AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“They can’t?” I thought for a minute. “That doesn’t quite make sense. They must have or they wouldn’t exist.”
The child seemed surprised, then thoughtful. “Oh, well, I guess they used to be able to. But they can’t now. But their magic, it had to go somewhere, right? So it went into human kids instead. At least, it does sometimes.”
“So you’re human but you were born with magic,” I summarized.
The boy’s explanation didn’t quite make sense. I was sure he was leaving parts out by accident. Or perhaps because he didn’t know the full story. Surely Draven’s people were able to have children. But I had read that the fae only had children rarely, perhaps because they were so long-lived. Maybe it was something like that. There wasn't the same cultural imperative to procreate like there was with short-lived humans who needed to produce a legacy more quickly.
“What’s your name, anyhow?” I asked the boy.
“Beks. And you’re the Prince's Paramour.” He grinned.
“You arenotgoing to call me that,” I exclaimed. “That’s a title, not my name. You can call me Morgan.”
“Morgan? Okay, Morgan. Walk faster. You want to get there today, right?”
“Get where exactly? Where are we going?” I said, as I quickened my pace.
The boy gave a careless shrug. “We could go anywhere. The menagerie. The gardens. The temple. The library.”
“A menagerie? That sounds interesting.”
“There are animals there from across Myntra. And even some from across the ocean,” Beks boasted.
“Impressive,” I murmured. “The library might also be nice...”
“Or I could take you tohim,” Beks suggested, with a roguish look.
“Him? To Draven you mean?” I raised a brow. “You know where he is? Right now?”
Beks nodded enthusiastically. “He’s training. I watch them all the time now that it’s started.”
“Now that what’s started?” I asked with frustration.
Beks shook his head at me in amazement. “Don’t you know anything?”
“Apparently not,” I said crossly.
There were so many things I was missing. Draven hadn’t just left me in that room. He had left me utterly in the dark. Now I wondered again why.
“Your paramour is a prince, yes?” Beks said.
“So they tell me,” I muttered. Paramour. Ha!
“And if he were the eldest prince, he would be emperor now. Since his father is dead. But he is the second eldest. And his brother is dead,” Beks explained.
“But since his brother is dead and he’s a prince, shouldn’t he be on the throne now?” I asked, genuinely puzzled. “That’s how it works everywhere else.”
“Maybe where you’re from. But he killed his brother. His mother had to banish him, then she became queen.”
“Queen Regent. And yet she let him back in,” I pointed out. “He’s here now and doesn’t seem banished to me.”
“He was banished for ten years,” Beks clarified. “He was gone much longer. He left before I was born.”
That much was plainly obvious. Beks was nowhere near twenty. I hid a grin.
“But everyone would talk about him. The Prince of Claws. The Lost Prince. They would wonder why he hadn’t returned. His mother missed him,” Beks said. He sounded almost forlorn. Though nothing anyone else had said had given me the impression the Queen Regent was a particularly doting parent.
“So banished wasn’t really banished forever? Just for a little while?” A humiliating punishment but hardly what one might expect for killing the heir to the throne. Elsewhere, Draven might have been simply executed.
