RE: Monarch

I endured an endless litany of well-wishing, brown-nosing, and curious questions. All throughout, the table at the center of the banquet hall beckoned. I salivated, staring at the spread.

My father had pulled out all the stops. The seemingly endless table was overflowing with every fruit, meat, and wine imaginable. Maybe I’d start with the honeyed ham, or a turkey leg, or the gods-damned table itself if it meant I could finally eat. Stuff myself with splinters of wood soaked in grease from a hundred felled animals.

After years in the sanctum, even the road rations we ate in transit felt decadent. This was something else. This was like waking from a terrible dream and realizing everything was not only alright, it was fantastic.

And then realizing that you’re glued to the bed.

“Are they as savage as the stories?” A man I’d never seen before and probably never would again asked in complete seriousness. His underbite was large enough to serve food on.

“The birds?” I asked, utterly entranced by a glistening tray of turkey.

“What—No.” He looked around conspiratorially and leaned in to whisper. “The infernals.”

“Worse,” I whispered in his ear. “Many of them are academics.”

“Aca… demics,” he repeated, as if he was trying out the word for the first time.

“Um.”

“And don’t tell anyone I told you this…” I lowered my voice further for dramatic effect. “But some of them even… have… children.”

He opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. Then seemed to abandon further comment altogether.

I left the man behind, thoroughly confused, making slow progress to the table before another young noble stopped me to chatter about the state of the kingdom. Despite every instinct to blow her off and slip by, I listened. Playing politics wasn’t my preferred cup of tea, but blowing them off and following my every whim hadn’t exactly worked out for me the first time around.

Once we parted, I made it another three steps before a familiar voice stopped me.

“You get any more trussed up, they oughta stick an apple in your mouth and put you on a table with the rest.”

I spun.

Cephur grinned. His face and appearance were more or less how I remembered, though there were a few more streaks of white scattered throughout his hair, and he wore a resplendent cerulean tabard that gave his hardened appearance a distinguished flare. He held two plates in his hands, one nearly empty, one stacked with meat.

Beside him, Tamara openly smiled. Her once wild and unruly hair was arranged in a neat bun that cleverly hid the points of her ears.

“Told you,” Tamara stage-whispered to Cephur. “See that stupefied look? He doesn’t remember us.”

“I could live a thousand lives without forgetting either of you.” Any annoyance at the interruption vanished entirely, and I strode forward, nearly knocking the plates from Cephur’s hands and wrapped them both in an embrace.

“Such a softie,” Tamara said.

“Soft? Soft what? You feel those damn arms? Boy’s solid as a rock,” Cephur grunted.

I stepped back, pushing my hair out of my face. Elphion, where did we even start? I spotted a pair of matching rings on their fingers. “You got married?”

Cephur maneuvered a plate around Tamara and used his forearm to pull her close. “Yep.”

“That was the idea,” Tamara said.

“Congratulations… I… You both look great,” I said, uncharacteristically at a loss for words. Seeing them again filled me with nothing but warmth. They both took such a gigantic risk on me when there was almost no reason to do so. Gambled. And I was delighted to see it paid off.

Cephur nodded. “Commandin’ a regiment is a pretty lucrative position. Maybe that’s obvious, but I didn’t know how much. More than a few steps up on the pay scale, you know.”

Tamara sighed, giving her husband a small push. “One promotion and writ of nobility was all it took to turn him into a gold-hoarding goblin.”

“I’d prefer a dragon analogy, myself. Since they also waylay beautiful women from time to time.”

“Stop.” Tamara rolled her eyes and kissed him on the cheek.

The regiment. I’d almost forgotten.

In my first life, my father tasked me with putting together a regiment of soldiers, all of whom would answer to me directly. Being young and stupid, I’d twiddled my thumbs until the deadline, and he eventually threw up his hands and abandoned the idea entirely.

Not long after my reawakening I’d charged Cephur with putting it together, writ of nobility contingent on his aid.

