Heir of Golden Storms

“I-I am sorry for interrupting, b-but can I tell you something?” Common Cold asks, following me.

“You already did,” I answer.

We are walking through the path between the Slumbering Forest that leads towards the Miracle Castle. My day could not get any more complicated. I must find a way to nullify the venom of a red frog before dinner. It would be easier if I were partnered up with someone else. If I were with Caspian, he would have suggested to go hunt a red frog while I find an antidote. If I were with Hesperia, she would have told me all of her knowledge about the red toad, and it would be easier to find the antidote. Instead, I am stuck with someone who cannot even cover her mouth when she sneezes.

To top it all, I am supposed to meet Hesperia and Caspian tonight. Father, of course, had to complicate things with a useless dinner. If he is going to talk about Easton’s wedding one more time, I am going to be bitter. Last night’s ball was in honor of his engagement to a princess from the Court of Spirits.

“But –”

I turn around. My patience is thin for insolent people like Common Cold. “But what?” I yell.

“Someone is watching us,” she says as she lowers her head.

I look to my right. The forest eyes are back to stare at me. I let my journal, ink and feather fall to the floor and draw my sword.

“What do you want?” I yell at him. He blinks once and starts retroceding. “Get out of there!”

His eyes continue making themselves smaller. He is not following my orders. Annoyed and offended, I take a step towards the Slumbering Forest. Before I could pass the first tree, Common Cold grabs me by the elbow, coldness emitting from her hand.

“Don’t,” she says. “It is dangerous in there.”

“I do not care,” I say as I jerk my elbow away from her grip.

I walk inside, sword high and following the forest eyes. He is faster than me, so I start jogging. The more I walk inside the forest, the less the light penetrates. Whispers starts sounding from everywhere inside the forest. I cannot make out what they are saying, but I do not try either because my focus is on the forest eyes. The forest eyes stop, and I accelerate my pace to catch up.

The forest sprite is not wearing the dark green suit anymore. He is not wearing any clothes. Instead, he has leaves and vines covering his chest, creating a shirt. The vines continue to his legs, turning brown and imitating roots that create long pants. He is barefoot. His face is serious.

“I gave you an order,” I tell him, stopping a few feet away from him.

“Your commands are not of any value inside the Slumbering Forest,” he says as the whispers intensify.

“What do you want?” I ask him. I hear a whisper close to my left ear and I flinch, turning my head to see who is there. No one is. Another whisper sounds in my right ear and I react the same way, but there is no one there. “What are those?”

“What are what?” the sprite asks. Is he teasing me?

“The whispers,” I tell him.

“What whispers?” he asks but then his eyes grow wide in wonder. “Do you hear them?”

“Who does not?” I ask him as I slap the air near my right air, trying to blow away the whispers.

“She was right. You need to get out of here,” he says, looking to his sides, searching to see if someone is out there.

Before I could react, someone pulls me by the back of my shirt. I see Common Cold extending her arm past me and throwing a blast of ice towards the sprite. The sprite jumps to the side and to the floor, evading the blast. Before I could see his next move, Common Cold pulls me out of the woods.

“Why did you do that for?” I ask when we are back on the passage. I pull my shirt away from her grip.

“He could have killed you,” she says. “Or worse! He could have tortured you into granting him a miracle!”

You need to get out of here.

Why did he lured me into the forest if he wanted me to get out? What made him change his mind? He reacted when I told him about the whispers. It has to do something with them.

“Whatever,” I tell her, brushing her off. I could punish her for yelling at me or for even touching me, but it will not bring me any satisfaction. I put my sword back in my belt against my hip and pick my journal, ink, and feather from the floor.

I continue walking back to the castle. When I am in front of the gate, the knights stand in attention. The white doors with gold decorative lines and horses with wings open slowly, greeting my arrival. I turn my head to look if Common Cold is behind me and has not gotten lost on the straightforward road.

Her eyes are wide opened, revealing the lightest blue eyes that I have ever seen. She stares at the massive doors and at the white walls. She probably has never been this close to a castle before. She would not have had this privilege if she were not partnered with me.

I walk inside the castle. Outside is mostly white, but inside it lacks white. The most abundant color is brown. Brown wooden floor is made of the strongest trees harvested on the mountains. There are paintings of relatives on each wall of the main hallway. A red carpet leads to the main living room where a light-colored chandelier hang.

I instantly take a turn to the left when I arrive to the living room, which has a loss of furniture. I continue through the hallway that is at the left of the living room where glass windows of the west wall illuminate it. I take another turn but this time to the right and enter the fourth door to the right.

