SINDRED

"The boy needs to be protected. Sindred, I want you to watch over him."

I watched him. Watched as he and his friend snacked on apples and sausage out in the fields, safe within the palace walls. Kept my distance, but made sure they didn't go sneaking off where they were told not to go. When the sky filled with fire, I watched one boy run back up the hill and I waited… I was so sure the other would be close at his heels. I crept closer, only to be knocked off my feet when a falling rock smashed to the ground nearby, sending out an explosion of dirt and debris. By the time I caught my breath and pushed myself to standing, there was no sign of the prince. Darkness clogged the air and the forest was in flames. I stood there, frozen in place, for longer than I'd like to admit. My world was spinning; I could barely see through the searing clouds of smoke. What was more frightening: the stars crashing down from the sky, or how utterly I had failed at my most important assignment?

"I want you to watch over him. You're right. It is a lot of responsibility."

By the time I reach the palace, it's in chaos: a cacophony of screams and pounding feet. Ironborn swarm the grounds in their gold-plated armor and spiked helms, holding up magical barriers against the onslaught of flaming rocks dropping from the heavens, herding groups of terrified people with stern commands, putting out flames with a sweep of their wands. The boy Leon goes straight for a company of king's guards who stand sentry at the front gate of the palace. Desperate to find Ezebel, I dart inside through the kitchen entrance.

She's not in the apothecary, but that's not surprising. I don't find her in the king's study, either, or his war room. The halls leading to the ballroom are crowded with people, noble and peasant alike. I try to push through, but it is impossible. They huddle together, forming a solid blockade. There are people crying, others trying to console them, some begging for an audience with the king, others shouting obscenities. There is a constant banging of many fists on the door, a few yelps of pain as guards do their best to keep folk from barging in.

"Please," I say to a young maid I've seen a few times before. "I need to get through."

She glances over her shoulder, looks right through me and gives a man behind me a dirty look.

"I need to get through!" I repeat loudly. No one reacts.

I squeeze my way out of the mob, determined to find another way in. There is a guard at the stairway to the ballroom balcony, spear at the ready. "I need to speak with the king! Or the White Witch," I tell him.

He doesn't hear me, doesn't see me.

"The prince is in danger!" I scream.

The man doesn't even twitch. His eyes continue to watch the nearby crowd.

In the distance, something hits the earth with such force that the floors of the palace tremble, the weighty tapestries flutter. Everyone staggers, a few fall.

"Somebody!" I plead, spinning around.

Ezebel made a mistake. I should never have said I was ready. The prince is my responsibility. It was my task to watch over him. But when danger arrived with unexpected severity, I did nothing. I didn't go to him, try to protect him myself. I watched, and waited. I lost sight of him, and then went running to get some hero who would swoop in and be the rescuer. It's my assignment, but I expected someone else to do the hard part for me. I'm just a coward. A child. Useless and invisible.

That boy, Leon. He's the prince's best hope.

Back outside, the air is heavy with dark smoke. I find the closest king's guard and tap him on the elbow. "Do you know where the prince is?" I ask. "Or his young friend? Can you help me?

The man looks at his arm, shakes it a little, then goes back to standing at attention. He coughs under his breath.

Part of me wants to slap him, stamp my foot, roar with frustration.

Instead, I slip away, searching the front courtyard for any sign of that boy with the sandy blonde hair. Then I notice the king, atop a horse, wearing armor and a deep green cloak to match the guards who cluster around him.

The king is speaking with the High Priest, who hovers a few feet above the ground, looking down at the ruler astride his steed. The wizard is dressed in full ceremonial garb: barbed iron headdress splayed around his silver-painted face like rays around the sun, bits of gold-plated metal braided into his long beard, jingling robes the color of dried blood.

When I get closer, I realize their conversation is an argument. I can see the sheen of sweat on the king's flushed face. His horse dances in place, aware of his rider's agitation.

I'm still too far to hear what the High Priest is saying, but I hear the king's response. "I will not take your orders. This is about my son. My son," he snarls.

The High Priest says something else, again too quietly for me to pick up the words. I see him gesture towards the forest with a wave of his arm, and my eyes follow, looking down the hill at the fiery landscape. The whole area is enveloped in flames, except one section, a dark hole in the blazing hillside.

