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Lilia sighed exasperatedly at the distinct snap of a twig surrendering under the merciless weight of a leather boot.
The shift in the air was immediate, as his audience tensed upon the fae’s tired acknowledgment, the atmosphere growing syrupy under the cackling threat of magic, the tension thick enough to slice with the cleaver that hung from his hip.
In all his impressively lengthy military career Lilia had thought he’d seen it all. He’d seen entitled nobles with decorative ranks butcher entire campaigns in the name of their egoism and insubordinate recruits disobey the orders of their higher-ups, possessed by suicidal streaks of recklessness that won them nothing but lengthy sessions of wiping. But arrogance and brashness he could understand. It was no less infuriating, but at least it was a behavior he’d learnt to expect and by extension, counter.
But the general had yet to find the cure when it came to the world’s unadulterated stupidity. The virus spread indiscriminately between humans and fae alike. No one was safe from its toxic poison. Not even an inconspicuous lawful civilian returning to his home with the shopping of the month.
Okay, maybe the disguise he’d put together wasn’t as discreet as he’d like it to be, but were he to wear another layer of fabric over the wool cloak he’d wrapped around himself he’d actually overheat and keeping up appearances would be the least of his worries if he were to pass out against the scorching cobblestone sidewalk because of the latest heatwave. It was shaping out to be the hottest June they’d had in the past century!
He detested leaving the house during the day, the way his clothes clung against his skin, adhering to the slick layer of sweat he’d been emitting even without the addition of that cursed cloak was entirely uncomfortable, but the streets were always less crowded in the morning hours and the sleepy clerks less inclined to conversations.
Afterall, he doubted anyone would recognize him here. The town was far from both the capital and the border and although it was rather small in size, much like the rest of the villages springing across the edge of Tenebrous Woods, it was always bristling with travelers, a passageway connecting the outskirts of the Briarland territory with the mountain area surrounding Dragonopolis.
So, it didn’t matter whether a couple of dichromatic strands slipped out of his hood, catching the blazing sunlight across the crimson ends, nor did anyone bat an eye at his notoriously famous magearm peeking from below his coarse clothes every time Lilia went to inspect the ripeness of a squishy tomato or the softness of a new set of socks. At least that’s what he’d thought so during the first few visits to the town.
He was beginning to reconsider after being trailed across the last three shops by a pair of very unsubtle guards.
His eyes rolled at the very audible whispers they exchanged from their barely concealed position behind a tight cluster of leafless oak trees. In order to bear the Draconia insignia one had to spend a little more than a decade at the queen’s training camps built across the most dangerous canyons of Mount Dread. Lilia himself had been subjected to the hellish training regime, along with an embarrassing amount of hazing from the more patronizing tutors, he’d made sure to pay back tenfold when he started climbing the ranks of the military. However, the general highly doubted that those babbling baboons had attended a single class on enemy surveillance and the hushed yelp the first guard released when an unripe acorn dropped straight into his head only served to prove his point.
Lilia was beginning to see why they had lost the war.
For the shake of their pride and mostly his cover, instead of walking straight into the pair’s pathetic spot place and have them humiliated with one of the typical lectures he’d thrown at his troops every time they messed something up, which -for a bunch of well-trained experienced warriors- was frustratingly often, he’d conceded to a harmless spell. The vines, summoned with a flick of the general’s fingers, coiled slowly around their leather boots, going completely unnoticed by the guards until they were springing upwards, pulling their bodies along with him. Lilia enchanted them to hang a little below the treetops, before engulfing himself in a smokey cloud of fuchsia, as he teleported away from the dry forest blaring with screeches of the dangling fae and into the kitchen of their temporary residence.
Someone was bound to notice they were missing… eventually.
That would teach them to thread more curiously while spying on someone, but it still left Lilia with the task of finding a new marketplace until next month.
“Lilia!”, a cheerful piping voice greeted him, before its owner bursted in the room.
“Good morning Malleus.” Lilia hummed, offering a small smile at the tiny dragon shaking with excitement. The boys had been pestering him about being old enough to stay alone for a while now, but he doubted spending the whole morning doing the chores Lilia assigned to them qualified this level of enthusiasm. Although he supposed Malleus was at that age where taking a simple bath was considered an event. Perhaps not the most jovial one, but still an event. “How was your first day staying over with Silver?”
