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The tip of Dimitri’s nose itched.
Normally, when that happened, he scratched the offending spot and forgot about it. But his tunic clung to his throat more tightly than it should, and the Faerghesi blue surcoat embroidered in silver thread pressed against his chest, not to mention the fur that kept threatening to slip from his shoulders despite its clasp. He did not dare raise his hands, already sweating inside lined gloves; if he accidentally moved the collar, shifted the clasp, or worse, dishevelled his hair, his father would be furious. He already felt awkward walking in those boots.
He swallowed. Perhaps it was not even an itch. Perhaps he was about to sneeze— he could already see it, a sneeze exploding across the face of a duke bowing as he swore fealty. It would be a disaster discussed for years— here it was, the royal bastard incapable of controlling his own nose—
“You're hesitating,” his father, Grand Duke Rufus of Itha, commented next to Dimitri. He didn't stop walking for a second.
Compared to the attire imposed upon Dimitri, his father’s clothing seemed almost sober: a black doublet of excellent workmanship, fastened with a clasp bearing the Crest of Blaiddyd, and a mantle lined with fur. After all, he would not be standing on the dais with Dimitri; he'd instead be among the other heads of the Kingdom’s noble houses and their heirs to swear fealty to his son.
“I beg your forgiveness, Father. My mind is besieged by concerns for the future,” Dimitri replied, striving to keep pace and hoping he wouldn't trip over his feet. He pondered his next words; he could hardly speak of his itching nose or his fear of sneezing in someone’s face. “I fear they may contest me because...”
He couldn't find the words to finish the sentence, but he didn't need to. His father’s expression darkened instantly.
Dimitri immediately lowered his eyes. He had been born on the wrong side of the sheets, as the bolder nobles had remarked in his presence, sometimes with the smile of someone pretending to jest. Possessing a minor Crest of Blaiddyd wasn't enough when his father had already been passed over for the throne in favour of his younger brother, far more beloved by the people of Faerghus than the Grand Duke of Itha had ever been. Plus, the maternal blood of Dimitri's legitimate cousin had tied him to lineages respected far beyond the walls of Castle Fhìrdiad.
Yet, what kept Dimitri awake at night was that he hadn't been raised to be king. His cousin had been the student of renowned tutors and had enjoyed the friendship of the heirs of noble and influential Houses. Not Dimitri.
Dimitri didn't feel ready to fill the void his cousin had left behind. He was not even sure he wanted to, but his father would react badly if he said it.
You should be here, Darius, Dimitri thought with a pang of pain in his chest.
Their last parting, which happened on the training grounds, had been full of bitterness. It had rained the day before, and the mud gave way beneath their boots until his cousin lost his balance and fell. Dimitri offered him a hand to help him back to his feet, but his cousin Darius slapped it away with cheeks splotched red. Darius immediately screamed that Dimitri had won the duel only thanks to the power of the Crest of Blaiddyd and that, without it, he would never achieve anything. Dimitri had tried to apologise, but Darius shoved him backwards and stormed off.
Dimitri hadn't told his father any of it; he had not wanted Rufus to quarrel with his uncle Lambert again. His father learned of it anyway and ordered that they leave Fhirdiad for Itha more than a week in advance. Still, Dimitri wrote his cousin letter after letter beneath the bed linens or under the light of the Crest of Blaiddyd after everyone had retired for the night; he slipped the letters into the ordinary post and prayed every day to receive a reply from Darius.
Every hope of reconciliation vanished when his cousin returned from Duscur in a coffin.
His father’s gloved hand came to rest on his shoulder. Dimitri jolted.
“Do not torment yourself needlessly,” his father said. “The noble Houses of Faerghus have preferred heirs with Crests for centuries. Who is the heir of House Galatea? Not the firstborn, whose sharp mind has served Duke Fraldarius and the troops of Galatea well. Not the secondborn, whose charisma and commercial talent have more than once saved his people from famine. No, it's the youngest daughter, the only one with a Crest, even though her greatest achievement has been making friends with her peers.”
Dimitri resisted the urge to correct his father. The peers he spoke of were the future Duke Fraldarius, the future Margrave Gautier, and Dimitri’s legitimate cousin, who would have become the King of Faerghus had he not fallen at Duscur. They were friendships capable of shaping the course of history.
