Part 1: From The Ashes

  “You will go to the southern district and serve in the orphanage.”

  The words fell like guillotine. They were spoken with clear finality.

  Across from me, my son’s face shifted from shock to disbelief. Then his pride cracked, and his eyes clouded with something hidden fear.

  “Why, Father?” Sirius cried, his voice breaking. “I am a prince! Why must I waste my days with those who are… lesser by birth?”

  “Because, my son,” I said, my tone firm though my heart ached, “you will learn to respect every citizen of this kingdom. If you cannot, then you will never be fit to rule within it. While I sit on this throne, arrogance will grant you no authority.”

  The words struck him harder than he expected. I saw the fight drain from his small shoulders. He lowered his eyes, and the defiance that had sparked for the last twenty minutes guttered into silence.

  Sirius had been caught bullying the castle servants again. It was the last time I would tolerate such cruelty. Discipline had to go beyond scolding. Some lessons only take root in the soil of experience. Among the orphaned, the abandoned, and the forgotten, he would see the truth of the world beyond marble halls.

  “Yes, Father,” he muttered, his voice small.

  “You may go,” I said, softer now. “Tomorrow, Thorn will take you there. One day, you will see that this is for your good.” I forced a smile, hoping it would pierce through the sting of correction.

  He bowed, clumsy and stiff, then turned away.

  When the doors closed, I let out a long breath. Raising children was no small task, and the burden of shaping a prince pressed heavier than most. Discipline must be firm, but it must also be done in love.

  Sirius was only nine, yet already the burden of the crown hovered near him. Soon enough, the kingdom would demand more from him than he could imagine. I prayed that my example, both in my failures and successes, would forge him into the man the empire would need.

  Whether on this throne or at his sibling’s side.

  I wondered what fate awaited him in the orphanage. Sometimes the Maker joins paths we would never weave ourselves.

  —

  I still could not believe I was walking to spend time in an orphanage.

  My eyes stayed fixed on Thorn’s boots as they struck the stones before me. My bodyguard always walked a half-step ahead, silent and steady. The scar that stole his voice had never dimmed his vigilance, though it left him useless for conversation. Still, I trusted him with my life.

  Today, I almost wished he would turn down another street. Lead me to the market. Take me out hunting again, beyond the walls where the air was clean and wild. Anything but this.

  Instead, he guided me deeper into the southern district, where the streets grew narrow and the buildings hunched low. The smell of damp and smoke clung to the air. Children’s laughter rang faintly, though it did not sound like joy to me. It sounded hungry.

  Up ahead, Thorn raised a hand. His gesture was simple, but final. I followed his eyes to a squat building of stone and timber, worn thin with years. No banners, no carvings, nothing of note. Just another face among the weary homes of the poor. Yet here, Father had decreed, I would be spending too much time.

  I sighed and muttered under my breath. I had never known Father to lie. If he said years, then years it would be.

  We reached the door. Thorn knocked once, firm and sure.

  It opened to reveal a woman so old she seemed carved from the same stones beneath our feet. Her back was bent, her hair as gray as ash, her skin lined deep. Yet her eyes flicked sharp as steel, and her hand snatched the letter from Thorn quicker than I expected.

  The seal of my father’s crest broke beneath her thumb. She read swiftly, lips pursed, then lifted her gaze to me. It was not the kind of look one gives a boy. It was the kind of look one gives a prince who must be tested. Her eyes were sharp, almost too knowing, and I felt myself stiffen under them.

  “Come in, then,” she said. Her voice rasped like gravel dragged across stone.

  I lingered at the threshold, staring into the dim hall beyond. The air smelled of damp wood and smoke, mixed with something sour-sweet like boiled cabbage. My chest tightened. This was no palace.

  “Here we go,” I muttered, and stepped inside. Thorn followed silently, his shadow stretching long across the floor.

  She led us through a narrow kitchen, where iron pots hung blackened with years of use. The walls carried stains of smoke and grease, and the wood beneath my boots sagged with age.

  Beyond it, a low door opened into a wider room where the orphans gathered.

  Children sprawled across the floor, their clothes mismatched, their laughter raw. They were kings and soldiers and merchants in the games their imaginations built, scraping together kingdoms out of scraps of cloth and broken toys.

