When The Stars Align

chapter eighteen | but syrup is thicker than blood

THE KING WAS AN only child, supposedly. That was what everyone knew. Queen Regan and King Micheal - King Pheon's parents - only ever had one child, because the former royal couple wasn't able to conceive any others.

But that was different from the story the king told us. And the king was a primary source - his story had to be the truth.

Ansen Gray was born minutes before midnight on September thirtieth. He was so close to everything - the kingdom, the people, the magic. So close, but it was an emergency procedure that his mother had to undergo that made him born three weeks earlier.

Three weeks would've made a great difference.

But in result of whatever the queen went through, Prince Ansen Gray Alderidge was born blind, and King Micheal considered that to be unacceptable. It was announced that the boy was a stillborn, and was hidden in the castle oblivious to the public that he was around.

Five years later, Crown Prince - now King Pheon was born on a stormy night in the middle of October. Joy filled the kingdom at the birth of a new heir. But that was when the rage filled through Ansen's veins, and at that young age, he learned about his family. He learned about the kingdom. He learned about magic.

And despite the technological and medical advances, he teamed up with his best friend and son of the King's right hand man, Damien, in search for magic to heal his eyes.

He found it. Who knows where, but at nine years old, he was finally gifted with the ability of sight. And he saw the world in burning red, rage pumping throughout his system. Whatever magic he discovered then, he wanted more. But he never got it.

At nine years old, Ansen Gray left his home without a trace. And since the king and queen didn't announce his birth public, they couldn't express how important it was to bring him back.

"You don't want to do this? I'm telling you to do this, so you will do this? You think no one's killed their own parents before? Guess what, love, that's exactly what I did."

The eve of Prince Pheon's sixteenth birthday, King Micheal and Queen Regan was found dead in their beds, their throats slit - like the king and queen of Sylvaine decades ago. I spent so many years staring at Ansen and King Pheon, but failed to realise they both had the same sharp jaw, and even without the colour, they had the same shape of eyes. They both had an unhealthy obsession with pacing and if you ever saw the two fight, it was almost identical, but Ansen's were now more fine tuned.

I was told to rest after our conversation, but that was the last thing I've been able to do after hearing the story.

I'm back in my hospital room, Lysander insisting that I needed to spend at least another day in here. I'm probably going to try to convince Tori to let me out before then. But for the last three hours, all I've been doing was staring at the ceiling, thinking about what possibly we could do.

We all agreed that we had to find the other three amulets as soon as possible. The black one couldn't be too far from our some, because I had it in my possession when I was eight. It had to be somewhere in our house.

The other two... we agreed that the ruins of Sylvaine were a good option, since that's where Ansen found the ones for Alynthi and Caelum. There's nothing saying that he already searched and found it, but we had to look and confirm.

And the amulet of Auxillium... I wanted to ask Atticus' mom before we searched anywhere else. She had to know something, I refused to believe she was clueless about her son's heritage.

There was a light knock at the door. I raised my head off the pillow, telling them to come in. Atticus shuffles into the room, dropping his bag onto the ground next to the doorway. "Hey," he said simply, falling into the armchair. "How you feeling?"