Chapter Text
The palace woke before the sun.
Servants moved like shadows along the marble corridors, soft-soled shoes whispering over polished floors. The ever-burning crystal lamps along the vaulted ceilings dimmed in subtle degrees as night wards reset and day wards stirred, lines of faintly glowing sigils sliding across the arches like lazy constellations.
And in the eastern training courtyard, the crown prince was getting his ass handed to him.
“Higher guard, Your Highness,” Captain Ren said, voice mild, wooden staff slamming down toward Shouta’s shoulder.
Shouta twisted sideways, felt the shock of impact vibrate up his arms, teeth jarring. The staff skidded off his forearm guard instead of cracking bone. He bit back the hiss that wanted out and adjusted his stance.
“Stop calling me that,” he muttered, and launched forward.
The courtyard tiles were still cool with lingering night, slick with a thin sheen of dew. Shouta’s bare feet found purchase anyway, years of drills making his movements automatic: duck, sweep, pivot. He aimed for Ren’s legs, staff a blur. The captain hopped lightly over the strike and tapped him on the forehead.
“Dead again,” Ren said. “That makes six.”
Shouta scowled up at him, dark hair plastered to his face with sweat. It was longer than he liked—it always was—some compromise with court etiquette that his mother had insisted on. His tunic clung damply to his back, and the leather bracers on his forearms were beginning to chafe.
“I grazed you,” Shouta argued. “If this were a real fight—”
“You’d be very nobly dead,” Ren said. “Which is impressive, if the goal is to be a martyr by lunchtime.”
Shouta rolled his eyes, but he shifted his grip, re-centering his weight. His chest still felt tight, breath not quite catching up with him after the last exchange. The air smelled like wet stone, oiled wood, and the faint metallic tang of old magic—the kind that had soaked into the palace itself over generations.
Ren let him settle, then lifted his own staff back into guard.
“Again.”
Shouta attacked first this time.
He had always been good at moving. Faster than his tutors liked to admit, quieter than most of the guards. He compensated for the fact that his quirk wasn’t flashy with discipline and stubbornness.
His quirk. Not royal magic, not some inherited glow that crackled in bloodlines and artifacts. Just a simple, stubborn quirk that let him erase other people’s quirks while his gaze was on them. Useful, the court mages said with tight smiles, if enemies ever made it into the throne room.
Less useful, Shouta thought, if you were trying to be anything other than a glorified anti-weapon in a gilded cage.
Ren’s staff came in low. Shouta vaulted, tucked, rolled, shoulders scraping the stone as he tucked himself into the smallest curl he could manage. He came up beneath Ren’s guard and thrust upward, staff braced like a spear. The tip halted an inch from Ren’s throat.
They both froze.
Ren’s brows lifted.
Shouta’s chest heaved. Sweat dripped off his nose.
“…Four to three,” Ren said finally. “Better.”
A slow, tired grin tugged at Shouta’s mouth before he could stop it.
He pulled back, lowering his weapon. The satisfaction lasted exactly three heartbeats—until Ren stepped in, quick as a snake, and flicked his staff against Shouta’s ankle.
“You dropped your stance,” Ren said, as Shouta stumbled, caught himself. “In battle, you never assume a fight ends when you want it to.”
Shouta scowled. “You’re impossible.”
“It’s my job.” Ren glanced toward the archway. “And it seems I’m not the only one you’ll be sparring with today.”
Shouta followed his gaze.
A figure stood just outside the courtyard, framed by the carved stone arch and the soft glow of the waking wards. His uncle wore dark robes trimmed in silver thread, his hair perfectly arranged despite the early hour. Behind him, the magic woven into the archway flared faintly in recognition of royal blood.
Uncle Masaki smiled, all smooth warmth and polished charm.
“Nephew,” he said. “Up with the dawn again. Your father will be pleased to hear it.”
Shouta forced his shoulders not to hunch.
“Good morning, Uncle,” he said, staff lowering to his side. He kept his tone flat, respectful. His mother had drilled that into him early: you do not pick fights with the man who commands half your council, no matter how much he grates on you.
“Captain Ren,” Masaki added with a nod.
“Your Grace,” Ren said. His voice went crisp and formal, the lazy teasing from a moment ago folded away with professional ease. “His Highness shows improvement.”
“Does he?” Masaki’s eyes flicked to the faint redness on Shouta’s forearms, the fresh bruise blooming along his jaw. “I suppose there’s merit in knowing which end of a staff to hold.”