“Best part of getting paid?” Cephur stuck the fully stacked plate out to me with a grin. “Eatin’ better.”

I took the plate as gingerly as a firstborn child, gave Cephur a look of unimaginable gratitude, then unapologetically shoved food into my mouth. It was everything I’d dreamed it would be and more.

“No wonder you aren’t so scrawny anymore,” Tamara teased.

I glared at her, and ripped into a leg of lamb, talking between bites. “Bully me later. I wanna enjoy this.”

The one-time ranger’s smile slowly faded. “Fun as this reunion is, there’s a few things we really ought to go over. Sooner, rather than later.”

Tamara’s mouth turned down at the edges.

I swallowed and put the lamb down.

Part of why Cephur and Tamara left such an impression on me, despite the relatively short time we spent together, was that they didn’t screw around. They didn’t give two shits about rank or station, or any of the countless nothings that pervaded Silodan. And neither of them scared easily.

So if Cephur was worried about something, I wasn’t about to put it off.

***

We slipped into the adjacent hall. Tamara and Cephur took turns bringing me up to speed.

Either my father’s estimation of our standing was drastically out of touch, or he’d outright lied to me. Whitefall was on the brink of civil war. It was so bad enough that my father executed an entire house—House Faircomb—a matter of months ago. The tactic wasn’t all that surprising, considering the source, but that the atrocity occurred within Whitefall itself was unheard of.

To make matters worse, the pending conflicts weren’t only inside our walls.

Cephur swirled his wine. “Couple factions—not small factions mind you, have been pressing their luck. Nipping at the borders. They’re hard to pin down, even harder to interrogate when we can lay hands on ’em. That don’t happen often, because as open-minded as these new policies seem, among the regiments we’re still the king’s redheaded stepchild, pardon the figure of speech. Tend to be used in a supplementary and cleanup capacity, rarely more. Part of it is that we’re mixed, which makes us a risk to deploy when some men could turn tail and run in the instance we go up against their blood brothers and sisters.”

“What factions?”

“Allegedly independent factions of light elves and dwarves, mostly. Dark elves have been quiet. Little too quiet for my liking.”

I ground my teeth. This made little sense. I spent most of my teenage years in relative peace. There was no sudden upsurge until Thoth came out of nowhere.

But then again, she didn’t just appear from thin air.

She was working in the background the entire time, building allies.

Just as I was.

Had she held them back? Encouraged them to wait to strike until the perfect moment? It’s what I would do if I were her.

I grimaced. “Why now?”

Tamara and Cephur exchanged a look.

“It’s… hard to say,” Cephur hedged.

I straightened from my slouch, looked them both over. They were holding something back. More accurately, they didn’t want to tell me. My mind ticked on something Cephur said. Allegedly independent.

“Oh, fuck,” I groaned.

Tamara gave my arm a comforting rub. “To be clear, we’re not saying it’s your fault.”

“It ain’t,” Cephur grunted. “Light elves and infernals, or dwarves and dark elves, sure, but light elves and dwarves? Nobody but the mountain seers expect that pairing.”

Of course they wouldn’t. Because they’d never seen it before.

But I had.

And if the elves and dwarves caught wind of the king sending his son to the enclave as a bargaining piece—in no world would he admit I’d run off on my own—they’d sense a shift in the balance of power, and start making alliances of their own.

“What’s happening?” Maya stood in the doorway, her face barely lit.

I rested my forehead against my palm and waved her over. “Just in time. We’re talking about how my actions in the enclave may have inadvertently antagonized our future allies.”

“Hey there, little purple,” Cephur said, giving her a small wave.

Tamara rose to greet Maya as she approached. “You look gorgeous.”

Maya took Tamara’s hands and squeezed them. “It’s wonderful to see you again. Both of you.”

Cephur caught Maya up. All the while, my mind raced, looking for things I could have done differently, coming up dry. If I’d returned to Whitefall after the initial reset, my father wouldn’t have listened to a damned thing I said. It would have been years before I could strike out on my own, far too much time to leave Thoth to her own devices.

