‘What do you suppose we do, Steven?’ Henry asked me calmly as the cold night breeze wafted past us.

The two of us stood at my favourite meeting place, the top of The Tower. The almost full moon shone down upon us, complemented by the numerous stars dotted sporadically across the dark sky.

‘We’ll tell the children, of course,’ I replied, keeping my eyes closed. I tended to do that when I was enjoying myself or found myself particularly tranquil. ‘It’s their parents, is it not?’

‘Well, yeah,’ Henry said awkwardly. ‘But how do we break it to them? We can’t exactly just randomly walk up to them and say it.’

‘We can. It would not be proper etiquette, but we could do that,’ I said, opening my eyes and turning to face Henry.

He did not look nearly as calm as I felt. I knew he did not really like being up here, one hundred and ten metres above the ground, but I hadn’t called him here, it was he who had come to find me.

‘Whose parents is it again? I can’t quite remember,’ I squinted up at the sky now, trying to grasp a memory that seemed to have disappeared in the short time since it entered my mind.

‘Acclere’s, Stewart’s, Brown’s, and Jacobs’s,’ Henry said, and I could tell he was trying his hardest not to sound annoyed.

‘I apologise, my boy,’ I spoke quietly. ‘I know I can be an annoyance, but please refer to the children by their actual names. I know I didn’t like it when my old deputy head referred to me as ‘Mr Santrrer’.’

A pinch of colour appeared in Henry’s cheeks. ‘No! No, Steven, you’re nowhere near an annoyance! It is all my mistake, don’t you worry! It’s Natasha’s, Jay’s, Ethan’s, and Asbel’s parents!’

I chuckled. Even this high up, I tried to keep my laughter down, but I found that to be quite difficult. ‘You really are funny when you’re flustered, Henry.’

‘I’ll tell them in the morning, but you really should get some res-’

‘Do not worry about me, Henry, I can assure you that I am fine.’

Henry promptly opened his mouth and reclosed it. Then he took a deep breath in and spoke very carefully. ‘But, Steven, you know that you need rest. You’re not exactly in the…fittest state. The doctors would-’

‘I don’t care what those doctors say,’ I said quickly. I didn’t like interrupting people, but I did not want to touch on this topic especially. ‘I’m still standing, aren’t I? So I’ll keep going.’

‘Have you told Albert about it yet?’

‘No.’

‘I’m sure he’d want to know, Steven, you are the only family he has left, after all,’ Henry’s tone was almost pleading.

‘That he knows of. And I don’t want to worry the poor boy. Being troubled with that knowledge would do more harm than good to him.’

I was trying to steady my breathing. I remembered something my Grandad Albert had told me. ‘If you can steady your breathing, anything is possible’. If I could just steady my breathing, everything would be alright.

‘After finding out about the rules of inheritance for my position, I’m positively certain that the boy would not want to hear that, Henry.’

‘I just thought that you would be within the right mind to tell him,’ Henry spoke as though he were begging me for mercy. ‘He’d be worried about his Grandad. And if you just drop-’

‘That’s enough, Henry.’ I was calm. I was calm. I was calm. I knew I was. Why didn’t I feel it?

‘On another note, Steven,’ Henry began anew, ‘I have heard some…unfortunate news about Albert's first day at school.’

I snapped around to face him. A sharp pang of pain ran up my back as I did so, and I gritted my teeth and placed my right hand in the centre of my back, as though trying to conceal the pain.

‘What?’ I noticed that my words came out very quickly. ‘What happened?’

‘It happened in Form, he was standing at the front, supposed to be giving interesting facts about himself when, well…’

‘Well…?’

‘Yellow lightning began to appear on his arms and chest.’

It was at that moment that my heart stopped. ‘Y-you what?’

A cold sweat broke out on my forehead, and it had nothing to do with the wind. My eyes widened and my jaw set. It was now seemingly impossible to calm my breathing. It began to spiral out of control. To think they’d done that to him. Given him such a power. Oh Gods, why?

‘Apparently, the students dismissed it, they see their peers unable to control their powers quite often, but it gave his teacher quite the fright.’

‘To think…’ I whispered, ‘they would do that to my grandson…To think they cursed him with such a thing…laid such a burden on his back…’

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‘He contained it, Steven, he isn’t a dange-’

‘That’s beside the point…Henry…you know what that lightning means…it’s no sign…no Claiming…Albert holds a power that used to give me nightmares for days when I was young…And if he gets overwhelmed…lets it loose…Oh, Gods…the school would have to be evacuated if it didn’t get completely destroyed…’

‘But if he’s good at containing it then that isn’t an issue, right?’

‘He’s eleven…there must have been times that he hasn’t kept it in…Days he’s felt overcome by something…hidden and…let it all go…’

‘I’ve informed Miss Thomas that she cannot tell anybody.’

‘Miss Thomas? That’s his form teacher? We can trust her…I’m sure of it.’

I felt adrenaline surging through my veins. Cold dread gripped my heart. I knew that they had done horrible things to him, but to give him that power, and probably didn’t even know what he was capable of. No, he knew exactly what he was capable of. No ordinary eleven-year-old would be able to hold it in, not unless they were experienced. There’s no way they…trained him with it too, right?

Gods bless his little heart, holding it in for the sake of everybody else around him. It had changed my whole viewpoint on him. If he had held it in then he must know about the power. Must know what it does to him.

