Chapter 26: Can’t A Prince ever Rest

Chapter 26: Chapter 26: Can’t A Prince ever Rest

Theon stood at the broken balcony long after the danger had passed, the cold wind pulling at his silver hair as he stared into the distance where the assassin had vanished without leaving so much as a footprint behind.

The palace below looked exactly the way it always did, quiet gardens, distant torchlight, servants moving between the halls as if the whole world had not just tilted sideways. That calm made it worse. It felt like a lie the palace was telling him, and he hated how easily he wanted to believe it.

His fingers curled around the shattered stone railing until his knuckles ached.

One of my siblings sent that blade.

The thought had been circling his skull since the moment the attacker fled, and no matter how many times he tried to push it away, it kept crawling back in, patient and cruel, the way a bruise announces itself again every time you forget it’s there.

He had grown up hearing stories about palace intrigue the way other children heard bedtime tales, and some distant part of him had always assumed those stories belonged to a different kind of family. Not his. Not people who shared his blood.

Apparently he had assumed wrong.

Behind him the room had gone still, holding the particular silence that follows fear once the fear itself has nowhere left to go. Then he felt a small tug at the hem of his coat, so light he almost missed it, and when he looked down he found Lyra standing there, close enough that he hadn’t even heard her cross the floor.

Her hair fell in two colors over her shoulders now, one side pale as moonlight, the other burning faintly like coals beneath ash, and her eyes no longer matched either, one blue and steady, the other a deep, living red. She blinked up at him with the sleepy, unguarded curiosity of a child who had just woken from a nap and hadn’t yet remembered that the world could be frightening.

"Big brother?"

Something in Theon’s chest loosened at the sound of her voice, the way it always did, the fear and anger draining out of him just enough to breathe.

"You’re awake," he said, crouching so he could look at her properly, and for a moment he simply took in the changes in her face, the strange new symmetry of moon and flame sitting side by side where a single ordinary color used to be.

He glanced up at Ifrit, who stood near the window with his arms folded, watching the two of them with an expression Theon still hadn’t learned to fully read.

"Why are her hair and eyes like this now?"

"It is the mark of awakening," Ifrit said.

Theon frowned, uneasy. "If the awakening finished, shouldn’t she go back to looking like herself?"

"The soul of the Flame Empress has stirred within her," Ifrit answered, quieter than before, "but Lyra’s own will remains the stronger of the two. The powers now share her, side by side, neither one swallowing the other."

Theon studied his sister’s face for a long moment, searching for anything unfamiliar hiding behind her eyes, and found only Lyra looking back at him, a little sleepy, a little proud of herself for being interesting enough to worry about.

"So she’s still herself," he said, more to convince his own racing heart than to ask a real question.

"Completely," Ifrit said.

Lyra puffed out her cheeks, offended on principle. "I’ve been myself this whole time, you know. I didn’t go anywhere."

Theon laughed, and it came out rougher than he meant it to, relief bleeding through the sound. "Good. That’s good."

He had almost let himself relax when the knock came.

"Master," a nervous voice called from beyond the door, "it is time for your etiquette lesson."

The color drained from Theon’s face so fast Lyra actually laughed out loud.

"No," he whispered, as if the word alone might be enough to undo the last thirty seconds of his life. The knock came again, more insistent.

"Master?"

Theon looked wildly around the chamber, weighing his options with the desperation of a man who genuinely believed his life was in danger, and his gaze landed on the bed. Without another word of protest he dropped to the floor and dove underneath it.

Lyra stared at the space where her brother had been standing a heartbeat earlier. "Big brother?"

"Tell them I died a hero," came his muffled voice from beneath the frame.

Ifrith pressed a hand over his mouth, shoulders shaking with the effort of not laughing outright.

The door opened, and a tall woman in severe black and white robes stepped inside, her glasses catching the afternoon light in a way that somehow managed to look threatening.

Your highness, the imperial etiquette instructor, feared by every noble child who had ever passed through these halls. Her sharp gaze swept the room once, calm and unhurried, before dropping directly to the space beneath the bed.

Silence stretched out, thin and unbearable.

Theon held his breath as if that alone might save him.

She bent down without a word, closed one hand around his ankle, and dragged him out across the polished floor with the effortless precision of someone who had done this exact thing more times than either of them could count.

"WAIT, WAIT, I CAN EXPLAIN—"

His fingers scrabbled uselessly at the carpet.

"Lyra! Save me!"

Lyra waved at him cheerfully, entirely unbothered. "Good luck!"

