CHAPTER 1

“ERIMOR! ERIMOR! ERIMOR!”

The crowd howled and hollered, stirred up even beyond their exaggerated norms.

The rowdy behaviour wasn’t the fault of the crowd below, Alaric reflected, tapping his wine glass and keeping his gaze to the depths of the colosseum. If he had to name the issue, it was his brother’s grandstanding.

Flames sizzled and exploded, issuing a wave of heat that swept away the morning chill and roused the chants anew.

The pitiful growling and roaring of a fey dragon dead-to-rights only spurred it further. Drinks rose and spilled, and hollering tore Alaric from his contemplation.

A gentle breeze twisted into a sweeping gale, and the insipient heat dispersed as quickly as it appeared. Air coalesced into a long blade, and it swept the green-scaled beast’s head clean off its shoulder.

Like a balloon, the crown prince’s scale boot crushed the delicate leathery head to paste. As usual; his magic was showy, but equally mighty.

“ERIMOR! ERIMOR! ERIMOR!”

“LONG LIVE THE CROWN PRINCE!”

The figure below looked to the crowd and casually waved, a smile on his ruggedly handsome face.

Two pairs of eyes met, and Alaric presented a pleasant smile and raised his glass. Erimor’s eyes shifted elsewhere. As was usual, he utterly ignored him.

Alaric was used to it. He downed his glass and gently placed it on the waiting servant’s plate. He had already stayed as long as he cared to, and quickly swept down from the heights of the coliseum to the depths of the private tunnels of the royal family.

Footfalls echoed around him, his retinue of royal guards keeping apace despite the burden of their armor.

Unusually, a silent figure strode beside him, her robes enchanted with so many runes that Alaric had trouble distinguishing one from the next.

Alaric spared the silver-haired court-mage a strange smile.

“Elara, to what do I owe the pleasure?”

Runes below and above littered the private tunnels connecting the colosseum and the palace with subdued orange light. It cast a deep shadow across the stern visage of Elara, a recently qualified royal mage, and equally made any meetings in the tunnel seem rather sinister.

Elara, a mere step from his side, pointedly ignored his words. A stern and professional young woman. Alaric wasn’t one to waste his breath, so he waved off the interaction and silence resumed.

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The silence was only alleviated once they’d navigated through the palace, and after Alaric’s retinue had stationed themselves around – and most certainly not inside – his chambers.

“Show me your sigil.”

Alaric, credit to him, didn’t react at first.

“Do excuse me, but please say that again.”

The royal magus’ gaze turned pointed.

“Show me, Prince Alaric, your magician’s sigil. Promptly.”

She seemed, inexplicably, to come alive.

As if a switch had been flicked, Alaric’s eyes thinned. He hunched perceptibly; an uncanny weight settled over his shoulders. He felt his hairs stand on end and his hands, for the second it took him to regain his calm, shook.

Like a rabbit ready to bolt, Alaric noted absently. Magical suppression, he knew.

His decadent robes, the bronze-crown that topped his head; a symbol of direct royalty, and for all the opulence of his quarters, the vague presence of his guards and even being in his own chambers…

It was, in a word, meaningless. Before raw power, what was the point in anything?

Alaric rolled his eyes and pulled off his coat. He dropped it to the carpet without care for its worth, all the while unbuttoning his shirt and glaring pointedly.

“Have a sense of propriety, Elara. How urgent could this possibly be?” Alaric mumbled, cleanly dismissing the eyes his way as he peeled away his sleeves.

There, laid plainly across his chest, was easily the most unfortunate part of his inheritance. Being a prince was fantastic, but bearing a broken sigil? Well, not so much.

The thin lines of bloody magic, starting with great sophistication above his heart, spilled into crooked broken lines halfway across his sternum. It was both a blessing and a curse, of course. He couldn’t perform magic, which meant a number of things. One of which was that he couldn’t extend his lifespan past that of an ordinary peasant, but another was that he was considered a non-issue to his competing brothers.

Of course, that in itself carried a number of downsides. His life, at least, wasn’t directly threatened.

Alaric idly realized he had that thought under duress.

“My hiring,” Elara said shortly, with a dour expression and pursed lips, “was to fix you.”

“I know that. You’re not the first. But what have you done between studying irrelevant texts and stripping me?”

She coldly snorted. Alaric raised a brow.

“Well? Is this helping?”

Tingles crept down his spine as Elara’s gaze toward his chest grew ever more piercing. A sudden cold swept across Alaric’s skin, and unknowingly, he shivered.

A notebook swept from the mage’s pocket to her hand. Opened without a touch and accompanied by a pen similarly appearing in her other hand, the scratching of runic script sounded through the decadent chambers.

Seconds, passed in silence, turned to minutes.

Clap.

The notebook snapped shut, and the mage none-too-gently pushed it into his hands.

“You’ll find my research notes in here. My proposed fix is toward the end… You won’t be seeing me again.”

A small smile formed on Elara’s lips, but her eyes showed none of it.

“It was pleasant serving you, Prince, but I hope not to do it again.”

The doors to his chambers shut quietly behind her.

Alaric deflated in an instant.

“Fucking finally.”

He only briefly flicked through the notebook before chucking it aside.

In one smooth motion, Alaric dumped his crown on his bed, picked a pair of well-worn robes from his wardrobe and chucked one over his shoulders.

The doors to his chambers slammed shut behind him, and one of the guards found himself buried beneath the brown traveller’s robe.

“I only need one of you. Enjoy the day off, fellas.”

A chorus of cheers preceded a groan from the unlucky escort. A wry smile crossed Alaric’s face, and he promptly walked. There wasn’t enough time in a day to waste a moment.