The Saintess and the Villainess

A Tale of Two Princes - Chapter 4

Elyon listened to Sebastian's story in silence, his only reaction a slight tightening around his eyebrows as the true extent of what happened became clear.

"My mother died because I couldn't kill a little bird," finished Sebastian. He could feel himself choking on the words he never thought he'd say out loud, so he took a moment to clear his throat. "If I... if I ever kill anything else, even if it's just a rabbit for food, then I won't ever be able to stop thinking, 'If I can kill this rabbit now, then why couldn't I have just killed that bird back then?' But if I never kill anything, then I know I was never capable of killing anything, which means there was nothing I could have done to save my mother. It's the only way her death has any meaning. It's the only way it's not.. entirely my own fault."

These were thoughts Sebastian had had, over and over again, throughout many sleepless nights throughout the years. He'd had enough lessons in rhetoric and logic to know that his reasoning was jumbled and circular, but no matter how often he told himself he was being irrational, he just couldn't let go. It was a pathetic justification of a weak-willed pacifism, but it was the only thing he had to hold onto.

But despite years of obsessive thinking, this was the first time he'd spoken about any of this to another person. Even with Corvina, although they sometimes spoke around the events of that day, in vague terms, they'd never spoken about it, not directly. Now he felt oddly raw and empty, and vulnerable in a way he'd never felt before.

Perhaps it was because of that vulnerable feeling that he was watching Elyon's face so closely, but Elyon gave very little away. His ageless face was impassive as a statue, but his blue eyes shimmered in the candlelight with a deep sort of unfathomable life and Sebastian was reminded of the long-life of elves.

In his eyes, is the life of a human even all that different from the life of a little bird?

"You know, I met your father once," said Elyon, looking off into the distance. Most of the time Elyon spoke with a light, matter-of-fact tone, but now his speech sounded tense, wound-tight. "When he was much younger. Perhaps around the age you are now. It was a diplomatic event, a banquet, before there were any hints of war between us. He was still the Crown Prince at the time, attending the banquet with the former Emperor, your grandfather. I didn't speak to him much, but I watched him closely, and I remember... I remember him as a rather sad and angry young man. He was proud, too, in a quiet way, but the thing I remember most of all was how scared he was of his own father. All of their interactions were colored by that fear."

Elyon's brows knit closer together, and when he spoke again his words were dripping in venom, "To think that a man like that could have gone on to become so pointlessly cruel to his own children... To fail so entirely to learn from the mistakes of the past generation... It's maddening."

"How old are you?" asked Sebastian, his sudden curiosity cutting through the intensity of the moment.

Elyon finally looked back at Sebastian again. "I'm 378 years-old," he said. "But that's not important right now. Prince Sebastian, there's something important you need to hear. Your mother's—"

"Elyon!"

"Wait, you can't—!"

A cool breeze ran through the tent as the entrance was thrown open. Sebastian was upset by the interruption (he wanted to hear what Elyon had to say) until he saw that it was Agis striding in through the opening, followed closely by a rather frantic looking Lieutenant Landi, and...

Sebastian squinted his eyes. Was that Corvina's maid? With a big bandage tied around her head?

"Did Anne and Corvina come through here?" demanded Agis, without any sort of preamble. "Have you seen them? They're missing."