Descendants of the Kings (Book 2)

Ch 25: The hallowed relics

"Someone better be dead or missing a vital organ, because if they woke me up at this ungodly hour for nothing, I am about to start stabbing," Val moaned, falling into the seat next to Ella with a huff.

"I'll celebrate that day we're called for something as piddling as a missing organ," Aedion mused sourly, as he rubbed his eye. "Then it might actually be entertaining."

Like all of them, he didn't precisely look fresh-faced. His top button was undone and his dark strands looked even more mussed than usual, giving him the air that he'd quite literally rolled out of bed.

Ella, who was an abnormally early riser by nature, found herself agreeing with them nonetheless.

When Callan had said he'd call for a meeting first thing in the morning, he hadn't been bluffing. Ella had rather imagined that an early meeting meant before or after breakfast, not well before the sun even rose. This crack-of-dawn reunion was surely a cruel and unusual punishment for defying him the day before.

As it was, they all found themselves huddled around a candle-lightened meeting room, bleary-eyed and still sleep-mussed, waiting for the man of the hour to show up. Well, almost all of them, except for Blaise, that was.

"Morning," he called absently, as he scanned the journal in his hand and made his way into the room, looking for all the world as if it were midday.

"How are you so bright-eyed and bushy-tailed?" Ella squinted at him enviously, and subconsciously ran her fingers down the messy braid she'd barely managed to make when she'd been rushed to rise. Not only was his hair neatly combed, but he also looked wide awake. Certainly, he didn't have pillow wrinkles on his cheek, like Ella did.

The former lifted his sight from the book in his hold and shrugged. "I suppose I'm simply more accustomed to working early. I need very little sleep."

"Bullshit," Val snorted loudly, earning a glare from Blaise. "You haven't even gone to sleep yet, you little nutter."

"She's right," Aedion chimed in with an eye roll. "You've been up all night again, that's why you look so awake. This one runs exclusively on smugness and tea."

"I am not smug, I am competent," Blaise sniffed. "And we hardly have time to dally around with all that's been happening. I couldn't very well go to sleep when there was so much to do."

"Quite well said," Callan said, as he entered the meeting room followed by Zella, and took a seat around the table. "Sleep is the last thing on my mind in light of recent events."

"I must have forgotten that part, because I slept like the dead," Val muttered under her breath.

"I know matters are difficult at the moment, but couldn't this have waited at least until the sun rose? I'm not one to complain, but honestly, Callan, four in the morning? I barely closed my eyes and someone was banging on my door like the heavens were collapsing. I appreciate my sleep," Aedion sniffed. "Especially when I've got work to do in the morning. You try sitting through the Chamber of Lords' monologues with two hours of sleep."

"If you'd all cease your caterwauling and let me speak, I'd have told you there will be no Chamber of the Lord's meeting today, nor regular activity," Callan said dryly. "Not with the recent news we've just received."

This effectively made them all silent, all previous lightheartedness gone.

"What happened?" Ella asked quietly, bracing herself for the worst.

"My sources have informed me that soon, the Ardowenian Chamber of Lords will announce King Torin's death. They will hold the funerary rituals, and prepare for Prince Ciaran's ascension to the throne," Zella spoke up.