Chapter Text
Shane had been three princes in his lifetime.
When he was young, he was the prince of change. His birth, a quick and quiet birth in the middle of a very bitter winter night, became a beacon of hope for the people of Savoulle, caught in the throes of war and endless poverty. This is the prince he remembers the least, but the stories remain as reminders. A prince is born, a prince more beautiful than all the jewels and gold that a kingdom could wish for. A prince with a blessing from Seren. A miracle. It had been years of conflict and even more years without an heir. Shane, like a shining light to the people, was a symbol of a new beginning.
Though he had never seen them, he had been told that there were statues erected in his honor around the town square, shining monuments of him as a young boy with a golden coronet and a stubby leg propped on the arm of a small throne. But the statues had only been the start, because carvings, paintings, and songs with his name in the choruses quickly followed. It had all been so pure when it began.
The second prince was a pampered one. Most princes were, but Shane was spoiled in a way that put the others to shame. It had to do with his parents, two lovely and doting figures who only wanted the best for him. As he had grown up in the palace, it was common for them to send attendants for his every possible need, to the point that Shane had to assure his mother that he didn’t need someone to help brush his teeth or comb his hair in the morning. He had learned that there were no bounds to which an order he made could not be carried through. His servants were instructed to obey the prince above everything, save for his father’s executive decision. But other than that, Shane’s control was almost limitless within the borders of the palace.
Shane would be lying if he said he didn’t revel in the needless attention. Logically, he knew he was extraordinarily lucky, always being fitted in the finest clothing and served the most lavish meals paired with exotic imported wines. His every wish seemed to appear at his feet, even desires he had only imagined in his mind.
He remembered waking at midnight once from a nightmare where he was stuck in an endless stretch of blazing desert. When he started up in bed, a servant met him several moments later with a cold lavender towel and a tall glass of iced water. She left without a word, and when Shane fell asleep the next time, it had been dreamless.
Until he had started to grow older, he saw nothing out of place about it. The sun rose and fell, the seasons changed, and the palace tended to Prince Shane’s needs. It seemed simple enough.
The third, and current, prince was a beast that was confined to the palace walls. He was the prince who now sat idly at the end of his father’s table and listened to his advisors drone on about the ongoing war with the kingdom of Ulalon. It was all dull talk of terrain advantages and battle tactics that lulled Shane to sleep quicker than the drugs in his nightly drinks- administered by his mother’s most trusted doctor, of course, so that he got a full night’s rest no matter what.
“I just think there is something more to be done. I mean, is this truly about land or spices or religions anymore?”
The table went silent, and Shane looked up from where he had been nipping at his fingernails. It was a younger war correspondent who had made the remark.
The booming sound of his father’s voice cut through the silence.
“I have already made it clear that my issues with the motives of King Byron have nothing to do with his people. I have no desire to continue this violence any longer than necessary.”
The boy is lucky, Shane thought, that it’s my father who is king. Most kings did not treat comments against their character as graciously as his dad always managed to.
“Of course, Your Majesty.”
The room descended back into chatter soon enough, and Shane descended back into his own mind. He imagined his room in the East Wing and how his maid, Eloise, always washed the silk covers with calming oils and fluffed the pillows before he went to bed. He would do anything to sink into that bed now, after one of the dullest days of his entire life. How long could these men possibly keep speaking about war?
His eyes drifted around the room as his father moved small wooden figures of soldiers around the unfolded map of Savoulle and Ulalon lying on the table. Shane spotted a spider in the corner of the ceiling, crawling across its web, which was glimmering in the light of the chandelier hanging over him. The bug started to fall down, attached by a single line of silk before swinging and running across the wall.
Shane turned his head to the side as he followed the path of the spider with his eyes. He watched it until the bug disappeared behind the head of his guard, and Shane lost sight of it. Shane frowned and stared glumly at Sir Ilya for a moment, a tall, stocky man with light curls just barely showing from underneath the metal visor he wore. Shane couldn’t see much, but Sir Ilya was his parents' most trusted guard, so he was familiar with the scowl that likely was hiding behind his helmet.
Shane rolled his head back and turned away, but didn’t try too hard to convince his guard that he was paying attention. They both knew he never was.