  I had never seen play like this. My games had armor polished bright and tutors watching to correct my form. These children had only themselves, and yet they seemed alive in a way I did not understand.

  Then my eyes caught on someone apart from the rest.

  In the corner sat a boy close to my own age. His body looked ordinary enough at first, but his left arm caught my attention. It was unnaturally pale, almost the color of bone. He had scars across other parts of his skin where sleeves could not cover that were the same shade, as if a winter frost had marked him forever.

  And stranger still, he was reading. A thick, worn book balanced in his lap. While his eyes traced the page, his right hand flipped a butter knife again and again, catching it between his fingers with easy rhythm.

  A boy my age, scarred and pale, reading with one hand while playing with a blade in the other.

  It was such a strange sight that I froze where I stood, unsure whether to laugh, scoff, or step closer.

  He turned, and his eyes almost glowed in the dim lighting.

  —

  I knew they were coming before they entered the room.

  The world around me was never silent. It thrummed. Every footfall, every shift of weight, every scrape of chair against stone or cloth against skin sent tremors through the world. My mind caught each ripple and wove it together into a picture of everything within fifty feet. Beyond that, the shapes grew faint, like smudges at the edge of a painting, but they were there all the same.

  Three sets of steps drew near. One steady and deliberate, the other heavier and protective, following those familiar steps which moved with an ancient grace.

  The knife spun in my hand. Over and over, the small clink of its handle against my fingers marked the rhythm. The motion steadied me. Once it had been survival, for I needed the focus to drown out the flood of signals that threatened to overwhelm me.

  Now it was simply habit, a comfort I did not wish to lose. The weight of the blade in my palm, the flick of wrist, the catch, all of it made sense of a world that often did not.

  It had not always been so. The first six months after I awoke with what I now call tremor sense nearly destroyed me. Every touch was agony, not because it hurt but because the sheer avalanche of detail left me gasping for air.

  I had to remain naked, for even the brushing of cloth against my skin was more than I could bear. A sleeve or a boot was not fabric to me but a thousand scratches, a thousand echoes of motion all clamoring at once. I could not eat, could barely sleep, and more than once I blacked out from the flood.

  So I began inch by inch, forcing my body and mind to adapt. At first it was nothing more than breathing in patterns, training myself to cling to one thread of rhythm until the rest of the noise faded. Then, slowly, I found that if I created my own rhythms, I could drown out the chaos with order. That discovery saved me.

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  Mistress Elora saw it before I did. She gave me work in the kitchen, where everything could be done at a steady pace. Stirring soup. Kneading dough. Chopping bread in slow, even slices. Each motion was an anchor, something solid to hold me in place against the tide of sensation. From there I found smaller things to keep the rhythm alive. Tossing a pebble or coin in my hand. Rolling a stick between my fingers.

  My favorite rhythm was flipping a knife. It forced me to focus more intensely than anything else. I had to keep track of the edge, the balance, the spin, all while holding a steady pattern. When Mistress Elora first caught me doing it in the kitchen, she stopped me at once, afraid I would cut myself.

  What she never realized was that I already had, many times. The wounds closed almost as quickly as they opened, leaving only pale scars that blended into the countless thin lines already etched across my body. They drew no new attention.

  In time, she saw how much it steadied me, and she allowed it while I worked beside her. After enough pestering, she finally gave me a dull butter knife to carry when I was not in the kitchen.

  I felt safer that way. This world had taken everything from me, and without it in my hand, I felt stripped bare, defenseless. The knife became more than a tool for focus. It was comfort I could control, when the world felt like chaos.

  Reading came next. At first, it was only the turning of the pages, the steady cadence of paper sliding beneath my fingertips. The soft rasp of parchment against skin became another rhythm, another tether to keep me anchored when the flood threatened to sweep me under.

  Then the words themselves caught me. Each line was a thread I could follow, pulling me deeper until the noise faded into the background. Books became a different kind of rhythm, one of thought instead of touch, yet no less vital. Through them, I learned not only how to focus but how to choose. I could narrow my gaze to a single sentence, a single word, until the storm quieted enough for me to breathe.

  Years have passed since those first nights, and I no longer need the aid to function, yet the routines remain. The knife spins in my hand, the pages turn before my eyes, and with each familiar motion, I carve out a small space of silence amid the constant tremor of the world.

