Authority accumulated.
Language hardened.
A person who could speak between worlds became a person who could command them.
Aren wrote in his journal:
Perhaps every tyranny begins when “I can hear them” becomes “They must obey me.”
Oren read it.
“You stole that from something.”
“No.”
“It sounds too intelligent.”
Aren threw another parchment.
Some traditions remained.
At thirty-one, Aren returned to the abandoned room beneath the eastern palace wall.
It had become storage again.
He found the corner where he once slept.
Smaller than memory.
Cold.
He sat there.
Mira found him.
“You disappear dramatically.”
“I walked downstairs.”
“That is dramatic for council members.”
“I’m not a council member.”
“You attend every meeting.”
“That’s because all of you make terrible decisions.”
Mira sat beside him.
“Do you ever wish you took the crown?”
Aren thought.
“Sometimes.”
She looked surprised.
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“When meetings last longer than four hours.”
She laughed.
Then he became serious.
“When people are suffering and everyone argues.”
Mira nodded.
“It would be easier to order.”
“Yes.”
“Would it be better?”
Aren looked toward the floor.
“That’s the problem.”
He never stopped being tempted by simplicity.
That was another thing stories removed.
They turned the boy who rejected a crown into someone immune to power.
He was not.
Sometimes Aren imagined what he could accomplish if nobody could say no.
Schools.
Food stores.
Roads.
Justice.
All noble things.
That was how he finally understood Aldric.
Not excused.
Understood.
Power rarely introduced itself as evil.
Usually it arrived carrying a good reason.
At forty, Aren became the first Keeper to visit the Shadow Vault after its sealing.
The chamber was mostly collapsed.
The Stone Throne remained broken.
He found something beneath the rubble.
A small silver pendant.
Inside was a portrait.
Princess Elara.
His mother.
Young.
Dark hair.
Same eyes.
On the back, one sentence.
For my son, should the world forget what he is before he is old enough to choose.
Aren sat in the ruins for a long time.
He brought the pendant home.
Not to the museum.
Not to the archive.
Home.
At fifty-three, Corvin died after a winter illness.
Too young.
The kingdom mourned the Steward.
Aren mourned the boy who once came to an Abbey and said, You’re shorter than I expected.
Corvin’s final request was absurd.
“Do not let them build a statue.”
Aren promised.
The Council built one anyway.
Aren had a plaque added.
HE SPECIFICALLY ASKED US NOT TO DO THIS.
Citizens loved it.
Corvin would have hated that too.