“And I know that we have had several conversations about this potential route as a means of peace, but I wanted to say that I’ve come to a decision.”
“Your Majesty, are you sure this is...” an advisor beside his father began, before trailing off and making eye contact with Shane. Shane sat up a little straighter in his chair.
“I am sure. I have already expressed that this fighting has continued for too long. I do not wish to see any more good Savoullian people die.”
Shane turned back to his hands. He swore that the court talked themselves in circles. They wished to make peace, but peace came with a price. They were prepared to pay any price, but they wanted to protect civilians. The civilians wished to protect their land and maintain peace. There could be only peace or land, and the cycle continued for days, months, years-
“Prince Shane will be marrying the Princess of Ulalon as an alliance between our two kingdoms. He began as our symbol of peace. I think it is only fair that he follows through.”
Shane’s head flew up before his father had finished his first sentence. His mouth dropped open, but every word became stuck in his throat as the entire court turned to stare at him.
“Me?” was all that Shane could manage.
“Yes, you. Unless I have another son?”
Shane shook his head in a simple show of obedience. Why hadn’t his father told him about this?
His thoughts began to spiral as his father continued to discuss his plans and how negotiations with the Princess of Ulalon had already started to be arranged. The men all seemed enthralled by the idea, adding comments about how much this would benefit the kingdom and its people, how it could be the true ending to the war that had persisted for nearly twenty years. One of the taller men remarked that he had heard stories about Princess Rose, and she was known for her bold eyes and long, amber hair, which was rarely seen pinned back or braided.
“Unless anyone had any other comments, I am ending this meeting. We will meet again tomorrow to discuss the details of this alliance and how to send the final proposal.”
The men filtered out through the grand wood doors, each of them chittering to one another in hushed tones. The noises faded down the hallway, and the door shut with a resounding boom, leaving Shane alone with his father. Alone except for their respective guards.
It took a few moments for either of them to speak.
“Listen, Shane-”
“Father-”
They both stopped and looked at one another.
“I meant to tell you at some point, but then the meeting started, and I realized that it could not wait another few days.”
Shane kept his eyes locked on his father, trying to muster up some form of anger, but he found it impossible when his dad’s face was riddled with fear.
“Does it have to be her? Does it have to be so soon?”
Shane’s father turned away, as if he was concealing something on his face. An emotion, maybe, or watering eyes, more likely.
“I wish I could tell you something different. I wish you had all the time in the world to choose a wife, and we didn’t have to go through with this betrothal.”
“But..”
“But I wish a lot of things, Shane. I wish this war had never started and that it had ended years ago. I wish the people didn’t look to you to save them, even though you aren’t king yet.”
Shane’s eyes fluttered, praying that this was all a dream he would soon wake up from. But he could tell from his father’s voice that this decision had already been made for him, and it seemed like it had been made this way for quite some time.
“I understand,” Shane whispered, and that was the end of it.
His father gave him one more sympathetic look, pulled Shane in for a firm hug against his chest, and then left the room with his guard in tow.
***
Shane wished he could hide his unhappiness, but the moment he stepped into his room, he screamed and lunged for his towering vanity, grabbed his hairbrush, and raised it above his head as if he was going to throw it. But he wouldn’t; it would ruin the walls and be unfair to the loving chambermaids who always treated him so kindly. His hand lowered to its place at his side, but he was still furious.
“Please,” a voice called to the servants, some of whom were across the room by what he liked to call his bathroom, but it really was an extension of the main room- a luxurious part of his chamber with an in-ground bathtub that overlooked the terrace and let the water fall over the edge of the palace wall and down into the garden. It was typically a breathtaking sight at night with the stars overhead, and he suddenly felt guilty for lashing out when it was clear the maids were drawing him a bath for when he returned.
The voice behind him spoke up again, “Leave the prince.”
Everyone's shoes scuffed on the floor as they shuffled out at the guard’s command, and Shane felt the silence fall over the room instantly.
“You didn’t need to do that,” Shane snapped and turned to face Sir Ilya. His expression was almost completely unreadable beneath his visor, except for his hazel eyes, which pierced through the thick veil of metal with confidence.
