping his head tightly as bright red burns quickly scarred his tear streaked face around his eyes. The local medicine woman – who everyone thought was a quack and high most of the time – could not heal a magic based injury with poor man’s medicine made from malmushroom spores and daggerquill droppings. Only medicine affordable to those in the Grand Quarter could heal such damage, and even then it wasn’t guaranteed that he would get all of his eyesight back. The only good thing she had to say was that his eyesight wasn’t completely gone, but he could no longer make out distinct shapes and colors more than an inch from his face and bright lights, particularly direct sunlight, would be too much for his overly sensitive eyes.
From that day forward, Sora was banned from ever using magic again, if his mother’s crying and his father’s beatings had anything to say about it.
Besides, he was better off keeping his gift a secret from the rest of the slums’ inhabitants, what with him being born connected to light magic, one of the rarest magic connections in all of Nevermore, maybe even the world. From what anyone knew there were only 5 people born with such a rare connection, and they were all born into royalty. If it was known that a slum rat had that connection, the city would be in an uproar. So, Sora kept his gift a secret, his parents telling everyone that his injury was due to the boy playing too close to a fire, what with the obvious burns on his face. He quickly learned how to get around the slums blindfolded using an old cane he found and his own hearing. He had already memorized where all the streets and alleyways connected, mapping it out like the back of his hand to the point that he could walk the streets just fine with his eyes closed. Being blind didn’t change that at all.
When he was 12, he came home to an empty shack. That wasn’t unusual for the preteen, what with his parents constantly out scavenging for food, getting drunk or sleeping around. It wasn’t unusual that they didn’t return the next day. Or a week later.
A month later, Sora was found in the shack by a local older boy and friend, Neku, who had not seen him in several days and had grown worried for him. He found the boy curled up in a corner of his home, nearly starved to death. Neku was able to confirm for the younger boy that no one had seen his parents in weeks. Best case scenario was that they died, their bodies mixed in with the garbage outside the city. Worst case scenario, they had abandoned him and left the city for a better life rather than looking after a blind magical child in the slums.
Sora tried to live on his own in the small shack for a few days but was quickly chased out by squatters who heard about his “tragic loss” and took advantage of the free real estate. He was stuck wandering the tight streets, homeless and scavenging for food for days before Neku took pity on him and introduced him to his “family”, which was just a squatter gang that held a tight enough rope on one of the tallest buildings in the slums, renting rooms out to sex workers and drug users in exchange for food. The leader, Cid, knew Sora from the area, mostly from his father who he thought was a complete asshole for treating his wife and child the way he did. He let Sora stay in the room on the top floor, connected directly to the roof, in exchange for taking care of the bird coop on the roof housing a small flock of racer pintails, fast flying pest birds regarded as vermin in the higher districts and a food source in the slums. They were on the small size with the body of a rat, the wings of a swift, the head of a cat, and the coloration of a gray tabby. Sure, they looked creepy, but the flock on the roof were very sweet and tame around people. The birds were originally kept as a last food source only to grow attached to their last owner who had died a few weeks before from overdose, leaving Cid to look for a replacement. Upon meeting Sora, the birds took an immediate liking to him, so he became the next best candidate. The room he was given was small, equivalent to a storage room already filled with storage boxes, a shower and toilet closet that didn’t work with no access to water except for the rainwater collector on the roof, and a makeshift stove/heater built from an old metal drum that easily kept the whole room warm in the winter.
After staying in the building for a few weeks, Sora somehow was able to start growing flowers in the old planters on the roof after Aerith – one of the sex workers and a mother figure to the younger family members – killed another batch of flowers needed for work on the street. He gave her the flowers he grew at first for thanks in letting him keep the room, as well as for some extra food rations, then it just became a habit.
It wasn’t much, but it became a new home to Sora.
===
“Thank you for the new batch, Sora,” Aerith said with a smile, taking the carefully wrapped brightlilies from the 16-year-old boy. The older teen, no longer able to fit into his old shirt and shorts, now wore an old baggy shirt under a loose-fitting sweater, dirt covered baggy pants and shoes a size too big for him. All hand-me-downs from the last person who stayed in his room, except for the dirty blindfold that hid his scarred eyes. “They are beautiful as always.” The boy gave a smile of his own, hands on the back of his messy brown head.
