LAUCAN

'You might not like what you see.' The fabled prince of the Traye Loyalists sneered at him, the carrier of a bloody legacy as much as he was. Unable to find the answers buried in the snow, it was a flimsy hope to find them trapped in the memories of his family's greatest adversaries. Wyverns set the wilting standard of Naveera to the cold flames.

I have to do this before we freeze underneath the core. Ancient songs won't save us. We can sing, hum all we like for salvation, but it won't come from up high, not anymore. Evyriaz has abandoned us to the blizzard, but I won't let our culture — our language, everything we are, die. Laucan left the frozen dungeons he hoped to never use, and though he left his crown behind, its metal teeth dug into his brow and tugged at his downy feathers. Our indolence, our apathy... I have to show them the sun. Maybe it will melt this. Maybe this will end. Maybe I'll have an answer to the question I've been asking since I stumbled upon Father's desiccated, frozen corpse, even if the Trayes would see us turn to nothing but ice. I will have that answer — the truth to Yokonei Traye's vision. The reality of how he felt about us.

"We take and keep what we're owed," Father scolded him when he tried to share a meal with one of the palace servants.

Hayvala's disappointed ripped through his skin when she stooped at the threshold of his door and berated him for his foolish actions. It fluttered to break the tune in his throat when the older lords turned their noses up at him and crowed about the glory days of Father's reign around the carved table in reflection to the Snow Prince and his Knights Thirteen, lost to the history, long dead to their souls with their names forgotten. And if we forget our names... we are all but doomed to this white darkness. He stopped beside one of the large windows overlooking the great wall around Volaris, the last great city. Blue starlights flickered across the metal railings connected over houses, mere candles against the maw of the blizzard pounding against the barrier made of his magick. Father decreed it pointless, but he knew the reality.

Father never could raise the barrier, and the former Traye princes knew.

Prince Ikarun and Ser Yokonei.

Blackwall insisted Yuven Traye was the final piece to the puzzle of Naveera's woes. With the information in his grasp, Hayvala would be able to see the sun up close, instead of idyllic imaginings. From the way sparks flew off the sun's arms, to the way it curved across the expanse and shed light into the deepest recesses; the way it warmed his skin and his heart the way nothing else had before. It melted the carapace of ice encasing his limbs, and made him want to dance underneath the nascent bloom. Madame Titania chittered at him, to go through the groundwork of his steps, but he neglected it.

That must come later.

Laucan reached the palace library, where he housed the world sphere deep in the stacks. White magelights floated down the corridor in cyclic motions, patrolling until someone plucked them from up high to sneak a peek into the books. Wisps flecked off the perfect sphere when he drew closer, where Blackwall sat at one of the desks scribbling on a long piece of parchment. "Ah, Your Winged Grace," Blackwall said, his Navei proper, sharp, and near perfect for an outsider. "Was your discussion with Warden Traye fruitful?" He twisted in his chair with an affable smile.

"I don't think he's going to cooperate, Keeper Blackwall," Laucan admitted. "I don't see how you're going to get the information we need out of him. He claims he doesn't remember anything about Irimount." He took a seat in the other chair and listened to the indiscernible hum emanating from the sphere. "I can hear an echo of something."

"Hm?" Blackwall raised an eyebrow at him.

"An echo..." Laucan stared at him. "Can you not hear it?"

Blackwall discarded his quill to tent his fingers. "You are hearing something from the sphere, is that what you're telling me?" He tipped his head, then tickled his chin with his fingers. "Interesting, to answer your question, Your Winged Grace, no, I hear no echoes from the sphere. Though, as an Aurus, I can see the ripples of something I am unable to comprehend. Maybe those are the echoes you hear, affecting the crystal surface that I can see." Blackwall returned to his work without another studious remark. "Do not worry about Yuven Traye. I can handle him. It's just a matter of finding what's in his heart to get to his memories, not so much his mind." He rested his arm on the back of the chair to smooth out his fur cuffs. "I can't, and won't, break the Auric Law. So we must resort to other methods to get what we need for information."

"Information to save Naveera," Laucan mumbled.

"Yes." Blackwall rolled up the scroll.

"Yuven Traye seems to believe we're going to kill him."

Blackwall blinked at him. "That won't be necessary, Your Winged Grace."