“I did. It is not fair for servants to have to witness your anger,” the knight spoke, his voice clipped and heavily accented.
Shane wasn’t sure what kingdom he had come from, his dad had mentioned before, but he had never been good at geography. It didn’t matter much; they hardly spoke to one another outside of Sir Ilya’s occasional, Yes, your Highness or this way, Your Highness. Or, more recently, you will be late for your meeting, Your Highness.
“Nothing was going to happen. I wouldn’t do anything to them.”
Sir Ilya stood unsettlingly still as he said, “I know.”
“I’m just going to go bathe, I think. It’s been… a long day.”
But neither of them moved. For a moment, Shane wished that it was all different, that he wasn’t a prince, or maybe simply that he had an older brother to take the throne in his place.
“He is just trying to help. Your father.”
Shane mussed with the bristles on his hairbrush and avoided Sir Ilya’s glare. His look always seemed intense. The visor he wore showed only his eyes framed by his thick eyebrows, making him appear intimidating when he wasn’t trying to be.
Shane had seen him be intimidating. He would never forget the way Sir Ilya had fought off the rebels at the Summer Solstice celebration, with his sword flying in precise circles around Shane as he cut down man after man. He remembered the looks on their faces like it was fresh out of a nightmare- the hatred and determination in their eyes had burned into his mind like it had been seared with fire. But the vision never lasted long, because then there was Sir Ilya’s throwing the men in the other direction before stabbing them in front of the harrowed crowd of townspeople.
It was why he was so heavily favored by King David and Queen Yuna- he had shown fierce loyalty since the beginning of his term as one of Shane’s shift knights, when he started about seven years ago. Shane could always tell, through the identical sets of metal armor they all wore, when Sir Ilya was on duty. His presence was overbearing, unmistakable, like a humming in the back of his ears that he couldn’t get rid of. But it was good in a sense, Shane figured, because he never felt unsafe with him. He was a ruthless killer.
“He is trying to do best for Savoulle,” Sir Ilya said firmly.
He was, from what little Shane had managed to gather, a very innocent young man. He existed between two worlds- loyalty to Shane’s parents and loyalty to Savoulle. Beyond that, Sir Ilya was a complete enigma.
“I know,” Shane sighed. “It’s just hard. I thought maybe..”
Sir Ilya was silent, expectant.
“I don’t know,” Shane laughed at himself. “That I would find someone, maybe. That I could carry on in ignorance forever, and never become king.”
Sir Ilya’s expression shifted to amusement, and this time the look was so clear that Shane could easily see it.
“You are foolish, Your Highness.”
The night continued steadily, with Sir Ilya tidying up the mess that the maids had not gotten to and Shane slipping into the bath.
The bath could be considered a pool, given how it was built into his floor. He had a separate room, off to the side of his chamber, that had another, more practical bathtub, along with his shower and sink, but this was where he gravitated every night. Something about the cold bite of the tile against his neck and the warm water on his skin before he moved, and it spilled over the edge of the pool, brought him a sense of peace.
Shane could feel the air slipping through the open arch doorways, and he let his head fall back as he sank lower, until the water was higher than his shoulders. The terrace opened up into an inky night sky, littered with winking stars. Stars he should know, stars he studied, stars he could never remember.
While he bathed, Sir Ilya was trying his best to silently clean, but the familiar clink of metal rang through the cold air. It wasn’t easy to block out the noise. Shane closed his eyes and tried his hardest, but every movement from his guard was punctuated with the small clanging or shinging of him rustling through the room.
“You do not need to clean right now. It’s alright,” Shane sighed, his head draped sideways against the tile as he watched his guard, his eyes level with Sir Ilya’s boots.
Sir Ilya turned to him, looked down, then looked away. “Your Highness, I would like to help.”
Always so righteous, Shane couldn’t help but think to himself. You would never know how violent he became on a battlefield.
“It is not your duty.” The guard was avoiding his eyes. “You do not have to.”
Sir Ilya paused and lowered the clothes he had picked up. “I apologize, Your Highness. You’re asking me to take post.”
He shuffled all the clothes to the side and muttered a rushed “Good night” as he made for his sword to take nightly watch at Shane’s door. Shane grumbled and shifted in the water to face the door.