The library is the biggest chambers of the castle. It is even big enough that the entrance where we enter is the third floor. It has two underground floors and three more above the floor that we are in. The ceiling is made of enchanted glass that cannot be broken and with the purpose of natural light to enter. I can go left or right to continue checking up the third floor but instead I take the stairs standing in front of me to the first floor.

“How can we find what we are looking for?” Common Cold asks. When she sees that I do not answer, adds, “Your Highness.”

“We do not search for anything. Instead, the library does it for us.”

In the middle of the first floor, between bookshelves, a wooden pedestal stands. A book with a navy blue with gold elegant lines stands on top of it, known as the research book. A feather inserted in a black pot of ink stands next to it. A red band, that is attached to the book, marks the last paged used.

I open the book, revealing the themes that anyone else have looked for. I take the feather from the ink pot and write on the book “Red frog”. Books start flying from different floor, moving around, and landing on the long table at our right. Hundreds of books land on the table. I turn back to the book and add an apostrophe, the letter “s”, and the word “venom”. Books start flying back into the bookshelves.

“Wow,” it is the only the thing that Common Cold says.

I sit down and grab one of the books. Looking at the index of the book, I see Common Cold still standing and looking at the library. When she finds me staring at her, she shakes her head and hurries to sit across from me. She opens one book and starts reading.

“Why did you add salt to the venom when you made it drinkable?” Common Cold asks after an hour of reading quietly.

“Red frogs do not swim in ocean waters because of the salt,” I answer. Also, the venom is toxic to merfolk because of the excess of salt inside them. I nullified the venom with other materials and what the salt did was react with the particles of venom left. “The reaction between salt and the venom causes a small explosion.”

“That is why merfolk are vulnerable to it,” Common Cold says. “Why are faeries and sprites vulnerable to it?”

“I smelled something metallic in it,” I tell her. She raises an eyebrow as if questioning how I can smell it, but she is smart enough and does not ask. “It could be a derivate from iron and iron can kill faeries and sprites.”

“Then, how exactly did you nullify it?” she asks.

“By parts,” I say. “I identified the materials inside of it and started eliminating each one separately by reacting them.”

“That is why you used a string of my hair,” she says. “Can’t we do the same with the frog?”

“No. Smashing it with a boulder will have the same effect.”

I close another book in frustration and push it without remorse away from me. The book falls to the floor and it floats back to the shelf where it was found. I look at the clock that hangs from the wall across of the stairs. I jump off my chair.

“Dinner is in forty minutes,” I shout. “I need to get ready. Get out!”

“But what about the assignment?” Common Cold asks.

“Take the books,” I said, piling four books and handing them to her. “Come to the castle tomorrow at dawn if you find something.” I doubt that she will, but at least it will keep her busy.

I walk away from her, back to the entrance. She follows me closely behind. When I am at the main living room, I do not look at her to see if she is going to leave. I only climb the stairs towards my chambers. In there, I find clothes laid on my bed.

The clothes are obviously white, more elegant than the clothes that I wear at the balls and in a softer fabric. It has golden lining on everything but the pants. The upper part of the costume represents a long-sleeved vest. It starts on my shoulder, breaks into two different sides in the middle where my chest ends and stops only inches above my knees. White long boots stop inches below my knees. There is also a white cape with the inside colored gold that it is supposed to cover my back and my right arm. The purpose of it is to hide my sword on the right side of my hip.

I draw a hot bath. Twenty minutes spent in the bath, and I start putting on the clothes. When I am done, I look at the mirror. The only thing that could make this costume ridiculer is if it had a hat. I put the sword on my waist, cover it with the cape, and walk out of the room.

“Woah! Look at the handsome prince. Maybe you will find someone special tonight,” I hear a female voice say.

I look at my left and spot Marin walking towards me. My sister is against her husband with her arm resting between his. Her golden hair is in a braid and circling head. She wears a white long dress with a few golden and yellow flowers design on it. The yellow color represents the Court of Summer, where her husband is from. When she is near me, I lower a little to kiss her cheek.

“This is a family dinner; I doubt that there will be anyone new,” I tell her. Then I lean in and whisper for only her to hear. “Besides, most princesses are not considered new to me.”

“You are a pig,” Marin says after laughing.

“How are you, Blaise?” I ask Marin’s husband.

Blaise is the second born male of the king of the Court of Summer. He will not get the throne unless his brother dies. He knows that, and it haunts him. I, on the other hand, am the third male, meaning that my chances of obtaining the crown is less. A second born son’s ambition is more than the third born, knowing that the only thing standing between the kingdom and him is one person.

Besides that, Blaise is happier than Ailsa’s husband. He lives at the Summer Castle, but rules over a segment of the court. Tonight, he wears yellow vestment with white lining. It makes a handsome contrast with his tanned skin and ocean blue eyes. He is taller than me and Marin and older than me by more than ten years.