"What?" Laucan jolted. "No, I don't want to kill him, Keeper Blackwall. I just..." He tucked his hands into his own furs.

"Well, if Yuven Traye is the pragmatic man I believe him to be..." Blackwall unfurled another empty scroll and dipped his quill in the inkwell. "Come now, Your Grace. These things only ever end up one way. You may not kill him, but are you really going to let him leave after what he's done? Would your Council be amenable to just releasing the Crown's greatest enemy? Think of it from his perspective. He has a claim to your throne. He is the one danger to your authority. Your family is within the last throes of a blood feud. Even if you don't kill Traye... it will happen eventually, he knows this. He knew it when he attacked you at the Summit the way he did. He was out for blood. Quite an enigma when the Storm Wardens supposedly claim indifference to the political atmospheres of the kingdoms. One would say it was personal." He whistled a tune past his lips. "What with the possibility that the Traye loyalists summoned a demonic entity in a death curse against your father, I think keeping Traye where he is is the smart move so he doesn't hinder our plans further."

"I know." Laucan stole breath from the whispering wind within the library. And Hayvala said this cycle will only end when both sides stop the bloodshed... but how? Until we're all dead? Is this what remains? Is this the reply to the song we've been singing? He frowned when Blackwall stood up with both scrolls in hand. "What about after? How long do we keep him once we have what we want on Irimount?" he asked before Blackwall left him alone with his thoughts and actions in the name of his home.
"Why, that's up to your prerogative, King Laucan." Blackwall shrugged. "Although, if it is not too bold of me, if you want advice..."

"You are free to speak as you wish, Keeper Blackwall. You've done us a service."

"Setting Yuven loose will only hasten Naveera's downfall, and I doubt you want that. The whole reason we brought him and Adara Sazaka here was to unravel the mystery of Naveera's heart," Blackwall pointed out with a softened gesture at the world sphere. "Unless your goals have changed, Your Grace?"

"No, they haven't."

"Then we shall proceed with all due haste," Blackwall said. "You need not worry about Yuven Traye's cooperation. Someone like Yuven Traye will only ever respond and kneel to one thing in life, and I'm afraid to say it, King Laucan, you are not one of them. There is nothing you can say or do that will convince, or force Yuven to bend to your royal will."

"Then... what will it take to get him to cooperate with us?" Laucan questioned.

"Something that Yuven won't readily crush underneath his heel without a second thought," Blackwall said with a tap of the scroll. "Something close to his heart that he would do anything for. He is a Storm Warden, after all. That is how we will get the answers of Irimount, and how I will be able to reveal his memories. This is a delicate process and will take time, King Laucan. You have a twice century life. I'm sure you can wait a couple days for me to work."

"Days."

"Yuven Traye will take quite a bit of convincing."

I don't even know how to tell when it has been a day. Only in books. Laucan stood there in the studious silence when Blackwall disappeared through the large painted doors. Pages fluttered in his ears with the echoed song coming from deep inside the sphere. Hayvie... what did you see in it? Why do you not tell me? You told me you wanted an answer too, did it show you? Laucan left the library to tread the dim halls of the palace. Servants cleaned the corners and dipped their heads low when he went past, refusing to look him straight in the eye; for he held the blood of the oldest wyverns of Naveera. He climbed the icy steps to his coronation, for the priests of Evyriaz to place the pearled crown atop his head.

'Is every pearl bathed in crimson?' Yuven Traye accused.

Your family shed just as much blood as my own. Laucan argued to the noiseless voices as he passed the glittered window panes. In the center of the city quarters, the Volaris Opera House shone with bright cyan stars. Offset on the square, the crystal cathedral dedicated to Evyriaz alone, where his people sang for reprieve from the longest blizzard nights. Courtyards stretched around the palace, and he came to a stop at the path to the decrepit embassy's. Stonemasons worked through the flurries to fix the building and fill in the cracks Father left to reject the outside world. One sent flames into the braziers, shivering underneath its orange shadow while the rest took turns to battle the cold. A couple others sat underneath a tent, huddled around a boiling steamer. Feathers flicked every which way for heat, for warmth. His own tickled his ears when he heard a distant word of discussion.