“Guard,” Shane called before he left. “I’m not asking that.”
Sir Ilya stopped with his hand hovering over the door handle.
“If you really want to clean, it’s alright. Just please take off that chestplate for now. The noise is driving me insane.”
The guard cautiously stepped back into the room and took his time unbuckling the various leather straps and pulling the metal from his body. Shane watched the whole process, never having witnessed any of his guards out of their armor, but he noticed how Sir Ilya never turned or glanced in his direction. He was a wall of indifference when it came to being the prince’s protector. Sir Ilya could have been a lowly peasant’s guard, for all he cared about Shane’s status.
As he lay in the bath, Shane never commanded Sir Ilya to leave, letting him work through whatever chores he had deemed necessary. It was strange to see him move without his armor, which had made him seem much larger than he was, though he was not lacking in muscle or height. He had taken everything off, save for his metal helmet, which stayed securely on his head throughout the night.
When it started to get late, Sir Ilya returned from another room, Shane’s study perhaps, or the dining room, and began to put his armor back on. The noise of the metal shook Shane from the hazy nap he was taking, and he sat up in the water, which was now lukewarm. This time, it took only seconds for the guard to maneuver his chestplate, his hands buckling himself into it with practiced precision.
“I am taking post,” Sir Ilya said once he was done, his back still to Shane. “Good night, Your Highness.”
“Thank you. Good night,” Shane responded as his guard slipped out the door.
Alone, Shane realized that in all the time he had spent with him, that was the most he had ever spoken with Sir Ilya.
***
The preparations for Princess Rose began almost immediately. Overnight, it seemed like the entire palace had changed for the arrival of the princess. It started with Shane being given an entirely new wardrobe with even his most dressy blouses being replaced by ornate embroidered clothing adorned with silver buttons and shimmering trim.
When he got dressed and left, the palace was bustling wth maids, cooks, and noblemen, all running in different directions with wide smiles across their faces. An older woman that Shane didn’t recognize even patted him on the shoulder and gave him a kind smile.
“Prince Shane is engaged to be wed!” a voice called down a usually silent hallway.
“Prince Shane is getting married to Princess Rose!”
“Peace has come!”
Shane did not understand the excitement from the staff, especially considering most of them hated the Ulalon people for what they had done to Savoullians in the war. There had been an immeasurable amount of death in the past twenty years, from both sides, but after so long, the Ulalon people had slowly become less human in the eyes of the Savoullians. Despite how much he was dreading this marriage, he hoped the people of his kingdom were welcoming to the Ulalon princess.
However, it wasn’t her being Ulalon that deterred Shane from marrying Princess Rose. Shane had struggled with relationships his entire life, unlike most princes who spent their teenage years tucked behind shelves of the library with ladies-in-waiting or dodging nobility for a moment alone. He had tried, on occasion, but he always found his experiences with girls in the palace to be lackluster and disappointing.
He had hoped he would meet someone before his father did, but he hadn’t tried very hard, and his father had beat him to it. But maybe this was what he needed, and Princess Rose would be different from the girls he had been with before.
Shane turned into the palace library, a golden-hued room with cascading ceilings and bookshelves that covered three floors. Shane searched for a familiar face at a familiar table.
His tutor was an older man with small eyes that crinkled when he talked about something he found exciting, which was nearly everything. As far as Shane was concerned. He never moved from the place Shane found him every morning, curled in a library chair with a messy stack of books to his side. His nose was so deep in the page that his glasses were nearly falling off his head, but he didn’t notice as he flipped the pages.
“Professor Winfield,” Shane smiled as he slid into the chair opposite his teacher.
“Prince Shane!” he exclaimed, and his smile grew. He folded the corner of his page down and set aside his book. “My most passionate pupil.”
“Ha,” Shane scoffed. He was anything but. “What is on the agenda for today? Astronomy? Philosophy?”
Professor Winfield smiled.
“Etiquette.”
Shaned laughed, loud enough that a few lords turned their heads from their respective tables. But Professor Winfield still had the same dopey grin on his face, like he was not joking.
“Are you serious?”
“As a Savoullian soldier.”
