32

Luc Zelsor and the Week His Father Took Him

“I want you to take in a ward,” Luc said to his mother as he sat back in his father’s throne with folded arms. He was only half his mother’s size, his voice young and high. No one else was in the cold throne room while Luc’s mother offered a tribute of wreathes to the sky deities. She hung one on the back of each throne.

“Why is that, Luc? Won’t you be jealous if I give you a brother or sister?” his mother asked. Her mouth moved in silence as she counted the chairs.

Luc pulled his legs up on the large seat to cross them. “Not a sister—that would be useless. I want a brother.” He scratched his chin as he thought it through. “I want a brother who isn’t afraid of anything.”

“That’s strange.” His mother pushed her pale hair behind her pointed ear and lifted the brightest wreath of all to hang upon the back of the Dark Queene’s ceremony throne. “Why would you ever ask me for such a thing?” she asked. She pulled the next wreath out and studied its thorny black rose stems.

Luc looked down and twisted the laces of his boots. “All the other childling males are afraid of me.”

His mother lowered the wreath, finally looking at him. She released a chuckle as she came over and patted him on the head, scuffing his ruby hair. “You’re a fox, Luc. That’s nothing to be afraid of. Besides, you have the power to make them like you, don’t you? I thought foxes could lure others in. If you pull them in and show some kindness, they will like you as I do.”

Luc released a large sigh and folded his arms again. “I don’t know how to be kind. And father wants me to be cruel.”

His mother’s light laugh drifted through the throne room as she went back to her wreathes. “So be cruel to others when you’re with him and be kind to others when you’re with me. I will teach you kindness.”

Luc glanced toward the tall murky windows. The cloud of torment raged in the sky above the palace, ever swirling, ever restless. He thought of what his father would do if he ever caught Luc being kind.

A day later, Luc’s father returned to the palace with a deep frown and a look in his eyes that made the palace fairies stay far out of his way. High Prince Reval slammed his chamber door shut, trapping Luc’s mother in the room with him. Luc waited in the hallway, sure they did not realize he was out there. He turned and pressed his thin ear against the door to listen. His stomach dropped when he learned his father meant to cast his mother out—out of the palace, out of the capitol, out of the Dark Corner of Ever. His father did not even give a reason why.

“I’ll only leave if I can take Luc,” his mother’s voice sailed through the door, and Luc went still, his thoughts falling away until his mind was empty and listening and waiting and desperate. He pressed a hand against the door, imagining he was reaching for his mother through it.

But everything that followed was unexpected.

Luc did not expect his mother to make a bold bet to win him so he could leave with her.

He did not expect his father to agree.

But most of all… In the day that followed, he did not expect his mother to lose the bet.

He did not expect to have to watch his mother walk away from the palace with a straw basket of her belongings and a black rose wreath upon her head.

But what Luc did not expect the most was to be trapped with Prince Reval forever. To forever be cruel, instead of liked.