AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Chapter 1: The Quest
Fairy-companions weren’t unheard of, in the small northern speck of kingdom that was Bellemare. Unusual, but not unheard of.
They were rare. Associated with princes and epic deeds and times of need. Legendary, even.
Oliver couldn’t remember a time without his.
To be fair, technically he could; he’d been fourteen years old when Tirian had turned up at the palace for the afternoon session, looking almost like any other finely-dressed twelve-year-old boy, entering quietly alongside every other person arriving for an open audience with their queen. The difference, of course, had been that for those huge storm-grey eyes everything human was new.
The difference had been that Tir wasn’t and never would be human.
That wasn’t a fair thought, and Oliver felt a bit guilty about it. He mostly didn’t think about it; none of the family did, much. Not after fifteen years.
Some days, like today, he remembered. He wanted to turn, to glance back at Tir. Instead he lifted a hand, waved at his people, his kingdom, his responsibilities.
Tir, a half-step behind him, was being a tactful compromise. Tirian was not, by blood, part of the royal family, hence the step into Ollie’s shadow; he’d been very much adopted, though, and had become familiar to everyone, over the years. The people of Bellemare would have worried if their favorite luck-charm hadn’t been on the dais. Everyone liked Tir, possibly more than they liked their actual crown prince, who tripped over words and his own too-large feet.
The sun beat down. Ollie did not squint, because crown princes didn’t. Today’s elegant shoes weren’t quite big enough. He hadn’t wanted to complain.
His mother, seemingly unbothered by thick autumn sun and layers of rustling russet-leaf robes, offered the next proclamation—a land-gift, a new title—with flawless calm. A queen to her bones, steady and strong. Oliver’s youngest sibling, on her other side, radiated charm, because that was Cedric: born knowing how to adore and be adored, harmless as dandelion fluff.
Ollie took a breath, let it out. Nodded at assembled barons and village representatives and small children. Aimed for royal dignity; felt the self-consciousness scratch at his throat.
Too big. Too clumsy, a fraud in green velvet. The Heir’s coronet sat heavy on his hair.
He liked being outside, amid gilded sun and autumn grass. That helped. He’d rather have a sketchbook and a pencil and a spot from which to document the scene, as opposed to being part of it.
He felt Tir move, an infinitesimal shift of weight. Feather-light fingertips brushed Oliver’s arm, and lifted, leaving a reminder. Tirian was here, and would be here, without judgement. No matter how badly Oliver wanted to bolt.
His mother did the announcement about work on the new harbor. Assorted merchants and shipwrights cheered.
Tir had always been at Ollie’s side for audiences. For other moments, so many, formal and less so, from hunts to banquets to lessons to late-night tavern stumblings. No one questioned his presence.
No one would, of course. Queen Eleuthenia’d made his position as another family member entirely clear years ago, and in any case, people did tend to treat fairies with some respect, or fear, or a healthy mingling of both. Tir had, from very early on, simply quietly been wherever Oliver was, not drawing attention but plainly not going to be shooed away or made to leave the crown prince alone. The general conclusion, offered by hastily-summoned historians and flustered scholars in University robes, was that it would be unwise to offend a fairy-visitor, and anyway Tir hadn’t done much aside from be present, and anyway it was possibly an honor, because the princes and princesses who’d had fairy-companions tended to be memorable.
Oliver did not want to be memorable. Oliver mostly wanted to be left alone, to exhale, to keep the world rumbling on just the way it was. No epic deeds. No heroics.
And no epic deeds had been required, not yet. And he and Tir were friends, and Tir wouldn’t leave Oliver alone for a public audience. That was also entirely clear.
Tir did the little whisper-touch again, checking on him. Oliver’s mother glanced at them both, and away. He couldn’t read her expression.
He wanted to turn around and say I’m all right, because he was, mostly; he’d distracted himself by thinking about Tir. About the mystery. While Tir had been worrying about him, in turn.
Tir did a fair amount of that. But Oliver had never really minded. Used to it.
He liked his life with that moon-slim shadow at his side, the dark elegant contrast to Ollie’s own rumpled-sunbeam height. He liked them being friends, a constant promise, reliable.
He’d always liked that, even growing up, even if Tir had always been the one who resembled a storybook version of a Crown Prince, a daydream out of illustrated romances; much more so than Oliver, anyway. Ollie was resigned to not being the pretty one. He knew he himself generally looked as if the person in the mirror had been made by someone who’d heard about blond-haired muscular heroes but hadn’t got all the rough-hewn edges smoothed out. Tirian, on the other hand, had managed to appear polished and put-together even the morning after the last Spring Festival and all the honeyed mead. Tir could show up at a formal audience barefoot and shirtless and yawning, black hair falling out of a tangled knot and into sleepy smoke-and-silver eyes, and would still make everyone else feel instantly overdressed. Some sort of magic. Fairy gifts. Unfair ones.
Ollie really wasn’t envious, though. Tir was his best friend. Besides, he’d once seen his fairy purchase what’d looked like the entire contents of a bookshop, scoop the book-mountain into adoring but clearly inadequate arms, and proceed to drop every single volume onto normally graceful fairy-feet.
Tir liked novels more, but they both liked history. Precedent hadn’t helped, though, as far as figuring out why Tir was here. Aside from the obvious purposes of reading all the books in existence and providing a distraction when Ollie got uncomfortable during a public occasion, of course.
Tir, of course, probably knew. Whatever purpose he’d been sent to fulfil.
Oliver did not. No one knew. That was the other unanswered question of his life. Why him, why now. Why Tir.
The last prince with a fairy-companion had lived just over three hundred years ago, outside anyone’s lifetime but recent enough to be well-documented in Bellemare’s history books, and they’d fought as brothers-in-arms to hold the country together during the Great Civil War. They’d been heroes; statues sat atop civic monuments and observed the horizon benevolently.