Shane lowered his voice, not that it was much of a secret anymore. “Is this because of Princess Rose?”
The professor sighed, “I’m afraid so. Don’t blame the middleman, Your Highness-”
“Please, don’t,” Shane waved his hand. “It’s Shane.”
Winfield was not supposed to address Shane by his name, but they had moved beyond that many years ago. Shane did not like the way nobility treated Professor Winfield, like he was some loony professor who was below them, so he had insisted that in the library, they were equals.
“Well, Shane, you know I would much rather be teaching you about the ancient texts or the origins of the war.”
“And how it mirrors the Middle Kingdoms War, yes, I know.”
“Ah! So you do remember something I taught you!”
“Don’t get your hopes up,” Shane laughed and picked up one of the books from the professor’s stack.
A Nobleman’s Guide to Ruling With Nobility Manners. Shane could feel his eyes rolling back into his head as he flipped through the pages of the manual. It was filled with words like couth and chivalry, and worst of it all, responsibility.
“I wanted to give my congratulations, you know. I mean, it’s clearly a betrothal of alliance, but I have heard she is lovely, that Princess Rose.”
“Yes, as have I,” Shane said dully. Professor Winfield frowned, and Shane had to turn back to the book to avoid his searching stare.
“You are unhappy,” he said, not posing it as a question but an observation.
This was what he admired about Professor Winfield. Growing up, he confided in his parents, but as the years passed, it became clear that there was a divide between him and the King and Queen. He loved them wholeheartedly, but even a prince was below the rank of his rulers. There was a level of obedience and expectation that came from their relationship that was not common for an average citizen of Savoulle. His problems, to them, were trivial complaints compared to the war that they were struggling to put an end to.
So when he was twelve, he confided in Professor Winfield. The teacher had no reason to entertain a friendship with Shane- he was a lazy and uninspired pupil who put forth less than minimal effort into every academic task.
“You are not unintelligent,” Professor Winfield used to always remind him. “You just don’t have the drive. How do I pull that out of you?”
Shane would just shake his head. I don’t know.
“I wouldn’t say I’m particularly cheery about it, no. It’s never great to be married off to a stranger.”
“Yes, I would imagine,” he chuckled. “It is good, though? For the war? You do realize how you will be shaping the history of the kingdom with this marriage?”
Shane sighed and turned back to his etiquette book. “Yes, I suppose so.”
Professor Winfield fixed him with a smile and told Shane the page that he would need to turn to for their reading. The lesson was all about the role that he would play as a prince, how he would treat foreign ambassadors as he became acquainted with Ulalon nobility, and even how to speak at royal dinners with people who had different customs than him.
And the Ulalon and Savoulle people were very different, he learned. The most evident being the fact that they did not worship the same God as Souvillians, but rather a collection of elemental deities that they believed controlled everything- the weather, the daily happenings of the kingdom, even the path and outcome of the war. He was instructed by Winfield not to pray to Seren, the Savoullian God, before any meals with the Ulalon royal family.
“Respectfully, I am shocked that you do not know of this,” Winfield chuckled as they finished the chapter on Ulalon religion and the etiquette manual’s chapter on table manners.
“I don’t know much about religion here, if I’m honest.”
“Shane, you are sworn in under Seren. You are the prince.”
“Yes, I know. That does not mean I believe in him.”
Winfield laughed. “Well, regardless, religion plays a large part in the war. It comes as a surprise to me that you have not heard your father speaking about the disagreement between our people.”
Shane turned back to the page, where the Ulalon symbol of religion was inked into the rough, yellowing pages of the book. He ran his fingers over the emblem of a blazing sun with a rose through it. He was afraid that this marriage, and everything that came with it, would bring to light to how ignorant he really was.
The work that they did in the library was somehow more boring than the lessons on geography and history that he was typically subjected to on Monday mornings. When Shane had pointed this out to Professor Winfield at the end of their time in the library, he laughed.
“Don’t worry. It seems as if your new engagement means you will be almost tripling the amount of lessons you are taking. ‘A good prince is an educated prince,’ per your father’s words.”
“Joy,” Shane said, and smiled at Professor Winfield as the clock chimed and he left the library.