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𝕱ear.
It is such a powerful, hungry emotion. It feeds off of uncertainty, anxiety, diminishing confidence, and the unknown. It is an adversary that Nohrians believe must be conquered and, if they cannot, then they are deemed weak.
Siegfried sits in its sheath as it always does, nowadays, tipped against the far wall of Prince Xander’s bedchamber. The single ruby stares, catlike at him in the low light, and he is frightened.
Dark energy coils around the heirloom blade of gilded ebony, pulsating with a dull echo in his blood like a vision ripped from a nightmare of his own making. Siegfried commands attention, inside and out, as the fear settles over the prince’s skin, writhing and restless and whispering in his ears, leaving gooseflesh in its wake, making his innards squirm. Xander’s legs draw closer to his chest to make himself smaller, eyes never leaving the object of his destiny. Its very presence is baleful, dark and murky light coalescing along the black-and-silver-split Nohrian steel blade in some demonic mockery of a dance, trapped in the metal like insects in amber.
The palm-sized ruby embedded into the hilt glitters and winks in the firelight like the eye of the dusk dragon herself, unfathomably ancient, with primal wisdom men cannot measure, forever watching over those of her bloodline. It shines fierce, luxurious, sophisticated, and with an eternal fire burning beneath the surface. Sometimes Prince Xander — soon to be Crown Prince Xander — thinks he can imagine the sound of leathery beating, the scrape of honed obsidian claws, and a voice, ethereal and smoky, drifting through the air.
The space stretching between him and the sword feels like the chasm separating him from a crowd of courtiers, their piercing eyes watching his every move from the moment his mother brought him into the world. He’d scarcely left the battle of the birthing bed without midwives reaching for him, guards posted at the entry in their sleek gold-chased black armor as a precaution, naïve to the future bloodshed.
☙ —————— ❧
The girl — his sister — kept the point of the dagger poised at him with a steady hand, glinting like a star from her place on the floor. She wielded the piercing gaze of her one good eye, too.
Shoulder-length violet curls partially obscured the shaking boy clinging to her, like a spirit hovering just out of sight. The corpse before them had yet to begin decaying, but the scent of iron and glory bloomed thick in the air despite Xander’s beliefs of just how glorious it was withering in his heart. He’d always been too gentle for this.
Her voice, hushed, reginal, commanded authority, yet Xander could taste the fear buried within, beneath the darkness dripping down the ruin of her other eye, down her pale porcelain face.
“Enough.”
Slowly, so slowly the entire world beyond the lavish crimson carpet might fall away entirely, the boy who would one day be king reached his hand towards his little sister and brother. They were not his rivals; his mother hadn’t raised him to treat the others within the line of succession as obstacles. Katerina had been far more tender-hearted than that, caring more about securing a better future for their kingdom than wasting precious energy fighting family.
And her son was cut from the same gentle cloth. As he looked down at his remaining siblings, he could not help but feel an overwhelming warmth deep within his frantically beating heart. He already knew that he loved them. Fiercely.
He was so tired. Justice felt like an illusion. Why else would so many others be gone when they could — should — be here too? To join hands. To work together. To unite so that they could nurture Nohr into something greater, something kinder, molding it, willing life into it like a gardener’s wilting roses. If justice was not the natural state of his kingdom, then he would dedicate himself to creating one with proper guidance.
He sank to the ground with them and spoke, softly, as he might a timid horse, agreeing with two simple words:
“No more.”
☙ —————— ❧
Lions were unusual in that they were feline pack creatures. Jointly admired and feared for their independence, the gilded beasts defied expectations by nurturing deep familial bonds that allowed them to dominate the natural food chain.
Cyriacus Lionheart was among his favorite ancestors to read about due to the legend of how the prince had raised a lion cub, creating a bond so strong with her that she would fight alongside him in battle. The stories described them as twin golden streaks across the battlefield, and when they fell, they fell together. Even in death, their bones were intermingled within the Krakenburg crypts, her likeness in stone guarding them, eyes two fiery rubies.
The lion hunt was a sacred Nohrian tradition, utilized as a symbolic means of demonstrating the prowess of a future monarch. A test of mettle.
The heart-and-thorn circlet weighed heavy on Xander’s brow as they cornered the cat, shimmering sleek and golden like a brand of precious sunlight in their perpetual night. As it paced, never taking amber eyes away from their party, pulling back its lips to reveal fearsome canines, his mount whickered, sensing his hesitation, and those he rode with seemed to as well. The dogs were barking. The lion was growling. The humans were staring.
“Well?” Eliana asked with a confident sort of patience, like the governess who knew her pupil was on the verge of an answer. He could see the push in his retainer’s eyes, the sense of encouragement bordering on urgency. Xander worked his jaw; as crown prince, he’s only permitted one kind of bleeding heart. No more shyness, out of breath attempts to lift even a steel blade, or tears. He must reject his very nature to find balance, yet not allow himself to be consumed entirely, either. Strength is key. Control is key. He must be more than he is.