As if summoned, the older child walked into the kitchen looking considerably less thrilled at being awake. Between the three of them, Silver found it harder to function properly during the morning hours, which was absolutely ridiculous since the rest of the contenders were literal creatures of the night. The irony of the situation was not lost on Lilia’s face, if the lopsided smirk he shot at the frazzled boy was anything to go by.
“It was great! We swept the floor and then we made the beds and we even dusted!” Malleus proclaimed, while Lilia emptied the shopping bags on the kitchen’s small counter. He supposed that making them spend their whole day on chores he’d be able to complete with a flick of his hand was a bit cruel on his part, but he needed to keep them occupied enough to stray from reckless ideas. Fates knew it would take a lot to recover from the last time Silver tried to take off on Malleus’s dragon form from the roof!
“And then we braided our hair!”, the little fae exclaimed, spinning on his heels to show Lilia said braid.
It was a decent work. The two plaits began from the base of Malleus’s shiny horns, twisting all the way to the back where they interloped with each other, merging into one thick braid hovering a little over his shoulders. It was easy to deduce which boy had made his hair, especially after inspecting Silver’s own disheveled hairstyle, tangled ivory strands of hair peeking out from his ears not unlike Lilia’s own unruly locks.
“I can see that.”
“Silver's friends even gave us some flowers to put in it.”
“Silver's friends?” Lilia inquired, recalling the last time Silver’s friends, as in a pair of fully-grown and extremely dangerous grizzly bears that could have easily snapped the boys’ heads off their bodies had they wanted to do so were found lounging in the kids’ joined bedroom. He’d almost finished arranging everything to their spots, when he sent a worried glance at Silver to which the child nodded meekly in response.
“He means the birds.”, he mumbled in an unusually reluctant tone, his watercolor gaze dropping to the ground and Lilia’s eyes narrowed at the nervous tick of shifting his weight from one leg to another.
Silver had never been particularly energetic, to which he was extremely grateful, because dealing with a lively ten-year-old on top of raising a fire-breathing dragon fae child, fully prepared to bite into anyone who refused him his post dinner ice cream, would have pushed him off the edge. But that was not Silver’s typical sheepishness. Upon closer inspection, Lilia could see the way his pale fingers clung onto the hem of his shirt, his teeth biting into his lips hard enough to turn a flustered shade of rose pink. Had those blunt excuses of newly acquired permanent teeth been even remotely similar to the sharp fangs of a fae the human would be bleeding all over the freshly swept floor. Lilia didn’t miss the conspiratory glance Malleus shot him, nor the gentle nudge at the older boy’s shoulder.
“Is there something I need to know?”, he asked, his voice dropping to the low rumble of the general. These two were stinking of insubordination and the startled winces his scolding tone elicited were further proof of their guiltiness. He was not thrilled at the prospect of having to salvage whatever catastrophe had rendered Silver anxious enough to stammer in his presence. They’d grown past this stage a long time ago.
“M-malleus has something for you.”, he muttered, to which the little dragon beamed, oblivious to the other boy’s turmoil, “I was trying to read one of the books you got me, the one about human customs and well... I was speaking out loud because it helps me piece out the words in my mind. I’m still not very good at it…”, the last part muttered almost shamefully, and Lilia forced his chastising scowl to relax. Silver wasn’t to blame for having difficulty with reading, afterall he’d started learning way later than most kids. Lilia himself had embarked tardily on that journey, firstly encountering written words during his days with the Draconias and even then, he’d had access to an elite class of tutors, not a former general’s dubious teaching methods.
It was natural to feel a little left behind, but no matter how many times he tried to remind Silver, his reassurances helped little to ease the kid’s self-consciousness.
“He was really interested on a particular tradition it mentioned.”, he continued. Lilia struggled to understand where he was going with it. “Well, if I’m being honest-”
“Happy Father’s Day Lilia!” Malleus bubbled, unable to hold his excitement any longer, as he shoved a piece of paper into the fae’s stomach.
Lilia blinked incredulously at the child and when Malleus didn’t waver at his dumbfounded gaze, pushing the paper harder against the fae’s frozen body instead, his hands moved to grasp its creased edges.
“It’s us!”, the little fae supplied, his emerald eyes shining with uncontained pride at his creation, a sight Lilia failed to notice as his crimson orbs burned holes into the child’s drawing.
Malleus had made similar drawings before. Sometimes it would be him and Silver, or him and Lilia or the three of them. This particular piece belonged to the latter genre, with three haphazardly drawn stick figures drawn in the middle of a grassy field, a two-dimensional house covering most of the background.