“It’s the least I could do for one of my favorite caregivers,” he said with a chuckle, making the older woman blush and giggle.
“Don’t lie, little bro!” another woman, Yuffie, called out from one of the other rooms. “We all know it’s because you don’t go killing every flower you touch like some other people we know!” Aerith gave the other a glare, cheeks puffed out like an angry chipmunk, while others’ laughter was carried down the hallway. Sora shook his head as he headed back towards the rooftop, one hand instinctively on the wall as he made his way up the ladder to the roof, hearing his family continue to laugh and pick on Aerith.
Once he felt the warm breeze on his face Sora removed the blindfold, blinking his pale gray eyes a couple of times when everything went briefly white before various shapes and colors came into view. With his limited vision, he could see that the sun was almost completely set, what with the red and gold colors painting the sky visible through the canal opening. He navigated across the roof until he reached the bird coop, already hearing the chirping and cooing of the pintails inside. After counting fourteen distinct bird chirps, he bid them goodnight, ready to lock the coop up until the morning when a sudden screech could be heard approaching from behind. Sora turned around and smiled brightly at the sudden visitor.
“Lazarus!” he called out happily as the solid white Nevermore hawk landed on the roof ledge, letting out a pleased trill at the boy. Nevermore hawks were a rare distant cousin to daggerquills, kept for hunting small game and message delivery. Normally, Nevermore hawks were darker and speckled in color, either dark brown, red, or black so they could hide from hunters and their prey in the brush before attacking, but solid white ones were highly sought after by collectors and breeders. On the medium size with a 4-foot wingspan, they were gorgeous birds of prey covered in a mix of feathers on their wings, head – including two antennae like feathers that stood out – and back, and soft silky fur on the stomach, legs, and tail that trailed out 2 feet behind them like long flowing hair. It was no wonder that everyone wanted one of them, unless you lived in the slums where they would be killed and eaten right away with no regards to their value.
The story of Lazarus was interesting. Around a year ago, Sora was locking the coop early after hearing about a sudden storm coming in from the south but was surprised to find the white feathered hawk taking refuge within the coop with the pintails. The teen was ready to scare off the hawk, afraid it would attack the other birds. However, they seemed on friendly enough terms, so he left them alone for the night. The next morning when it was slightly clearer, his whole family was on the roof with him, checking over the hawk with awe. There was a bracelet on one of its legs, meaning it was a hunting bird, so it was tamed and thus had an owner. And just like the pintails, it seemed to take a liking to Sora.
They let the hawk go after another day, once the storm had completely cleared out, making it safe for the birds to fly again. Before he let the hawk go, Sora wanted to attach a note to its leg meant for the owner, letting them know what happened in case the owner was worried. Since he was blind and illiterate, Aerith wrote the letter for him as he told her what to write. Once written, the letter was rolled up and tied to the hawk’s leg, then he bid it farewell and let it loose. He thought that was the only time he would ever see the rare hawk.
However, the hawk returned a few days later, this time with a note and a small pouch attached to its leg. It was from the owner, who had signed the letter with an intricate “R”, apologizing for the inconvenience of Lazarus as they often let the hawk out to fly freely or else it would become restless and didn’t know the storm would come through so suddenly, and that they wished to compensate for the trouble with a gift. In the pouch was some munny, not much to someone in the Grand Quarter, heck even to someone in the upper level Commons, but to someone in the slums this could feed the entire family and then some for three whole weeks. Sora almost felt bad taking the money as he didn’t take care of the bird thinking he would get anything out of it, but his family had fallen on hard times and were in desperate need of it. In the end he kept it and sent another letter back thanking the owner even though he didn’t do it for monetary gain.
