Chapter 11

CHAPTER11

The last few days had been the most difficult of his life.

Between leaving Jade behind and missing his mother, Larkin had fallen into despair. Nothing looked right, nothing felt right, nothing tasted right… Nothing was right at all, and he wasn’t sure how to get past it.

Everything seemed negative, and that simply wasn’t right. It wasn’t Larkin’s worldview. He saw everything as positive, and when it wasn’t, there was room for improvement.

But there was no way to think of leaving Jade as positive, and there was nowhere to go from his mother’s death but down.

The idea of fulfilling his familial obligations in an arranged marriage should’ve helped some, at least, because that was partially why he’d come back. But it only depressed him more, leaving him feeling more isolated.

It didn’t help that he was much more aware of how the many people in the castle touched each other. Discreetly, usually, or in places where they thought nobody would notice. The servants who stole a quick kiss before parting ways, or the nobles who sat a little too close during the daily government sessions.

Before he’d left for his trip, Larkin would have been scandalized. He heard the rumors now, too, and thought—what did it matter, if people were enjoying each other’s company? So what if Baron Somerfield and Duke Insbrook had been seen fondling each other on a riding trip? Did it matter if Lady Estelle and Sir Edwin walked the gardens together? They weren’t hurting anyone.

It wasn’t crass, or degenerate. They were simply having a good time.

There were much more important things to worry about.

Larkin sighed, looking around his mother’s office and wishing for all the world that she’d simply show back up. That nothing had really happened to her and everything was fine.

She used to sit by that massive desk while lecturing him about his attitude toward rule. “Be a bit more like your brother. Spend time getting to know the courtiers and advisors.”

Larkin always nodded and said yes, and she’d smile at him knowingly. Of course Larkin wasn’t going to become friendly with everybody the way Elric was.

When she wasn’t lecturing him, they sometimes sat by the sofa and read together. For hours, sometimes, before his father had passed. Time had become more scarce when she’d taken over sole rule, but she still found a few moments here and there for them to discuss a book they’d both enjoyed.

Larkin went to the sofa and sat down, keeping both feet on the floor as was proper. He didn’t want to stain it. He didn’t want to upset anything about it, really. It still had the faint smell of her perfumes—but who knew how long that would last.

Jade could probably smell all the places she’d touched here in this office.

Tears threatened to well up again. Larkin quickly rubbed them away, not wanting to be this pathetic in his mother’s office. She would’ve given him a handkerchief to get himself presentable, and kindly not commented on the tears.

He startled when the door opened.

“Larkin?” Elric asked, stepping inside. “What are you doing here? It’s quite early.”

Larkin blushed. He didn’t want to admit that he’d just wanted to feel close to his mother again. It sounded so stupid, especially from a prince of the kingdom. He should’ve been stronger than that instead of seeming like a wounded child running to his mother for help. “I thought I’d start sorting through some paperwork,” he lied. “I know there’s a lot to do, and you have a lot to handle, so I wanted to be helpful.”

Elric looked at him for a moment, and Larkin was briefly unsettled by that stare. He squirmed a little before getting up, presenting himself properly as a prince instead of acting as though he’d been caught doing something wrong. “I can take some time to go through the documents with you,” he said after a moment.

Larkin was relieved when Elric’s scrutiny shifted off of him, and he nodded, heading back over to the big desk and pulling up a less ornate chair to give Elric their mother’s usual position. “I’m not sure where to start,” he admitted, looking at the piles of documents on the desk, the scrolls and the ledgers.

“Let’s sort things. Personal letters in one pile, anything official looking… I’m sure she had a system,” Elric said. “I’ve spoken with her secretary too. He’s compiling a few things for me. I’ll have to figure out what I need to keep and what I can throw away.”

“Throw away?” Larkin blinked at him. “Aren’t those important documents? We should file them away in case they’re needed in the future, shouldn’t we?”