The prince always took creative liberties when it came to his sketches, but it wasn’t hard to deduce the identity of the depicted ones even without Malleus’s comment. The small horns added over the shorter figure were as obvious as the purple button eyes of the one standing next to it, as were the small hoard of bats and bunnies surrounding each one respectively. Lilia’s own stick figure drawn with an insulting amount of pink crayon was placed in the middle of the pair, the disproportionately long arms of the fae resting on top of the kids’ shoulders.
His mouth felt as dry as the Sunset Savanna scalding deserts and no matter how hard he tried to swallow, Lilia couldn’t get past the thick lump that had formed into his throat.
“I told him you aren't his father, but he insisted.”
“Liar!” Malleus yelled, but the fae saw neither the indignant glow that flashed across the dragon’s round face, nor Silver’s steep flinch upon the other’s sudden emotional shift, “It's in Lilia's book.”, he insisted, his angry spurt going away as quickly as it came, leaving behind nothing but a stubborn frown on its wake.
“Father is someone who takes care of you and protects you. Someone who makes sure you're okay and teaches you new things. Lilia always makes sure we’re safe and tucks us into bed and he teaches us so many cool things about magic.”, the kid explained, overjoyed with his infallible reasoning, “Lilia is Malleus and Silver father!”
Every color drained from Lilia’s face at the announced conclusion, his eyes darting away from the doodle that had been monopolizing his attention to find a similarly blanched Silver. The boy looked positively sick at Malleus’s words, his widened eyes turned towards the wooden floorboards as if the eroding patterns of the wood had been the most breathtaking sight he’d ever witnessed, his tense shoulders shaking ever so slightly. And then his gaze shifted to Malleus whose certainty was waning the longer Lilia remained silent, his eyebrows creasing with confusion at everyone’s reaction and the fae decided he’d tackle one issue at a time.
“This is a really nice drawing Malleus.”, he managed, feeling his heart clench with phantom pressure, at the child’s content expression. And suddenly it wasn’t Malleus staring back at him, it was her, sporting a fanged smile of smug satisfaction upon winning another argument and every word Lilia had been meaning to say turned into ash in his mouth.
Because he shouldn’t be the one receiving a gift on a day meant to celebrate the child’s parents. He shouldn’t be showered with compliments for providing for a kid he’d made an orphan of. He shouldn’t be the one standing at the receiving end of that kind-hearted smile, not when he’d destroyed Malleus’s life before it’d even started.
Not when he was living on borrowed time.
“But you should add your own parents to it.”, he added forcing a smile out of his taut features. The expression warped across the edges, his lips stretching a little too unnaturally across his hollow cheeks to be convincing, but he didn’t drop his grin even when Malleus perked a curious eyebrow at him. “Remember when I talked to you about them? About how they loved you more than anything in the world and how they died to protect you?”
“But they're not here.”, he mumbled noncommittally, and Lilia wanted to scream, because whose fault was that.
But he couldn’t tell him that. Not when Malleus was staring at him with that expectant look plastered across his childish face.
“Perhaps not in the way you mean, but you always carry a piece of them with you.”, he explained, a coat of bitterness soaking his words, because pieces were always reserved for those who couldn’t have the whole. He just hoped that the piece Malleus carried was less jagged than his own, less barbed when pressed against his heart, less haunting when he closed his eyes and surrendered himself to sleep. “It's even in your last name.”
The little prince seemed to mull Lilia’s words over and the fae crouched down to meet his eye level.
“Dwaconia?”
“Draconia.” Lilia corrected. Malleus was still challenged by the pronunciation of some letters, especially when put in the spotlight. If there was one thing he hadn’t inherited from his mother, despite being a carbon copy of Meleanor appearance-wise, a punishment the general was more than deserving of, was her affinity for the limelight. “It's a powerful name because you come from a powerful family.”
“Lilia Draconia.”
“No!” Lilia almost yelped, trying to drown his surprise with a cough. The queen would have a heart attack were she to hear her grandson talking like that. Well, he supposed Maleficia would have a heart attack were she to find out her daughter’s son was alive and well, raised among a human and a traitor, but that was beside the point.
“Lilia Vanrouge. Malleus Draconia.”, he explained slowly, pointing at himself and at Malleus’s puffed chest at their respective names. The little fae’s eyebrows seemed to only crease further.
“What about Silver?”
Well, that was the other issue.