This happened over the course of the past year with Sora becoming pen pals with “R”, sending letters to each other through Lazarus at least one to three times a week unless the weather made it impossible for the hawk to fly safely. Through their letters, Sora learned that “R” lived somewhere in the higher districts and rarely saw their father as he traveled a lot for business, their mother was a workaholic which caused her a lot of stress who also worried about him so much she rarely let them leave the house, they were an only child but had a lot of cousins, and they hated having music lessons as their tutor was a tyrant. Most of the time “R” seemed more interested in talking about Sora, but the teen felt embarrassed telling someone from a higher district that he lived in the slums, so he exaggerated his stories about his status, daily life, family, and illiteracy. Most of their letters were rather short – one liners sometimes – and other days they took up an entire page, all depending on what they decided to tell each other.
To be honest, Sora rather enjoyed talking to “R”, if it wasn’t already obvious as the boy shook with excitement as he removed today’s letter from the messenger.
“Thank you, Lazzy!” Sora said, pulling out a dead rat from the small crate next to the bird coop and tossed it up into the air. The hawk caught it with a happy squawk, swallowing the meal whole as the teen quickly and carefully rushed back into the building and down two flights of stairs, almost tripping on the last step as he joined his family in their dining room. “Aerith! I got a letter! Hurry and read it!”
“Alright, Sora, calm down,” the brunette woman said with a chuckle, putting down her spoon as she took the scroll, Sora bouncing on the heels of his feet. Yuffie watched them with a smile as she slurped down her soup from across the table while two others, a tall dark-haired woman named Tifa and a scarred man named Leon, were a couple of feet away in the kitchen distributing soup to multiple bowls for the rest of the family once they decided to come up and eat. Leon rolled his eyes at Sora’s enthusiasm while Tifa smiled. Aerith unrolled the scroll and proceeded to read the letter as Sora sat down next to her, Tifa placing a bowl on the table next to him.
“Sora,
How are you today? Thank you for worrying over my mother’s health, I’m sure she appreciates the sentiment. She works herself too hard but does not know the concept of “taking a break” it seems.
While I do love her, I cannot believe that she changed violin lessons into piano lessons! First it was the flute, then the violin, and now the piano? Sometimes I wonder if she wants me to become a one-person orchestra with how many lessons she wants me to take.
I hope you and your family are in good health on this fine summer day after your sister got sick last time. I do wish she is doing better now as I do not need you to also get sick with worry. If you need the funds to afford medicine, please let me know.
Good night, my friend,
-R”
Sora laughed at the comments “R” made in the letter, his heart swelling with happiness at their kind consideration. Last week his sister, a tomboy named Rhyme, had caught a small fever and everyone, especially her biological brother Beat, were worried if she would ever break her fever as they could not afford the medicine to help her along. Sora practically had Aerith fill the paper front and back last time he sent a letter to “R”, telling them about Rhyme and hoping that she would get better. Luckily, she broke her fever yesterday, so they didn’t have to worry anymore.
“Can you write the response now?” Sora asked Aerith with a smile. “I want to send the letter before it’s too late!”
“She will after you have finished your meal,” Tifa said as she sat down at the table along with Leon with their bowls and a plate of stale bread slices. Sora picked up his bowl and quickly began to slurp it, burning his tongue from the heat and almost dropping it in shock. The soup was heavily watered down with chunky leathery meat bits in it, most likely cat, and almost boiling from how hot it felt. Leon told him off for his carelessness and he was forced to eat slower, Tifa not letting him leave the table until he finished the entire bowl and one whole slice of bread. A few minutes later, Sora finished at the same time as Aerith.
“Hurry, hurry!” Sora ranted excitedly as he bounced by the door, waiting as Aerith took his bowl to the counter along with her own before the boy dragged her out of the room.
“Alright, I’m coming!” she said, following him down the hallway to her room where she kept her writing supplies. The teen was so excited that they could tell without looking how he overshot the distance from the dining room to Aerith’s room when he walked straight into the wall with a shout. Yuffie, Tifa, and Leon watched the two of them leave silently, Yuffie occasionally taking a long slurp from her bowl.
“Do you think Aerith always writes exactly what Sora tells her to write in his letters?” she asked her brother and sister nonchalantly. “’Cuz I bet my best lockpick set that she’s dropping hints every time.”