When Cephur’s attention returned to me, he radiated pity. “None of this diminishes what you accomplished.”

“It does if it kills us,” I said darkly. “How do we fix it?”

Cephur leaned back in his chair, steepled his fingers. “We sit tight for now. Plan. I suspect things will be quiet for a while, now that you’re back. They’re waiting to see how it all shakes out.”

“But if there’s a formalized alliance between Whitefall and the infernals before tensions deescalate…” Tamara trailed off.

“It will be open war,” Maya finished.

“The last thing we need, with Thoth on the horizon.” I squeezed the table until a loud crack startled all four of us.

“Just focus on shoring up the alliances you can,” Cephur reiterated. “Spend some time training with the regiment. Reconnect with your family. Let Whitefall see you as a person they can get behind. Relax. I’ll keep you in the loop.”

Relax. Do I even know how to relax, anymore?

Even if I didn’t, I knew how to recenter. I let the frustration and anger go, sinking into the state of tranquility used to increase the speed of mana generation.

“Okay.” I looked to Tamara. “Speaking of family, any insight on Sera? She came at me pretty hard right off the iron. We weren’t exactly friends when I left, but we weren’t outright hostile.”

Tamara nodded thoughtfully. “I’m not sure Sera has or wants friends. But we’re friendly enough that she’s talked a little about her situation. Vented, mostly. At first, they were prepping her for succession. With you out of pocket, many of the duties and learning she had shirked were no longer so easy to evade. She may have been exaggerating, but I’ll be honest. It sounded like the hells.”

“And then I made my triumphant return, making all that unpleasantness totally unnecessary.” I filled in the blanks.

“Poor porcupine had to wear a dress,” Cephur sneered.

Tamara sighed. “You’re too hard on her.”

“I ain’t.”

“You are.”

“I’d like to hear your opinion as well, Cephur.” Maya inserted herself into the argument smoothly. “Just to get an alternate perspective.”

Cephur put his goblet down. “Haven’t talked to her much. Mostly just what I’ve heard from this one.”

The married couple shared another look, and finally, Tamara relented, nodding her assent.

“Can I be blunt?” Cephur asked.

“Please,” I said.

“I think Princess Sera got a little too used to being queen shit of a tiny pond.” He continued, even as Tamara rolled her eyes. “The only member of the royal family with magical talent. That’s gone. And now, she’s still every bit the outcast she used to be, with none of the benefit. And she’s too proud to accept it, so what’s the alternative? Blamin’ you.”

“I’m not sure I know how to mend that gap,” I admitted.

“You don’t. Treat her the same as any noble who gets above their station, any sheep that breaks from the herd. You break her.”

“Sera’s pride is fragile. More now than ever.” Tamara slapped her palms on the table, glaring daggers at Cephur. “If he does that—baits her into a spar and muscles her down, or rubs her face in it some other—he’ll lose her. Permanently.”

“And if he don’t, she’ll never accept that he’s the real deal, not some two-sliver rat thief.”

I glanced between them. “You two have a lot of faith in my abilities, considering how we haven’t seen each other in years.”

Cephur snorted into his goblet while Tamara looked away. “Pardon the frankness, my liege, but you killed a revenant, set a trap for a mage stronger than all of us put together and put him down yourself, started building an army, and killed a handful of marauders all while you were barely out of diapers. And that was all before you went to the enclave. I have a sneaking suspicion you could handle your sister now, if it came to that.”

As kind as his words were, I didn’t want it to come to that.

And I had a feeling that neither of them were wrong. Breaking Sera would only push her away. And treating her with kid gloves would only reinforce her image of me as some cowardly thief.

I stood up, suddenly exhausted. “My thanks to you both. You’ve both given me a lot to think about.”

Cephur held up a finger. “One last thing. That kid you were lookin’ for? I found him.”

“Hmm? What kid?”

“Alten.”