Compared to Ingrid, Dimitri possessed even fewer achievements. He had no worthy allies and hadn't served a notable House as a page. No eminent figure had expressed any interest in his education. He had merely been born.
His father squeezed his shoulders before Dimitri could voice his thoughts. Rufus's eyes shone with an intensity so fierce it made Dimitri’s skin prickle. “So don't worry, my son. The crown is rightfully yours.”
Dimitri forced himself not to break eye contact. His eyes stung.
“Yes, Father,” he murmured. It was better to indulge him when he was in that mood.
At last, the hand withdrew from his shoulder. “In any case, there is no need to worry,” his father went on. “The coronation will happen when you come of age. You still have plenty of time to learn.”
They crossed the last stretch of corridor that separated them from the audience chamber. Dimitri studied the portraits of the past Kings and Queens of Faerghus, from Loog von Blaiddyd to his uncle, hanging on the walls in silver frames. A pair of royal guards stood by the sides of the door, which was reinforced with polished iron bands, through which Dimitri was going to step.
Beyond that threshold, the nobility of Faerghus awaited him.
His nose still itched.
For a moment, Dimitri believed his father was about to give him some final instruction or an admonishment. Instead, Rufus turned left and walked away, the edges of his mantle swaying behind him, until even the sound of his footsteps vanished.
The two guards, straight as spears driven into stone, continued to surveil the door without speaking. Dimitri offered them a smile he hoped looked confident. One of the guards answered with the slightest twitch of the lips; the other kept staring ahead, though Dimitri thought he saw a vein pulsing in his throat.
Dimitri looked away and focused on the door. From the other side came neither murmurs nor footsteps. He didn't know how it was possible. The nobility was known for its decorum, not for its silence. He wondered what expressions adorned the faces of the nobles out of his sight. How many of them would be thinking of his uncle and his cousin while swearing fealty to him.
The tip of his nose throbbed.
He flexed his fingers. Open; closed; open; closed. Dimitri wished he had something to hold. He would be given the royal sceptre upon entering the chamber, but, at that moment, his hands stayed uselessly at his sides. Behind him, the portraits of dead monarchs watched and judged him.
Without any warning, the door opened. Dimitri held his breath and took the first step.
The audience chamber uncurled before him in a triumph of royal hangings and faces turned in his direction. A great swarm of nobles inundated him with a flood of indifference, calculation, vague curiosity, and grief before their expressions smoothed into impassibility. Many wore black accessories in mourning for the late king and crown prince. Some, all of them from the eastern territories of Faerghus, were clad in full mourning outfits.
Dimitri halted at the sight, and one of the court attendants exploited the pause to set his uncle’s crown upon his head. It nearly slipped down onto Dimitri's brow, still too large for him.
“Hearken!” the steward proclaimed to the assembly over Dimitri’s pounding heart. “Before you stands Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd, nephew of His Majesty King Lambert Egitte Blaiddyd, son of His Grace Grand Duke Rufus Thierry Blaiddyd, grandson of His Majesty King Emeric Jerald Blaiddyd, and descendant of the blood of Your Majesties King Loog von Blaiddyd and his daughter, Queen Rhiannon Elspeth Blaiddyd.”
He should have expected it,truly. His uncle Lambert had always been close to the eastern lords and had been a close friend to some of them since adolescence.
The steward pushed the sceptre into his defenceless hands. Dimitri managed to close his fingers around it without snapping it.
“...swear fealty to him as the Crown Prince and future King of the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus. If there be any here who would object, let them speak now or forever be silent,” Dimitri heard the steward’s final declaration.
Dimitri held his breath. At any second, a voice would rise from the crowd, and then another, and another—
Nobody spoke.
The steward stepped aside, yielding the rest of the dais to Dimitri. He didn't know where to rest his gaze. Lady Cornelia Arnim, the Court Mage adored by the people as though she were a saint, gave him an encouraging smile. She was the only one. Dimitri met his father’s impassive gaze from the back of the hall for a single moment. The spark Dimitri had glimpsed earlier had returned to Rufus’s eyes.
Dimitri looked away and fixed his gaze on a point above everyone’s heads. He steeled himself and stepped to the edge of the platform, where he would receive the oaths sworn to him. He inhaled carefully.