Elric gave him an amused look. “Larkin, not everything is important. Like… Look at this scrap. It’s just a half-written poem. Two geese lead the flock // one is green // the other flies… this is awful. I know Mother thought herself a poet at times, but she really had no talent for it.”

Larkin thought it sounded nice, really, something worthy of preserving if only because it would forever remind him of her. He’d see the geese, and he’d think of her poetry, and she would live on in his memory. “But I like her poetry,” he protested. “I want to keep it. I don’t want to see anything gone.”

“I’m not going to waste space in my office preserving this,” Elric countered. “But if you want this scrap, fine.” He handed the half-ripped paper to Larkin. “Are you going to want all her love letters, too?”

Larkin blushed. He wasn’t sure why it was such a terrible thing to be sentimental, but Elric was making him feel ridiculous. “Well, yes, actually…” He trailed off. “It’s history. It’s beautiful. One day, we might want to look back at it.” Then he paused as he truly absorbed Elric’s words. His office? No, it still belonged to their mother. She might be gone, but Elric had his own office. “Why would we need to clear her office, anyway?” he asked cautiously. “You have your own office already. We can preserve everything in here.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Elric said. “My office is much smaller. Now that I’m going to be king, I need more space of my own.”

Larkin bit his lip. That wasn’t how things were meant to work, was it? He’d lied and said he was going to sort through paperwork, but he’d never intended to get rid of any of it. What if they burned something important? They’d never be able to get it back. “But…”

“Larkin. Focus.” Elric pointedly picked up another piece of parchment. “If it doesn’t seem important, set it over here. We’ll burn those documents to clear space for more.”

Everything seemed important to Larkin. The old fountain pen she didn’t use anymore. The paperweights with delicate designs inside the glass. The stack of poems.

The letters he’d written to her when he’d been on the trip north a few summers ago.

“I’ll keep these things in my chambers,” Larkin said, trying to keep his voice from wobbling. “Anything you don’t need, I want it.”

Elric rolled his eyes. “You’re so sentimental. I’ll have to check everything first, of course, to make sure whether it’s important or not. Who knows if she negotiated treaties in her private letters…”

That all made sense. Larkin didn’t mind, as long as nothing was destroyed. If he couldn’t… if he couldn’t ever see his mother again, then at the very least, he wanted to hold on to as much of her as he could.

“Are you going to want her dresses, too?” Elric asked while he went through the desk’s drawers.

“Her dresses?” Larkin stopped reading through another set of poems.

“Since I’m moving into the larger chambers. I told the servants they should sell everything that was out of style, and keep the things that might be salvaged for my future bride.”

Larkin stared at his brother in alarm. “You’re… Elric, that’s disrespectful! You should wait at least a year before doing something like that. These are still Mother’s spaces!”

“I plan on marrying before the year is over, Larkin. I can’t move my future wife into one of the guest spaces. And we’d want the large bedroom as our conjugal chamber. Mother emptied out most of Father’s rooms too. She didn’t cling to useless sentimentality.”

“But she didn’t throw everything away, either! She gave us a lot of his wardrobe, and I know you kept his sword. Nobody’s been living in Father’s rooms.” Larkin swallowed hard, having a hard time believing how quickly his brother was ready to move on after their mother’s death. Obviously, they needed to run the kingdom, but it all seemed like it was happening so quickly. Elric had a response at the ready for everything, which made Larkin feel a little stupid, but he still couldn’t shake the idea that this was somehow wrong.

“Of course no one lived in Father’s rooms,” Elric said, his voice dripping with condescension. “She never remarried.”

Larkin looked down at the parchment he was holding, but he couldn’t really focus on the words. This was all so wrong, but who was he to say it? He was only the younger brother. “As you wish,” he said softly.

“We can’t let anybody see any weaknesses, Larkin.” Elric sighed loudly. “Especially after that attack on Vanea.”

Larkin’s head snapped up. “Attack?”

