Eric read it twice. Huh. That was unexpected. Reading between the lines, it sounded as if she was planning on running away and eloping, and yet she’d done him the honor of warning him about it first. Her inclination towards slightly obscure sentences in plain language also sounded like her, but if Eric showed this note to someone else later on, there would be a sense of deniability. That was not too bad at all, much better than he could have hoped for, actually. He’d been braced for some tear-streaked accusation about how his father’s reputation had brought down theirs, or at least some reprimand for avoiding her.
The longer Eric thought about it, the more he felt cheered. He ought to be more upset about being spurned, but he was released from his silent obligation to Lydia through no fault of his own, and he found himself sincerely wishing her the best in return. As he absently finished his second cup of tea – still scalding, still over-brewed and bitter – Ixthan was nowhere to be seen. Odd.
Eric chewed the remainder of his sausage slowly as he tried to think back what had happened in his mind. He’d been staring into the distance again as he mulled over Lydia’s words, and Ix must have left without a word in one of the moments when his mind scattered. Had Ix said anything? HadEricsaid anything? He didn’t recall it. He shook his head. His mind wasn’t usuallythis hazy, he hadn’t realized that his father’s trial would impact him this much.
It didn’t take long for Eric to finish his plate, he had no real appetite anyway, so he went looking for Ix in his study after. He knew better than to knock. If Ix was in the middle of some difficult magic working, the knocking would interrupt him more than merely easing the door open. So he peered around the door and then slid in when he spotted Ixthan polishing a mirror.
Ixthan’s study was far more impressive than most noblemen’s writing rooms, this room being where he studied his magic. And even knowing this put Eric in a position of privilege: very few people knew that the demon prince had topracticehis magic. Everyone assumed it came to him naturally, as with all demons.
They’d never discussed it at length but Eric knew, as did everyone at court, that the Princes Ixthan and Ceronzar had grown up here, in the human realm, confined by the restraints of their mostly-human bodies. The only people who could teach them were human mages, who learned at the king’s Magisterium. Ceron found it disdainful to be taught by people who were even less demon than he, and had shunned it. Ix, on the other hand, knew everything the mages did and then some, but he preferred to conduct his own experiments in here instead of taking classes at the Magisterium.
Eric would find him in the study regularly, juggling fire, or turning wood into gold and other such arcane acts. The habit of not disturbing Ix while magicking had arisen after he’d turned and nearly sprayed Eric with a thousand splinters of glass he was trying to turn into snow. Never mind that they’d been seven.
“Did you say something? I didn’t hear it,” said Eric sheepishly when Ix paused in his work.
“No, we were silent,” said Ixthan. And then let it fall uncomfortably quiet again.
“If you don’t want me here, I can leave.” The words had been on the tip of his tongue a while, waiting for the moment Ixthan got tired of sharing his rooms with Eric indefinitely.
Ixthan stopped what he was doing, the blackened, sharpened tips of his fingers still raised to the mirror. He turned around and looked at Eric properly. “I didn’t say that. If you don’t wantmehere, I can leave.”
“What?” Eric blinked in surprise. They were having two different conversations now. It used to happen a lot when they were children, when Eric was starting to learn the socially acceptable ways to phrase things and Ix found delight in being obscenely brusque.
“Usually when you’re like this, you prefer to be alone,” said Ixthan critically.
“I – oh. No.” Eric felt stupid now. He scrubbed at his face with his hands as he recalled, vividly, the day he’d found out about his father’s treason. He’d been at his family house, and the hours after the news had felt endless, with the king’s guards and bailiff coming to seize the property, lawyers with questions he didn’t know the answer to, the neighbors peeking over with their questions, Petra crying silently on the stairs, all the servants hovering, waiting to be told what to do. He’d eventually run out without even a coat on and arrived at the palace and begged Ix for an empty room where he didn’t have to deal with anyone at all, at least for a few hours. He wondered how Ix recalled that day.
“Thank you. Sorry. I mean – I don’t know. Let me start again. I don’t want to be alone, but I don’t make good company right now,” said Eric gratefully. “Do you mind if I just… sit here?”
“At least come out of the doorway,” said Ix, thankfully ignoring Eric’s incoherent word jumble and pointing at an armchair. Eric lowered himself into the overstuffed velvet monstrosity and watched him practice his magic incompanionable silence. That was better. It surely eased something in Eric’s chest to know that Ix wasn’t annoyed at him, had never been, it had been a figment of his stressed mind.
A lot of watching Ix practice magic was just watching Ix standing with his arm out. He wasn’t complaining. Ix always kept the fire ragingly hot and his shirtsleeves were rolled up to reveal toned forearms. Given Eric was his main partner for most sports and activities, it was distressingly unfair that Ix could pack muscles on top of his muscles while Eric always looked as though a stiff breeze might topple him.
Sometimes, Eric thought Ix didn’t notice his staring, too caught up in whatever magic was happening that he could see and Eric could not. But there were other times where he’d catch Ix looking back at him, his eyes dragging up and down Eric’s form. On those days, Eric liked to alternate between wondering whether Ix could feel the same about him as Eric did him or whether he was doing it to mock Eric.
“Did you win?” asked Eric as Ix relaxed and lowered his arms. A bit of a running joke between them, since Eric couldn’t sense or see magic at all and therefore couldn’t tell how well any given magic experiment was going.
“I always win,” said Ix, which he always said but there was a triumphant note in his voice today. “I just need to contain it now.”
Even though the magical terminology made no sense to Eric, he watched as Ix pick a stick of still-burning charcoal straight out of the fire with his bare hands and start inscribing symbols onto the mirror against the far wall. Eric made a slightly wet choking noise because his blank face was nonexistent.
His reaction made Ix laugh softly at least. “Relax. It’ll wash off.”
“I’m sure it will,” said Eric faintly. That was a full body-length mirror imported across the sea from the Continent, asheet of flawless glass and hammered silver with emeralds and peridots set into the frame that likely cost more than Eric’s entire family worth at the moment.
The surface of the mirror shimmered, and the reflection became distorted as if they were viewing the room underwater, undulating and dark. It reminded Eric of those traveling fairs with their tents of tin mirrors that manipulated shape and size, except then he saw movement. Something dashed across in front of the mirror, but only within the reflection. He gasped, looking around the room, but the only two moving things in here were him and Ix.
“What was that?” Eric had shot to his feet.
“It can’t cross over,” said Ix, which was probably meant to be reassuring but since Eric hadn’t known there was anything theretocross over, it had the opposite effect.
“Cross over from where?” demanded Eric. “And what is ‘it’?”
“The demon,” said Ixthan, as if it was obvious. “From the demon realm.”
“Why are you summoning demons?” Eric lowered his voice even though there was no one around to hear him. Not only was unauthorized demonic summoning illegal, but that was the specific crime his father was being executed for. If Eric was discovered even near the vicinity of a summoning—
“I’m not,” Ix interrupted his thoughts before they could spiral. “I just said it can’t cross over, remember?”
