Three days.
It had been three days since the night of the ball, the night he should have remembered as ordinary as any other. He was a sitting duck pacing his room, attending dry and pointless political gatherings, and hacking away at a training dummy he wished were his father. It was bizarre watching people come and go from the castle, people who had no memory of the chaos that had broken out during the ball they had attended. People acted as normal, and Cirian couldn't help but feel out of place.
How could he have been deceived for so long? The question echoed through his head, though he knew the answer. Those gifted like Athan could steal his thoughts and bend them to their will. His father was a hypocritical bastard, damning magic then using it for his own benefit.
What irked Cirian most was that he could do nothing. He was powerless. While Athan may have put down arms for Fyra's sake, others would not be so inclined to aid him should he seek to oppose his father. Should he gain support from non-gifted allies, they could be robbed of their memory at the wave of a hand. He sighed, remembering the afternoon tea his stepmother had yet again insisted he attend. Would she remember meeting Fyra at all? Or was that wiped from her mind as well?
When he reached the room, Isabella was sitting at the little table on the balcony, lost in thought. The intensity of her gaze surprised Cirian. She was always the picture of confident grace, but there was a trace of fear swimming through her focused eyes. When she faced him, there was an age he had never seen in her eyes.
"Cirian. Thank the gods." Her voice was laced with relief and dissipating worry, and Cirian didn't stop her as she stood and embraced him. "Are you alright?"
Cirian tried to hide the slight alarm that had surfaced. Her worry was not a common thing, in fact, any emotion shown on her part was usually subtle and hidden. "I'm fine...why do you ask?"
She met his eyes, a tired smile gracing her features. Isabella considered skirting around the real topic of concern, but by the look in Cirian's eyes, a direct approach would be more effective. "Do you recall what transpired the evening of the ball?"
Cirian's heart sped up, and he shifted in his seat a little in an attempt to appear casual. Isabella's alliance wasn't clear, but she had never given any inclination that she was anything but loyal to the king. Was this some sort of test orchestrated by Henry? Or was his stepmother's concern genuine?
"Just a normal ball. Nothing too interesting."
"And what of that friend of yours I met?" Isabella thought of the girl who had been missing since the night of the ball. The girl who had reminded her so much of herself, in both her spirit and brokenness. Fyra was safe, that much Isabella knew, but it was clear that Cirian didn't. Wether he was aware of the finer details or not, he was concerned about her disappearance.
She knows. Cirian tried to keep his voice from wavering. "We danced." In that moment, Isabella saw the battle raging in his eyes, saw the uncomfortable fluctuation of his emotional energy. He attempted indifference by assuming a casual pose, but the tension knotting him up was all too evident.
"I see you remember what your father would rather you forget." Isabella nodded. Cirian's nervous demeanor was masked behind a cool disinterest, but she had known the boy long enough to see past it. Somehow, he had evaded the memory wipe. "I wanted to keep all this magical business away from you. But I suppose it's time you knew."
"Time I knew...what exactly?"
Isabella met his eyes, and Cirian fought the urge to look away. Her gaze was sharp and intelligent, and he couldn't help but think had been underestimating her the entirety of the time he had known her. Did she hide herself behind a mask of indifference and faux vanity, or had he simply refused to see her as she was? This direct and calculating queen wasn't the one he thought he had known.
The stepmother whom he knew prattled on and on without saying anything at all. Now, her words seemed to have had meaning, clear emotion seeping through with the rise and fall of her voice. Finally breaking the stare, he peered into the into the cup of steaming tea, waiting for the words that he hoped would clear the questions building up in his mind.
"Your father, as you well know, has a blind hatred towards magic of all kinds. But as I know you also realize he is a hypocrite and a tyrant." Cirian nodded. " He has amassed an army of magic users. He intends to offer Fyra the choice he had offered many others: join the army or die. She is safe. I made sure of it."
Fear, confusion, anger, and relief rose within him, knotting together. Though he couldn't be sure how, or why, Isabella had ensured Fyra's safety, and Cirian believed her. Just hearing that she was in no danger spoken aloud calmed him, despite the fact that worry still plagued him. Before he had thought out what he wanted to say, a question that had been nagging him slipped through the cracks. "How does Fyra have her...gift?"