“Oh, she is definitely playing matchmaker,” Tifa assured her. “That boy is so in love you can tell just by looking at him.” Leon nodded in agreement, taking a sip of his soup to hide his smile.
***
Meanwhile in the royal palace…
The dining hall for the royal family was not large, but the acoustics were quite amazing: you could hear the chiming and clanking of silver cutlery on ceramic plates from the very edges of the room. The walls were painted dark red in contrast to the white and gold tile flooring, red and gold ornate pillars holding the domed ceiling up along the walls where long dark blue curtains hung, hiding the quick access doorways to the kitchen for the staff. The only people in the room were four kitchen hands, the queen, her aid, and the prince, but they were all silent. For the moment. The silver haired woman gave her son a disgruntled look as he played with his salad, pushing the cooked vegetables around with a bored look.
“For Shiva’s sake, Riku, eat your salad already,” she said with a huff, taking a sip of wine. “The staff worked hard on this full-course dinner for us. The least you could do is eat some of it.”
Queen Aranea Highwind-Fleuret was a noblewoman born into a military family in Lucis, and if her upbringing wasn’t obvious from the way she presented herself, then it was from her attitude. She wore a tight-fitting gray tunic and dark gray leather pants under a black and red corset and thigh high boots, her red and black gloves and cape being held by her aid while she ate with her son.
Prince Riku on the other had had taken the “casual” approach for their mother-son dinner that night. Again. The 17-year-old prince wore a loose-fitting long sleeved white button up shirt with the top two buttons undone, under a dark blue and green vest which hung open, and black form fitting leather pants. He opted out of wearing shoes it seemed, his bare feet tapping the tiled floor in boredom. His short-cropped silver hair stuck out behind his head, which was resting casually on his hand propped up on the dark hardwood table.
“Well, if they cared so much, they should know that I don’t like eggplant in my salad,” he grumbled under his breath but still loud enough for his mother to hear. She sighed at his childish attitude. She then snapped her fingers, her aid rushing to her side quickly.
“Yes, Your Highness?” Emma said, expression serious as she waited her orders.
“Please reiterate Riku’s schedule for tomorrow,” the queen said before she resumed her meal. The blonde woman nodded as she began to speak, the prince’s schedule already committed to memory.
“The prince will be attending court tomorrow with your highness at 8 am sharp and should be dressed and prepared at least 2 hours in advance—” Riku grumbled at that comment but was quickly shushed by his mother, the aid continuing like nothing was said. “—so that he has time for breakfast with your highness. Once court is finished by noon, he will have piano lessons for 1 hour in his study, after which lunch will be served on the veranda. After lunch, there is a brief hour-long free period before the tutor arrives, at which time he will have—”
“Can I use that free period to go to the Plaza?” Riku asked the queen, his ears perking up when he heard his opportunity. “It’s been a while since I—”
“No, you may not.”
Her response was instantaneous, and right away everyone went silent, including Emma. The kitchen hands shifted nervously as they watched the prince turn to glare at his mother, the queen returning it with one of her own. You could practically feel the tension rise.
“And why, pray tell, can’t I, mother?” The way he said that you could tell that he was pissed.
“You know very damn well why not.” The kitchen hands flinched when the queen cursed. That was never a good sign.
“No, I don’t fucking know!” Riku said in a raised voice that could have been a shout if pressed any more. “Nothing has happened to me or father within the past year!”
“An aristocrat was found murdered just the other day,” the queen said in a calm but chilling voice, swishing her wine glass with a stiff hand. “He was killed in broad daylight in the Grand Quarter. No one saw or heard a thing, and the killer has yet to be caught or even identified.”
“That doesn’t mean they were after me to begin with! One of his rivals could have put a hit out on him, or maybe a slum rat got to him—”
“My spies tell me that it was merely a diversion to throw us off their scent, to make us think that you and your father are not the intended targets.” The queen took a long sip of her wine, downing it as one of the kitchen hands came to refill it. “The moment you set foot outside the safety of the Royal Court they will be on you like a pack of sabertusks on a carcass.”
