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Syden stretched his feet under the table, a motion aligned with the stretching of his arms, in his attempt to wake himself up from a mildly drowsy state. It was early morning, and he was still in his night clothes.
The morning sunlight poured into the room and accented them all in a soft yellow glow as they sat around the breakfast table.
There were seven of them altogether, with the absence of his parents.
The others were engaged in their own occupations, whether it was his brother lost in his tree-shaped silver dais, or his sister talking to their cousin in a hushed voice about a personal matter. He wondered if he was the only one who was still too sleepy to do much talking. Despite appearing more alert than him, the others seemed mostly quiet in their murmuring talk.
Not so with Leighanna.
She talked loud enough for the kitchen maids to hear in the other room, had they been listening.
“Do you ever wonder what foreigners eat?” she asked no one in particular. “I do sometimes… but it’s probably a stupid question. It’s difficult to imagine what goes through the minds of those savages, if they have the ability to think.”
Syden took a sip of his soup from a silver spoon. “Maybe they eat human flesh,” he ventured, looking at her evenly.
Leighanna made a face like she was disgusted.
“I am so glad we live here,” she said. “There are finer pursuits in life for sophisticated people than dirtying their hands with other people’s blood, all in the name of… what, exactly? I see no reason to stoop so low unless you are lowborn to begin with.”
Syden looked into his soup bowl, stirring its contents silently.
“I understand killing beasts,” she went on. “But for a man to kill another man, it’s a deplorable act. Yet, if they were to punish the killers properly, they’d have to hang half the land…” She sighed. “They really are hopeless.”
“Not as hopeless as we are,” said Syden, finding his voice at last. Though he uttered it quietly, he could see that his sister was affected, by her disapproving and indignant glare.
“You talk like one who has blood on their hands,” she said, staring piercingly into his eyes, arctic blue against witching green.
“Maybe I do,” he said, taking a sip of his fruit juice from its tall glass.
Leighanna laughed.
“And I am secretly a Princess of the realm,” she said, finally finding some humour in the room.
_
[Several years before, about a decade ago]
The King sat back in his throne, restless in his seat, feeling a discomfort he hadn’t felt before.
The longer he sat, the more he felt the aches and pains in his body growing.
He dismissed it as merely a problem of needing to replace the worn cushions, and tried to focus his wandering attention back on the task before him.
There was the boy, in the center of the judgement hall, with a guard standing next to him, awaiting his decision. The boy was perhaps about fifteen, though from here, he looked rather small.
The King found himself staring long at his features. Pale skin, and raven-black hair that swept past his chin in wild streams. At first glance, the boy appeared to bear an uncanny resemblance to his lost son.
He had to stare hard to confirm that it was not, could not, be possible.
No. This boy’s eyes were a soft, chestnut brown.
“Is he one of the Order?” the King asked, addressing the guard, who held the boy up by the neck of his robe.
“No, Your Grace,” the man said in a rough-hewn tone devoid of feeling.
“Please…” he heard from a far corner of the hall. It was the quavering voice of a woman, who stood shrouded in a dark robe, held back by another guard. “Have mercy on my son.”
The King took some time pouring over a scroll, reading the detailed written accounts of the conduct in question.
“I am sorry,” he said, at length, having made up his mind following his scrutiny. “But the law is the law. As he is not an ordained Knight of the Order, his actions must be treated the same as any others of his kind…”
“No!” shouted the woman from the shadows.
“The sentence for practicing witchcraft is death.”
At those words, the boy’s legs seemed to become weaker, and the guard had to pull him roughly back up to stand straight. There was a strangled shriek from the end of the hall.
“Is this how you intend to keep the realm clean? By washing it with the blood of the innocent??!” screamed the woman.
He did not make reply, as he had no answer to give. The day’s work was long, and he had other matters to attend to, a large stack of complaints to go through. He could not sit here all day making idle conversation with those who could not accept their fate. Nor did he want to be reminded…
He gestured for the guard to take her away, as the other guard left with the boy through another door.
There were some creatures in this world that were far more dangerous in a herd than they might be alone. That was why it was important to keep them from congregating, from forming a Coven—or worse yet…an army.