I was six when my aunt and cousin were assassinated.

My childhood was for the most part uneventful until that fateful day. Like any common youth I enjoyed playing the dashing hero as a child. Yet to be entrapped by the decorum of statecraft, I’d rampage the halls of my family’s estates eager to share my flights of fantasy.

My had parents remained in the capital while I absconded to the countryside during the tail end of Autumn that year. The red brick manor house two days north of Dannbourne was always more home to me than those stifling apartments mother preferred we stay in as a family. That was before our role in statecraft took a turn towards the more prominent.

Now trapped in a cell exiled from the nation I bled for I find that manor house to feel ever more an illusion of nostalgia.

I miss that manor house. The winding staircases that seem endlessly large when each step came to my knees. The craftsmanship of the inner arches that created an illusion of height along the corridor wings.

It was not wholly the building that I miss. It was the staff bustling around with cleaning supplies, the local town gossip on their lips whenever I was out of sight. The bark from the kennels outside, with the musky scent of wet dog ever present after a downpour. Even when the manor was near empty it felt full of mysteries, a place I could plunder all afternoon to my heart’s delight. It was a privilege, dear reader. Please forgive my indulgences.

By day I would wear thick leather boots to trample through the mud as I ‘helped’ train the dogs. They were shepherd and mountain breeds who we leased to the local townships during deep winter each year. Even as an energetic child I could barely keep up with their boundless gaits across paddocks and cattle fields. My afternoons were often punctuated by a warm drink and a nap but only after I had given each dog a hug.

Come nightfall my reign of terror began. Having napped or not, the staff were, at my behest, organised to suit whichever fantasy I had concocted during the day.

My guards, esteemed knights and squires of the realm tasked with guarding my life above their own, happily volunteered to play the heel to my hero. Only grim Syr Joyce, grandpa’s old First Blade, refused to take part. But she never stopped her juniors from acquiescing to my fun.

My nannies were ever eager to be the supporting cast. Governess Carol, a woman of marvellous height and audacious hairstyles, was my right hand in organising my performances. She was trained in the operatic arts - potentially of the second heightening I now suspect - and always made the most convincing damsel or eccentric villain. From mother to son, Carol had been one of my family’s closest confidants since before I was born. I ascribe my future court fashion to her teachings of colour and texture from those days making costumes together. I only had the patience for it during those afternoons it was too stormy for me to pet the dogs. To this day I miss her lilting lullabies. They were most often sung whenever I missed my parents in those early days alone in the manor.

I hum those same tunes to myself now whenever frost settles on my bedsheets in this damp cell.

My childhood staff were angels. They had been handpicked by mother and father not merely for their competence but for their companionship. Looking back their generosity was taken for granted by my younger self. Throwing fits when I could not match Carols clean stitches, or whenever Syr Joyce stole away a performing squire right before the third act because “Duty must come first, young master.” As if duty was succour to the grief of loss.

Forgive me, dear reader, for these minor infractions. I was only six at the time. I did not, could not, comprehend how finite my gleeful childish adventures were going to become. Even now I struggle to move onto the meat and bones, but I promise this opening is important.

I loved my staff and I hope they too enjoyed my performances. From maniacal antagonists to supportive side characters, they each lent themselves to their roles. I was able to perform musicals or dramas, comedies and tragedies all to my little heart’s delight. Becoming a ruler of people was incomprehensible at the time despite how I ruled that manor. I was all about the performance. Home the only stage I required to sate my appetite.

It was during one of my plays of fantasy that father arrived at the Winter estate cloaked all in black.

My father, once the youngest of three now one, arrived quite unusually. He rode in a single carriage burdened with eight of our most distinguished knights. No wider entourage, no herald sent prior to a squire alerting us to the silent rolling of an armoured carriage on the unsealed path. The staff scrambled to present me out the front of the manor. Mother was not with him, having remained by Grandfather’s side in the capital I would later learn.

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I was held back by Syr Joyce as father’s companions, hidden beneath heavy plate armour, swept the grounds. Some entered the manor house to confused commotion by the staff, who were rounded up. Precautionary interviews and checks occurred in a whirlwind. The change in tone was so swift it set my stomach roiling.

I remember feeling lost. There was not meant to be anything to fear here. It was a safe space. It was my space. So why were all the grown-ups acting so serious?

I almost shouted at father, to ask what was happening hoping my young voice would not betray my emotions.

