Chapter Text
Every so often, Lilia allowed Silver to accompany him on his errands into the nearby town’s market—buying necessities like cloth, meat, and the dozen other necessities the forest couldn’t provide—and Silver enjoyed every moment spent in the unfamiliar surroundings. The cottage would always be his home, but even he grew tired of the same scenery each and every day, and even the small birds that gathered on his windowsill told him he should be able to explore more.
It was rare when he was younger. Lilia used to leave alone for the day, and Silver would watch him go and try not to mind it. But it was easier now, now that he was eleven, to be trusted along—easier still since the town was also where Sebek’s family lived, which meant Silver had some company while Lilia bartered with the food stalls.
Sebek had grumbled at first, saying that he did not want to be seen in his hometown in the presence of a human, lest someone mistake them for friends, but it didn’t take much convincing from Silver’s end for him to finally agree to show him around. Now, the younger boy would grab Silver’s hand, tugging him toward the bakery he swore made the best salted rolls in all of Briar Valley.
It had been another one of those trips into town, the late spring heat warming the air nicely as the townspeople went about their day. Silver had accompanied Lilia to a handful of storefronts, staying close to his father’s side as the man tried to haggle his way to an obnoxiously colorful flannel that he insisted they needed despite Silver maintaining they did not.
Sebek eventually joined them, his entire figure buzzing with excitement, saying he had seen members of the royal guard on the road to the market and how he couldn’t wait until he and Silver were worthy enough to join their ranks.
They moved further into the square; the smell of spice and baked bread hung thick enough in the air that Silver could nearly taste it, and beside him, Sebek’s stomach gave a long, unmistakable growl.
The sound drew a laugh from Silver before he could stop himself. Sebek’s ears went instantly, furiously red. “Stop laughing, Silver! I just ate this morning, so I’m not hungry!"
An obvious lie, exposed by his own stomach growling louder, and Silver stifled his laughter behind his hand. "Not hungry, you say?"
Lilia laughed outright, reaching down to ruffle Sebek’s hair until his curls stood up in every direction, which only deepened the boy’s pout.
"You’re a growing boy, Sebek, and growing boys need to eat. Otherwise, how else will you grow taller than Silver, hm?"
Silver shot his father a look of pure betrayal. Lilia only grinned back at him, taking Silver by the shoulder and pulling him into a brief, crushing half-hug that the boy returned easily. The comment, at least, seemed to brighten Sebek’s spirits as he began to smile widely, his recently formed fangs flashing brightly in the mid-morning sun.
“Once I finish my shopping, we can pop by the bakery to buy some of those rolls both of you like," he said, lifting his list to read again. "I’m planning on getting the ingredients for mushroom risotto for dinner tonight, Silver, so try not to ruin your appetite too much!"
His father’s words made him grimace, and Sebek shot him a look of pity. He loved mushroom risotto, and it was one of the few things his father made that he could usually stomach. Usually. Silver could only pray that Lilia didn’t decide to add his own twist to it again. Maybe Sebek's mother would take pity on him and send him home with some leftovers as she had done before.
"Your mother gave you a list of things for you to buy too, Sebek?"
“Yes, sir!" Sebek nodded eagerly, taking a carefully folded piece of paper from his tunic pocket. "She gave me money as well!”
Lilia hummed, tucking his own list away into the fabric of his cloak. “Perfect. For efficiency, why don’t you begin buying the things she wants you to get, while I go out and finish my own list. Silver will accompany you!"
The list Sebek’s mother had given him wasn’t very long, yet the amount he meant to buy of each thing was startling. Silver couldn’t imagine buying six dozen eggs—he and his father would never be able to finish that amount before they all spoiled. Then again, Sebek lived with his parents and siblings, and if they ate as much as their youngest did, perhaps six dozen was a conservative estimate.
"Of course, Master Lilia!" Sebek shouted directly in his ear, and Silver decided, magnanimously, not to say anything about it.
