Polaris || l.s.

chapter 7: jewel

Apart from the laceration to the side of his head, all the other wounds looked as if they would heal promptly. Once the blood and dirt had been cleaned, he could see that the gash ran longer than he had predicted, starting from the top of Louis' forehead and ending just a shy centimeter above his eyes, slitting through his eyebrow in a slanted cut. "Do you need a cuppa?" He had helped Louis settle on the nest, placing a few pillows behind the alpha's back to aid him in bolstering himself upright. Somewhere in the back of his mind, the fact that the nest smelt wholly like him had built itself a sturdy lighthouse against the storm of his other qualms, but he was getting better at ignoring those silly thoughts.

"Do you know how to make one?" Louis snickered lightly in response. When he looked over his shoulder to fix the alpha with a flippant glare, Louis was already looking at him, slouched and extremely unbothered at getting caught. Had he been in the alpha's place, Harry was sure he would have buried himself alive. It would have been just too much embarrassment for him to stomach.

"Of course, I do. I used to make cuppas for the prince all the time." He lied, only partially though, since he did make a good cup of tea every once in a full moon whenever Leon had his heats scheduled. Louis grunted for some unknown reason. If he had to take a wild guess, it was definitely at the mention of the royalty. "I've heard that the almighty Prince of Eonshire is a scaredy cat who cries at the most dotish things, is that true?" Louis spoke after a while, sounding more intrigued than ever.

Harry wasn't someone who cried easily— at least, that was what he liked to think sometimes, times like when he wasn't crying over the most preposterous things. "That is not true. From the time we have spent together, the prince is the most compassionate being I have ever had the luck to meet." Perhaps, he was a tad conceited at times. "Is that why more than half of his kingdom is dying out of starvation?" Louis snorted, his words a mix between a quip and revile. "The prince was not permitted outside the castle often. The King believed that cooping him indoors was his safest bet, especially after what happened with the Queen." He could have bit his tongue, could have agreed with Louis' disparages, after all the alpha was speaking nothing but the ultimate truth.

Louis didn't respond, so he let himself get carried away with the task at hand. After he had placed the kettle of water on the stove, he puttered around the kitchen aimlessly. "The Queen's demise— uh, did it affect anyone in the family?" He stashed away the container of tea leaves on the tiny space left between the stove and the sink, thankful (for once in his life) to have faced away Louis.

The prince, at the mere age of eight, started having night terrors, he wanted to say. He cried till days bled into nights, and the line between sanity and insanity blurred somewhere along. The eight-year-old prince gave his father quite a nightmare with his 'episodes', forcing the King to almost sending him away to the dungeons made for the mentally ill. There was so much to say, but he held it all in.

"I don't know." He settled for, at last, taming down the bundle of nerves that had blocked his air passage momentarily. "Huh, that's weird. Got told that the King became fed up with his son, and was ready to sell him off to the sailors." He hadn't known that. He would have been happy his whole life without knowing that piece of information.

"How do you receive all these insights?" He questioned, spinning on his heels to regard Louis with a pointed look. "News circulates like forest fires in the local markets. I still remember I was thirteen when the Queen died. Many of our neighbors traveled over to Eonshire for the rites of her sepulture." Forcing his attention away from the rugged alpha seemed to be more difficult than he had pegged it to be. Nonetheless, he averted his focus to the boiling kettle, pouring the beverage into two cups as Louis' words rang in his ears.

"Were you there?" He chose to ask, ignoring the obvious crack in his voice. The day of her interment was still vivid in his memories. "No, I couldn't, unfortunately. My parents were buried on the same day." It was the way Louis had uttered it so nonchalantly that scared him. Here he was, choking over his words every time someone mentioned his mother, whereas, Louis was mentioning his parents' burials as casually as some liked to converse about the weather up north. Harry could never imagine losing both of his parents at once. Though his father had been of no help while he mourned for his mother, the man's presence was grounding enough for him. Like a constant source of support that kept him tied to the ground.