Interlude: The Crown Prince vol 2

The carriage jolted over a cobblestone, and Aldric felt the impact in his teeth. He sat with his back rigid against the velvet seat, his gloved hands folded on his lap, his eyes fixed on the passing gray of the capital's walls. The ride from the Academy to the old quarter took forty minutes—time enough for his hands to stop shaking, time enough for the mask to settle back into place, time enough to remember every moment of this morning's failure.

He was not angry. That was the first lie he told himself, and the one he repeated most often.

Aldric was twenty-seven years old, Crown Prince of the realm, and he had never manifested a Class. Not at twelve, when the other children had awakened to their destinies and he had stood alone in the temple, waiting for a voice that never came. Not at twenty, when the last of his cousins had left him behind. Not now, watching his twelve-year-old brother weep with joy at an S-rank status that should have been his by birthright, his by blood, his by the sheer weight of being born first.

*Classless*, they whispered. *The Unmarked Prince. The Hollow Crown.*

He touched the signet ring on his right hand, the heavy gold band carved with the royal crest. It was warm from his body heat, solid, real. The only power he had ever possessed was the power of his birth, and now even that was threatened by a twelve-year-old commoner girl who could forge spells in mid-combat and a brother who summoned wyrms while he remained nothing, less than nothing, a placeholder for a throne he could not keep without the strength to hold it.

The memory of this morning rose unbidden. Lucan's jaw in his hand, the bone fragile beneath his fingers. The boy had gasped, his knees buckling, his reserve empty, his magic gone. For a moment, Aldric had felt it—the power, the control, the ability to make his brother *feel* something other than pity. He had squeezed, feeling the give of flesh, watching Lucan's eyes widen.

But not with fear. Never with fear.

With pity. With *mercy*, as if Aldric were the one to be pitied, the sad older brother lashing out at something he could never understand. And then Lucan had stepped forward. Empty, exhausted, broken, and he had *stepped forward*, had spoken those words about Class not meaning destiny, about being born everything and becoming nothing.

The words still burned in Aldric's chest like a coal he could not cough out.

The carriage stopped.

Aldric did not move immediately. He breathed in slowly, counting to ten, letting the cold settle over him like a mantle. He had learned long ago that anger was a luxury for men with power. For the powerless, anger was a weakness that showed in the eyes, in the voice, in the tremor of hands that could not strike back. He had spent fifteen years learning to control that tremor, to hide that weakness, to present the face of a prince even when he felt like a fraud.

He had laid hands on Lucan today. It had not been enough.

Aldric stepped from the carriage into the rain.

The old quarter smelled of rot and river-mud, of wine turned to vinegar in abandoned casks, of piss and smoke and the particular sour stench of poverty that no amount of perfume could mask. The street was narrow, the buildings leaning together like whispering conspirators, their upper floors touching overhead to block out what little light managed to penetrate the clouds. Somewhere, a baby cried. Somewhere else, a man screamed at his wife in a language Aldric did not recognize.

He pulled his cloak tighter—plain wool, unmarked, nothing to identify him as royalty. The Crown Prince did not visit this district. The Crown Prince did not exist here, in the dark, in the wet, in the places where the System's light did not reach.

He walked with purpose, his boots finding the path his memory had traced. The wine cellar was three streets down, past the tannery that stank of urine and lime, past the brothel with the red lantern that swung in the windless air. He did not look at the faces he passed. They did not look at him. In the old quarter, you learned not to see, not to remember, not to bear witness.

The steps down were slick with moss and black with mold. He descended carefully, one hand on the damp wall, feeling the stone crumble beneath his fingertips. The door at the bottom was oak, banded with iron that had rusted to the color of dried blood. It had no handle, no lock, no visible means of entry.

He knocked three times, paused, knocked twice more. The code had cost him a hundred gold sovereigns and the life of an informant who had tried to sell it twice. The man had been found in the river three days later, his tongue removed, his eyes gouged, his fingers broken. The Shadow Assassins did not tolerate competition.

The door opened without sound, without resistance, as if the wood had simply ceased to exist for a moment.

The Shadow Assassins' guildhall was smaller than he had expected, and larger than he had feared. A single chamber, stone walls weeping moisture, lit by tallow candles that smoked and spat and filled the air with the smell of rendered fat. The ceiling was lost in darkness, swallowed by shadows that seemed to move independently of the light. The floor was stone, worn smooth by centuries of feet that had walked here with purpose, with desperation, with the weight of final decisions.

In the center of the room stood a single chair. Empty.

The figure that waited beside it wore no face—just a mask of polished obsidian that reflected Aldric's own features back at him, distorted and strange, the mouth too wide, the eyes too dark. The figure's body was wrapped in gray cloth that shifted and moved like smoke. The eyes behind the mask were dark, unreadable, patient as the grave.

"Your Highness," the mask said. The voice was neutral, sexless, stripped of accent and emotion. "You requested a consultation."