“Before the nobility of the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus,” he began, and he thanked the Goddess that his voice came steady, “I, Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd, nephew of His Majesty King Lambert Egitte Blaiddyd, son of His Grace Grand Duke Rufus Thierry Blaiddyd, grandson of His Majesty King Emeric Jerald Blaiddyd, and descendant of blood of His Majesty King Loog von Blaiddyd and his daughter Her Majesty Queen Rhiannon Elspeth Blaiddyd, stand before you to accept the honour and burden bequeathed from sovereign to sovereign of the Faerghus.
Before the Goddess, my forebears, and the people of the Kingdom, I swear to protect the Kingdom and its people as His Majesty King Lambert Egitte Blaiddyd, His Majesty King Emeric Jerald Blaiddyd, and all the Kings and Queens who came before have.
I promise to strive for justice to be done. I promise that the fallen shall not be forgotten and that the souls of those who met their deaths at Duscur may, one day, rest in peace.”
Dimitri wondered whether his father would consider his last words an affront. They hadn't agreed on that portion of the speech; Rufus had insisted on duty and continuity.
As though a spell had been shattered, the hall moved in its entirety. Heavy fabrics rustled against one another, and boots clacked against the floor. The nobles of Faerghus began arranging themselves in an order that Dimitri could not fully understand. He saw no division by House, rank, proximity to the crown, or even seniority. Yet, a distinct line emerged soon, even though it dissipated into the crowd after the count of seven people.
Viscountess Belinus advanced with the bearing of one going to a gathering among peers, closely followed by her daughter and heir, Yvette. After reaching the foot of the dais, both stopped and bowed according to protocol.
“I, Odette Gretel Belinus, Viscountess of Belinus, swear fealty to Your Highness, Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd, as Crown Prince and future King of the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus,” said the Viscountess Belinus. Yvette repeated the same words in a slightly more wavering voice.
Dimitri clenched his jaw. He had rehearsed his part of the ceremony before the mirror until he grew exhausted for this very moment.
“The Crown accepts your oath. Under the eyes of the Goddess, may House Belinus and the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus work in harmony for peace and justice,” he pronounced without his tongue stumbling as it had in the past.
Viscountess Belinus and her daughter bowed a second time before stepping aside to make way for Viscount Brennius, the lifelong rival of Viscountess Belinus, just like their parents and ancestors had been.
The procession quickly stabilised. Barons from the western regions alternated with Viscounts, Counts, and Dukes; among them were Baron Dominic, Count Duval, Viscount Enid, Baron Kleiman, Duchess Ifan, and many other names Dimitri tried to carve into his memory. All bowed and swore fealty. Some spoke with worn ease; others, younger or less accustomed to court, showed a stiffness in which Dimitri saw himself. Dimitri answered each of them with the same words: harmony, peace, and justice. After the fourth or fifth exchange, he stopped thinking over every syllable.
The lords of Eastern Faerghus advanced in a dark block. Perhaps it had been a coincidence, or perhaps they had deliberately let most of the western lords precede them. Both possibilities were plausible, especially when Dimitri noticed the pale faces of Ingrid, Sylvain, and the other young heirs who had been his cousin’s friends.
Duke Rodrigue of House Fraldarius approached Dimitri with the composure required by his rank and little else. Rufus’s rants about House Fraldarius resurfaced on their own in Dimitri’s mind; his father, in his endless contempt for House Fraldarius, often declared that its members expected to be welcomed with gifts and honours wherever they went and that they basked in their ancestors’ deeds as if they were their own. When Rufus was particularly bitter, usually after drinking more wine than normal, he murmured that they coveted the throne.
At that moment, however, the only thing that came to Dimitri’s mind was that Rodrigue was a broken man. His eyes were dull, his face ashen, his hair greasy, and his mantle lined with fur hung crooked to one side. He had lost not only a friend in King Lambert but also Glenn, his firstborn. Dimitri had heard they could bury only Glenn's armour.
Rodrigue's second son and heir, Felix, was nowhere to be seen. His father would certainly speak of that later.
For a heartbeat, Dimitri feared he would see rage or pain too vivid to be contained on Rodrigue’s face. Instead, Rodrigue bowed from the waist, pronounced the oath without the slightest emotion, and withdrew into the crowd.