His hands blistered beneath his gloves, but the hunting party was watching him like the purebred lionhounds watched their quarry, thirsty for even a drop of weakness. A wave of nausea washed over him as he commanded the ever-harshly-whispering Siegfried to send out a dark bolt.
The blade quieted.
“Well struck, my lord,” Eliana said, and it sounded like a sigh of relief.
☙ —————— ❧
Father has fallen ill because of this beast, this symbol of the conqueror, and though Xander wants to put all blame onto the tempered metal, he knows it’s what this sword — this Deathbringer — represents that has rent hearts and devoured flesh. He remembers many siblings within Krakenburg’s ancient walls, remembers the tears shed and times he donned the ghostly white of mourning. They’d simply stopped after “enough” dead heirs, barely acknowledging infants slain in royal cradles, all for winning courtly favor and conquering their own bloodline. The family’s broken in countless different places, crushed to fathomless shards, glittering from the dead grass like stained glass masquerading as crown jewels.
It sickens him that he must one day wield this sword regularly. How dizzying a thought, standing before all those people, with endless responsibilities upon his shoulders. He must bear the duty of brandishing Siegfried, including scars on calloused palms that spider up his arms; Xander has seen Garon without gauntlets, and tales are told nationwide of the burden of Siegfried. It fights too in the battles it sees, imposing its will upon the weaker monarchs of history until they’re consumed by it. In this regard, the crown prince considers himself lucky: it is being voluntarily passed to him, not pried from dead hands.
☙ —————— ❧
“Little prince,” Father rumbled, the sentiment almost tender in his gruff voice as it echoed around him in the wide, naked negative space of the king’s audience chamber. Xander could recall a vague, foggy time when he would smile, would lift his son onto his massive shoulders, granting him the ability to see what had, at the time, felt like the entirety of Nohr in her velvety darkness stretching before them. “Allow me to impart some wisdom to you.”
“A high honor indeed,” the new court mage agreed in a silky purr, far too slippery to gauge what he might truly think. Silenced, dismissed with a glare from Garon, he scampered away in his cloak of crimson feathers.
“Marxander,” the king began once more, ruby eyes turning to his son. They seemed less lustrous, less fiery than he remembered, but there were promising glimmers deep within now as he spoke, emphatic. “The world is not such a simple place that a man can merely wave his hand and settle all its woes. It is rife with such complication that even a king cannot succeed in this task in and of himself.
“It is imperative that you become more than what you are. Something stronger than your bones, larger than your body, louder than your name, and of greater quantity than your singularity. The weak man cannot lead. The weak man cannot feed his people. The weak man cannot defend what is his.”
A huge hand rested on Xander’s shoulder, the claws of his father’s armor biting gently into fabric and flesh, like the way a lion cradles the scruff of his cub’s neck between teeth meant to kill, to tear, to unmake.
“It is imperative that you become something greater than the weak man, even greater than your Dusk-given birthright of blood, of power, of opportunity. You will not be a weak man, my son.”
☙ —————— ❧
Fear is a disease in this country. Foreign. Taboo. Unforgivable. And yet the future of it is deeply afraid of a bloody sword and her sanguine-soaked history.
What had once tasted like glory on Xander’s tongue has of late felt like cruelty that was not intrinsic to his nature. That grim realization has steadily polluted his bloodstream… or perhaps it’s always been polluted. Why else would such weakness leave him trembling before a sword?
Gods, his hands were shaking.
A sword. But a sword with its own will. Rivaling. Pushing. Pulling. The level of greatness he must achieve feels like an insurmountable, Herculean task; he dares not ask Father how to be more than he is. Some part of him already knows the answer, deep in his ebony bones, clawing down the divots of his spine, chiding between his ears in the dreadful cacophonous symphony of baying lionhounds hungry for tender meat. Weak boy. Little lamb acting the lion.
The most important trial of the crown is to conquer Siegfried, for if one cannot conquer the very spirit of Nohr, how can one be expected to rule her?
Slowly, Xander dares to move, rising to his feet on gangly legs not unlike a newborn foal. Unsteady. Uncertain. The courtesans had not spared a glance when he was born too early, had scoffed that there was no way he’d survive the winter, and if he did this one, then he would not the next. But now that he’s beginning to fill out as his father had, he sees them look with greater interest, as if he finally has achieved an iota of worthiness. A plea in his spirit calls him forward, propels him, gives him intent and purpose for that which must be done.
The silence is thick, the maelstrom of the sword of nightmares almost suffocating, but with each step, Xander gradually transforms into that which he needs to be, tempering his resolve just as Siegfried had been forged many moons ago, melted and molded with the blows of a hammer. Fold. Heat. Cool. Transmutation. Becoming that which seems impossible. Perhaps if he cares enough, he can be enough—
With every step, the next seems easier as he swallows his fear, thinks of Camilla, of Leo, of little pink-faced Elise still alive in her cradle, tethering himself to a wish that seems so simple as he reaches for his destiny.
He will be strong enough to keep them safe.