The Shadow Wanderers

Chapter 15

Young Zayden twisted his leg and fell with a shriek. His trainer straightened his virtual sword on the marble floor in disappointment.

"Get up, young man! Your father's going to be—"

"Proud!" a voice exclaimed. King Lugus appeared from behind a pillar of the adjoined courtroom. He looked at Zayden on the floor and back at his trainer. "How's he doing, Skaad?"

"Well, so far, he's breaking a leg," said Skaad, eyeing Zayden, who, still sitting on the floor, looked apprehensively back and forth between his father and his teacher.

King Lugus stretched out a hand to Zayden, who took it reluctantly, standing up on his feet. "Cut him some slack, Skaad. He is my son!" said Lugus, a pleasant smile on his face, mockingly eyeing his son.

"I despise being treated like a prince," said an annoyed Zayden.

"If you don't accept being a prince, then how are you going to be a king one day?" asked Lugus, bending down to bring his son to his eye level.

A look of momentary tremor passed in Zayden's eye and, for a moment, Lugus feared his son might burst out crying. Inevitably, that fear turned out to be true, because, in the next second, Zayden ran away from them towards the courtroom and into his room.

Lugus sighed, urging Skaad to continue training the other trainees who'd been standing watching them. As he turned from them and sulkily walked into the courtroom, he spotted his wife Asura, leaning against a pillar, looking at him. His slumped shoulders slumped even more; she'd seen the incident with their son.

He went to the table laid out in the middle and sat. His wife followed. "Do not tell me to stop reminding him of what lays ahead for him," he said. "He's never going to come to terms with his responsibilities if this kept up."

Asura took his hand and she sat beside him. "He's a little child, Lugus. It is not yet his time to be reminded constantly of what isn't his yet." She tried to look into his eyes but he averted his gaze, blankly staring at the sky visible through the pillars. "Give him a chance to just be your son for a moment. Not a prince, not someone who is heir to the throne, not someone who is going to have responsibilities in the future. Just your son."

"And have all that affection stolen from him when he has to execute me?" snapped Lugus.

Asura flinched and slumped back in her seat. "I am very much aware of the inevitable. I always have it at the back of my mind. I do not need constant reminders from you. But you are letting it get in the way of your relationship with your son. This is not how it has to go."

All of a sudden, the king looked exhausted, his eyes weary. He took off his crown and placed it in front of him on the table, tracing the black lining on its edges. "I'm trying to be a good father, Asura, I really am. But I can't see him get hurt when the inevitable comes knocking on our door. I want to make him a strong man, I want to prepare him for it. Otherwise, nothing will ever be the same for him and I don't want to leave him in pieces like that. Even though my relationship with my father wasn't as affectionate as ours, I know what it did to me when I had to spill his blood with my own hands."

Zayden kept a hand on his heart as he listened in on the conversation of his parents from behind a pillar. To his father's words, Asura seemed to have no response. Zayden realized his father was torn between loving his son and detaching himself from him. But none of it would save him from the heartache of orchestrating the gruesome deed, nor would it stop the inevitable.

Zayden had known about the princes killing their own fathers to achieve the throne for about a year and he had never been the same. He'd always wondered why his father was distant from him and not his sister. He figured it was not intentional; his father loved to spend time with him, but he would always zone out in a trance or excuse himself early. That always irritated him and he assumed his father loved him less than his sister.