Work Text:
The cries and shouts borne from Duke Yverk’s announcement finally gave way to silence, leaving only the memory of those terrible words to wail through the great hall: The king is dead.
The queen with yet no crown watched from her seat beside her father’s empty throne, knowing that soon she would feel its cold marble hug. As Yverk continued, she dropped her head and smothered a sob into a handkerchief that seemed impervious to her tears. Relatives and ladies-in-waiting tended to her grief, leaving the two younger brothers, Leuvis and Sonju, ignored in a lonely corner. For them it was a familiar scene, and a welcome one at that.
The youngest, Sonju, grasped his older brother’s sleeve for attention. The tall demon bent to listen.
‘Brother, is Father really dead?’ the boy whispered.
‘Yes, Sonju,’ Leuvis replied. ‘I have seen his body for myself.’
The younger’s grip tightened. ‘He was killed?’
‘Yes.’
‘By Lord Derk?’
This made Leuvis pause. Since the early hours of the morning, the palace had been in uproar. The king grievously wounded, Lord Derk arrested, the princess shaken and herself injured in the scuffle that had taken place. Until Duke Yverk’s announcement, there had been hope that the king would live. Now that hope was as cold as the man it had lived for, and those that remained would feel the chill for a long time.
The Grand Duke looked down at the boy with pity. ‘Possibly.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean that it is possible.’
‘But you don’t think so, do you, Brother?’
A wail rose high and awful above the rippling murmurs of the crowd and Duke Yverk paused while frantic ladies-in-waiting comforted the half-fainting Legravalima.
Unmoved by the noise, Leuvis’s eyes gave Sonju his answer.
The boy’s lower lip quivered. ‘But how? I know Sister can be cruel, but Father - you really think she’d... ?’
The Grand Duke placed a withered hand on his shoulder and crouched low. If anyone had been paying attention, they would have seen an elder sibling comforting a grieving child. But Leuvis had no words of comfort to give, and Sonju’s eyes dropped tears of fear more than grief.
‘Sonju,’ the old demon said. ‘Regardless of what truly happened, when spring comes again, Legravalima will be your queen. The rules that existed to govern your life will become even harsher than before. Tolerance for disobedience will lessen almost to vanishing, if not vanish entirely, and the control our sister wields will take away what few friends you had.’
The young prince clung to Leuvis’s great cloak, as if to disappear within it. ‘What do I do? Tell me, Brother!’
‘Guard yourself, Sonju,’ the elder whispered in his ear. ‘In this palace, your morals and your opinions are dangerous. Hide them. Do not let your emotions forfeit your life. If you wish to rebel from within, become cunning, but if not, you must accept what is - and find your way elsewhere, as I have.’
Sonju withdrew slightly, the lower, exposed half of his face red and damp with tears and snot.
‘You - you mean - join you, in the -?’
Leuvis shushed him. ‘Yes, boy.’
‘But -’ Sonju stammered. ‘What about here ?’
‘What about it?’
The young prince hiccupped, partly from the shock. The bluntness of Leuvis’s dismissal wasn’t a new development in his character; boy as he was, Sonju was already aware just how much the elder loathed politics and all its slimy players, but this wasn’t about them. This was about family. About him.
‘If - if Sister is queen, the people will suffer.’
‘Very likely.’
‘She will continue the Farms and - and keep the Promise…’
‘No doubt, she will.’
‘But Brother - you hate the Farms!’
‘I do,’ said Leuvis, calmly as ever. ‘But what do you suggest as an alternative? Those free days before the Promise are past. We cannot get them back.’
‘But -!’
The older brother’s black-cloaked form seemed massive now, growing before Sonju’s eyes like an inescapable mass. ‘But what? There is a way? We can find a way? Cast out that foolishness of yours, Sonju. Do you mean to march to Him and demand the Promise away? What exactly can you give Him that would make that exchange possible?’
Crushed under the insupportable weight of his ambitions, Sonju could only stand and stare. All he had was a wish, that much as painfully clear.
Leuvis sighed. ‘If a snared rabbit struggles too much, it only wounds itself further and hastens to death. If it lives quietly within its limits, it can hope to live as it used to do, if only for a little longer. That is the state we are in, Sonju, and no amount of wishing is going to change that.’
He stood, a giant who had once torn through the front lines of the battlefield and seized victory, and led dozens in the hunt for fresh, wild meat. Those days were long gone now.
‘I will live how I see fit for as long as I can,’ he said. ‘I will not lose what little joy I have for a pipe dream.’
That final line was like a slap in the face. Sonju opened his mouth to plead, to call him a big, ugly traitor, but he stopped short. Leuvis would not budge. As much as Sonju wished, in this, alone, his brother was not his friend. In this, he was alone.
‘Do you understand now?’ Leuvis asked.
Sonju looked up at him, older now. ‘Yes. I understand.’
The elder nodded in approval. ‘Good. Now, let’s watch the show.’
The brothers turned away from each other, towards the chaotic scene, further apart than they’d ever been when Leuvis left to his forbidden hunting grounds. Sonju noticed his brother’s three-fingered claw near his face, but his own little hand remained as cold and alone as he felt.
Without another word, Sonju left Leuvis’s dark shadow and disappeared among the crowds. Nobody else noticed the prince leave, but the brothers knew the queen would notice, and that when she did the scene would be even uglier than this.
Leuvis watched his foolish little brother go, following the doomed dreamer's path, and sighed.
Sonju walked straight through the doors of the great hall and out. Jaw clenched, heart trembling, he made his own way alone.