“Yes, Father," he said, nodding slightly. Lilia leaned down, pressing a kiss to Silver’s forehead and smoothing his hair before he turned away, his dark cloak swishing as he straightened.
"I’ll see you, boys later! Don't get into any trouble!” He called over his shoulder, and Silver watched as his father disappeared into the crowd.
"Silver!" Sebek was already several strides ahead, his sack, meant to carry his groceries, slung over his shoulder and his wooden sword at his hip. "Let us make haste! I don't want to keep Master Lilia waiting for us to finish because of your lollygagging!"
Silver caught up to him easily, falling into stride to the boy’s right, a similar sack slung over his own shoulder. "You don't have to shout. He litteraly just left.”
They wound through the stalls together, slowly making their way through Sebek’s list of produce and goods, the errand made pleasant by Sebek’s narration of each vendor they passed—this one gave free samples on fridays, that one has a specialty reciipe only served in winter—a speech Silver had heard, nearly word for word, on every visit before this one, and never once minded hearing again.
It was a flicker of color, caught in the edge of his vision, that pulled his attention—a beam of blue then purple, sliding across the cobbles like magic. He slowed without meaning to, then stopped altogether, until Sebek’s shoulder was no longer pressed against his.
The shopfront was small and narrow, wedged between a tanner’s stall and a shoemaker’s studio, easy to miss in the market’s dark alleys, unless the sun happened to reflect light into the glass at the right hour. And the sun had caught it. Dozens of small glass pieces hung strung together in the window, each one welded from fragments too oddly shaped to have been cut on purpose—offcuts, Silver guessed, the leftover scraps creating something breathtakingly beautiful. Light passed through them and came out as bursts of color, pooling across the stones and blurred into one another whenever the glass so much as trembled in the breeze, as though someone had replaced the ocean’s water with a shifting rainbow.
“Sebek. Look,” Silver said, grabbing the sleeve of Sebek’s tunic before his friend could walk too far away.
"What is it—" He turned around, annoyance written plainly on his face, following Silver’s gaze to the little shopfront. "Oh. That’s a suncatcher. The owner of the shop makes them herself."
"It’s beautiful." Silver meant it. The nearest one, the one that had caught his eye, held tiny blue and purple glass flowers suspended mid-bloom inside it, reflecting shifting beams of light, each petal so finely worked it hardly looked like glass at all. “The flowers look so real."
Sebek studied the one Silver was looking at, his brows drawing closer.
"The glass in that one—" Sebek pointed to it, then seemed to think better of finishing the sentence.
Silver tilted his head to the side. "What about it?"
“They're kind of—they're a similar color to your eyes. That's all.” Sebek’s ears had gone pink again, for whatever reason, and this time he didn’t wait for Silver to laugh before spinning on his heel, grabbing Silver’s hand to pull him away from the suncatchers. "We’re wasting time! We still have half the list left!"
Silver let himself be towed along, smiling at the back of Sebek’s head the whole way. At least with his back turned, Sebek couldn’t see the pink coloring of his own cheeks.
They continued through the stalls, and by midday the heat had thickened, and Silver found himself trailing half a step behind, Sebek still pulling him along until they stopped beneath the shade of a tree at the market’s edge while Sebek counted coins into a vendor’s palm to buy a ridiculous amount of potatoes.
The shade was cool, dappled sunlight caressed his cheeks, and the drone of the market settling down as it reached noon had coaxed Silver’s eyelids to grow heavy as he sat at the base of the tree.
"Don't tell me you're sleepy," Sebek said, appearing at his shoulder with the sack of potatoes balanced against his hip. They were lucky that Lilia had encouraged both of them to do strength training. Carrying the Zigvolt’s groceries would have been nearly impossible otherwise.
"I'm not." Silver tilted his head against the tree, his eyes briefly closing.
Sebek snorted, kicking Silver's leg, but the action held no malice. "You are! You look like you're about to fall asleep right here, you sluggard!"