He turned pleading eyes toward the demon instead. "Ifrit! As your master, I command you to rescue me right now!"

Ifrit gave a slow, solemn bow. "Survive, Master."

"You absolute traitor!"

The instructor hauled him out into the corridor while Lyra collapsed into helpless laughter behind them, the sound following Theon like a curse all the way down the hall.

The etiquette hall was enormous and, in Theon’s private opinion, genuinely horrifying. Books were stacked in towers along the walls like the fortifications of some particularly humorless castle.

Rows of tea sets gleamed on long tables. Dance markers had been chalked carefully across the polished floor, waiting for him like traps. Theon sat in his assigned chair wearing the expression of a man awaiting execution.

The instructor adjusted her glasses with the calm of someone who had broken far more difficult princes than this one.

"A prince must possess grace."

Theon nodded weakly.

"A prince must possess dignity."

Another nod, weaker still.

"A prince must never hide beneath a bed."

"...That last one felt unnecessarily personal."

"It was."

The lesson that followed stretched across several merciless hours. He learned the correct angle for greeting a visiting noble, and the precise, maddening way one was meant to hold a teacup so that it never clinked against the saucer.

He learned the difference between six separate ceremonial bows that all looked, to his eyes, almost exactly the same. He learned to walk without a single sound, and to sit without appearing lazy, which felt to Theon like being asked to breathe without moving his lungs.

And then, worst of all, came the dancing.The tutor demonstrated the steps with an elegance that made the whole thing look effortless. Theon attempted to copy her and discovered, immediately, that his feet had apparently never met each other before this exact moment.

He stepped on her foot once.

Then twice.

By the third time, even the servants watching quietly from the edges of the hall wore expressions of genuine sympathy for him.

"Your Highness," Lady Seraphine said, her voice terrifyingly level, "a lady is not an enemy soldier to be conquered by force."

"She might become one if I keep doing this to her feet."

"Again," she said, and Theon nearly wept where he stood.

While her brother suffered through his fifth failed attempt at a waltz, Lyra sat cross legged on the bed, studying Ifrith with the frank, unblinking attention only a child can manage without shame.

"You look familiar," she said finally.

Ifrith blinked, then bowed his head deeply. "I was formerly known as Diablo."

Lyra’s whole body went rigid. She scooted backward across the mattress in one quick motion, putting as much distance between them as the bed allowed.

"D... Diablo?" Her voice had dropped to a frightened whisper. "Isn’t that the demon who attacked my brother? The one who almost killed him?"

Ifrith lowered himself slowly to both knees, his head bowed all the way to the floor. "I ask forgiveness for that sin. It is not owed to me, but I ask it regardless."

The room went quiet as. Lyra stared at him for a long, searching moment, her small hands gripping the blanket beneath her, and then she looked toward the door where her brother had been dragged away only an hour before. Whatever she found in that memory seemed to settle something in her chest.

She let out a slow breath.

"If my brother trusts you enough to let you stay near him," she said finally, "then I’ll trust his judgment. For now."

Ifrit raised his head, something almost like relief crossing his features. "Thank you."

"But," Lyra added, and a tiny flame flickered to life on the tip of her finger, small and bright and utterly serious, "if you ever hurt him again, I will burn you until there’s nothing left to forgive."

Ifrith looked at her with open admiration. "As expected of the future Flame Empress."

Lyra blinked at the flame on her own hand as if she’d surprised herself. "...That sounded cool."

"It was meant to."

The two of them kept talking after that, and slowly, without either of them quite noticing when it happened, laughter began to fill the chamber again.

By the time the lesson finally ended, Theon looked like a man who had aged several years in a single afternoon. His hair had gone thoroughly disheveled, his eyes were hollow with exhaustion, and he carried three etiquette books under one arm as though they were chains he’d been sentenced to drag around for the rest of his life.

Lady Seraphine studied him and gave a small, satisfied nod. "You have improved."

"Then please, I am begging you, release me from this nightmare."

"Tomorrow we begin advanced ballroom lessons."

Something in Theon quietly gave up and left his body for a moment.

He stumbled out into the corridor on unsteady legs, whispering the word freedom to himself like a prayer, and had almost convinced himself the worst of the day was behind him when a shadow fell across the floor in front of him.

He turned slowly, already knowing what he would find.

Captain Voss stood there, grinning the way he always did before something painful was about to happen. "Ready for another spar, Your Highness?"

Theon stared at him for exactly one second before turning on his heel and running as fast as his exhausted legs would carry him.