“I’ll be fine, mother! I’ll have my guard with—”
“My answer is no and that’s final!”
When the queen shouted, Riku went silent, his fists shaking with rage. Small black wisps began to wrap around his hands and forearms like creeping tendrils, his blue-green eyes flashing amber for just a moment. The staff became even more worried as it seemed like the shadows in the room became more pronounced and the temperature felt a bit cooler. Even Emma began to sweat from fear, but she refused to let it show. The queen ignored her son’s temper tantrum and continued to eat her meal. Eventually, Riku let out a huff and sat back in his chair, the black around his hands gone and the room returning to normal. The staff let out a sigh of relief as one young woman approached with a cart to collect their plates for the next course.
“Any other important news?” Aranea said, gaining Emma’s attention with a snap.
“Ah, yes,” she said, regaining her composure. “A message was sent by the King from Tenebrea. He has arranged for the princesses to come to the palace again at the end of the month for another meeting with the prince—”
There was a sudden crash and a terrified squeak from the female staff as Riku shot out of his chair, knocking the plate out of her hand, causing it to fall and shatter on the floor.
“Riku—”
“Give the rest of my meal to your pets, mother,” he said with a snarl, spitting out the last word with venom in his voice as he stormed out of the dining hall, his bare feet missing the broken ceramic on the ground by mere inches. He threw open the doors leading out into the hallway with a loud echoey bang and was gone within minutes. Aranea dropped her fork onto her plate and ran a hand down her face, letting out a sigh.
“Am I being too harsh on him?” she asked her aid, the blonde looking down at her queen with a sad frown. “He is my only son. I just want to protect him, but why do I feel like the bad guy?” Emma was quiet for a moment before she spoke again, her seriousness gone.
“Permission to speak freely, Your Highness?”
“Permission granted.”
“In all honesty, you were a bit of a bitch.” Aranea looked up at Emma with a raised brow at her statement but didn’t say anything. “My mother was very strict, too, especially on my little sister, and she hated her for it. I did, too, when I was her age. The prince reminds me of myself when my mother told me I couldn’t leave the house after seven and not to date the boy who is now my fiancé. And you know how the prince is with you bringing up the princesses: it would have sent him running whether you kept him under house arrest or not.” The blonde woman took a deep breath as she continued. “As someone who was once in his shoes, you are the worst human being on the planet right now, but I understand that you want what’s best for your son.”
“So, then, what should I do?” the queen asked her. Emma gave her a small smirk, showing her cheerful side that she saved only for her highness.
“Start off small, maybe with not so many music lessons. Have you heard him play the piano yet?”
“By the kings, yes,” Aranea said with a sigh, downing her glass of wine quickly with a large eye roll. “That sound is most dreadful. Maybe we should toss out the piano as well since no matter how much it’s tuned it always sounds broken when my son touches it.” Emma chuckled as she nodded in agreement.
“And what should I tell the chef?”
“Have a maid take the rest of his meal to his room with some added extra. Once he’s ‘cooled down’—” the queen smirked, making little air quotes. “—he’ll want to finish his dinner.”
===
Riku stormed down the long window lined hallways with a glare that could kill, any servants he came across immediately pressing themselves against the nearest wall, heads bowed so they would not make eye contact with him. He continued to stomp and glare his way through the palace and up two flights of stairs before he made it to his room, throwing the large oak doors open and spooking the maid inside. His bedroom suite was quite large, but smaller than his old room on the first floor, his mother having had him move up two floors after the rumors of assassins coming for his life over a year ago. An assassin can’t scale the royal palace walls to kill the prince and not be spotted by the guards.
The walls and floor were the same as most of the rooms in the palace, dark red wood and white and gold tiles, but Riku had his suite filled with furniture and curtains that matched his favorite sky blue and bright green colors. Upon entering the suite, the first area you see is the sitting room, three comfy couches set around a dark wood and glass coffee table in front of a glass encased fireplace – currently unlit – with a large glass television set on the wall above it. One row of walls contained floor to ceiling windows with one being a sliding glass door leading out to a small balcony overlooking one of the many gardens in the Royal Court as well as the city. Next to the fireplace and along the wall to the suite entrance were bookshelves containing hundreds of books, most of them for Riku’s lessons (which most of the time went untouched or forgotten) with a couple of comic books mixed in, and scattered around the shelves were various gifts and trinkets given to Riku by his father from his many trips around Nevermore and to other countries. One space along the wall also housed a life-sized mannequin that held gold and white ceremonial armor that Riku only wore during very special occasions. On the coffee table were various video game cases, controllers, and a video game system hooked up to the tv for the prince to play on if he got bored.