Truth was the temporary situation of domesticity he’d found himself caught up in for the past couple years, was consuming every part of his being, draining both his physical and mental reserves, until he was hovering over haphazardly scattered building blocks and piles of stained shirts like a lifeless zombie working on autopilot. So, for the first time in his life, sleep had turned into a daily habit, his brain lacking the energy to revisit proofless methods of torture, allowing him to savor whatever few hours of slumber he got before a particular dragon’s body was decked into his own. The Knight of Dawn's alabaster visage scarcely visited his dreams anymore.
Peacefulness was a new concept to him, one that left him completely on edge, but Lilia wasn’t foolish enough to forsake his demons. He clung to them with tooth and nail, always reminding himself where he came from lest he grew complacent in this new state of familial tranquility. However, for all his burning hatred to the man, he’d never got to learn his real name, much less his family name, deriving satisfaction upon reducing his ghost to a soulless moniker rather than an actual person.
Silver didn’t need that man’s name anyway.
“Why don't you add your parents to the drawing Malleus?”, he prodded, hoping for a break from the kid’s interrogation, “And then we can hang it on the wall.”
“Okay!” Malleus exclaimed, before pulling the drawing out of the fae’s grasp, biting into the fae’s bait, the offer of having his masterpiece placed in such an honorable position too great to refuse. Lilia felt his shoulders sag with relief as the kid skidded towards the living room, before collapsing on the floor, shuffling through an array of chipped crayons.
“I tried to talk him out of it, but he was being very stubborn.”
“It's alright Silver. He'll understand when he grows up.”, and Lilia would face his wrath then.
Normally Silver would have followed after Malleus, aiding him in his artistic endeavor or practicing his writing skills in a napkin he’d probably end up hiding away from the fae, but instead, he continued hovering nervously over the kitchen’s threshold, standing a little taller than the blue mark of the doorway corresponding to his height over the last year.
Lilia would typically wait for him to piece whatever thought possessed his overwrought mind. Gone were the years when he’d snap at the jumpy child for taking too long to answer, the restless general mellowed into a domestic version of a patient guardian.
But old habits were difficult to part with, and Lilia’s curiosity took the better of him as soon as he noticed Silver’s hands had remained hidden behind his back during the entirety of their conversation. “What are you hiding over there?”
The kid seemed taken aback, startled lavender eyes darting away from the floor and burying themselves into Lilia’s own pupils. His mouth opened for a moment before closing again, that hesitant gaze dropping back to the ground as the kid shuffled closer.
“N-nothing. I... Well Malleus wanted company while he was d-drawing. I thought…”, he managed, his voice barely louder than a whisper. But then something shifted within the child and Silver was squaring up his shoulders and facing the general with a firm look of decisiveness. And even though he appeared no less anxious, he seemed all the more certain about the choice of words he was about to speak and the fae felt himself engulfed by a streak of bubbling pride. “I know you aren't my father. I'm not a kid. But my book said it was a good idea to make gifts for the ones who take care of you.”
“So, thank you for taking care of me.”, he announced as his hand retracted from behind his back presenting Lilia with a flower crown.
And for the second time today, Lilia was reduced into the state of a mute owl, batting his eyelids dumbfoundedly over wine full-moon orbs in an oddly resemblant manner to Silver’s feathery friend whose favorite pastime consisted of staring into every stranger’s soul.
“You made this for me?”, the fae mumbled once he managed to swallow past his clotted throat, his gaze trailing towards the boy in a mix of palpable confusion and something else. Something that clenched his heart at the sight Silver’s fingers covered in thorn cuts.
“You don’t have to wear it. I know it’s not your style, but…”, he faltered, before scrunching his eyes shut, once again resetting his timid expression into a determined frown so similar to the one Malleus had thrown at him mere moments ago.
“Happy Father’s Day Lilia.”, he wished, his voice echoing loud and clear as he extended his arm a little further, not quite breaching the fae personal space, but making his intentions clear enough.
The flowers’ blossoms were soft to the touch and unexpectedly warm, although the fae assumed the last part had to do with Silver’s clammy hands that were shaking ever so slightly when Lilia’s own fingers brushed over them as he took the small wreath in his palm.
The flashy colors were bleeding into a whirlwind of complimentary shades that reminded Lilia of the last breath of sunlight before the evening’s darkness settled. The magenta hues of the large peonies boded well with the flushed tints of the sweet peas, the rich painting of the receding sunset only further accented by the ebony petals of the black dahlias woven into the impressive halo. Lilia’s gaping expression turned into a frown.