A harsh jab of fear seemed to stab my heart. If he knows what that power does to him…had he used it in the past? But even if he did hold it in today, there was no guarantee that he’d be able to hold it in the future. If something overwhelmed him with rage, fear, grief, or any strong emotion of the sort, then it would break loose, I’m sure of it.

‘If you don’t mind me asking, Steven, which do you think is? Out of the Six?’ Henry was still speaking very carefully, and it hurt me that he thought he had to be scared.

‘It can’t be the Controlling, we know that that’s in Croatia somewhere, with Miss Cooks,’ I thought very long and hard about this question, depending on the answer this could become either a bigger or smaller issue. ‘But if you ask me, any of the other five is worse. The Controlling is the weakest unless it’s in the right hands.’

‘What if it’s something like the Death or Colos-’

‘I dread to think of it, so do not speak of it,’ I said quickly. ‘Either one of those two would put the entire Valley in danger if he let it loose at school.’

‘And I take it you don’t want him to know that we know?’

‘He’s a smart boy, he’ll figure out that we know, but do your best to conceal it from him, please,’ I sighed. If he had the Death…I didn’t know what I would do. There was simply no way he could harness something like that. At eleven? He had a better chance of becoming a God. Even if he had let it out in the past, it would have most likely been nothing but a short burst, and it would have been out of control.

‘I wonder if Rob knows,’ Henry said, stepping up next to me and gazing up at the stars. He slowly turned his head to look up into my eyes. ‘Shouldn’t we invite Rob to the City? He’s the closest thing Albert has to a parent.’

‘As much as I understand where you are coming from, and as much as I want to invite him, the law forbids us,’ I said painfully. ‘When Albert is Prime Minister, he can choose to invite him or not.’

‘Don’t speak like he’s going to become Prime Minister next year or something,’ Henry said sternly. ‘You still have a while to go, you’re not even sixty yet.’

‘And as you pointed out, I’m not even sixty yet the doctors say I should spend most of my waking moments in bed.’

Henry opened and closed his mouth once more. Then he changed the topic. That’s what he always does. There was a reason we’d been through three different topics already.

‘What if we could use Albert’s power to help win the war? Magic can’t do anything against one of the Six.’

‘Henry,’ I said, taking a deep breath, ‘with all due respect, my grandson is eleven. Asking him to show us what the power is and having him use it would be too much. And I thought we agreed that we wouldn’t let him know that we know?’

Henry sighed. ‘For a son of Athena, I don’t really remember much do I?’

‘Henry, don’t belittle yourself. There is a reason you are one of my most trusted companions.’

He smiled at that. My mind was still whirling. Henry thought that I should tell Albert about my problems, but there’s no way I could do that. And his power…even the thought of it scared me. I realised that the best thing I could do would be to remain silent on the matter to Albert. He could not know. The worry, the fear, that would instil in him…I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.

I wondered what would happen if the City found out about Albert’s power. I doubted most people would understand what it was, what the yellow lightning meant, as we had banned it from being taught in schools, but if anyone saw it, even a photo of it on the battlefield, that would be enough to strike fear into the hearts of all RoCitizens. If his power were to be revealed, I doubted that anybody would want him as Prime Minister once I passed.

I thought back to another thing my Grandad Albert had told me. ‘Steven, there will undoubtedly be a time where you have to make a big decision, but you have to make sure it’s the right one’. Was this that big decision? No. There was no chance that this was the ‘big decision’ in my life that he had mentioned.

‘You’re scared, aren’t you, Steven?’

My breathing stopped. That wasn’t Henry’s voice. My eyes widened. I hadn’t heard that voice in over ten years. It was my Mummy’s voice. It was something she had said to me just a few weeks before I had watched my own wife fall to the ground dead in front of me. Just a few weeks before Amy tore apart the entire family. A few weeks before my Mummy was murdered.

‘You can hide, Steven. It may feel wrong, but you can hide.’

I gulped. I felt my entire body begin to tremble. I poured all of my focus into keeping tears from my eyes. You’re pathetic if you cry, I thought to myself. What grown man would cry at just the thought of his Mummy?

Hiding from my responsibilities seemed like a good idea. Hiding from Amy seemed like a good idea. Hiding away from the world seemed like a good idea. For the second time that night, my breathing became shaky.

‘Mummy…’ I whispered.

‘Pardon?’ Henry seemed puzzled, and for good reason, too.

‘It’s nothing,’ I replied, half-wishing that this conversation could be over. I knew that Henry could tell I didn’t really want to talk, because after I said that he nodded slightly and spoke once more.

‘I’ll leave you to it, then.’

‘Goodnight, Henr-’ I coughed. Very hoarsely.

‘Careful, Steven,’ Henry panicked. ‘And, look, I’m sorry if anything I said tonight got on your nerves or offended you-’

‘Do not worry, Henry. Goodnight.’

Henry nodded and Dis-Apparated. The loud crack echoed throughout the sky.

I sighed heavily. So many things had just happened. I had discovered Albert’s power, remembered Mummy, and been told to go to bed by a man nearly forty years my junior.

I will admit that the introduction of Albert’s power completely changed things. If worst came to worst, he could use the power. Henry was right in a sense; it would take a lot of powerful spells to quell something like what Albert wields. Depending on which of the five he had inherited, he could easily blow up, deceive, weave in between, or simply just crush Amy’s army beneath his huge feet. It sent a shiver down my spine at the thought. Pure, little Albert doing something like that.

‘Mummy, are you proud of me?’ I spoke to the glistening moon.

Sighing, I whispered to myself. ‘I’m sorry, Mummy, but I’m going to keep my silence on this one.’