“The reports from the survivors say it was a dragon, but I’m having a hard time believing that. A sorcerer, maybe, sent to weaken us while things are already in turmoil.” Elric’s lips curled in disdain. “It was barely even a city. All they had were the hot springs. It’s not a major trade hub, so I don’t know what their goals were. But I also don’t have time to figure it out now, with the coronation around the corner.”

That did seem to be coming up very quickly, something Larkin dreaded for reasons he couldn’t explain. He couldn’t shake the feeling that something bad was on the horizon. Maybe… maybe Jade had been right?

No, that wasn’t possible. Elric was just trying to be methodical and efficient.

“How bad was it?” he asked quietly. Elric had said survivors. How many were dead? What had Jade done? And why? “In the city? Did a lot of people get hurt?”

“Did anyone… Larkin, it doesn’t matter right now. When they come ask for our help, and once the coronation is over, we’ll task somebody with looking into it,” Elric chided him. “We have more important things to think about.”

“These are the lives of our subjects,” Larkin protested. “There really isn’t anything more important.”

Elric sighed, looking at him for a long moment. “This is precisely why you aren’t suited for the throne, Larkin. You get too focused on the little things.” He tossed a scroll back onto the desk. “Come. We have other things to do than sort through old papers.”

Larkin shook his head. He wanted to spend a little more time in their mother’s favored space. “I’ll stay. I’ll sort things like you want.”

Elric looked torn, but he finally nodded. “All right. Try not to spend too much time in here. You have plenty of other things you could be doing.”

Larkin wasn’t quite sure what else he could be doing, because there was nothing he wanted to be doing. He bowed his head to his brother, watching as Elric left the office. He sighed, going back to the desk.

Maybe he would have been better off staying with Jade, given how useless he was. But… had Jade really attacked Vanea? No, he couldn’t believe Jade would have…

But Jade had killed those attackers. He’d eaten them, right in front of Larkin’s eyes. And if Jade was angered by Larkin’s disappearance, it would stand to reason that he could heartlessly destroy Vanea in revenge.

This was why he was right to leave. He’d forgotten that Jade was a dragon. A beast. A…

His eyes welled up again.

Larkin quickly rubbed the tears away and turned his attention back to his mother’s things. Elric had already taken a stack of documents with him. All the drawers on the desk were opened, most of them empty.

Larkin frowned when he noticed the sunlight hitting the bottom drawer. The wood grain was different from the other drawers.

It was probably just a coincidence—the carpenter had run out of wood, or he’d mistakenly taken the wrong plank.

But when he went to close the drawer, he noticed a small design at the very back of the drawer—a carved bird.

A lark.

Larkin checked the other drawers, but none of them had the same mark. He went back to the marked drawer and ran his fingers around the inside. It wasn’t as deep as the other drawers, he realized. It wasn’t much of a difference, but he lined up a paper along the lengths, and there was a definite discrepancy.

It had to be a secret compartment. How had they missed this before? How had Elric missed it? Elric must have known there was a secret space somewhere, right? Surely Elric’s own desk had a few of these compartments.

Larkin fumbled around a bit, trying to figure out how to remove the false bottom, until he realized that there was a very, very small hole in one corner. All Larkin would need was a pin of some sort…

He found a long pin among all her old pens, shaped perfectly for the hole. Once he pushed it in, one side of the drawer’s bottom lifted up enough for him to remove it entirely.

Underneath were two letters, both sealed with the queen’s mark. The first was addressed to him.

Larkin picked both up and quickly stuffed them into his coat. He replaced the drawer and cleaned up the desk, his hands shaking. He desperately wanted to read the letter immediately, but he had this strange sensation that he couldn’t do it here. He couldn’t risk anybody seeing or knowing he had these documents.

Larkin packed up some more of his mother’s belongings, and once the desk looked more or less how it had when he’d first entered her office, he took some of the sentimental items and went back to his own chambers.