Father sat with comically perfect posture within the protected carriage door. There was a single black lock of hair out of place dropping across his forehead. His hands were clasped but for the slight rubbing of fingers around his wedding band. Yet, despite the clear anxiety I now know he felt that afternoon, from a hundred metres away he chose to smile. I eased up in Syr Joyce’s grip as father held a finger to his grinning lips. I mimicked the gesture playing along, and he returned it with an exaggerated wink as if this was merely a game. There was no danger afoot. Father was here and seemingly here to play.

Once Syr Joyce had seen me calm myself he left to confer with the newly arrived guards. Those of the fourth heightening and above are, let us say, differently attuned to the world. Syr Joyce was beyond even that noble level of power and yet felt more grounded than father’s travelling companions.

One cloaked in dark navies was checking glowing runes on each room’s entry point. The hidden inscriptions only visible now due to the weight of sol being forced through them. I was not a stranger to those who could wield their sol beyond themselves. Father was himself of the third heightening, just able to create visual sensory experiences with his own sol. However, the craft of checking the manor house was of a much stranger and more professional artform then a six-year-old could parse at the time.

Eventually the all clear was given and father hastily ran to give me a hug.

“Why are you here?” I squeaked out. Father was a slim man. While tall he did not cut an imposing figure. He was built for the ballroom floor, lithe limbs and a steady heart. It was the dance floor where he won my mother’s heart, so the rumour goes.

“I’m here…” Father looked down on me then with emotions I could not explain at the time. Mayhap I was too small, appearing too fragile a boy to be told the truth. So instead, he pivoted. “I’m here for you. I heard you’ve been working on the most marvellous of plays. He wrote a part just for you, hasn’t he Joy-joy.” He gave the old First Blade a winning smile.

I giggled. At six I no longer dared use the nickname he crafted for the older woman when he too was a child. But instead of rebuking my father with another duty-focused line, she slowly nodded.

I gasped full of excitement. “Really, really, really?!” With the longest of sighs Syr Joyce assented to perform for me. My father gave a short laugh and whisked me into the hall smartly.

Without my knowledge nearly two-thirds of my staff were sent away that night. There were changes afoot but father and the more senior of my nannies and guards did all they could to not let it be so. For one last night I remained carefree.

Dear reader, my father was not to be a great monarch. He wore velvet gloves without an iron fist underneath. Historians claim him as too passive, too weak in leadership during an age of rapid change. Even having been laid low myself in the annuls of history, I find myself in morose agreement. But, despite his flaws as an authority, I remember him foremost as a good man.

In the depths of my melancholy, when darkness threatens to consume any meagre hope of a fresh dawn, I try remembering that afternoon we spent together at the redbrick manor house. The laughing lines on father’s face as he played the damsel with great theatre. The warmth when he hugged me close as a I ‘rescued’ him from grumpy Syr Joyce who had found it within herself to play a dastardly villain for our amusement. Carol’s ability to magick a cake from an understaffed kitchen, covered in frosted berries was spectacular. As was how a dollop of cream made its way onto the point of my father’s nose, much to Syr Joyce and I’s amusement.

I slept in his arms that night for the first time in four years. I dreamed of dragons and heroic escapes as he read to me a happily ever with tears in his eyes. Father gifted me loving memories of family, of childhood bliss on arguably the darkest day of his life. That is a love all children deserve to feel.

The next morning I was dressed in my finest blacks and joined father in the warded carriage. It was there on our journey to the capital that he told me how the world had changed.

My aunt, the rightful heir to Dannbourne, an augur of the sixth heightening and beloved by all who met her, was gone. She was killed at a frontier petition.

Her only child, Briar, was found only a couple hours later unresponsive in an alleyway outside their favourite club in the capital. I would later learn it was an overdose but at the time father spared me the more gruesome details. My bright toothed cousin’s demise was chalked up to a teenager’s grief. Briar never wanted to rule. Even at six I knew of their fears having witnessed the arguments they had with grandpa and aunty at family functions. The peerage easily swallowed the public line of a grief-stricken teenager meeting a tragically avoidable death. I did too until I confronted the Courts over a decade later. Only then did I learn the full scale of their role in that fateful day. To say it contributed to my foolish campaigns of war would be an understatement.

Father and I were now the heirs to Dannbourne. From that day forward I was taught not to serve, not to support but to rule. Dear reader forgive me, in this tutelage I was an excellent student.