There was a study just off of my late father’s bed chamber that I assumed had been reserved for hushed and hurried political meetings in the middle of the night. I had a very clear memory of being very young, perhaps just old enough to toddle around and having been left to my own devices for just a smidge too long, had ended up wandering the halls of the castle right into the room. The room seemed massive then, the desk in the corner covered in parchment and bottles of ink in various states of use had felt imposing as I scrambled up to sit in the large, cushy chair seated at it. From my position, I played monarch, imagining reading over very important documents that required my full, serious attention, though the writing on any of the parchments on the desk was still nothing more than a garbled mess of ink marks to me. Despite having not a single clue what any of the documents were, I pretended to read them over, clutching my head in frustration, grumbling about taxes and skirmishes, anything that I could remember my father being concerned with in the past. I narrated a nonsense thought process on how I would rule to the empty room, pretending the two couches that filled the room in front of the desk were the seating place of several important dignitaries who were hanging on my every word. The imagined men bit their nails in fear that I would suddenly blame them for all the trouble in the kingdom and doom them to the dungeons for a sentence, or perhaps to never to come out again. My favorite part had been imagining a man standing just off the side of the fireplace on the back wall, slowly looking over documents from a large stack of parchment at his feet, considering each one seriously before deciding to either set it back into a different pile or feed it into a crackling fire.

Being a young child, it did not take long for me to grow tired after a lot of serious emoting and nod off seated in the overstuffed upholstery. I was startled awake by grumbling, hushed conversation. My father, looking irritated, but determined, entered the study with his scribe and a man who felt familiar to me, but I could not place. He did not look like family, possessing no physical traits in common with my father or mother’s side, but I was convinced that I had seen him many times before, though my circle of interaction at that age was still small and my attention span was perhaps even smaller. His face was young with rounded features that spoke more to a family line rooted in peasantry rather than nobility. His dark hair was cropped close to his head, more like a whisper of hair that separated him from being totally bald. The confusing part for me was the scar that ran down to the side of his face from the bottom of his right eye to just above his lip. Surely such an obvious facial scar would mean I could place where I had seen him before immediately, yet despite wracking my brain I couldn’t bring to mind anywhere I might have seen him before. Perhaps he could be one of the people who delivered messages to my father and I had only seen the left side of his face before, though that seemed like an oddly specific scenario to explain why I recognized him, yet could not place how. The men, seemingly a bit on edge, took no time in spotting me, my father letting out an annoyed huff under his breath and marched over to where I was still groggily sitting in the chair.

“Where is your nursemaid?” my father demanded to know.

He seemed agitated and I shirked from him, immediately darting my eyes away from his. While he usually seemed to avoid striking me, when stressed or angry he was not the type to have held back from taking his frustrations out on whomever was in front of him. Many unfortunate messengers and servants bringing bad news had crumpled to their knees under a blow and that was not something I would have put past him doing to me. Even my own mother flinched whenever he would move his hands around her when he raised his voice. While I had not seen him directly beat her, I had seen the side of her face bruised from time to time the next morning after he had an evening of anger.

“I don’t know,” I answered as rapidly as I could gather my wits about me.

“Useless woman,” he growled, scooping me roughly out of the chair and marching to the door.

Much to my relief, he appeared to be too busy with whatever they had been preparing to discuss to focus his annoyance on me, though he did roughly drop me to my feet just outside the study door, taking no care with how I was set down.

“You are never to come in here again, understand?”

I nodded quickly, ready to agree to anything to avoid his wrath.

“Good, otherwise I would make you understand,” he grumbled. He glanced back at the men waiting in his room, then leaned down so that his hot breath was right beside my ear. “If I do catch you in here again, I will make sure you have a scar to always remember why you do not disobey your father.”

My young blood ran cold and as soon as my father stood up and nodded that I was dismissed, I ran crying back towards the safety of the common room to find my nursemaid and fling myself into her lap for comfort. I was inconsolable for the rest of the day, though I was too young and scared to properly articulate what exactly had me so upset. To be back in the same room now still brought that surge of fear back to the surface. Despite my father being dead and the fact that I should have already been crowned, so technically I should own all rights to the study at this very moment, did nothing to settle the butterflies that fluttered as I sat in the chair I had been cast from.

The strange man I could not bring myself to look in the eye had done a good job of soothing the intense anger of my long lost sister to a hot smolder. She did not seem pleased with the fact he was insisting we discuss the situation rather than she be my executioner which I was incredibly grateful for. I did not know if I had the strength in me to block any more of her attacks and to be honest, I only had the foggiest idea of how I was doing it in the first place. It had not been something I consciously did, it was a gut reaction out of self-preservation that had stunned even me. I supposed that I had at least one reason to be at least a bit grateful for having my aunt unlock my latent magic, it had saved my life even if it had also almost taken it before.

