“I am tired.”
“Do giants sleep?”
“We invented it.”
Aren smiled.
“Will you wake again?”
“If I choose.”
There it was.
Always.
Choice.
Aren placed his palm against Gaelor’s enormous finger.
The giant walked east.
The mountains eventually accepted him again.
Others followed.
Some giants remained awake.
One helped rebuild a collapsed bridge because villagers asked.
Another refused to move from a lake for twenty years.
Children swam around its shoulders.
Eldoria adjusted.
People always do.
Aren grew.
At fourteen, he was still too thin.
At sixteen, he finally became taller than Corvin for three months.
Corvin hated it.
At seventeen, Corvin grew again.
Aren declared the matter politically motivated.
They became brothers in everything except parentage.
Not immediately.
They argued.
Fought once.
Actually punched each other over whether the northern provinces should receive tax relief.
Queen Maris found them.
Two heirs to rival royal lines rolling across the council floor.
She stared.
“Is this how the kingdom is governed now?”
Corvin said, “He started it.”
Aren said, “He was wrong.”
Both were made to clean the chamber themselves.
Mira, a street girl Aren had known since childhood, eventually became representative of the eastern wards.
She had laughed the first time anyone suggested it.
Then won overwhelmingly.
Aren accused her of bribing voters.
“With what?”
“Stolen apples.”
“Those were campaign refreshments.”
She became the loudest person in the Council.
Oren adored her.
Corvin feared her.
Aren trusted her more than most nobles.
Years later, people began telling the story of the festival differently.
Paintings showed Aren in shining armor.
He hated those.
“I wore a coat with lice.”
Artists politely ignored him.
One painting showed him effortlessly pulling the Kingmaker Sword from the marble.
Wrong.
He never pulled it.
He turned it.
That mattered.
“Why?” a young scholar asked.
Aren was twenty-eight then.
“Why does turning matter?”
“Because everyone thought the sword was a weapon.”
“And it wasn’t?”
“It was a key.”
He smiled.
“Most dangerous things are not what people call them.”
The Kingmaker Sword was never placed back in the altar.
Aren had it moved to the public archive.
Not royal treasury.
People could see it.
Nobody else could turn it.
Some tried.
That became annoying.
Eventually a sign was installed.
PLEASE DO NOT ATTEMPT TO BECOME KING.
Mira claimed authorship.
The older Aren became, the less interested he was in his own royal blood.
He traveled.
Visited the mountains.
Studied the giants.
Found villages where ancient stone symbols remained.
Learned that Eldoria’s history before the monarchy had been far stranger than anyone knew.
The First House had not originally been monarchs.
They had been translators between humans and giants.
Keeper.
Not King.
The title had changed over centuries.