"It's the heat," Silver said, his eyes still closed. It was getting harder to think as the familiar feeling of drowsiness settled in his bones. "And the shade…can't help it."
That pulled a scoff from his friend, and there was a rustle of fabric as Sebek threw the sack of potatoes over his shoulder.
"If you fall asleep, I'm going to leave you here so I can finish this list," Sebek warned, his free hand poised on his hip, though it sounded muddled in Silver's brain—the incessant tugging of sleep pulling him further into unconsciousness making the words soft and blurred.
"I'm serious. I'm leaving you here." There was an edge to Sebek’s voice, and Silver knew the other boy wasn’t joking. He tried to blink awake—tried to sit up steadily—but the movement felt like he was wading through syrup. It was no use.
"Go…then." His own voice sounded very far away to him. "Finish your list…I’ll catch up."
He didn’t catch his chin falling against his chest as sleep claimed him. The last thing he was aware of was the wind blowing the smell of bread in his direction, and then nothing at all—not even the sound of Sebek’s footsteps walking away, list in hand.
When he was younger, Malleus had angrily lectured his father about letting him sleep outside unattended.
It was after a storm had hit the valley, one Malleus had just so happened to have caused due to some irritating confrontation with a diplomat, causing the prince to journey to the cottage to seek respite.
Rain was pouring, and thunder crashed loudly, and it wasn't until Malleus had teleported directly into the boy's room that both he and Lilia realized Silver wasn't inside. They searched for hours, only to find Silver holed away in the high hollow of a tree, fast asleep and cuddled against a rather protective owl.
'What if he gets hurt?' Malleus warned, the storm outside still not resting. 'Unless you plan to keep him in this forest forever, one day Silver will fall asleep in a place he shouldn’t. Not everyone is as kind as you or me—they may hurt him.'
The words nearly made Silver cry in shame—he didn’t want to be the cause of worry for his father or Malleus.
Lilia only tucked Silver closer under his chin, Silver hiding his tears in the fabric of his father’s shirt that was already soaked by the rain.
'You worry too much, Malleus,' Lilia said, rubbing his hand along his child’s back. 'Silver will be safe. As long as he has us, he can sleep peacefully.'
He surfaced slowly—sleep clung to every movement and thought as Silvwe tried to register anything through the haze. The shade he fell asleep in had lengthened, and the light had turned closer to gold than midday sun. The ache in his neck told him he’d slept longer than he’d meant to.
It only took Silver a second to register that he was alone. Sebek was gone.
Silver scrubbed the sleep from his eyes and pushed himself upright, guilt for abandoning his friend already pooling low and cold in his stomach.
He said he’d leave me here.
He scrambled to his feet, brushing dirt from his tunic with hands that weren’t quite steady yet, and set off in the direction he thought Sebek’s list would have taken him—deeper into the market, past stalls that had already closed for the day. He kept to the edges of the crowd, thinner now than they were earlier, scanning for a familiar head of green hair and loud voice.
He didn’t notice how far he’d wandered until the stalls thinned out and were replaced with towering shops and winding alleys—restaurants and stores that Silver didn’t recognize. Father rarely brought him this far into the market, and he never let Silver go alone.
It was a small, frantic rattling, and the sound of an animal in pain, that pulled him off the main street and into the alley between two shuttered stores—a crate tipped over on its side, with something inside it thrashing against the slats hard enough to move the whole thing an inch closer to him.
He crouched and found a raccoon staring back at him through the gaps, sides heaving, one paw twisted awkwardly where it had wedged itself, trying to force a gap too small to fit through to escape, its small eyes looking up at Silver pleadingly. Inside the crate with it was a loaf of stale bread. Or what was left of one, since it had suspiciously raccoon-sized bites taken from it.
"Oh." Silver kept his voice low, the way he’d learned to with the skittish creatures that wandered near the cottage. "Mr. Raccoon. Are you hurt?"
The raccoon chirped at him, its small hands pointing to the latch that had closed on it—likely shutting when the creature had snuck in to get the bread.
