Things will reveal themselves in the least expected moments. They will be there when they are most needed.
“We still have no clue for where as to start with our investigation,” Virgil sighed and put the letter opener back on Janus’s desk.
Janus sat on the chair behind it, while Roman paced around the room and Logan sat on the armchair in the corner of the room. Roman was muttering silent curses under his breath and Janus watched him closely. They had been sitting together for a few hours. He and Logan had retold over and over again how they had met Green but nothing out of the ordinary had happened that day, except for Green’s arrival, of course. The day before was also quite unremarkable to the point of both Logan and Janus not having anything important to say about it.
“I am aware Virgil,” Logan said and scratched his eyebrow as he looked over to the window. It had the view to the inner courtyard, where the makeshift medic tents had been put up. “But there is nothing else I can tell you. We didn’t learn anything about his background from himself, so we have to reconstruct who he might be from the things we have seen ourselves.”
“Well, we know that he had a partner. Possibly, a husband.”
Janus, Logan and Roman stared at Virgil, who took the letter opener in his hands once more and fiddled with the blade.
“A husband?” Logan asked with a shivering voice.
Virgil glanced over to him and nodded.
“Yes. He mentioned him. No details but that one existed. I assumed he… He never mentioned this to you?”
Logan shook his head and stared down at his left hand. Did he imagine it or was there a band of lighter skin around his middle finger? He blinked and the image was gone, the skin just as brown as the rest of his hand.
A loud stomp almost shook Logan out of his chair and he looked over to Roman who stood with his back turned to them. His hands were balled into fists. For the first time Logan noticed how broad Roman’s shoulders were now that they were held with tension.
Dramatically, Roman turned around and glared at the others as he announced: “We know him! We know him and he obviously knows us! He knew how to calm me down, he knows exactly how to get on J’s nerves, he knows what all of Vee’s nods mean and he knows everything what you think Lo! And so do you! You just throw each other a look and it’s clear! You just know and it’s like it’s all we should need to know in order to figure out who he is but there is something preventing us to make the last connection and it’s driving me mad!”
“I can see that Roman,” Janus said and vaguely motioned against Roman’s hands, “but what are we supposed to do? We have nothing to go off and-”
“He knew where about the panic room. He brought me there. He knew it was safe. He knows the castle; he knew the courtyard but he was no servant. And we can’t remember it because of a curse.”
With that Janus stood up. His brows were furrowed deeply and his lips were pulled into a harsh snarl. Roman growled at the expression and pressed his hands against the side of his head while shaking it vehemently.
“You can’t deny this anymore! It has to be a cruse!”
“Don’t lightly talk about magic, which has been used to eradicate my ancestors. The only ones who would dare to use such powers would be the unnamed and she hasn’t been here since months before Green’s appearance!” Janus hissed.
Roman wasn’t affected by Janus’s anger. In the contrary, he seemed to get even more worked up and turned away towards the door.
“Come on Janus,” Roman said as he gripped the door handle, “this thing is affecting me. Which means it had to be her. No other magic is strong enough to do so.”
Roman pressed the handle down and left the room. Immediately Janus went after him and both Logan and Virgil followed rather confused about what the two had just talked about. They watched Janus getting next to Roman and how he opened his mouth to chide the prince but stopped. His expression changed and he silently kept walking next to Roman who steered towards the backroom in the servants’ wing.
Nobody said anything when Roman opened the door and entered. Nobody made a noise when Roman paced around the room for a few minutes. They just came inside and Virgil closed the door as he was the last one to enter and waited with the others for Roman to get a grip on himself again. He watched his partner walk in circles and eventually stop in front of the wall opposite of the door. He was staring at it and Virgil exchanged a worried look with Janus.
“Ro?” Virgil began cautiously and walked up to him. “I know you wanna solve this but there is nothing in this room. He has been inside here only once; we won’t find any clue here.”
Roman stepped closer towards the wall and put his hand on one of the stones.
“This wall opens.”
“What?”
Perplexed Virgil stepped back. Frantically Roman moved a chest to the side and again put his hand on the same stone as before and pushed down on it. A low creaking sound. The wall slid aside and opened a passage into a dark tunnel.
For a moment four men just stared inside. Then the prince went inwards unbothered by the dark, his eyes adjusting effortlessly and taking on a red colour. His ears were taking in every sound, he knew immediately that the light steps just behind him belonged to Janus, that the heftier but muted ones were Virgil’s and that the hasted loud ones were Logan’s at the end of the group.
“Roman, where are we going! We can’t see!”