Trying to save face, well as much as I could at this point, and not reveal all my weaknesses before we got to actually talk, I had insisted that the trio accept an offer of hospitality and have an opportunity to eat and wash before meeting me in a private location. My sister had not seemed thrilled at the idea and immediately wanted to refuse, but the man had insisted, claiming that better decisions would be made when everyone had a chance to step away, reflect, and recharge. The entire time he was convincing her of the logic of stepping away for a bit he kept sneaking winks at me and giving me sly grins. I was not sure how, but I was certain he knew the predicament I was in and that I was not yet ready to reveal that I was unable to walk. Why he was willing to help me out when it was obvious he was on her side and had come with her to enact her revenge, I couldn’t fathom, but I had not been in a position to question his motives beyond being relieved that he was able to finally talk her into taking a meal and meeting me in the study.

The door to the study opened and the strange man appeared in the doorway, my eyes immediately darting to focus on the wallpaper next to his head to avoid looking directly at his eyes. I was surprised when he stepped into the room alone and closed the door behind him. His grin was wide as he set his eyes on me, I was starting to think it was the only facial expression he made.

“I was hoping to have a private word with you,” he said, giving a quick bow, though much less than one would expect for royalty. I got the distinct sense that he meant it a little more as a private joke to himself rather than a sincere action. “If you’re not too busy of course.”

“Without my sister?” I questioned. “I thought you were serving her. I’m sure she’ll be upset if she knows you’re trying to talk with me without her present.

“Serving her? I suppose she probably assumes that,” he said with a deep chuckle. “She has yet to come to the obvious conclusion that I do not, and have never, really, served anyone.”

I raised my eyebrow in intrigue and confusion. What little I knew about my sister inclined me to believe that she was some sort of monarch in her own right at the moment and thus anyone traveling with would have owed her their fealty. It would have been a very strange situation for a monarch to travel and take the word of anyone who refused to acknowledge her power over them.

“Then you have deceived her?”

With a smirk, he elegantly slithered into one of the couches and sat facing me. “Deception is perhaps a strong way to interpret the situation. I have never declared my fealty to her, nor has it been asked of me. If she assumes that, then it is just an incorrect assumption. I am merely an old friend of the family who has a vested interest in seeing that the family line does not implode on itself. Which, it is apparently intent on doing recently.”

I instantly felt even more wary about the man in front of me. If he knew about my family and was very familiar with him, then he also knew all about the dark secrets of my bloodline. The only other people I had known who did were sadistically out to make my existence as horrific as possible. Coupled with the fact his mere presence in the room made me feel strange and uneasy, I could feel anxiety rising through me and I wondered if perhaps it would have been a better idea to have guards sit with me during the discussion. They probably would have not been able to help in any way, but having them there might have made me feel at least slightly more secure.

“You do not have to worry about me,” the man said placidly, “remember I was the one who convinced your sister not to keep trying to kill you. Just as an aside, you might consider if you owe me for that at some point, she had been dreaming of that moment since you were born and it’s a minor miracle she was persuaded. Stubborn women run in your family.”

“I do not like the idea that I might owe you something,” I said with a sigh.

The grin on his face widened to almost inhuman proportions and nodded his head. “You have a good head on your shoulders, perhaps more perceptive than your sister already, even though you are still young. I assume that must have something to do with having to live with a couple of dangerous predators these past weeks.”

As he spoke, he tilted his head to the side, looking more amused as his words progressed, like he was reading something in my facial expressions. He suddenly stood up and moved to the fireplace, carefully positioning himself exactly, then looked back at me with a knowing grin. He was in the exact position I had imagined the man feeding parchment into the fire, despite it having only been a product of my childhood imagination. Multiple shivers ran up my spin and my mouth began to water. I did not feel necessarily unsafe physically, but I knew that I was treading in dangerous waters with powers I could not hope to yet understand.

“That was a real pity, them doing everything to you that they have so far,” he said, being nonchalant about what he had just done. “I suppose that you needed some sort of magical training, you are more than old enough to have started perhaps years ago, though their methods are a bit crude. Your pious aunt even managed to draw something more evil than I think she realized to you and almost got your very soul consumed.”

“For someone who just got here, you seem to know an awful lot,” I said, failing to keep a quiver out of my voice.

“Oh don’t worry with the idea that I had anything to do with any of that, that’s all just the Church being political and your aunts being nasty. In fact, I am here to try to help you. I think you have potential and if I don’t intervene, Toria is going to sense blood in the water and go for the killing blow.”

“What do you want from me?”

“I just want you to come to your full potential and what I want from there will fall nicely into place,” he said with a wave of his hand.

“Forgive me if I seem untrusting despite you having already helped me once today, but I am quickly learning not to blindly trust anyone or anything I thought I knew.”

“You are already in some ways a more capable monarch than your sister,” he said cheerfully.

Moving from his position at the fireplace, he stepped across the room and towards me. As he approached I almost put my hands up defensively and had to mentally steel myself to try to stay calm and collected.