The fae was far from a flower enthusiast, but he was observant, the queen’s guards currently dangling over the treetops of the forest stretched across the fae town’s border could testify for that. He knew that this type of plants didn’t blossom around the cottage. Silver must have woken up at the crack of dawn were he to gather this assortment and thread it together on top of finishing his chores and keeping Malleus occupied. It was no wonder the kid looked so tired.
As if on cue, Silver’s flushed lips parted releasing a sleepy yawn.
Reprimanding him for sneaking out of the house behind his back when Lilia had painstakingly highlighted the importance of remaining hidden from the public eye would have spared him the struggle of thinking of an appropriate response, but before he got the chance to get a word out of his mouth Silver was nodding to himself, heading towards the living room, his skinny body slumping onto the floor next to Malleus’s coloring book.
Lilia could easily pry on the boys’ conversation had he wanted to, putting his enhanced hearing aside, their house wasn’t exactly big, a humble assembly of two bedrooms, a kitchen and a cramped living room built on the base of an ancient looking plane tree whose large roots interlaced with the creaking floorboards. But he preferred to let their muffled voices wash over him as they were, a jumbled warp of familiarity he could anchor himself.
His eyes flickered towards the window placed over the sink. The leafy branches of the plane tree covered the thin glass from the blinding midday sunrays, offering enough shade for Lilia to catch his reflection upon its translucent surface. He followed the motions of his arms from the makeshift mirror, as they rose over his head and set the colorful crown on his head. He’d be foolish not to notice it sooner, his self-praised observance betraying him for the first time, but the shades Silver had picked were identical to his hair. He supposed that was deliberate.
His eyes narrowed as he spotted something white peeking from the wreath’s center. He’d thought it had been a fleck of dust, a wayward particle getting caught in the knitted stems, but when he focused his attention closer to his reflection Lilia recognized the small blossom. Afterall the field stretching over the cottage had been filled with white lilies.
He didn’t think he’d ever worn a flower crown before. He’d seen Silver make them for Malleus, the small dragon beaming with joy every time the older boy procured a different creation that was bound to crumble after the endless hours of playing across the woods, but he’d never partaken in their activities. He could only imagine the faces his former military officials would pull upon his sight. He could almost hear the noble fae of the court whispering about how low he’d fallen, the mighty general turned into a glorified nursemaid!
Silver was right. It wasn’t his style at all.
And yet his index still stroked the soft petals of the singular lily standing out among the darker palette of blacks and pinks. His eyes glowed in an imperceptible flash of fuchsia, as the preservation spell settled over the wreath, seeping over the tangled stems and gleaming petals.
“No! We’ve run out of pink crayon!”, he heard Malleus scream from the other room and Lilia pushed himself towards the tangled forms of the children. He stood over the two boys lying across the crooked floorboards on their stomachs, in a blatant display of disregard towards the perfectly functioning chairs and table set right next to them, heads resting over their arms and legs crossed over the backs, their feet brushing over one another’s ever so slightly.
He threw a quick glance at their little sketch before regretting it immediately.
“Why does Meleanor have a third horn?!” Lilia gasped, his voice assuming a reasonably horrified tilt at the sight of his princess’s stick figure sporting a third bump. Both boys turned at him in a display of practiced synchronization one could only ascribe to a brotherly bond and when Lilia caught sight of the human’s round face breaking into a blinding smile even the sun would envy, upon watching the fae honoring his gift, he couldn’t hold onto his anger.
Instead, he sunk on his knees between the two and patted their braided heads ever so awkwardly. His heart skipped a beat as he felt both bobs of white and black nuzzle into his touch.
“Three horns are cooler than two.”, the little fae stated matter-of-factly, twisting his head over the older fae’s form, his deadpan expression conveying the severity of his statement and Lilia sent a silent apology towards the vague direction of Blackscale castle. He’d seen jesters get hanged for less.
Well, he’d hanged jesters for less.
“Can I have one?” Silver piped, always content to follow Malleus’s lead.
“No!”, the dragon protested, as he stole the black crayon from the other boy’s hands, before replacing it with a light blue one, “But you can have bird wings.”
“Let’s give Lilia bat wings then.” Silver conceded, as the two boys got wrapped in their task, forgetting entirely of Lilia’s existence.
In the end Lilia didn’t know who had ended up adding the lopsided flower crown over his stick figure’s head. But one thing was certain.
These kids were going to be the death of him.