Aldric did not flinch at the title. They knew, then. Of course they knew. Information was their currency too, and they had spent it to learn his secrets. He wondered what else they knew—about his failures, his fears, the way he woke sweating in the night from dreams of wyrms and stellar fire and the pity in his brother's eyes.

"Two targets," Aldric said. His voice did not shake. He had rehearsed this in the carriage, in the mirror, in the dark hours of the morning when sleep would not come and the memory of Lucan's defiance burned like acid. "A paladin and a wizard. Both... prodigies. Both threats to the stability of the realm."

"Children?" the mask asked, though Aldric knew the question was rhetorical, a test.

"Weapons." Aldric's hands tightened behind his back, hidden in the folds of his cloak. "Uncontrolled. Unregistered abilities that could destabilize the noble houses, provoke civil war, destroy the succession. The girl forged a spell mid-combat—no manual, no precedent. She burned twenty percent of her reserve in one heartbeat and survived. The boy summoned a wyrm at twelve years old. They are not children. They are threats that happen to look like children, and they will destroy everything if left unchecked."

The mask tilted, considering. The obsidian caught the candlelight and seemed to drink it in, reflecting nothing back. "You wish them removed?"

"Permanently," Aldric said. He let the word hang, cold and final, a stone dropped into still water. "But differently. Specifically." He stepped closer, close enough to smell the mask's breath—nothing, just cold air, as if the thing behind the mask did not breathe at all. "The girl dies. The paladin. Hallah Sovringard. I want her dead. Throat cut, heart stopped, however your craft demands. But I want it certain. I want her in the ground, in the dark, where she cannot forge any more miracles."

"And the wizard?" the mask asked. "The brother? The Class S?"

Aldric thought of Lucan's eyes, the way they had held his, unflinching, even as Aldric's fingers dug into his jaw. The defiance. The *pity*. "The wizard lives," he said slowly, tasting the words, weighing them. "But I want him broken. Terrified. I want him to watch her die, or find her body, or know that it was his disobedience that cost him everything." He paused, considering the methods, the possibilities. "Hurt him. Cut him if you must. Fingers, perhaps. Or burns—he has burns already, from his wyrm. Add to them. Let him scream. Let him understand that power means nothing when the shadows come, that his Class cannot protect him from pain. But keep him breathing. I want him alive to suffer. I want him to wake every morning remembering that he could not save her, that his defiance killed her, that he is small and weak and nothing."

The mask was silent for a long moment. The candlelight flickered, sending shadows dancing across the stone walls like living things, like hands reaching, like teeth biting. "The Spire is warded," the mask said finally. "The Academy is protected. Cost is triple for such targets. More, given the... specific requirements for the wizard."

"I am the Crown Prince," Aldric said. "I have access to the ward-keys. I know the rotation of the guards, the timing of the patrols, the blind spots in the scrying network. You will enter as palace servants delivering linens. No one questions servants. No one sees servants." He reached into his cloak and withdrew a heavy purse, larger than the first, the weight of it dragging at his shoulder. "Five thousand gold now. Five thousand when the girl is confirmed dead and the wizard is... broken."

"The girl carries something," the mask said, making no move to take the gold. "An echo. We have seen it before, in those touched by the old powers. It complicates the contract. She may not die easily. She may not stay dead."

"Then send three," Aldric said flatly, his voice hard as the stone beneath his feet. "Send five. Send however many blades it takes to put a twelve-year-old girl in her grave. I am not paying for effort. I am not paying for attempts. I am paying for a corpse, cold and rotting, and a boy who screams when he sees what his defiance has cost him."

The mask considered. Then, slowly, it reached out and took the purse, hefting it, testing its weight. "One week," the mask said. "The paladin will be dead within seven days. The wizard will be... damaged. Payment in full upon confirmation."

Aldric nodded. He turned to leave, then stopped, his hand on the damp stone of the stairway. "One thing more," he said, not turning back. "Make sure he knows it was me. Not my name, not my voice. But let him understand. Let him look at her body and know that this is what happens when you defy the Crown. When you pity your betters. When you forget your place."

He climbed the stairs, leaving the gold behind, leaving the darkness behind, leaving the mask and its silence and the weight of what he had just purchased. The rain had stopped, but the clouds remained, heavy and gray, pressing down on the city like a hand, like a lid, like the weight of a crown that had never fit quite right.

*I am protecting the succession*, he thought as he walked back to the carriage, his boots loud on the cobblestones now, the sound of a man who had nothing left to hide. *I am the only one who sees clearly. I am the only one with the strength to do what must be done.*

The lie felt thinner now, like paper held up to flame, scorching at the edges, blackening, curling. But it held. It would hold until the work was finished, until the girl was dead and the boy was screaming and the kingdom was safe from the chaos of their power, the insult of their existence.

He was not angry. He was not bitter. He was not envious, not frightened, not hollow.

He was simply... necessary.

The carriage door closed behind him with a sound like a coffin lid settling into place, final and absolute, and Aldric sat in the dark and smelled the leather and the wool and the faint lingering scent of his brother's soot, and he smiled.