Chapter 4: The Grace of a King

“He is getting restless,” Holden mused from where he was holding up the wall. 

Aayan tensed his crossed arms. “The king is always restless.” 

His lieutenant had a point—Aayan just didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of telling him so because his best friend would never let it go. 

“There’s been no sign of the last witch you brought him?” 

“It’s been almost three months since she left. It doesn’t look like she’s coming back,” Aayan sighed and swatted at Holden’s arm. “Stop leaning against the wall. You are supposed to be a leader.” 

Aayan outranked Holden and could command him to do whatever he wanted, but they grew up together. They were equals, no matter what their ranks turned into. His friend straightened himself and stepped up next to Aayan. 

“It’s been years of this, Ash, and not one of them has been able to return with the Book.” 

Aayan’s jaw tightened. “Five years and twenty-seven witches.

“Right. So where are they going?” Holden asked, crossing his arms over his chest.

They stared at each other for a long moment. It didn’t matter how many times the question was raised, Aayan always had the same answer. “I don’t know.” 

“That cousin of yours couldn’t be on time for once in his life could he?” Holden scoffed, picking at the hilt of his sword. He wore only one sword at his hip when stationed inside the castle. 

“What was that about my timely-ness, lieutenant?” sang the Crown Prince from behind them. 

They whirled around to see Darien straightening the golden crown on his head, a smirk fixed on his porcelain face. Aayan’s cousin was a certifiable rake with an odd sense of duty. He always showed up to events, loved being seen by the crowd, entertained just about anyone who was willing, but hated making the hard decisions. Luckily, he wasn’t yet the king. The dark circles under his eyes were a good indication of how late his night really was. 

“Enjoy yourself last night?” Aayan teased. 

Darien fought his smirk from spreading. “Last night, this morning, right before lunch.” 

“You need help,” Aayan sighed. 

“And you need to loosen up, cousin, before your life is signed away.” Darien threw an arm around his shoulders, steering them in the direction of the stuffy war room. 

Holden followed close behind, agreeing with the Crown Prince. “You really should, Ash. It wouldn’t hurt anything.” 

“I do not need to loosen up,” he said, shoving off a laughing Darien. “I am perfectly… loose.” 

“Loose, you say?” Holden jested, causing Darien to choke on air. The three of them lost themselves in their laughter. 

Aayan smacked them both on the arm. “You know what I meant.” 

“I am just saying you should take a break. You run yourself into the ground for this place and it wouldn’t hurt to relax for once.” Darien nudged him with a shoulder as they turned a corner. “There are plenty of people around here that find you attractive enough if you would just give them a little attention.” 

“That’s what I told him,” Holden added. 

“Looking after you is a full-time job, my prince,” Aayan mocked. 

However, Aayan could probably agree there was a middle to rigid and rakish, but he was perfectly comfortable where he was at. Keeping Darien safe was, in fact, a full-time job and it wasn’t as if Aayan’s wants mattered anyway. The king had plans for him, same as he did for Darien. 

The notion that he possessed a say in the matter was an illusion. The best he could hope for was that the king forgot about him altogether and Aayan was not eager to draw attention to himself by bringing a woman into the mess of it all. 

Darien tsked at him, but blessedly didn’t press the issue. 

The meeting they were headed to was about to be tense and Aayan’s preferred method of preparation was stoicism. Darien’s was acting out. Holden was always firmly in the middle, rambling his way through his nervousness. The man could talk himself to death and his ghost would come back with more to say. 

Palace guards lined the hallway to the open door of the meeting room, each one saluting Darien as he passed with a pound of their fist over their heart. The Crown Prince walked right through the soldiers with his head held high, but Aayan knew he hated this part—the people who blindly swore their oaths to him when he felt he hadn’t earned them. 

King Targon was seated at the head of the head of the long meeting table, pouring over stacks of reports from their neighboring kingdoms. Court politics were only getting messier, and it was making Aayan nervous. 

It was making everyone nervous. 

The king’s council was visibly on edge, their wooden chairs groaning underneath them with each shift in their weight. 

Each person in the room was sleep deprived after the events of last night, the same as Aayan. 

“Boys,” King Targon acknowledged, “please have a seat.” 

His uncle’s shoulder-length blond hair was tied at the back of his neck. Aayan always thought his deep-blue eyes were more alarming with his hair pulled out of his face. Even more so when he wore the dark Ashmore blue like he was now. 

