The Sole Prince

And forever. [part 2]

"To the left first. I first need to get to my old room, then we'll be able to get to the office."

"Aye, aye, captain," Celine jokes, stifling a laugh.

"Don't make me laugh, we can't be heard," Sage replies with a smile, mostly hidden due to the nature of a dark room.

"Whatever you say," she says with the same smile. "Where even are we?"

"These are secret passages built into the castle that only the royals knew to use. Made so that the Morrows could escape when in danger. As you know, they worked. And it seems that the current king never found out about them considering how dusty it is in here," he says, running his fingers along the wall to pick up a small collection of dust before turning around and blowing it onto Celine.

"Oh, fuck off," she laughs, unable to suppress it this time.

***

"I have no idea what you mean," James replies, a panic taking over his body. He decides to double down. Deny, deny, deny. That's the only way. "I just—"

"Cut the bullshit, you fucker. I know your ship never docked at Sardonia. Sardonia doesn't even have a princess," the king hisses in reply, sitting up in his seat.

"They don't?" James says, breaking character due to pure shock. That doesn't make any sense. James was sent there to meet the princess, to find somebody to marry. That was the whole reason this started.

"They don't. That's the whole point. Do you not get it?" the king continues in a tone that's purely condescending. James shakes his head, his heart racing incredibly fast. Everything has gone south so rapidly. But Sage should be here soon. The plan can still work. Not how it was supposed to, but it can still work. "You want to hear a story?" James is about to say a reply when the king speaks for him. "Shut up." James obeys. "This is the story of a king whose only son, a stepson for that matter, was a weak degenerate. Ever since the king had met the boy, he had tried to make things work between them. As hard as he could, he tried to form the boy into a respectable man. But some people are just too lost, and soon, a child of a man roamed the halls of the castle. Now, in this instance, the king had two choices. One was to ignore the flaws of his stepson and hand over the kingdom to the failure when he was of age. He would be hated by the nation, and soon, the kingdom that the king worked so long and so hard to create would be destroyed. The alternative was to hand the kingdom to somebody else. Somebody who was actually worthy. A king isn't allowed to do that unless his children died, but the degenerate stepson was still alive, you see. The king realized something then. He could either continue to provide for this stepson, who would be the downfall of this great nation, or he could twist the story. They would think he had a brave stepson who died in battle, trying to defend a royal ship from a slew of nasty pirates thus bringing honor to the king, and giving him the opportunity to give the kingdom to a man of worth. Without a doubt, the king chose the second."

"What are you saying?" James asks in shock, barely able to process the story. The king ignores him.

"Now, I'm just wondering what went wrong. Did you find somebody to take your place on the ship? Did you pay the crew to not go? Pay the pirates? I'm baffled."

"I... I don't understand."

"Are you that fucking stupid?

"It was you?"

"Of course it was me, you little shit. You left me with no other option. You had to be out of the picture. And now you come back from the dead to fuck everything up. And I'm wondering how in the world you did it? Where did my master plan go wrong?"

"You hired those pirates to attack our royal ship? You hired them to take me prisoner? It was you?" James yells, tears starting to form in the back of his eyes, his heart racing, his brain working overtime, his blood turning into searing heat.