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‘The child is doing well,’ the Red King comments. Eyes obscured behind his shades, he nonetheless watches the kerfuffle on the training grounds like a hawk.
Martyn stiffens. Leaning against the fence surrounding the yard, he did not hear his king approach. He quickly turns to bow. ‘You sound surprised, your majesty.’
Ren waves his hand, dismissing the formality. ‘You know how I felt about this in the beginning.’
Martyn’s lips curl. With formidable ease, he drops his voice into his king’s register. ‘“You purchased him? For diamonds? Martyn, how could you?”’ He garnishes the quote with a roll of his eyes.
Ren winces. ‘I don’t think I ever apologized for that.’
‘I didn’t think you would.’
Fifty feet ahead of them, the boy tosses his staff in the air, catches it with his other hand and shatters his opponent’s light, wooden shield. Then, nimble as a young stag, he jumps out of reach ere the soldier can strike him in retaliation. He’s grown into his height, over the past few months. In this, he resembles his father more and more with every passing day.
Not that one would assume them to be remotely related. The child’s skin is covered in soot-black dragon scales and even at a distance, his eyes glow unmistakably purple. Martyn keeps racking his brain, but he has not a clue where the unusual colouration could’ve come from. Yellow feathers would’ve at least made sense.
‘I understand why you did it now,’ says Ren.
Martyn shrugs. ‘I saw his potential.’
His interest had been piqued from the first moment he caught the rumours about the trans-dimensional Rift. When he found out Grian was involved, he knew he had to have an ear on the situation. Not that he had to listen very hard when they were practically shouting it from the rooftops.
Oli’s offspring with Joel had been short-lived golems. Martyn was rather impressed they’d managed to contain a spark of life at all; it was probably due to both Oli and Joel being steeped in lore at the time. Plus, a stolen kiss carried its own magic. Yet ultimately, the young ones had been like the other things Oli liked to create: short-lived and fleeting, beautiful but brief.
The child on the training grounds is something else entirely.
For one, Joel and Jimmy had taken equal part in his conception. The boy’s first breath had been both birth and benediction. He was given a name.
Then, to Martyn’s utter bafflement, they’d sent him off to be reared by Jevin. Who did not seem at leisure to raise a god-spawn, not even to reap the benefits of his fathers’ prestigious connections. Not that it mattered – the Mad King of Mezalea, the Storm God of Stratos, had joined the Hermits permanently, so that one was now in the bag.
Ren coughs. ‘I still find it difficult to believe that Jevin would sell a child.’
Martyn shakes his head. ‘Not him.’ A smirk. ‘See, that’s what you get for not grilling the full story out of me the first time.’
Ren shoots him a quelling look over the top of his shades. ‘Elaborate, Hand, if you please.’
‘It was his steward.’
The Hermits had done what they usually do and departed the world they’d painstakingly made habitable so that others could prosper and flourish and call it their home. They appointed custodians to be left in charge, whose families would go on to wield considerable power and influence thanks to the infrastructure they controlled. The mortals built a new society, lived happily and did what all mortals eventually do – they died.
Unfortunately for the boy, several generations hence, he was still a child. Lore had created him, thus, without lore to feed off of, he could not grow. At last, the stewards had enough of a toddler that required constant attention and were only too glad to be rid of him.
For Martyn, it was a lucky find.
‘It’s alchemy, you know,’ he muses in Ren’s direction.
The king’s brows quirk. ‘Making gold out of dirt?’
‘He was treated like dirt.’
Martyn scoffs. Maybe he should have burned the place down when he left.
‘And you think that makes him more deserving of wearing the crown?’
There it is, the blade that pierced his heart and stuck. The reason Martyn set out to that old world to retrieve the boy in the first place. Every second of the day, he’s all too aware of the weight of the axe hanging from his hip. He knows it is the same for Ren. Neither of them dare to voice it, but they cannot go on like this indefinitely. Sooner or later, the cracks in the façade are going to show. He needs to make sure they have a plan for when it happens.
‘I weighed the options, but since you’d decided you’d thrown your lot in with me for good,’ Martyn shifts uncomfortably, ‘I had to get creative.’
Ren hums. ‘I know. It doesn’t change the fact that I would have liked to work this out between the two of us before resorting to such drastic measures.’
Martyn flinches. ‘Our discussions had reached their dead-end, had they not?’
The years have done little to water down the memory of the recurring shouting matches that inevitably ended with Martyn on his knees, begging his king to take a concubine. A princess, a witch, anyone. Someone who could do for him the one thing Martyn couldn’t, no matter how much he yearned for it. His plea fell on deaf ears time and time again.
‘Ah,’ says Ren. ‘Point taken.’
He shifts closer until their arms brush. His heat seeps through Martyn’s mail shirt; drawing him in like a siren song.
‘Although it makes me wonder. Is there anything you would not try to do for me, if I asked, Hand?’
Sadness laces his voice when he says it. That means he must want Martyn to lie, right? He looks across the yard, straightens and clears his throat.
‘We don’t have to make a decision now,’ he says, just before the boy nearly barrels into him at high speed.
‘I’m done, Marty! I defeat them all!’
He spots Ren and freezes, eyes going wide. He presses his lips together, adjusts his stance and bows. ‘Good day, my king.’
Ren hesitates for a split second, then he puts on a smile. ‘No need for such formalities. I see Martyn has trained you well.’
‘It’s defeated,’ Martyn corrects gently. ‘And of course. I’d be remiss in my duties if I hadn’t.’
Chin up, he meets his liege’s stare. Ren tilts his head, considering, and pats the top of the fence. ‘Alright, then. Come here, Tim. Sit and tell us about your impressive accomplishment.’
Tiny Tim, who must be approaching nine years old in mortal years and is really not so tiny any more, clambers up onto the rail between them and starts talking excitedly. As he listens, Ren’s expression gradually softens. He leans in to pay closer attention, giving encouraging ‘hmm’s and ‘aah’s when the boy falters in his retelling. Watching it makes a choking warmth crawl up Martyn’s throat.
He wishes he could bottle up this moment. Preserve it in amber, so it would shine and glitter in the sunlight.