Janus had grabbed his arm and Roman halted. He turned and looked down to his friend. In his head something was revolting. Revolting and trying to get his memories back but it wasn’t working right. Instead, he turned to the side and gripped a torch which had been placed in a torch holder. He didn’t question why he knew exactly where the holder was or why it was hanging rather low but just took it and rubbed the top of it against his palm, flame enlighten immediately. He held the torch up over his head for a moment and looked back to the others before he resumed in walking down the tunnel.
There were crossings and other walls which slid aside when Roman pressed them. Nothing of it seemed unfamiliar to him and he knew that that alone should have freaked him out. Yet it didn’t and he followed the way he somehow knew he had to go. In his focus and the others’ worry none of them noticed that on several stones sat little coal drawings. They didn’t notice that there were little signatures beneath them, one from Roman and another they would not have been able to read, not because the language or scripture was different, but because their brain would refuse to put the letters together to a word.
They walked down into a dead end with a wooden door in the middle. Roman opened it, stepped inside with no hesitation and set the torch into a torch holder to his left as if he had done so a million times before.
As if he had done so before? Roman shook his head. The others entered behind him but he just looked at the room. It was a square room, maybe ten feet long and wide, a worn-down couch was standing against the wall in front of him, a little shelf left to it, with books and pencils and coal sitting inside them. On the wall of the door, close to the torch, was an easel, a blank canvas sitting on it.
“I have been here,” Roman mumbled.
He hadn’t noticed how Janus had stepped to his side and flinched when he said: “I would hope so! Leading us through a tunnel system you didn’t know anything about wouldn’t be something I approve of. Also, when have you even found these tunnels? Why am I not aware of them?”
Roman didn’t respond. His eyes had deviated to the wall to the right and his breath was stuck in his throat. Silently, he walked towards it. Walked to the wall with a portrait hanging on it. With a family portrait. Oil pastels. Vibrant colours and strong gradients, which made the four people in it look like they would come alive any second now.
Janus inhaled sharply as he saw it. Virgil’s eyes went wide. Logan gasped and leaned against the wall.
In the portrait they saw a man with light brown skin, short brown locks, eerily green eyes, and a well-kept beard standing next to a woman with slightly darker skin, dark brown hair in a beautiful bun, brown eyes and in front of them two boys, looking identical with brown skin, dark curls and eerily green eyes. They all were wearing regal clothing, man and woman wearing each a crown which hadn’t been worn in over two decades at this point.
It was a portrait of King Aneas, Queen Rhea, the young Prince Roman and…
“It’s him,” Roman choked out.
Janus shook his head and pressed his hand against his forehead: “No - how – we – how did we never see the resemblance? It- it can’t be! It can’t. It can’t?”
Roman’s head was pulsating and he let himself fall back on the couch. Virgil was beside him immediately, holding his hand and trying to not think too much about what he was seeing right now. Janus kept staring at the picture, at the boy in front of Aneas, with the green tunic and the wide grin with so much more confidence than Roman’s.
And Logan pushed himself off the wall and slowly stepped towards the picture. He looked at the colours at the way they blended into each other and he recognized the technique. He saw the hand putting the colours down on the canvas in front of his inner eye. He saw the same hand holding coal and sketching him. He heard a voice telling him to sit naturally. Heard the voice asking him fondly teasing if he could draw a nude. And he heard himself say in a just as fond teasing way that he could if he could behave himself.
“He drew this. He used to draw me…” Logan whispered and he felt his memory slowly breaking free. “He draws things he sees in his nightmares and burns them. He moves so much in his sleep. He has almost threw me off the bed when we started sharing. He doesn’t like it when he has to sleep alone and he usually comes to check on me when I take a nap. He – he didn’t-”
Logan panted. The day before. The day before Green.
That day-
“He didn’t come check on me when I took a nap.”
***
“And there you are.”
██mus froze. It had been a normal day. He had spent the morning with Logan and had a meeting over the alliance talks with Janus after that. Lunch had been calm and nice, Logan had excused himself soon after dinner to take a nap because he felt a little tired. ██mus had taken the time to get back in his room and relax for a while. He had just wanted to go and check on his husband but got caught up in the view over the gardens, the rose maze, his home.
██mus gulped and turned around. His grin was maniacal as he stared into the glowing green eyes of the Dragon Witch.
“There I am!” ██mus cackled and looked her over with a wicked grin. “What has you come here to my humble chambers, Dragon Bitch?”
The creature scowled at the name. She stood far taller than ██mus, her greyish skin, the black flames miming hair and the deep red coat underlining how foreign and out of place she was amongst humans. She was a creature of nightmares and the underworld, her name a testament to the creatures she has eradicated.
“Don’t test me, child. You will pay for your arrogance!” she growled.
