A Royal Reborn

Prologue

"Will you kill me?" Xavier breathed. The question left his lips like the most gentle of prayers. He meant it with all of his swelling, wounded heart. He was ready for death.

A ring of rabid noblemen and their wives pressed in around the boy like great waves that twisted, turned, and drowned. With hoarse voices, they damned and cursed Xavier's name. Who could have known that the boy who most resembled the first Kildred himself would be capable of such failure? Once or twice, a nobleman hurled a rotten apple at Xavier's head, and each time it hit its mark on the boy's temple, the crowd cheered with fervent rage.

Xavier trembled on his knees before the king. His left eye twitched, black and blue from a kick to the face. His gut wrenched this way and that, for he knew that the dusk would not greet him kindly. Just like the dawn, it would certainly seize and break him.

There would be no end to this wrath.

King Oliver, a trenchant man whose thick beard never quite managed to mask his antipathy, towered over Xavier with rancor so strong that it silenced the courtyard.

"Death would be far too merciful a thing for the likes of you," the king scorned, red in the face. "And I am not a merciful man."

The madness in the king's eyes was unlike anything Xavier had ever witnessed. Venom must have taken place of the blood that ran through the king's veins to cause such a tempest in his amber eyes. There was a fire within them that would spread and never cease. Even if death did not claim him this evening, Xavier knew his demise would surely be at none other than this man's hand.

Two guards, whose bronze armor bore the insignia of a maroon eagle, marched to Xavier's sides and bound his wrists so tightly with rope that Xavier felt his skin chafe. The sight was not enough for the People. They basked in the boy's suffering and wanted more of it, like Alden wolves who hungered for blood.

"Thirteen lashes," demanded the King through gritted teeth. "One for each year that my daughter lived." Xavier gulped, imagining a whip cracking against his back. He shrunk as Oliver's angered Court rose up, jeering at him. Oliver, however, raised his palm to calm them. "But not upon your back."

If not mine, wondered Xavier, breaking into a cold sweat, then whose?

Out of the crowd stepped a tall, broad man whose wrists were shackled behind him. Sweat beaded on his handsome, unshaven face. His eyes were like clear emeralds. If bravery was not a thing passed down from the first Kildred after all this time, it was those striking eyes.

"Father," cried Xavier, leaping to his feet.

"Step back, son." For having a voice so soft, Guardian Nathaniel surely held more authority than even his own king. How else might he have convinced Oliver that he should be the one to receive Xavier's punishment? A guard took a broad knife to Nathaniel's shoulder-length hair and cut it to his scalp. A massive upsurge of gasps and cries of disapproval erupted from the ring of onlookers.

"The son is the pest," cried a court man. "Lash him!"

Xavier lowered his gaze. Were these noblemen truly enraged by the loss of their Princess or at the loss of their most influential pawn? These men expected so little from Andria: beauty, naiveté, a feeble mind, and an even feebler character. They expected mindless obedience. Not independence. Not rebellion.

Not Andria.

"Now, now," called the king to his people. "I only thought that perhaps the young Guardian needed a different kind of beating, if he shall learn his lesson." There was a kind of glare in Nathaniel's eyes that Xavier had learned to fear, and Xavier knew that he was not alone in loathing the king. A guard shoved him out of the clearing, and Xavier found himself enveloped in his mother's arms. She stood tall at the edge of the courtyard, grasping her son and her daughter close. Isabella, Xavier's sister, cried into her sleeve.

"My boy," she muttered into his ear. "Do not be afraid, or guilty. Your father chose this fate himself." Xavier did not understand how his mother could hold him so tightly when he was the reason they were to endure this agony. This pain was his doing. He unraveled this tragedy.

Xavier's throat tightened as the crowd broke to make way for a large man clad in leather and armor. A dark scar ran across his shaved scalp, and he was blind in one eye. The man readied the whip in his hand, breathing like a bull preparing to charge – only while sporting a vile smirk.

A hush fell upon the crowd.

"Count," demanded the king.

No, Xavier wanted to say. I won't!

He had never wished for death so dearly until that moment. He carried too much of his father's heart in him—an absolute and unrelenting love that often gave them more trouble than they bargained for. All eyes caught on Xavier. He paled and cast his eyes to the dirt—to the sludge beneath his feet that so resembled dark, thick blood.

Xavier met his father's gaze. Dark rings shaded Nathaniel's deep green gems of eyes. Weariness was etched into his face.

Do it, Son, Nathaniel was saying.

Please.

Xavier shut his eyes and nodded.

Crack.

"One," he muttered.