  Mistress Elora had understood in her own way. She never stopped pressing more books into my hands, always saying that feeding my mind was the surest way to keep me from being consumed by the gift that scarred me. I devoured them greedily, one after another, until their words bled into my thoughts and shaped the way I saw the world. I did not simply read them. I wore them, like armor beneath my skin.

  I do not think Mistress Elora was the only reason the shelves grew full. Asher, the guildsman who had pulled me from the ruins, visited whenever his duties allowed. He never said much, but there was always another stack waiting soon after he left. I was not foolish enough to think it a coincidence.

  Somehow, he was the one providing the means for them, quiet and unseen. It was his way of checking in, I suppose. Bread for the mind, slipped to me as carefully as the coin, I was sure he slipped to Mistress Elora for excess food for us.

  He had carried me from the place where my parents died.

  The knife slipped once, its edge scraping my finger. My throat tightened. The ache came back, the one that never seemed to leave. No matter how many books I read, no matter how sharp my senses became, some wounds stayed raw, even when I could heal all others in moments.

  It seemed like this wound might never heal. I wasn't sure if I wanted it to.

  Mistress Elora entered the room, her steps graceful as always. Two figures trailed behind her.

  The first was a boy, close to my age. At first glance there was nothing unusual about him, yet the more I looked, the more he stood apart. His hair was a dirty blond, cut neatly enough that it did not fall into his eyes, which were sharp and green, almost too sharp. They seemed to pierce through whatever they looked upon, daring you to look away first.

  His face carried a cocksure tilt, a smirk not quite formed but always ready, as if he already knew he was better than the rest of us. Even his clothes spoke the same story. Plain, yes, but whole. The fabric matched, the hems were clean, and not a patch or fray marred them. Someone with coin had seen to that. He was no orphan. He did not belong to our ragged band of misfits.

  Behind him loomed a man whose presence nearly swallowed the doorway. He stood a head taller than most, well over six feet, broad-shouldered and thick through the chest. Brown hair fell untidily around a face half-swallowed by a heavy beard, but there was nothing careless in his bearing. His jaw was set hard, his eyes always moving, sweeping the room for threat or trouble. He had the posture of a man too big for the space he occupied, shoulders almost hunched to fit, yet there was nothing diminished in him.

  His whole frame radiated watchfulness, a silent vow that no harm would touch the boy while he stood guard. It was the kind of protectiveness we never saw in this place, where children learned early that they had no one to shield them but themselves.

  The sight was strange, almost jarring, against the backdrop of our worn-down hall. Here the walls sagged with age, the air smelled faintly of damp stone, and the fire crackled low in its hearth. To see a boy escorted as if he were treasure into our forgotten corner of the capital made the space feel suddenly smaller.

  I flicked the knife again, the handle catching between my fingers, and let my eyes rest on the newcomer. Whoever he was, he was not one of us.

  “Children,” Mistress Elora’s voice cut through the chatter. The room hushed, every head turning toward her. “This is Sirius.” She gestured toward the boy. “His father has sent him here to help with chores and to spend time among you.”

  A murmur rippled through the room. Some of the younger children stared openly, their curiosity unhidden. The older ones shifted uneasily, already weighing what it meant to have someone like him in our midst.

  Mistress Elora lifted her hand again, this time pointing to the man who stood behind Sirius. “This is Thorn, the guard who will follow Sirius. You can ignore him. He is mute and will not be speaking with you.”

  Thorn’s eyes scanned the room with the calm of a wolf watching a pack it did not trust. He stood tall and immovable, as if the walls themselves could not shift him.

  Mistress Elora’s gaze swept back over us, lingering long enough to still any whispers that dared to rise. “I trust you will be kind to Sirius and to Thorn.”

  Her eyes swept the room, prodding at the shape of our souls as if she could see whether we would live up to her expectations. It was the way only a grandmother could look at you, gentle enough to soften your guard yet sharp enough to leave you squirming if you had no intention of obeying.

  I flicked the knife once more and looked back to Sirius. His face was stiff, trying not to show the discomfort I could feel rolling off him.

  This was going to be interesting.

  —

  Sirius was worthless. He did not know how to do anything. Well, anything except boss people around. That part he had mastered.