██mus grinned as sweat began to form on the back of his neck. It made no sense that she was here now. She was only allowed in the castle at certain times. Janus knew the schedule by heart and he would have been with ██mus at all time had one of her visits been close to come.
“Oh, will I?” ██mus hummed and wracked his brain for the reason why she would be here.
And the reason took his breath and smile. The creature saw his change and began to grin. She walked towards him, held her hand under his jaw and forced him to look up. He had to control himself to not snap for air.
“Who was stupid enough to make a deal with you?”
Her chuckle was wicked and her eyes glimmered with satisfaction.
“Oh, look at that,” she hummed and let her thumb stroke over his cheek. “Your father’s desperation and your mother’s rage. I didn’t think I would ever see such a delicious last expression ever again.”
██mus’s heart stopped. He grappled her wrist and pressed it down from his face.
“What did you just say?”
“Last expression, my dear,” she answered unimpressed and pulled her hand out of his grip and began to pace through the room. “I was ordered to kill the last demon blood in this kingdom. I am here to get rid of your treacherous family once and for all.”
“You killed our parents. You killed my father for making your powers ineffective everywhere but within our kingdom’s boarders.”
██mus was glaring at the Dragon Witch who simply raised an eyebrow.
“Oh child, you should know we can’t do anything against our own kind without a deal. Someone sent me. And someone sent me again to kill you. The last demon blood-”
Loud and hysteric cackling stopped her words. ██mus was overcome with grief. With disbelieve. His father who had decided to stop all the bloodshed his family had brought over these lands, his father who had never shed a single droplet of blood despite having hungered for it, his father who had been nothing but kind to his people and the other kingdoms had been assassinated for the blood he had been born with.
But there was also relief. Relief in the fact that contracts with demons had to be followed closely and ██mus knew that she had made a grave error.
“Already breaking down? I expected more of you, Thea,” she snapped at him.
He regained his composure and tilted his head to the side. With a smirk he began to match her pacing, both of them walking in circles around each other.
“Oh,” ██mus hummed, “I am not breaking down, dearest demon. I just think you might have made a deal you can’t fulfil here.”
“Why would that be?”
“Tell me what the contract is. Not the contractor, I know the rules.”
She hissed but complied: “’I, the Dragon Witch, shall end the life of the King of Theana, the last demon blood in the lands. I shall do so as brutally and cruelly as I please.’ They were almost kind this time; They didn’t even tell me to go for your lousy husband.”
██mus almost snapped at the comment over Logan but kept his anger to himself and simply huffed with a grin.
“Your deal is faulty. Because I may be King of Theana, but I am not the last demon blood.”
“What?”
██mus eyes glowed at her rage and he said ever so pleased: “It’s my brother.”
The Dragon Witch screamed. ██mus jolted back, hands shooting up in front of him and eyes opened widely to see what she was going to do next. Angrily she threw her arms in the air, screeching and revolting under the revelation she just had and went straight forward for ██mus’s neck. He couldn’t do anything but choked as her fingers grappled him against the wall and she brought their faces close to each other.
██mus yapped for air and she lessened her grip. He took a deep breath and grinned dangerously at her.
“Shitty being an incompetent demon bitch, huh? Couldn’t be me-”
She screamed right in his face, the breath smelling rotten and toxic as it hit his nostrils. A clicking sound got lost in the noise.
“Oh, I will make you pay, wrenched thing, you,” she whispered sweetly and ██mus felt his stomach turn. “I will kill the king with demon blood. He’s not next in line now, but he will be if you don’t exist, won’t he?”
“If you kill me-”
“No.”
Her voice was wicked and smooth. Sugar in a deadly dose.
“I won’t kill you. I will erase your existence from their minds. I will make your precious advisor, your best friend, forget you. I will make your people, your most treasured people, forget you. I will make your brother, your last living blood, forget you. I will make your husband, the only one who you ever dared to ask for his love, forget you. And you will suffer seeing them, knowing them and not being able to say a single word about it. You will see your brother die as a king he never wanted to be. And it will be all your fault.”
██mus’s eyes were wide with horror. From the words he just heard, from the realization he just, but mostly from the look Logan shot him over the creature’s shoulder. And his terror grew as Logan shouted in white rage: “Let go of him!”
She was faster as Logan charged forward. She lifted ██mus from the ground holding her fingers up to snap. Logan’s look changed. ██mus tried to reach his arm out for him but he was already too high up the ground.
It dawned them that it was too late.
“Logan!” ██mus cried.
“RE-”
Snap.
***
“REMUS!”
___
Link for AO3, Taglist, Masterlist, and next Chapters are in my first reblog!