My hands go to my mouth, as if to stop a sound from escaping. The prince is out there somewhere, alone in a world that's burning down around him. "The boy needs to be protected." This is my fault. My fault.

I'm so fixated on the destruction of the forest that I don't even see her crouch before me until she takes my hand. "Sindred?" the queen asks. Her purple skirts pool around her, covered in dirt and ash.

"The prince," I choke out, my eyes filling with tears. "He's- He's-"

The queen's gray-smudged cheeks show tear-tracks of her own, but right now her eyes are dry. She squeezes my hand, her skin so warm compared to mine. "My son will be alright," she says. "The Ironborn will find him. They will save him."

For a moment, I don't know what to say. She seems so confident, so sure.

"Where is Ezebel?" I ask, wiping my cheeks.

"I don't know," she says. "Come with me; I'll help you find her."

"No, wait," I say, as she tugs on my hand. "Listen, please. We have to go after the prince. He's out there and…"

She frowns. "The wizards will protect my son. Look." She points towards the hill. A battalion of wizards fly in formation across the field, armor gleaming in the light of the fires.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

"I just want to make sure. Please," I whisper.

She looks to her husband, who has drawn his sword and is swinging it side to side with each word yelled at the High Priest. Then she looks back at the blazing forest, and the blackened crater.

Then we're running. The queen holds her skirts with one hand and pulls me along with the other. No one looks our way as we sprint through the gardens and into the burning fields. Above us, the Ironborn are on the hunt. Soon they will see us, but it doesn't matter. Without the High Priest to override her orders, the queen will not be questioned.

Still, I am not prepared for the way my limbs suddenly freeze, held in place by some unseen force. We are quickly surrounded.

"Your majesty, it is not safe," one of the soldiers says. Slowly, I regain mobility as they release us from their spell. I duck closer to the queen, using her to hide as best I can.

"Shield us, then," the queen says. "I trust you to find my son, but what if he is injured? He will need his mother. I need to be with him."

It's while the wizards are distracted by us that he emerges from the fire, a soot-covered boy walking out of the scorched trees. Somehow we all know him to be the prince, though he wears the ashen guise of some dark phantom, blending in with the night.

Except his eyes. His eyes are ablaze with searing red light, a glow that seems to come from within.

Lady Katalyn falls to her knees.

.

They lock him in the University's highest tower. No one is allowed to see him, not even his parents. At first, the king and queen are compliant. After a few days, they start to worry, to question. But when they go to the High Priest, he claims the boy is unsafe to be released, to even be seen, that he is possessed, inhabited by a demonic force.

When the king summons Ezebel for counsel, she brings me with her.

The queen is tucked into one of the study's enormous armchairs, her shoulders slumped and hands clasped in her lap. She's wearing a white linen chemise, long black hair in tangles around her head. There's a grayish tinge to her skin, bruised circles under her eyes. "I just want to see my son," the queen says, with a level of weary ferocity.

"It's not that we don't trust the Ironborn," the king says. "Adain was clearly not himself. He survived. How did he… And his eyes were like… like fire. We all saw. We just… Can we not just…" He gestures around, as if looking for the right words in the air. Then his hands fall to his side with a sigh.

My nails bite into the palms of my hands. For days I've been plagued by visions of the prince's strange glowing eyes. I'm unable to get them out of my head. In my dreams the boy is screaming in pain, his body twisted and stretched as he transforms into some fiery monster. He was my responsibility, and whatever he faced out in the woods, I let it happen. It's my fault.

Ezebel narrows her eyes. "Have you eaten?" she asks, looking from one of them to the other.

The queen shakes her head.

"That's not important!" the king blusters. "How dare-"

"You cannot ride to battle if you're wasting away!" Ezebel interrupts. "Look at you both. Sleep-deprived and falling to pieces. How can you expect to save anybody?"

"Save him? He's perfectly safe where he is!" the king says.

"No!" the queen says. The king instantly quiets, lowers his hands. "He is not, Graygon. He is a prisoner. You don't...We don't know. How are we to know?"

"Ezebel, do you know if he's alright?" the king asks, falling down into the hair behind his desk. "Have any of your eyes seen him? Please, we…"

"You know the University is beyond my reach," Ezebel says, lowering her eyes. "I'm sorry."

"Wait, I…" I start, then become unsure. Have I not failed enough, as it is? Yet I still find myself saying, "What if I go?"