The final wall had an arched opening leading to the slightly smaller bedroom where there was a king size bed covered in large fluffy pillows and blue and green downy sheets. The bedroom was mostly void of furniture except for the bed and a dark wood desk and matching chair where a large computer was kept. There were two other doors in this room, one leading to a large bathroom that had a jacuzzi bath and glass encased shower both large enough to fit four people each, and the other led to a large walk in closet, containing rows of shirts, pants, jackets, and capes for different seasons and occasions. There was additional storage for pajamas, shoes, and accessories from watches to rings to circlets made of white gold and embedded with green and blue gems.
Large fluffy rugs covered the floors everywhere, random planters housed various plants and flowers from around Nevermore, and there was also a large dog bed at the edge of the sitting room. Fenris, Riku’s raijūcanis – a wolf-like creature with long canines, sharp claws, a short jagged crystal-like horn on its head resembling a lightning bolt, blue and white feather like fur all over its body and dark blue scaly skin on the legs, chest, and stomach – was resting in it, a thick black leather collar around its neck. When its owner slammed the door open, the wolf perked up with a curious tilt to its head.
“Finished with dinner already, Your Highness?” a male voice sounded from one of the couches. Riku approached the figure, finding a 20-year-old man sitting leisurely on the couch, playing a game on a gummiphone, a new invention from Disney Castle. The man had wild fiery red hair that shot out behind him, practically defying gravity, pale skin, and bright green cat like eyes that watched the prince with amusement. He wore the typical kingsguard attire, mandatory to all personal guards of the royal family, minus the long jacket due to how warm it'd been lately. While the pattern on the sleeveless shirt was the same as the ones seen on the guards in Lucis, the colors were white and gold to match the city colors, and the city crest was printed on the chest over the heart. The man also wore tight black leather pants, knee-high boots laced up the front, and black leather gloves. “I expected you to last at least another half hour before you got bored.”
“What do you think happened, Lea?” Riku said, not expecting an answer from his bodyguard. The maid from before, lower in rank obvious from her simple black dress with white trimming, collar, and sleeves, white stockings and shiny black shoes, stood off to the side quietly with her head down, long pink hair tied back and hanging over her shoulder with a lacy white bow. “Leave us,” Riku said roughly, and the maid immediately bowed and left the room, closing the double doors behind her with a click. Lea arched an eyebrow at Riku’s sour attitude.
“Y’know, you could be sweeter to the poor girl,” the redhead said, going back to his phone as Riku sat down next to him. “Not trying to boss you around since, y’know, you are the prince—” Suddenly the gummiphone was gone from his hands, Riku tossing it to the other side of the room, clacking loudly as it hit the tiled floor. Lea was stunned for just a moment before he turned and glared at the prince, ready to get up from the couch. “You better not have broken that! I spent 50 munny on thammf!” Before he could finish complaining Riku was on top of Lea, pushing him into the couch and kissing him roughly.
It was no secret, no matter how much the boys denied it and limited their fun times to the prince’s private room, that they were lovers. Everyone in the palace knew it, including the king and queen.
Lea gasped into the kiss as Riku deepened it by forcing his tongue inside. This continued for a few minutes before the prince pulled back, panting heavily and eyes clouded over with lust. Lea looked up at the prince, panting just as hard, but his eyes only held concern, the former playfulness gone.
“Shut up and let’s have sex,” Riku grunted, yanking off his vest and unbuttoning his shirt.