"You want me to let you go?” The raccoon nodded vigorously, and Silver worried his bottom lip. It didn’t feel right to just leave him there. "Um, well, only if you promise not to steal anymore food. My friend told me there is a kind lady, next to the butcher, who will give animals the food she isn't able to sell that day. Do you mind going to her instead?"
The small creature nodded, chirping in agreement. Silver worked the crate’s latch free with nimble fingers, and the moment the lid gave, the animal bolted half a foot and then stopped, turning his head back to Silver to let out a gentle trill—a thank you, he assumed—before darting past his knees and into a crack in the alley’s wall.
"There you go,” he murmured after it, though it was likely too far to hear him now. "Be free, and don't cause anyone else anymore trouble, okay?"
"Hey, you!"
The shout spun him around fast enough that his hand was already reaching for his wooden sword before his mind caught up to the action. A man, with bright red slitted eyes and flour staining his frock, stood at the alley’s mouth before storming closer.
"Damn it, you let that damn raccoon escape! Do you know how long we've been trying to catch that thing?!" Silver shook his head as the man yelled, spit flying from his mouth. His hands only tightened on the hilt of his sword as two more men ran down the alley, both wearing similarly stained frocks.
"Damn, it escaped?! Wait—" One of them said—a snake fae who could have been close to Malleus’s age—as his eyes landed on him properly. "It's a human kid."
"One of the Zigvolts then?" The other one asked, fang-like tusks poking out of his mouth.
"Can't be." Silver's head snapped over to the snake fae again, whose eyes continued to bore into him. "Those ones all have green hair and fae eyes. This one is just a plain human."
The first man growled, storming closer, and now Silver could tell that he was much bigger than the other two. He reminded him of Baur with his hulking frame. Silver moved back until he hit the wall behind him, his hand still gripping the hilt of his sword.
"How dare one of your kind show its face here," the large fae hissed in Silver’s face, eyes narrowing, and Silver swallowed despite the dryness in his mouth. The man's breath reeked of alcohol. He knew that some fae still harbored resentment towards humans for the war—Sebek had made that clear—but Silver had never been met with such vitriol.
Silver took a breath. He needed to stay calm. Acting rashly would do him no good—that's what his father taught him. Perhaps they could be placated if he apologized.
"I'm sorry, sirs." He winced. His voice came out smaller than he wanted it to. "I don't mean for any trouble—"
He couldn’t suppress the violent flinch as the large fae slammed his hand on the side of his head. Silver’s blood ran cold as the man’s sharp talons, cutting through the stone, glinted in the little light of the alley.
"Bullshit! Humans always give us fae trouble!" He snarled.
Silver’s hand tightened on his sword, but he didn’t pull it out from his belt. 'Don’t act rashly,' he thought, despite the trembling in his shoulders. 'Don't succumb to violence if it's not necessary.'
The man's eyes flicked down to Silver's hand, the one gripping the hilt, and he growled angrily. "Horrible creatures! They should have gotten rid of you filthy monsters centuries ago!"
Despite his size, the man moved fast. A hand closed around his arm and hauled him forward, and Silver twisted against it on instinct, more startled than brave, his heels scraping uselessly on the dirty stone. "Let me go!”
The hand only squeezed harder, talons digging into his skin, drawing a pained cry from Silver.
He needed to act—his father had trained him for this. He needed to move.
Blood rushed through Silver’s ears as he yanked his arm back, pulling the larger man with him and ignoring the fiery pain that shot through it. In the momentary shock that had filled the man’s eyes, Silver swung his sword directly into the man’s temple before kicking him with all his strength, forcing the man to stumble back and let go of his arm.
"Fuck!" The man grabbed at where Silver had struck his head, blood dripping down his temple.
In that moment, Silver made a dash for the street—adrenaline pumping through every part of his body—weaving past the two other fae who stood there dumbstruck.