He had known the basics of magical dynamics, but something told him that Isabella knew. Perhaps it was the empathy that cloaked her voice when she spoke of Fyra's plight, or the thinly veiled hatred of the king that he had never heard in her voice. For the first time, he had seen his stepmother. She had built up a mask that was so convincing he hadn't thought to question it. Or maybe he just hadn't been looking.
"There is energy all around us. The spark of life, the energy that is our soul. While all life had a spark of life, the human magic is in our capacity to feel. Our expression of emotion is our own magic." She paused, searching for the words to describe the gift that lay dormant in a surprisingly large part of people, but manifested in only a fraction. "The ability to manipulate certain domains of reality using emotional waves is passed down like any other trait. The gift is fairly common, though it's manifestation, is rare, especially for those who only have small potential." She spoke as if reciting from a textbook, her voice poised, eyes cool, but as she continued speaking, a sad understanding crept into her eyes. Her voice hushed. "It's unlike anything. It makes you feel free, but caged at the same time. Sometimes..." Her voice trailed off and she shook her head as her eyes flitted to her wrist.
His voice was barley a whisper, but again, the words left his lips of their own accord. "Do you..."
She nodded before he finished the question, answering in a voice that was suddenly as thin and cold as a sheet of ice. "I did, once." She offered no further explanation, and she sat up a little straighter, as if she were hardening her exterior to withstand the sadness that echoed in her voice.
Surprising her, and himself, Cirian reached over the table and held her hand in his own. Unlike the touch of the mother he could barley recall, unlike what he may expect to feel in the hands of a queen, her palm was scarred and battered, a living map of the hardship he hadn't known she had endured.
"The magic doesn't change who she is," said Isabella, her voice hollow and distant. It was as if she was looking back on memories past, telling both him and the ones who had scarred her. Isabella again brought her eyes to her wrist, and Cirian followed them. His eyes didn't seem to be able to find focus on her arm, and so he looked at the faded scars on her hands. As Cirian watched her palm, the scar seemed to grow, wrapping around her wrist like a gruesome vine, until it ran through broken ink that he hadn't seen before.
Unspoken questions lined his gaze as he met his stepmother's eyes, and she answered, as if she could read his thoughts, "A masking rune hides it. You saw the scars and watched them, and eventually your mind realized that you had been seeing the whole of my scar the entire time. The rune just deflects your thoughts of it."
He didn't ask the one burning questioned that threatened to spill over: How had she gotten it? Though Isabella knew he was curious, the story was long and sad, and the Queen had no desire to play out her past, though she had seen glimpses earlier. What's done was done, and she could do nothing to change it.
A comfortable silence settled between them, and Isabella only smiled, still sick with worry for the girl whom Cirian had so deeply bonded with. When she had seen the two at the ball, she had seen their life strings dancing around one another, flirting and interning with an intimacy she hadn't seen develop between two who had known each other for such little time. He would see her again if she had any say in it. And she did.
The king may have his army, but Isabella had spheres of influence as well. Certain servants spied for her, and a few of the gifted army members kept her informed and performed subtle acts of rebellion for her benefit. While breaking out a potential recruit like Fyra was not something they would risk, her agents would be glad to slip her food and water.
The step of a servant brought both Cirian and Isabella out of the moment they had shared. The man handed the queen a note, and she sighed at reading it. It seemed that "urgent" matters required her attentions. She had probably been called upon to decide the color of the curtain that would hang in some obscure third floor window. Perhaps she was to entertain a foreign guest with a game of chess, or pick flower arrangements for some social event but either way, Isabella sighed in annoyance.
"I am sorry to stop our tea so abruptly, Cirian, but apparently I am needed." He nodded searching for words that he would never find. The queen smiled, letting the maternal warmth that Cirian never seemed to see shine through.
"Thank you," he finally said, the two common words carrying the unspoken thoughts. The silence that followed his stepmother's departure screamed louder than any words ever spoken, but Cirian ignored the lamenting nothingness, returning to reality and setting out to fill the role of a dutiful Prince.
Setting out to fool them all.