“Oh, so the queen brought ‘that’ up again,” Lea said as a statement, letting the prince lick and bite his exposed neck and collarbone. Whenever the king and queen arranged for the various princesses from across Nevermore and Disney to come to the palace for “marriage parties” – when Riku had to pick one of the available princesses to become his bride – the prince would become quite angry, demanding rough sex from his lover, completely passing over any foreplay, just to spite his parents when the maid would find the prince wrecked in his bed the next morning. They knew he wasn’t interested in marriage – or people in general until Lea came around and he realized that he only liked boys – but they still encouraged him to at least marry one of the princesses. He knew it was all for political reasons, just like the marriage between his parents, but he couldn’t deny what his heart wanted the most.
And right now, it really wanted Lea.
“I said shut up,” Riku growled, getting between Lea’s legs, one hand pulling up his shirt to expose his lover’s hard abs and the other trying to open the button of his pants. Lea looked down at his hands in mild curiosity.
“And what do you think you’re doing?” he asked. The prince gave him a look that said, ‘what do you think’, making Lea smirk. “Oh, no you don’t! You topped last time!”
Suddenly both boys were on the floor, Lea on top this time, pinning Riku beneath him. His eyes and hands began to heat up as he pulled his gloves off. “I hope you know, Your Highness, that even though you’re the prince I will not give in without a fight. Got it memorized?” He finished it off with a deep sultry voice, which caused the prince to give a full body shudder, his body turning into jelly underneath the redhead. Satisfied that he had gone compliant, Lea leaned forward and kissed the prince, not as roughly as before but made up for in passion. He slipped his own tongue into the prince’s mouth while one hand played with his chest and the other massaged one of his thighs, his touches becoming hotter and hotter by the second, making Riku moan even louder and the sweat on Lea’s neck evaporate.
One of the benefits of being connected to fire magic was the ability to control your own body temperature, enough to make it fiery hot without being painful to anyone.
The room was quickly filled with the sounds of lips smacking and heavy moaning as the boys got friskier, Fenris huffing with annoyance at the humans in heat. Their lovemaking was loud enough that they drowned out the sounds of tapping on glass until it became persistent. After a few more minutes the tapping became more of an annoyance, until Riku gasped in realization as he pushed Lea off him, getting to his feet in a rush.
“He’s back!” he cried out as he hurried to the sliding glass door leading to the balcony where a familiar Nevermore hawk waited patiently for him. “Welcome back, Lazarus! A message from ‘Sora’?”
Lea groaned as he rolled his eyes, getting back onto the couch, adjusting himself slightly as his pants had become tighter for a completely different reason. He watched Riku detach a rolled-up letter from the hawk’s leg before it flew into the room, taking rest in a large open cage next to Fenris’ bed where it slept. Riku unrolled the letter and read it to himself, his sour expression from before turning into one of pure happiness and delight, making Lea heat up with anger.
Ever since that stupid bird returned a year ago with a letter from “Sora”, Riku’s attitude had begun to change. After every letter he became calmer and happier, having always been prone to outbursts and sudden bouts of anger in the past, he was now treating the palace staff better and complimenting his parents more often. He never told anyone about his secret pen pal, and he made Lea keep his secret as well, so no one in the palace knew what caused the prince to have such drastic mood swings, going from irritable one moment to beaming an hour later.
But Lea wasn’t jealous. Nope.
He wasn’t jealous that whenever a letter showed up while they were in the middle of getting busy in the sheets or just chatting like old friends, Riku ignored him in favor of reading “Sora’s” letter.
He wasn’t jealous that if he tried to make him put it off writing a response until later then the prince would get annoyed with him and ignore him for the rest of the day.
And he was most definitely not jealous that by the fifth letter, Riku started reading them with a bright smile that took Lea weeks to get one of his own when they first met. It was a smile unlike the smirks or chuckles Riku let slip during meetings and balls, a soft warm smile that made Lea’s heart skip a beat and his face heat up without the need for magic.
Nope, he wasn’t jealous.
“What are you looking at, Cujo?” he growled at Fenris, who he noticed was giving the redhead a look before he yawned and curled up into the bed. He watched Riku continue to read and smile at the letter, and the bodyguard decided that now it was time for him to find out who this “Sora” really was.