Shouta swallowed back the retort on his tongue. Which end of a decree to sign, he thought. Which end of a knife to catch.
Royal children weren’t supposed to think like that. But then, royal children weren’t supposed to have nightmares about fire and screaming and the sound of cracking glass either. Yet Shouta had those, too.
Masaki stepped into the courtyard, ignoring the slight tightening of the ward-lights as he passed under them. The sigils etched into the arch flared, then dimmed again, like a held breath being released.
“We have a full day ahead,” Masaki said. “Your tutors expect you in the east study in half an hour. It would not do to keep them waiting.”
Shouta wiped his palms on his tunic.
“I can make it,” he said. “If Captain Ren is done with me.”
Ren met his eyes for a fraction of a second—a silent are you alright? that never made it to his mouth.
“Prince Shouta’s drills are complete for this morning,” he said. “He’s taken to the footwork well.”
Masaki’s gaze sharpened at that. “Has he now. Footwork is useful—for dancing at state functions, if nothing else.”
Shouta clenched his jaw.
“I’d rather be prepared for the other kind of dance,” he said.
Masaki laughed.
It was a pleasant sound. He’d practiced it.
“Of course you would,” he said. “You are your father’s son. All steel and stares. No patience for the softer arts.” He reached out, brushing a bit of damp hair back from Shouta’s forehead with a touch that made Shouta want to recoil. “We’ll have to fix that.”
Shouta kept still.
His uncle’s fingers were cool where they grazed his temple. His ring—heavy gold set with a dark stone—pressed briefly against skin, and something in the wards around the courtyard prickled, then settled. Shouta wasn’t sure if he imagined it.
Masaki dropped his hand.
“Don’t be late,” he said, already turning away. “Your parents will be joining your diplomatic lessons today. It will be…an important session.”
There was something in the way he said important that made Shouta’s stomach twist.
“Yes, Uncle,” Shouta said.
Masaki left in a swirl of dark fabric, servants trailing.
The crystal lamps along the colonnade flickered as he passed, then steadied again.
For a moment, the courtyard was quiet except for Shouta’s breathing and the distant murmur of the waking palace—a rustle of banners, the clatter of kitchen carts, the faint echo of voices in a hundred corridors.
Ren cleared his throat.
“Remember what we practiced. Keep your center low. Don’t get drawn out.”
“I know,” Shouta said. He meant the fighting. They both knew he didn’t.
Ren’s gaze softened for half a heartbeat.
“You don’t have to go alone,” the captain said, voice low. “Your Highness.”
“I do,” Shouta said, then grimaced. “And stop calling me that when it’s just us.”
“It’s never just us,” Ren said, glancing again at the archway, where the ward-sigils still glowed faintly. “Not in this palace.”
Shouta followed his gaze.
The sigils were old. He’d grown up under their watchful light: diagrams of protection, loyalty, lineage. They flared when royal blood crossed them, when certain vows were spoken, when specific names were called.
He’d seen them react to lightning storms, to newborn cries, to his father’s voice booming through the throne room.
Today, they looked…tired. Stretched thin and humming at the edges, as if a note had been held too long.
“Go wash,” Ren said gently. “You smell like training floor.”
Shouta snorted, the corner of his mouth twitching upward. “You always smell like training floor.”
“Yes, well.” Ren tapped the courtyard gate with the end of his staff, practical again. “Be on time, or your mother will storm the guard barracks to drag you out of drills next time.”
Shouta winced.
“Point taken.”
He racked the practice staff, bowed automatically, and left the courtyard through a narrower side passage instead of following the path his uncle had taken. Less ceremony there. Fewer eyes.
The palace was a maze he knew better than his own reflection.
He passed through a cloistered garden where dew-beaded spiderwebs hung between rosebushes, the air cool and damp. A pair of palace cats lounged on a sun-warmed stone bench, though there was barely any sun yet—just the soft grey light before dawn. One of them, mottled brown with a torn ear, cracked an eye as Shouta walked past.
“Morning, Bastard,” he said absently.
The cat blinked once and flicked his tail.
The first time he’d called him that—years ago, when the cat had scratched his hand and stolen a whole piece of smoked fish off his plate—a horrified footman had rushed to shush him. His mother had laughed until she cried and declared that if that was the worst language her son picked up in the guard barracks, she wasn’t going to complain.