  For someone like me, who could feel every tremor and ripple of the world with painful clarity, it still did not compare to the agony of being near Sirius. He was like a cheese grater pressed against your nerves, scraping them raw every time he opened his mouth.

  I thought living with a house full of broken orphans was hard enough, but at least we carried our wounds together. Sirius managed to unite us in something else entirely. We all hated him.

  It was the way he spoke, always as if the words themselves should bow before him. It was the way he moved, stiff with pride. Even the sound of his breathing seemed to gnaw at your patience. There was something about him that just grated, and after a while, you stopped trying to figure it out. You only wanted it to go away.

  A month had passed since his grand arrival, and already we were counting the days until his departure. He would stay most of the day and then leave before dark.

  I did not know why his father had sent him here, but I wished he would come and take him back, whoever he was. To be honest, though, if I were his father, I would have sent him away, too.

  To make matters worse, Mistress Elora finally lost patience with him. After watching Sirius attempt and fail at nearly every chore with a level of clumsy arrogance that defied belief, she decided he was better suited for one thing alone.

  The kitchen.

  She banished him there to scrub dishes. Piles and piles of dishes.

  Which meant that every time I helped prepare the meals, he was only a few feet away, sulking over soap and water. His sighs carried across the kitchen like wounded animals, as if the world had wronged him by expecting him to hold a rag.

  His guard, Thorn, was never far. The man had loosened since his first arrival, growing more comfortable with the orphanage, but his watchful eyes never wavered. He studied the room with the kind of analytical calm that made you feel he already knew what you would do before you did it.

  I found the pairing almost poetic. Sirius and Thorn. A spoiled boy flailing in the sink, and a silent shadow standing over him. The boy had been given the name of the stars, but it was his guard who carried the name that fit him best.

  A true thorn in the flesh of the world.

  “Ughhh… do these dishes ever end?” Sirius groaned for the thousandth time in the last two minutes.

  The steady rhythm of my chopping was my only reply.

  Out of the corner of my eye I caught him staring again. His gaze lingered on my pale left arm, the one that faced him.

  “What’s with the arm?” he asked. Same question, same tone, the same way he had pestered me and nearly every other orphan since he arrived.

  Something broke inside me. A tightness in my chest snapped, and anger clawed its way up my throat. I had tried to be kind, tried to honor Mistress Elora’s request. But I could not keep holding it back.

  “What’s up with my arm?” My voice came out a whisper, sharp as steel.

  I saw Thorn shift immediately, his eyes narrowing as if he had caught the scent of danger. His presence did not stop me.

  “I was five years old when the world ripped my parents from me. They were devoured by a wyrm. It tore my body apart and took my arm with it.”

  I tore my shirt over my head, letting the fabric drop to the floor. Pale scars ran across my chest and sides in a jagged pattern, like a meteor shower frozen against the sky of my skin.

  “When I woke, the wounds had closed, and my arm had become this. I did not even know I had lost it until I saw what was left of me.” My voice shook, but not with weakness.

  I stepped closer, glaring at him. “I have lived in this orphanage ever since, without the parents that beast stole from me. And now I have to endure your constant questions and your lordly strutting. You think you are above us because you were born on cushions and wealth, and you act as if that makes you ruler of the world.”

  My words burned like fire in my throat. “We are tired of you. We do not want you here. Why don’t you run back to the father you still have, and leave us alone.”

  Sirius’s eyes went wide. He stumbled back a step, his heel catching the leg of the counter. A clay plate slid free, tumbled, and shattered against the old wood floor. The crack echoed, sharp and final, as if the plate too had given up in protest.

  He looked down at the broken dish, then up at me, then to Thorn.

  Without a word, he threw the rag onto the counter and shoved past his guard. Thorn did not stop him. He only turned his head slightly, watching as Sirius stormed toward the door.

  A moment later, I felt the faint vibration of hinges and wood. My senses caught the shift of air, the scrape of the frame. The door opened, then closed. He was gone.

  I bent, gathered the broken plate, and dropped the pieces into the waste bin. Then I returned to the chopping block, redonned my shirt, and found the rhythm of the knife’s steady thud against the wood again.

  “I can’t believe that worked,” I muttered under my breath, a strange lightness stirring in my chest. At last, I had spoken the words that needed to be spoken.