He found himself stuck when one of the palace workers shoveled out the snow off the marble path through the courtyards. Snowroses breathed out of the frost and hugged the corners of the frostberry bushes. Another wiped off ice from the wyvern statues who stood guard in the middle of the embassy buildings. He tucked his arms around his furs and left them to their work, wandering the halls of his forebears. Back into the flimsy safety of the royal wing, with every corner filled by a Blizzard Sentinel. He stopped outside Hayvala's room, blocked out from the sun across the Aethijin mountain range. Soft keys from a piano filled the halls, and he raised his hand to the wood and knocked.

"Come in," Hayvala's wispy voice sounded on the other side.

Laucan hesitated, crushed underneath Father and Hayvala's disappointment, but he pushed through to the other side. Hayvala stood at her vanity, alone without her handmaiden, only giving him a quick glance before brushing out her moonspun hair with a fine metal comb. "What do I owe the pleasure, Your Winged Grace?"

"Where is Mistress Kazmira?"

"Why?" Hayvala faced him. "She is retrieving my supper for me." Laucan glanced at the picture on her desk. Yokonei Traye. Hayvala's eyes narrowed, and she drew it into her hands to tuck it behind her silk wings. "Is there something you wish to discuss with me?"

"They're working on the embassy. We should be ready to receive the Hanekan dignitaries come festival." Laucan closed the door behind him to close out any peeping gryphlings. He tangled his fingers together, then pushed, "You have been taking your medication, right?"

"Yes."

"Good." He drowned underneath snowbanks. "Good... because I'm hoping to take you across the mountain range... and I want you to be awake when that time comes. Next Summit, even. I'll-I'll introduce you to King Reyn. He's not that barbaric monster Father made him out to be."

Hayvala remained impassive. "Father has said a lot of things about a lot of people that were ultimately wrong." Her hand rested over the silk ribbon tied around her chest to flow down her evening dress. "But, I am heartened to hear that you have at least recognized that."

"Look, I-I know you're upset that I brought Yuven Traye here without talking—" He froze when Hayvala's gaze shifted into ice once more. "But, don't you see? We never got an answer to the fall of Irimount. Father dismissed it, but I'm not. Doesn't that count for something?"

"Why ask the question if you have already done the action?" Hayvala asked. "Yuven Traye is here now. You've captured a Storm Warden and an Anima and have turned them into prisoners when they should be honored guests — that they should've been given the choice." Hayvala sighed and shook her head, where her Navee loops bounced against her cheeks and highlighted her long, silver feathers. "You've err'd, Laucan, and I can't help you. I can't answer that question for you."

Laucan frowned. "You've been talking to him." He came closer. "Hayvala, you shouldn't get close to him. He's dangerous. He was trying to kill me at the Summit. He would have if King Reyn hadn't stepped in. His family, the loyalists, they've destroyed the stability in our kingdom and have left us with the broken fragments." Fear sliced with violet tipped claws. "He would kill us if we gave him the choice."

"How can you be so sure of that?" Hayvala whispered. "And what is so dangerous about a man in chains?"

Laucan fell silent to the soft harpstrings outside.

"You want me to reaffirm your actions," Hayvala observed, and the auric swirls around her pupils tightened. "I will not do so. If you are so dead set to fly on this path, Laucan, you will walk it alone." Hayvala's fists clenched, but nothing else betrayed his sister's emotions. "Leave me to my rest, Your Winged Grace. There is much planning to be done for the festival. Preparations to be seen to. The Lords will be expecting much and the Hanekan dignitaries will be under constant scrutiny, the lords will look for any opportunity to crush any hope of this trade. You need to be their staunchest defender, as King Reyn had done for you, as you so say. Repay the kindness he showed you at the Summit, and protect them well."

"Protect them?" Laucan questioned.

"They are far from home, Laucan. You've extended the invitation. You must be the one to show them the hospitality. Do not let someone like Lord Lazron step on your wings or on them," Hayvala pointed out.

Laucan twisted around when the door opened. Kazmira opened her mouth, but her gaze fell on him and she squeaked into a bow. "Your Winged Grace! I am so sorry—"

"It is alright, Kazmira," Hayvala said with a soft smile. "He was just leaving. Do you have what I asked for?"

"Your dinner is not quite ready yet, but I got the other thing you needed."

"Good." Hayvala gazed at him. "Go on, Laucan. Walk."

Laucan walked out of her room, and Kazmira bowed before shutting him out from his older sister.

Walk?