The colors of the royal’s garments specify your alliance. White lets everyone know that the wearer is allied to the Court of Miracles. Any other color specifies the court of that person. The color of Blaise’s Court of Summer is yellow, and the Court of Miracle’s color is gold. His garments main color is yellow and secondary white, while mines are white and secondary gold. The reason for this is that the Court of Miracle overrules the Court of Summer while no other court overrules ours. If the Court of Summer were under no ruling, they would wear only yellow as their main color.

“I am pleased to be here,” he answers. Pleased, not happy.

“Come on, you can say it,” I say. “I am not happy to be here also.”

“Stop it,” Marin says, hitting my left shoulder. “It is just one night. After that, we can continue living our lives.” She starts walking and I walk beside her, Blaise on the other side. “When are you coming to visit us? Sky has been asking about you.”

“Much to my disgrace,” Blaise says. Sky is Blaise’s younger sister, who is the same age as me.

“See? That is the kind of honesty I like, instead of bending your words,” I tell Blaise. He keeps his face straight, ignoring me. I turn back to Marin. “Maybe someday when she is off on vacation to some other court.”

“I heard that,” Blaise warns.

“It was meant to be heard,” I answer.

We walk the stairs into the main hall. Easton is standing there. He is ignoring his fiancée, who is talking to him. She eventually cuts herself up and looks at us.

Easton’s fiancée’s name is Gracin. She is from the Court of Spirits. The Court of Spirits are born with the gift to communicate with spirits, ghost, ghouls, banshees, or anything that is an afterlife presence. They live in the darkest part of the Witches’ Forest.

Gracin is wearing smoke gray dress with faint white color that resembles mist. Her black hair is straight as if it were dead and her skin is paler than a ghost. She is younger than me, by a year or two, and Easton is older than me by one, leaving a gap of two or three years between them. She smiles genuinely when she sees us approaching.

“My lady of the Court of Spirits, I am glad to see you here,” Blaise says as she kisses her hand.

“Happy to see an in-law that can share you pain of being part of this family, are you not?” I say without expecting an answer. “Where is everyone else?”

“Already in the dining room,” Easton answers.

“Then let’s get this over with,” I grunt.

I start walking towards the dining room. The knights standing beside the door open it for me. The long rectangular wooden table of the dining room has different food scattered on top of it. My father, the king of the Court of Miracles, is sitting on the left head of the table, and the right head of the table is emptied, saved for the next wife of the king.

Father’s garments are embodied with more gold than mine or Easton’s. He has trimmed his golden beard to be short but still to cover his face. His golden hair seems to have been cut today. He does not have any sign of age. The only thing that could give his age away is his brown eyes marked with wisdom and experiences that we do not have.

At my father’s right no one is sitting, but after that empty chair sits my eldest brother, Zephyrus, who is younger than Marin. At my father’s left a woman, whom I do not recognize, is seated. She seems around my father’s age, if not younger. Her dark purple hair matches her dress and her eyes are gold. Besides her sits three young ladies one after the other, going from the oldest to the youngest.

“Ah, glad that you could join us,” my father exclaims. “Rowan, my son, sit beside me.”

I stop for a second but quickly continue my pace. Royalty has a specific way of sitting. The king sits at one head and the queen at the other. Then besides the king sits the eldest children with their husbands or wives and continues the pattern. The pattern is broken when guests are here. The guests will always go beside the king. The other reason to break the pattern is when the dinner is dedicated to someone else that is not the king or queen. That someone must seat beside the king.

Father just told me to sit beside him.

Father claps his hands once and the servants start serving our food. It is their job to know what each one of us prefers. When they are done, my father raises his empty golden goblet and the servants come back, filling every glass of everyone old enough with wine. When I see that they serve me wine, I blink. I am not old enough to drink wine, even if I do drink.

“Rowan, I would like you to meet the queen of the Court of Storms, Queen Willow,” father says. I extend my hand towards her.

“Pleased to make your acquaintance,” I say. Pleased, not happy. “Your dress is truly remarkable.” Remarkable, not outstanding.

“Thank you,” Queen Willow answers. I look back at everyone who is wearing Court of Storm’s garments. Only her and the three other ladies are wearing it. There is no sign of a king.

“Please, raise your glass,” the king says as he stands up. We remain seated but raise our glasses. “We are gathered here to celebrate a wedding, an upcoming wedding.” Easton seems pleased with himself as he smiles at Gracin.

“This wedding will unite two of the mightiest courts on our land,” he continues. “Everyone, raise and cheer for the engagement of my son, Prince Rowan, and the daughter of Queen Willow, Princess Thalia.”

I remain on my sit while the cheers begin.