"That place is a fortress of magical wards and iron bars," Ezebel says, emphasizing the word iron for my benefit. "It's impossible."

"But what if I followed someone, and they didn't-" I try to argue.

"No!" Ezebel snaps, and at the same time, someone knocks on the door.

The king gets up to answer it, and Ezebel and I move to the side so whoever is there cannot immediately see us.

"Your Highness," a young voice says. After a moment I recognize it as Leon, the prince's friend. "I am here to...We have to get Adain out of there. Please, Your Highness. They'll kill him."

Before the king can respond, the queen is on her feet and has a hand on his shoulder. She ushers the boy inside. "You poor boy," she says softly, sitting him down by the fire in the chair she just vacated. "I'm so sorry. It's going to be alright, I promise. We're all worried about Adain. We won't let him come to any harm." She looks up briefly and says to the room, "Can you send for some wine and something to eat?"

At a nod from Ezebel, I go.

I don't bother trying to get the attention of any of the passing servants. There's no point. This glamour has gotten completely out of my control. To most, I'm less noticeable than their own shadow, no matter how much I shout or wave my hands. Only a handful of people seem to be unaffected: Ezebel, the king and queen, Bianca. But why? You have to feel it. Feel, Sindred. Part of me wishes my lessons with Aurelius hadn't stopped. I have so many questions. I did it. I convinced myself so fully that I fooled them all. Almost all. But what happens when you believe too strongly? When the glamour becomes too tangible, too real. What if one day, no one can see me? Do I just slip out of existence, as if I never was?

Would it make a difference?

I've gotten lost in my thoughts, don't see Bianca come barrelling up the stairs until she practically slams into me. "Sindred," she says, breathless. She grabs my hands. "I was looking for you! Something is happening. Is it true? The prince. Is he in that tall tower?"

I blink. "What's wrong?" I ask, trying to piece it together from her urgent questions.

"Come with me," she says, pulling me back the way I came. She heads to the west wing of the palace, practically running.

"Bianca, where are we going? What's going on?" I ask.

"You have to see!" she says.

There's a gallery on the second floor of the palace, winding all the way across the west side. It is lined with large arched windows, and has a massive balcony overlooking the city of Ylvemore, which stretches out down the sloping cliffside to the rocky coast beyond. The sunset balcony is not as popular as the sunrise balcony off the grand ballroom, which overlooks the royal gardens. It's far from all the main parlors and a bit of a walk from the nobles' quarter. It's one floor below the royal chambers, which have an impressive balcony of their own. And with the queen's fantastically colored murals decorating random halls and corners of the palace, who cares about a bunch of old statues and dusty portraits anymore? The whole palace has become an art gallery.

Yet even as we arrive, a small crowd is growing on the sunset balcony. Bianca pushes her way through the courtiers standing in the open doorway and expertly weaves through the throng, pulling me behind her. There are whispers around us, gasps and muffled shrieks. In the distance, I hear a rumbling.

Without a care about her station or their huffs of complaint, Bianca shoulders people aside and wedges us between the onlookers at the edge of the railing. "Look," she says, pointing.

The University is practically a city of it's own, shining buildings set apart from the rest by their golden-domed roofs and pearly white marble. There are many towers throughout the campus, all of them reaching ridiculously high above the rest of the city, practically to the height of the palace. But one tower stands out, taller and thinner than all of the rest, expanding at the top in a way that would surely collapse if not for magic. Dripping with gleaming gold, each of its branching turrets tiled blue to match the sky it reaches for. It should look clumsy and haphazard, but somehow it seems elegant, like that bulbous upper section is floating.

Right now, it's burning.

"The prince?" Bianca asks. "I heard-"

Holding my breath, I watch as the highest turret cracks, stone showering down. A ball of fire bursts out of the tower, but stops just beyond, held back by a barely visible net, magical strands shimmering silver in the afternoon sun. If that is the prince, my nightmares have come true. He has become something else, something terrible. A monster of flaming destruction.

A woman on the balcony screams.

"What is that?" a man asks.

The ball of fire grows, a rainbow of colorful sparks shooting in all directions. The net falls away, and as it does, the tower begins to crumble.

There is something, or someone, inside of that flaming sphere. A small shape, soaring into the sky with a streak of fire, disappearing into the glow of the sun.

"Sindred, I want you to watch over him."