Now, Bastard was as much a fixture of the palace as the statues and tapestries. Half the staff swore the cat understood human words. Shouta suspected they were right.
Bastard hopped off the bench and trotted after him, nimble feet silent on the stone.
“Come to eavesdrop?” Shouta muttered. “I’m sure the diplomats will appreciate your insight.”
The cat bumped his leg once, then veered off toward the kitchens. So much for loyalty.
Shouta took the servant’s stair up to his rooms, ignoring the broader, grander staircase meant for royal processions. The narrower stairwell was lined with plain stone, the only adornment a series of carved notches marking generations: princes measuring their height with charcoal and a knife, the marks worn soft by time.
His own mark—“S, 9” in messy, child handwriting—sat halfway up the wall, between “Yori, 10” and “Rina, 8.” Cousins. Both gone now to distant branches of the family tree or married into other houses. He’d stopped adding his height after that. The empty wall above those marks felt like something he hadn’t earned.
He reached his chambers, nodded to the sleepy maid stationed outside, and slipped inside before anyone could announce him like an event.
His rooms were large, because they had to be. A prince didn’t get a cramped cell. High ceilings, tall windows, thick curtains embroidered with the crest of the royal line: a stylized eye surrounded by looping threads of magic, like a capture weapon frozen mid-snap.
His bed looked barely slept in. He preferred the window seat, where he could see the city spread out beyond the palace walls—the rooftops and alleys and flickers of morning fires where people were already starting their day.
He paused there, just for a moment, fingers resting on the cool stone of the sill.
The city—his city, supposedly—was waking, too.
Distantly, he could see the outer market district: a cluster of roofs and stalls around the main gate, a patchwork of colors as awnings were rolled out. Further in, closer to the palace, the buildings grew taller, cleaner, the streets wider. The wards that encircled the city were only visible as a faint shimmer at the very edge of his quirk-sense, a static cling along his skin whenever he looked too long.
He pressed his forehead briefly against the glass.
Somewhere out there were people who didn’t know his name, didn’t bow when he walked past, didn’t care whether he used the right fork at dinner.
He wondered, not for the first time, what it would be like to be one of them.
“Your Highness?” a voice called from the sitting room. “Shall I draw your bath?”
Shouta straightened.
“I can handle it,” he said. “Thank you.”
He bathed quickly, scrubbing sweat and dust off with more efficiency than care. His bruises protested when he moved too fast, but he’d learned a long time ago not to linger. Hot water and quiet were a dangerous combination; they left too much room for thoughts.
By the time he stepped out, hair damp and sticking up at odd angles, his formal clothes were already laid out on the bed: dark trousers, an embroidered tunic in the royal colors, the silver clasp for his half-cloak. The cloak itself was folded neatly, its lining stitched with faintly glowing thread—subtle protection runes woven in by his mother’s own hands.
He stared at it for a heartbeat too long.
“Do I have to wear the cloak?” he called.
“Yes,” came his mother’s voice from the sitting room.
Shouta startled, nearly dropping his towel.
He stepped out, still toweling his hair. “I didn’t realize you were here.”
Queen Aizawa Hana sat in one of the armchairs, a cup of tea cradled between long fingers. Her dark hair was braided up, crown absent, dressed in a simpler gown than he was used to seeing in public—soft blue rather than heavy brocades.
“I wanted to speak to you before lessons,” she said. “And I know if I waited until after, you’d find some excuse to linger in the guard yard instead.”
He opened his mouth. Closed it again. “…I wouldn’t.”
Her brows arched.
“Fine,” he muttered. “Maybe I would.”
She smiled, small and fond, as she set the cup aside.
“Come here,” she said. “Let me see you.”
Shouta obeyed, shuffling over in bare feet.
His mother rose, moving with the easy grace of someone who’d trained in both ballrooms and battlefields. She adjusted his collar, brushed a thumb over the fading bruise at his jaw with a frown.
“Ren is hitting you harder,” she said.
“I asked him to,” Shouta said.
Her eyes flicked up to meet his. They were the same shape as his own, the same dark hue, but where his tended toward dry boredom, hers held a quiet, assessing sharpness.
“Why?” she asked.
“Because,” he said, picking at an invisible thread on his sleeve. “If anyone ever really attacks, they won’t pull their hits.”
Her expression softened and sharpened at once.