"GET BACK HERE!"

"Absolutely not!"

The chase tore through the corridors at full speed, knights leaping out of the way as the Seventh Prince sprinted past them with the captain thundering after him, laughing like a man who had never once in his life felt tired.

"Face me with honor!"

"I choose cowardice, thank you!"

Theon vaulted over a bench, slid around a corner hard enough to nearly lose his footing, and burst out into the palace gardens, lungs burning. He dove behind a thick cluster of flowering bushes and pressed himself flat against the cool earth, breathing hard, waiting.

No footsteps followed.

No laughter.

He let out a long, shaking breath. "I survived."

That was when something caught his eye in the dirt beneath the bush, half buried and easy to miss. It looked like an unremarkable stone at first glance, rough and gray, except for the faint crimson lines glimmering just beneath its surface, delicate as veins of fire sealed inside old glass.

He reached out and picked it up.

It was cold. Colder than any ordinary stone had any right to be, and the moment his fingers closed around it, something like a heartbeat moved through his palm, a single strange pulse that made the hair on his arms rise.

"What is this?"

No notification appeared. The World Archive gave him nothing, no warning, no explanation. And yet the stone felt wrong in a way he couldn’t put into words, the kind of wrong that lived in instinct rather than knowledge.

After a moment he slipped it into his pocket, telling himself he would examine it properly later, once his heart had stopped pounding from everything else that had already happened today.

A voice rang out across the garden.

"THEON!"

His eyes went wide.

"Not later. Running now."

He spent the next ten minutes sneaking through his own home like a criminal, ducking behind statues, waiting in doorways for guards to pass, flattening himself against a wall while Captain Voss marched by muttering under his breath about brats who wouldn’t stand and fight.

Theon held his breath until the footsteps faded completely, then slipped away and finally, finally reached the safety of his own chamber.

He pushed the door open with as much drama as his strained body could manage. "I have returned from death roll."

Inside, Lyra and Ifrit were laughing together over something he’d missed.

Theon stopped in the doorway, wounded. "You cunning demon. You’re both enjoying yourselves while I suffer and rot under a mountain of etiquette lessons and murderous knights."

Ifrith blinked at him with an expression of perfect, practiced innocence.

Lyra giggled and hopped off the bed to greet him. "Welcome back, big brother."

Theon crossed the room and gently ruffled her hair, some of the tension finally easing out of his shoulders. "At least someone in this palace is happy to see me."

The black cat version of Ifrit leaped up onto his shoulder without warning, purring low in his throat.

"Mrow."

"You too? Don’t pretend you weren’t laughing at me earlier."

The cat turned its head away with theatrical suspicion, and despite everything, Theon found himself smiling.

He had barely settled into a chair when he felt something in his pocket grow warm against his leg. Frowning, he pulled out the strange gem, and the crimson veins running through it pulsed once, then again, brighter this time.

The room dimmed for the space of a split second.

Lyra’s smile vanished. "Ifrith..."

The Flame Lord eyes narrowed instantly, all trace of humor gone from his face.

"That should not be reacting."

"What is it?" Theon asked, his voice tighter than he meant it to sound.

Before Ifrit could answer, the gem released something that was not quite a sound, not quite a voice, a fragment of raw mana that brushed against all three of them at once. It felt ancient. It felt aware. It felt, somehow, like it was searching for something and had just found the edge of it.

Then the light died, and the room fell silent again. Theon stared down at the stone in his palm as though it might suddenly grow teeth.

"What was that."

Ifrith’s expression had gone unusually grave. "I don’t know."

And somehow, that answer frightened Theon far more than a clear one could have.

Far above the palace, in the ruined northern watchtower where wind howled freely through broken windows, a hooded figure stood motionless beside the shattered glass. In his gloved hand rested a second gem, twin to the one now resting in Theon’s palm, and as if called by some distant thread between them, it began to glow crimson.

The figure’s eyes widened, the first genuine reaction to cross his hidden face in longer than he could remember.

"So," he murmured, and a slow smile spread beneath the mask, cold and satisfied. "The Seventh Prince has found the key at last."

Dark markings crept faintly across the exposed skin of his hand, spreading like ink through water.

"The seal is responding."

He turned his gaze downward, toward the distant lit window of Theon’s chamber far below, and something in his expression sharpened into hunger.

"After all this time."

The gem’s light pulsed brighter still in his palm, and as the wind screamed through the broken tower around him, the hooded man whispered into the storm, low and certain, like a promise he had waited far too long to keep.

"The game starts now."