He was nearly out when all of the air was robbed from his chest, his back colliding with the wall next to him and his sword flying out of reach. His head hit the brick, and for a moment Silver’s world went black, only to be met with the enraged face of the fae, blood covering his face.
"Hey, man, relax. It's a child—" One of the two others, Silver couldn't tell with the world spinning around him, tried to say before it was cut off by a loud growl.
"Shut up! It's a monster!" The man hauled Silver up by the collar of his shirt until his feet no longer touched the ground.
Terror seized him as he grabbed at the man’s hand. "Stop, please—"
The air from his lungs was pushed out again as the man slammed him back into the wall, leaving Silver coughing and gasping for air as lights danced in his eyes.
"You know what your kind did to my comrades? My family?" The man’s voice cracked with rage and grief. "They killed them in cold blood, and you dare beg for mercy?"
Even if Silver could think with the pain running through his head, he wouldn't have been able to answer him. He didn’t think there was one he could give that could right a wrong that horrible. He opened his mouth anyway, some half-formed apology rising in his throat—
The blow came before a single word of it made it out.
It caught him hard across the cheek, open-palmed, snapping his head sideways with enough force that he flew from the impact. He hit the overturned crate shoulder-first, the wood cracking under him, splinters biting through his clothes, and before he'd even finished registering the sting blooming hot along his jaw, a hand closed around his throat and pinned him there against the broken slats, splintered wood poking at his neck.
"You're going too far, man! Let the kid go!" One of the other men yelled.
Silver clawed at the wrist holding him, nails scrabbling uselessly against tough skin, his vision beginning to swim at the edges, dark creeping in from the corners like how sleep often did. The man’s talons began to prick wounds into his neck. He couldn’t get enough air together to shape a single sound. Somewhere very far away, he thought he heard his own name.
"Father…" Siver cried weakly as darkness boarded his vision.
The hand vanished from his throat so fast he nearly folded forward onto the dirt, air rushing back into him in one raw, whooping gasp that scraped his throat worse than the choking had.
Lilia had the fae by the collar before Silver’s vision had fully cleared, and the blow he dealt sent the man sprawling into the alley wall hard enough to crack the stone behind him. He didn’t stop there. Silver had never seen his father move like this—not during his training, not when he offered to spar with Baur to teach him and Sebek how real knights fought, not when he playfully chased Silver through the forest to catch him in his arms and into a bone-crushing hug. His father moved with a cold brutality, each strike striking the fae with vitriolic rage.
Behind his father, Sebek arrived—too late to do anything but stand in the alley's mouth with his wooden sword already drawn, chest heaving, eyes wide and pupils slitted—rimmed with what Silver could only assume was fury at him for being so weak. Silver averted his eyes.
With a thud, Lilia threw the fae that had Silver by the throat to his compatriots. The man's battered body landed on top of the cowering men.
"You three better be out of this town in three seconds," Lilia said, his voice dropping into a tone Silver had never once heard him use. "Or I will kill all of you before you dare take another breath."
The shiver that went down Silver's spine had nothing to do with the rips in his shirt letting in the cold. He had never heard that voice before—never heard those words before—venom wrapped around every syllable, nothing left in it of the man who'd kissed his forehead that morning.
Silver's eyes were still pressed closed when he heard the crack of a teleportation spell. They were still closed when he heard the barely present steps of his father draw closer until they were right in front of him.
He pressed his eyes tighter and curled his head closer to his chest. If he opened them, he knew Lilia would see his tears.
"Silver." His father was crouched in front of him now, the menace gone from his voice as fast as it had arrived, now sounding weaker than he had ever heard it before. One hand hovered just shy of the bruise already blooming along his cheek. "Silver. Look at me."
It took a moment. When he finally lifted his eyes, he heard Sebek gasp somewhere behind his father’s shoulders. Lilia made no sound, but Silver saw something shift in his expression—something break.