Dimitri’s nose began to itch again, sharper than before. His arm had gone numb, and his legs struggled to remain steady. Instinctively, he searched every face that approached him for traces of hostility, and he thought he saw it flicker more and more intensely as time passed.
You weren’t born for this, you thief, a voice that sounded like his cousin’s whispered into his ear, cold. My sceptre, my crown, my people. A bastard like you isn’t entitled to any of it.
Give them back. Give them back!
It wasn't the first time he heard Darius’s echo. When Dimitri's eyelids begged to close, or when he felt cold sweat crawl down his spine, Darius’s voice returned with a hiss at the edges of his consciousness.
Whenever that happened, Dimitri told himself that his cousin was dead and that the dead do not speak, as his father had taught him. He did the same as the noble blood of Faerghus bowed before him, and the voice faded.
Few nobles remained to swear the oath; the rest of the crowd had returned to their original positions, a mute and impassive wall like a barrier that waited for battering rain. Some were already elsewhere in their minds; Dimitri could read it in the glazed look of their eyes. He wondered whether he gave the same impression; he knew only that his fingers had remained clenched around the sceptre for so long that they had ceased to feel like part of him.
Then he saw his father advance, the last to close the now thinned line.
Dimitri's stomach tightened even though the Grand Duke of Itha bowed without a protest.
“I, Rufus Thierry Blaiddyd, Grand Duke of Itha, swear fealty to Your Highness, Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd, as Crown Prince and future King of the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus,” his father said distinctly.
“The Crown accepts your oath,” Dimitri said, striving to keep his voice steady. “Under the eyes of the Goddess, may the Grand Duchy of Itha and the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus work in harmony for peace and justice.”
His father rose again with the same precision with which he had bowed, and then Dimitri saw it— that intense gleam he had learned to fear more than Grand Duke Rufus’s open anger. Its appearance had always been the prelude to someone’s ruin, like recently, when his father had severed every tie he had once maintained with the former Lord of Gaspard before condemning him and his son Christophe, found culpable of having aided the Tragedy of Duscur, to execution.
Dimitri shivered despite the fur on his shoulders.
---
The final part of the ceremony flew after his father’s oath. Before long, the steward concluded the ceremony, declaring that loyalty and honour had to prevail more than ever before if the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus was to survive. Dimitri soon found himself on his way to his new chambers.
The rooms of the Crown Prince awaited Dimitri cold and far, far too big even for the son of a Grand Duke. Dimitri had seen them a few times when his cousin invited him inside, back when they were callow and unaware of the tension between their fathers. Dimitri looked around but found no trace of his cousin’s belongings. The servants had to have removed everything before his arrival because Darius was no longer there. Darius was a cold body, a body buried days before in the royal cemetery of House Blaiddyd—
Dimitri didn't have the time to remove the now crooked crown from his head before the door opened behind him. His father entered as though the rooms belonged to him, not to Dimitri.
“You behaved well,” said Rufus. Before Dimitri could even open his mouth, he continued, “Lambert snapped the sceptre in half from nerves. It was an embarrassing sight, and Sir Gustave did not allow him to leave the training grounds for weeks.”
“Is that so?” Dimitri said, more out of duty than any desire to continue the conversation. Knowing his father, what he wanted now was an audience.
He was correct. His father began to speak of tutors and the disadvantage of surrounding oneself with people loyal to the previous monarch. He listed names and roles: a new weapons master, an adviser skilled in law and administration, and someone to complete Dimitri’s education in the more refined customs of court. Now that he was the future King of Faerghus, it was not enough that he knew how to move within the Kingdom’s court; soon, he would be dealing with the nobility and the leaders of the Empire, the Alliance, and the Church of Seiros.
Dimitri nodded where appropriate. Only a little, though, so that the crown didn't slip any further down over his brow.
The embrace caught him unprepared.
It wasn't a hand on his shoulder or an arm laid across his back. Rufus knelt and wrapped both his arms around Dimitri, his limbs solid as they had never been before. Dimitri felt the weight of Rufus’s fur against his own and the warmth of his body through too many layers of clothing.
“I'm proud of you, my son,” his father murmured into his hair.
Dimitri’s heart lurched.
His arms moved of their own accord and closed around his father. At such close range, he had suddenly become larger than he seemed.
“Thank you, dad,” Dimitri whispered, though his eyes hurt. He buried his face in his father’s chest and prayed his tears would not fall.