On the cot across from Nyx came his younger sister’s voice, hoarse from coughing yet lilting with innocence. “I haven’t been opening my teeth ’bout it. You’re more chatty than me!”
“Liar! I only care about the witch.” Nyx’s eyes, dull and purple, blinked up in the dimness. “You’re to lop off her head as a gift for your bride, aren’t you, Majesty?”
Vesper bit back a grin, seeing his younger self in the lad’s bloodthirst and boldness. “Not the head, no. I don’t have the proper wrapping for horns. And a princess’s gift must be immaculately presented. Don’t you think it so, Elsa?”
A giggle erupted from the tiny girl’s bluish lips. “Yes, Majesty! Especially for a princess of moonlight and music!”
“So, you’re not to kill the witch at all?” Disappointment peppered Nyx’s response. “Isn’t that why you’re going into the haunted forest. Isn’t it?”
Their mother, the head cook, who had been busy preparing menus for the upcoming feasts, had apparently heard the rumors of Vesper traversing the Ashen Ravine and passed it on to her children. She was a firm believer that gossip provided better sustenance than food itself.
“I intend to capture the witch, yes,” Vesper answered. “It will be for the princess to decide her fate. But I’m also going that way to check on the royal gatekeepers. Now, shouldn’t you two be resting, so you can be well enough to attend the wedding?”
“I don’t wish to rest! I want to help. I’m aged enough to be a page, you know!” Nyx turned his head into his pillow to muffle a hacking cough.
Wincing, Vesper patted the boy’s rattling chest. “Of course you are, and when you’re better, we’ll see what we can do about that. First, you have to be hale and hearty enough to train. Even a knight needs to sleep.”
“Tell us the tale of the brumal stags and the little prince, please . . .” Elsa’s tiny lips scrunched into a pout impossible to resist. “We’ll fall asleep then, Majesty. Promise.”
“Fair enough,” Vesper conceded. “But you must both lay down upon your pillows and close your eyes. It’s far better to envision their beauty on a blank slate.”
Elsa grinned. Both children shut their stubby white lashes, and took rattling breaths as Vesper sat upon the cold floor between their cots. He propped his elbows on his knees.
“The prince was but a child when he first saw them.” He began the tale he’d told the castle’s children many times before . . . the tale that hinged upon his personal memory. “He took the journey to the Rigamort with his kingly father for the ritual of binding that every young prince before him had experienced. He was nervous about the interaction, for most Nerezethites never see the creatures. Only those who use the Rigamort, who keep secrets locked tight within themselves.”
“Was he scairt to smoke the pipe?” mumbled Nyx, halfway to sleeping already.
“Perhaps a little. But more, he was afraid the stags wouldn’t recognize his royal station . . . wouldn’t accept him, as this prince was different than all those before him.”
“He couldn’t see in the dark,” Elsa interrupted. “And his hair was black as soot and his skin shimmered like a copper bell.” Her own skin blushed, showcasing the blue veins beneath, and she squeezed her eyes tight to keep them closed.
Nyx’s own sleepy eyes snapped open. “Elsa, stop hornin’ in! And plus, swooning is for milksops.”
She harrumphed at that.
Vesper smiled, waiting for Nyx’s eyelids to flutter down. “The prince and his father descended deep within the cavern, past the frozen blue waterfalls and beyond the sparkling stalactites—and there in the depths were the gatekeepers. At first glance they looked frail: white, sleek, and deer-sized with moonlit-fringed fetlocks and long tufted tails resembling a lion’s. But the silver-glowing scales that curved from their spines to their chests were as impenetrable as iron shields. And their claws rivaled any panther’s, just as their razor-pronged antlers could shred a man to pieces—”
“With one duck of the head,” Elsa added, beating her brother to his favorite detail.
Nyx’s answering grumble evolved to a yawn.
Vesper paused reverently for the end of the telling. “Without any fear, the king took the prince’s hand and stepped forward. He knelt beside his strange son, showing the stags his acceptance so they would accept him, too. And they did, nuzzling his little head with muzzles as soft as eiderdown. The king lit up the ceremonial pipe, and both he and the prince inhaled the incense—filled with enchantments, smoke, and starlight—and breathed a shared breath into each of the stag’s nostrils.”
Elsa yawned, as if triggered by her brother. “It bound them to you. In their minds.” She rolled to her side and drew her blankets over her ears, her breaths growing even and slow.
“Yes. Exactly that.” Vesper was glad the children slumbered, for he would never share the rest. It made him feel powerless, that from the moment he drank the sunlight, he’d lost his mental ties with the stags, just as he’d lost it with his people. Ever since, he had visited the gatekeepers in person, but an abundance of night tides had prevented the journey over the last several months. When the royal sorceress, Madame Dyadia, reached out to them with her spiritual portents, she reported the creatures had grown less responsive. The sorceress assumed it a natural evolution—since sun-smuggling and assassinating had become a thing of the past and those under royal employ no longer sought usage of the tunnel, the enchanted beings had little to report. But Vesper was concerned enough to take the backward route into Eldoria, so he might confirm the brumal stags’ welfare with his own eyes.
Pulling the covers up to Nyx’s chin, the prince reached across to squeeze Elsa’s blanketed ankle and stood.
A physician spotted him and motioned him to a small table filled with medicinal herbs and waxy cones that could be melted down to ease breathing.
“Do you need a supply?” Vesper asked, eyeing the two remaining vials of golden liquid they’d drained from an incision a week earlier. “I’ll be gone for several days.”
The physician shook his pale head. “We want you strong and able-bodied for the journey, Majesty. We’ll make do until your return.”
Only recently they had discovered that Vesper’s sunlit blood had healing qualities. It could be painted directly onto the ribs and chest of the sick. Though it initially caused a burning sensation, it helped clear the lungs.
When he’d first devoured the arboretum’s daylit concoction, he had been unbearable for any of his people to touch. However, within a week they discovered that once the sunlight’s poison entered his veins, it became less potent—to anyone but him. By pressing droplets of the drained golden mixture to vellum, others could handle it in small increments and lose sensitivity to his fiery skin. It was a matter of desensitizing with exposure. This anomaly had prompted Vesper to send letters written in his golden blood to Princess Lyra. He hoped to acclimate her to the sunlight so she wouldn’t suffer when he touched her, so she wouldn’t have to fear him when the time came for them to be together as husband and wife. By now, Lady Lyra should have absorbed enough that they would be able to share a dance in Eldoria’s ballroom before leaving for Nerezeth, hand in hand.
Vesper left the infirmary and strode along corridors of obsidian stone, the ceilings and corners strung with glowing white spiders that lit the darkness like stars. The squeaks of fuzzy mice, so black they blended with the stones, followed behind as he arrived at the winding stairs leading down to the dungeon’s cells.
Only a few were occupied with prisoners, none more dangerous than thieves or drunken vagabonds. Following the glass-encased torches along the walls—each lit strictly for him and fueled by tinder-bat dung—he entered an empty chamber at the end where he could no longer hear guards talking or prisoners snoring.