“That is the guard’s job,” she said. “And the wards. And ours. Your father and I exist to stand between you and the knife, Shouta. Not the other way around.”
He swallowed.
“Doesn’t seem fair,” he muttered. “For you.”
“Fairness has very little to do with crowns,” she said. “But I appreciate the sentiment.”
She stepped back, taking in the full picture of him.
“You’re growing,” she said. “You’ll be taller than me soon.”
“Ren says height’s an advantage in a fight,” Shouta said.
“Ren is biased,” she replied. “He’s a tree. Of course he thinks that.”
A small huff of laughter escaped him before he could stop it.
Her smile turned wry.
“Your father will be in the east study already,” she said. “He’s been up since before dawn wrestling with trade tariffs. Be kind when you yawn your way through his lecture.”
“I don’t yawn that much,” Shouta said.
“You yawn with your eyes,” she said, reaching up to tap his forehead lightly. “And your father notices.”
He looked away, suddenly uneasy.
“Mother,” he said.
“Yes?”
“Uncle Masaki said today’s lesson would be…important.” The word tasted sour in his mouth. “What does that mean?”
Something shifted in her face.
For a moment, the queen vanished and the woman beneath flashed through—tired, worried, fiercely protective.
“It means the council is restless,” she said, carefully. “It means some of them are pushing for changes we are not prepared to accept.”
“What kind of changes?” Shouta pressed.
Her gaze slid toward the window, toward the city.
“The kind that forget there are people behind numbers,” she said. “The kind that thinks magic and power are the same thing.”
He frowned.
“Then tell them no,” he said. “You and Father. That’s your job.”
Her lips quirked again. “If only it were that simple.”
“It should be,” he said stubbornly.
She reached up, fingers threading briefly through his damp hair.
“You are going to make some poor diplomat cry today,” she murmured. “Do try to save it until after the midmorning break.”
He snorted, but the knot in his chest didn’t loosen.
“Mother,” he said quietly. “Why is Uncle always there? In those meetings. In everything. Isn’t it your job and Father’s?”
“Your uncle is…experienced,” she said.
“That’s not an answer,” Shouta said.
She hesitated.
“There are people,” she said slowly, “who are drawn to the center of power the way moths are drawn to flame. They circle closer and closer, convinced they can control the fire, that they can use it. They forget fire doesn’t care who feeds it.”
He thought of her brother, with his easy smiles and polished words. Thought of the way the ward-sigils flickered when he walked by.
“Which is he?” Shouta asked. “A moth or the fire?”
She looked at him for a long moment.
“Stay close to Ren,” she said instead. “And listen more than you speak today. There will be plenty of time for questions later.”
He hated that answer.
But he also knew his mother well enough to recognize when a conversation was over—for now, at least.
She picked up the half-cloak from the bed and shook it out. As she fastened it around his shoulders, her fingers brushed the inside seam where the faintly glowing thread was stitched.
The magic thrummed there, quiet and warm, a pulse that answered something in his own blood.
“Remember,” she said softly. “You are more than the crown they want to put on your head. You are my son. Your father’s son. Our heir. Not their tool.”
He nodded, throat tight.
“I know,” he lied.
She kissed his forehead.
“Come,” she said briskly, queen-mask snapping back into place. “We’ll face the council together.”
They exited his chambers into the hallway, guards falling into step behind them with practiced precision. As they passed under the arch leading toward the east study, the ward sigils flared again, brighter this time, casting their faces in brief, ghostly light.
The pattern spiraled outward—lines of power connecting this arch to others, to the palace heart, to the foundation stones.
For a second, it looked to Shouta like the whole structure held its breath.
Then the light sank back into stone.
The palace carried on.
In the east study ahead, voices were already rising—sharp, overlapping, threaded with tension. Somewhere among them, his father’s tone rumbled steady and stubborn, Masaki’s smoother voice sliding in like oil over water.
Shouta squared his shoulders.
He stepped forward, under the arch, into the web of magic and marble and duty that had been spun for him long before he’d been born.
The wards shivered once more around him.
If Shouta had been older, more trained, he might have recognized that shiver for what it was: not fatigue, not routine, but strain. A system pushed to its limits. A warning that something was beginning to crack.
Instead, he walked on, jaw set, cloak whispering against polished stone.
He didn’t know it yet, but this would be one of the last mornings the palace woke as it always had.
Soon, the marble would remember the taste of blood.