AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The room wasn’t enormous—it was clearly a smaller banquet hall—but it certainly seemed full of people. Heath and Percival were led to the slightly elevated chairs at the center of a long dining table where King Eamon and Queen Luciana were already seated. They greeted the pair graciously, and Heath cast a curious glance over Kyona’s king when he straightened from his bow.
King Eamon was a generation older than Valoria’s king, but he held his age well. His back was still straight, and his gaze was shrewd. Age had worn away any striking resemblance between him and his twin, but something about him still reminded Heath of his grandmother. Perhaps it was the magic. Identifying the presence of power was such a familiar part of Heath’s senses, he couldn’t separate it from the observations of his eyes, or his ears. But when he really tried to focus on King Eamon’s magic, he thought he could find the thread weaving its way back and forth between the siblings, as though they were two sides of the same coin.
Princess Jocelyn sat beside her twin brother. She’d been leaning slightly forward to speak to Kyona’s elderly queen on the king’s other side, but at Heath and Percival’s approach, she turned her attention to them, beaming as they were received by the king and queen. It was clear that she was delighted to have two of her grandchildren visiting her native land and meeting her brother.
King Eamon’s smile was genuine, and if he resented Percival attaching himself to the invitation, he gave no sign of it. Queen Luciana, beside him, still bore the signs of the beauty for which she had been famous in her youth. Her warm brown skin wasn’t as lined as her husband’s, and although her hair was completely silver, it was still thick and long. Her eyes were kind as they rested on Heath, and he found his spirits lifting. It was nice to be greeted with such warmth. His own monarchs had never been unkind, but there was always caution, always careful formality when Valoria’s royals interacted with the power-wielding branch of their family. Every interaction was loaded.
Not so here.
“Come,” Prince Theodore said cheerfully, once the king had dismissed them. “My parents want to receive you as well, but then you’ll be free to sit with the others our age.”
He dutifully introduced them to Prince Rory, the middle-aged heir to Kyona’s king, and his wife. The crown prince was several years younger than Heath’s own father, and asked pleasantly after his cousin, whom he had met on more than one occasion. Heath and Percival returned polite, if not entirely truthful, answers. Heath wasn’t about to say that his father had been grim and anxious since Heath’s mysterious near-death injuries, and he could only be grateful that Percival showed similar restraint.
The long table formed three sides of a square, with the king and queen in the middle of the central expanse. Formalities over, Prince Theodore conducted his second cousins to one of the side wings, where they were greeted by a lively bunch of others their age. The prince introduced them to his own younger sister and brother, and Heath suppressed a laugh at the open way in which young Prince Steffan was sizing Percival up. Three of Prince Theodore’s cousins were also there, all power-wielders, given their descent from King Eamon. But there were also a number of young people from the court, who could have no claim to magic, but nevertheless welcomed the Valorian brothers with flattering enthusiasm.
“Sit next to me, Lord Heath,” invited one of them. Prince Theodore had introduced him as Lord Vincent. “I’d love to hear more about Bryford. My mother has cousins there, and I’ve always wanted to go, but never yet managed it.”
“We would be glad to welcome you,” smiled Heath, warming to the cheerful young man.
“So, Lord Heath,” the Kyonan mused. “The younger son of the Duke of Bexley, right? Prince Kincaid and Princess Jocelyn’s eldest son?”
Heath nodded, a little surprised.
“And, if memory serves, your power is something to do with eyesight, isn’t it?” Lord Vincent turned his gaze on Percival, chatting happily with Prince Theodore nearby. “And your brother, of course, is the one with the strength of five men. That’s an easy one to remember.”
Heath realized his mouth was hanging open, and he shut it hastily. “How do you know what my power is?” he asked.
“Oh, we know your family tree well,” Lord Vincent said, seeming surprised by Heath’s reaction. “I mean, plenty of people don’t remember quite where everyone fits. But those of us who are interested in studying magic are naturally aware of all the power-wielders in the Valorian line of the Dragonfriends, and your abilities.” He grinned. “We were all very excited when His Majesty invited you to visit, so imagine our delight to meet two of you instead of one!”
Heath just stared, too astonished to respond. The idea that he would be well known in Kyona had never occurred to him. And his father’s position as the cousin of King Matlock had nothing whatsoever to do with his apparent fame. It was his relationship to the Kyonan throne, and its legacy of power, that these people were interested in. Lord Vincent had referred to Heath’s family, not as a branch of the royal family of Valoria, but of the House of Dragonfriend, the name given to Kyona’s royal house since the time of the previous king, father to both King Eamon and Princess Jocelyn.
Some strange mixture of gratification and alarm stirred within Heath. It was nice to feel so accepted, so welcome. But it also felt ominous, somehow, to hear a Kyonan claim the Valorian power-wielders as belonging to Kyona’s royal family instead of Valoria’s.
Still, it was flattering to know the Kyonans counted him as a magic user. It had always been a matter of some debate whether he even had magic. His eyesight was unusually good, but he’d never been convinced that counted, not when compared to some of the more impressive—and more obviously unnatural—abilities of his siblings and cousins. The questionable status of his magic was, he suspected, what had led King Matlock to appoint him as liaison between the crown and the power-wielders, since he almost had a foot in each camp.
Judging by the attitude of Lord Vincent, a thoroughly non-magical member of King Eamon’s court, the Kyonan crown had no need for a liaison between power-wielders and everyone else. Heath took note of the mood as the king rose to address the assembled group before the meal began, and throughout the evening. The respect for King Eamon was palpable. And it wasn’t just the dutiful homage owed to a monarch. Clearly, he was beloved. Heath realized that, although he hadn’t articulated it to himself, on some level he had expected that a throne filled by such an elderly king wouldn’t project the strength portrayed by someone King Matlock’s age. But he had been mistaken.
“A tribute!”
Heath turned, looking for the source of the call. A young nobleman, sitting not far from Prince Theodore—so probably someone of high rank—was looking beseechingly toward the royals.
“A tribute! A tribute for our guests!”
The cry was soon taken up by multiple others, and with a smile, King Eamon gestured his assent. The young people turned inward, muttering eagerly amongst themselves. Heath watched with interest.
Some agreement seemed to be reached, because the nobleman who had first called out stood, and swept an elegant bow to a dark-haired girl whom Heath recognized as Prince Theodore’s sister. She was younger than him, perhaps seventeen.
“Princess Kiana,” the nobleman said. “Would you honor us, Your Highness?”
She flushed slightly, but a dimple appeared as she inclined her head, not quite deeply enough to hide her smile.
“The honor,” she said in a musical voice, “would be mine.”
She rose, lifting her hands before her, palms down. Heath could feel Lord Vincent’s excitement beside him, but he didn’t take his fascinated eyes off Princess Kiana. She closed her eyes for a moment, her face twisted in concentration. Then she opened them, and swept her hands down, inward, and back up, as though scooping something. To Heath’s amazement, water rose from pitchers all along the tables, soaring through the air to meet in one floating, spherical mass in the center of the room. Princess Kiana twisted her fingers in a complicated pattern, and before Heath’s incredulous eyes, the water formed itself into a delicate flower, many times bigger than its real counterpart.
“A dianmon,” Princess Kiana said, naming the elusive white flower that was Kyona’s emblem. Heath knew that the bloom grew only in the mountain range at the eastern edge of Kyona, where a colony of powerful dragons had been concealed for hundreds of years.
“Found in the mountains that march along our border with your kingdom,” the princess continued. She dipped her head respectfully to Heath and Percival, and to some other key members of their delegation, seated on the other wing of the table. “A symbol and reminder of the friendship between our fair lands.”