Aayan and Darien took their seats at the opposite end of the table, Holden taking up his usual spot against the wall behind him. 

“The earthquake we all felt is exactly what we thought it was,” stated Azziz, Kaidra’s Minister of War. “The Wastes have expanded west again and my spies tell me that King Miros has laid siege to the border town of Rathar.”

“The rumored location of the Book of Mages,” Aayan mused. He knew that town better than anyone in the room, seeing as he was the one to collect the witches the king sent there. 

The air in the room turned stale, and none of them were eager to take a breath. 

“We cannot send soldiers to the Wastes with no protection from the king’s dark magic. Not to mention the militia groups that have taken up residence in the woods,” Azziz added. 

“I want that Book,” his uncle demanded, pounding a fist on the table in front of him, “and I want the Wastes destroyed. Without the Book, we don’t stand a chance at combatting the Wastes. There are spells in there that will eliminate them once and for all.”

Jet, the Minister of Coin cleared his throat. “Your Grace, as you know, the last witch has not returned. It is possible the Book is being concealed by enchantments, or that it was never in Rathar to begin with.” 

“There must be someone who has information we don’t,” Azziz offered. “The Tawneys were the last known witches to have had some sort of connection to the Book. Maybe they know more than they’ve let on.”

The Minister of Laws drummed his fingers on the table. “The Tawneys are dead, Your Grace. Presumably killed by witch hunters years ago.” 

“They left behind two girls, did they not, Adrian?” King Targon mused. For all his cruelty, the king knew his subjects, especially the ones who had any sort of connection to the Book he so coveted. And the Tawneys had a long history with the Book of Mages and the Ashmores for that matter. 

Darien fidgeted in his seat, but had yet to offer anything to the conversation. He didn’t like where this conversation was going, but he wouldn’t speak against his father in a council meeting when it came to the Book. The king was crazed when it came to his exhausting quest for the search to be over. For that, he would do anything, risk anyone. For that, he could not be reasoned with. 

“You cannot mean to send a young girl to acquire the Book, uncle.” Aayan leaned forward to meet the king’s hardened gaze. He on the other hand, took no issue in challenging the king. “It’s been a death sentence.”

Before the king could answer, Jet said, “The oldest is but five and twenty. A grown woman.” 

“That odd girl that talks to birds?” the king asked. 

“Yes, sir.”

The king shrugged. It wouldn’t have mattered to him if the girl had been ten, he would have sent her anyway. Aayan gripped the arm rests of his chair, earning a warning look from his cousin. 

“King Harold is becoming more paranoid by the day,” the Minister of War supplied. “He is prepared to send an army to get the Book if we cannot provide a solution to the Wastes.” 

“Which would be a breach of the border treaty,” finished the Minister of Laws. 

The men around the table nodded, quietly understanding the instability this would cause the realm. 

Their Navoyan neighbors to the east were skittish people, but Aayan would be too, if Kaidra bordered the Wastes. However, the Spirit Wood stood between them and the Wastes and it was the one credit he granted the woods. Other than that, Aayan was happy to keep away from the cursed trees. Navoya had outlawed magic centuries ago, but as the Wastes grow, they welcomed the magical intervention of their neighbors.

Kaidra needed to do something about the Book and the King of the Wastes, though, and yet Aayan hated the idea of sending another witch to her potential death. It didn’t matter if the king was the one who ultimately made the decision, Aayan felt just as responsible. 

“Then the oldest Tawney daughter will be the one to get it for us and if she doesn’t want to cooperate, it is lucky she has a sister.” King Targon’s words stilled the room. The fate of their kingdom was being placed on two young girls and Aayan wanted to be sick. 

The men in this room were fine with using women and girls, Kaidra’s witches, for their own political gain without a thought to the impact on the witches’ lives. Not one of them cared for the life of the witch sent on this quest. It was not lost on Aayan that none of these men had volunteered for the task. Aayan would go himself if he could stomach being away from his mother for that long. But with her condition worsening, he wouldn’t dare leave her. 

“And if she isn’t able to bring it back?” Aayan interrupted, suddenly perturbed. 

“Then she dies like all the others,” the king stated with no emotion on his face. He was tired, they all were, but there was something about his demeanor that unsettled Aayan. 

Something sinister lingered in the lines of his face. 

He nodded at his uncle anyway. “What do you need from me, Your Grace?” 

“Bring me the Canary Girl.”