"I'm sorry, Father. I fell asleep," Silver said, the words spilling out before anyone else in the alley could speak first. His voice cracked uselessly. "I'm sorry. I fell asleep, and I don't—"
"Don't." Lilia's hand finally landed, feather-light, against the unhurt side of his jaw. His voice was soft, and Silver unconsciously moved his head into the familiar warmth of his father’s palm. “Don't you dare apologize to me right now."
Silver's mouth snapped shut as he looked back down, unwilling to keep looking at his father.
Within seconds, Lilia picked him up, one hand under Silver's knees and the other one supporting his back. Silver hoped the feeble whimper he let out from the movement was soft enough that his father couldn’t hear it.
He must have—Lilia brought Silver closer to his chest.
They began to walk out of the alley, Sebek’s soft footsteps following right behind them, and Silver risked a glance over his shoulder to see him—to hope that he hadn’t failed so horribly in his friend’s eyes.
Sebek's face was turned towards the ground, holding both his own and Silver's forgotten sword across his chest.
They went to Sebek’s house—his mother and father gasping softly before ushering them inside—thankfully not asking any questions. Sebek’s father quickly dug up some bandages and first-aid supplies he kept from his practice, and Sebek’s mother filled a spare bucket with warm water and a rag.
Now, Silver sat on their couch, with his father in front of him dipping the rag into the water. He tried to apologize to them for getting his blood on it—it was a truly lovely couch—but Sebek's mom interrupted him before he could finish, insisting that the old thing didn't matter. Silver felt like it did.
"This will sting," Lilia said, lifting the rag up to his face.
The cloth stung the moment it touched his cheek, exactly as his father had warned, and Silver didn't flinch, because flinching felt like one indignity too many that he had collected that day.
His father kept wiping, his mouth pressed into a thin line. The silence that sometimes fell between them had never needed to be filled before, but now Silver needed him to say anything.
"I should have woken up." The words came out before he'd decided to let them. He had tried in the alley, but maybe now it would be accepted. "I shouldn’t have fallen asleep out there alone, and I should have been able to fight them off. I'm sorry, Father—"
"Silver." Lilia’s voice held a warning, low and even, and it only made Silver feel more ashamed.
"It's true, isn't it?" Silver’s head snapped over to where Sebek had been standing silently since they arrived—back as tense as a rod and not facing where the father and son were sitting. His arms crossed over his chest as he looked away towards the corner.
"Sebek." Sebek’s mother said, sharp and short, from the doorway to their kitchen.
If Sebek had heard his mother’s warning, he didn’t care. “You shouldn't have fallen asleep, and you shouldn't have been alone." The words came out fast and tight, and Silver knew that these feelings had been building since the alley was finally being released in all their anger and frustration. "What if you had fallen asleep while watching Malleus and someone attacked you, or if Lilia hadn't been there to save you? You could have—"
Sebek's voice cracked, and Silver didn’t dare to see the anger on his friend’s face. "You're only human. Maybe that's — maybe that's simply what happens when you're—"
He never finished it. His mother’s voice thundered across the room, too fast and sharp for Silver to catch what was said, and then she had Sebek by the shoulder, hauling him toward the kitchen where she and her husband had been listening in. The door swung shut hard enough to rattle in its frame.
Silver sat very still on the edge of the low couch, the cloth cool and damp against his cheek. Lilia remained silent, the room gone silent again except for the small crackle of the lamp.
"I'm sorry, Father," he said again, his voice wet as tears began to flow down his cheeks.
Lilia was quiet for a long moment, his hands still where they rested against Silver’s jaw. There was something unreadable behind his eyes—as if they tried to look everywhere but his son’s face.
Then, Silver felt Lilia’s hand move, slowly wiping the tears that fell from his eyes before pulling him into his embrace. Despite the pain in his body, Silver melted into it easily, tucking his head into the crook of his father’s neck, inhaling his scent in hopes it would calm him down.
“I'm sorry, too, Silver,” Lilia whispered.
Silver buried his face further into his father's collar, hoping that the tears spilling couldn't be felt through the fabric.