The princes are inseparable.
Kitt balances a book on his lap, though it’s difficult to focus on anything with his younger brother waving a wooden sword in his face. Myla stands to comb back Kai’s unruly hair, all while ignoring the boy’s huff of irritation. With the turning of a page, Edric’s heir grows suddenly studious in the presence of a mother who is not his.
Both boys have been continually told the very same lie as the kingdom beyond their castle walls. Kitt’s mother died giving birth to him before the king remarried and had Kai, making the princes half brothers. That is what they know to be true. Anyone who knows differently is part of the staff, sworn to secrecy, and stowed away within the palace.
In the many years of Edric’s marriage to Myla Rowe, a unique kind of love had blossomed between them. She was bold and stubborn in a way that Iris never had been, managing to rile the king more than he cared to admit. It was a rocky road that led them to each other, one that neither imagined treading. But Edric’s stony heart had started beating again, still only for his Myla.
The family clutters the king’s study, though two members are missing. One a weak child who remains in the west tower, and the other a forgotten princess who is just that. Edric thinks no more of the daughter he doomed to death. Rather, Iris’s end by something as weak as an Ordinary only enflames his hatred for them. And he will stop at nothing until his kingdom is rid of every last one. They were a mistake he is determined to remedy.
Myla looks up at her husband, watching him pore over the puddle of parchment on his desk. She offers him that bright smile, the one Edric had spent their first year of marriage coaxing out of her. For his wife, the king smiles back.
Catching the odd show of emotion, Kitt straightens before beaming at his father.
Edric only nods to the book in his heir’s hand and does not smile back.
