There is a creak from the stands, someone shifting in their seat. A bead of cold sweat makes its way down my back. I am not the only one waiting for something to happen. This morning, I was a hero to these people. Their future safe in my hands. What will I be now? An outcast? An embarrassment? I fight an urge to flee the square. But to go where? Hide in my rooms? Will they even be mine? They are the apartments of the heir. What am I without the inheritance?

  Someone in the crowd shouts something and I flinch, fearing that the people are already turning on me. What can I do but face them? Another cries out in shock. I realise they are not shouting abuse at me but crying out in fear. I turn and see that one of the stands is trembling, townsfolk clutching the bench beneath them. The stand lifts high into the air, blocking out the sunlight, and casting a long shadow across the square. I am bewildered. My hand is still be pressed against the tree, but this is not my doing. Then a second stand lifts into the air, causing more yells of surprise. Moments later, the last two stands join the others, thirty feet above the town. I see my father climb to his feet on the royal bench, standing proud as he surveys the results of my inheritance. On a higher bench, I see Tamarla’s face light up with surprise and joy.

  But this is not my doing. Someone else is responsible for this. I look up to the parapet of the house, where a line of young elms stand to power our aerial defences. In amongst the trees on the roof, I see a figure in a grey uniform, one hand on the trunk of a tree, another out in front of her, guiding the stands into the air. Even at my low vantage point, I have no trouble recognising her auburn hair. Raylee, my sister. She has the power to move objects with her thoughts? Raylee is two years away from facing the tree! Another uniformed figure joins her at the edge of the parapet. My mother, staring down at me. She has orchestrated this. My mother has saved me from humiliation.

  Raylee guides the stands back to the dusty paving stones of the square. There are cheers from the crowd as the iron feet of the benches grate against the cobble stones. Our people are used to displays of the family’s power, but not of being part them. They quickly jump down to the security of the ground. Tamarla hurtles across the square and flings her arms around me.

  ‘You’re such a show off! Keeping us all waiting like that! You really had me thinking you weren’t going to get anything!’

  Words won’t come. I kiss her to cheers from the crowd, but my head is full of shame.

  The eaves of the original house were once servants’ quarters, back when the house was a home and not the command centre of a war. Now the narrow rooms with sloping roofs are filled with maps and strategy tables, the country reproduced in miniature landscapes, our advances and withdrawals marked with tiny carvings of dragons, griffins and goblin hordes. I pass the open doors of the empty offices, the staff are all still down in the square, celebrating my supposed initiation. I am numb with shock as I walk the long corridor. The events in the square are like an anxiety dream. This morning, I woke to inherit the kingdom, now I don’t know what I am. What has made me this disappointment? One person knows more about it than I do.

  My mother does not have an office or desk; she claims such things induce lethargy. Rather, she spends her days at the head of the war table, a dark oak that seats a dozen generals, a map of the country carved into it. Whilst my father’s sorcery is unmatched, my mother is the architect of the battle against the elves. I find her alone at the table, pouring over reports from the front. When she doesn’t look up, I knock on the open door.

  ‘The Seventh Griffin are pinned down at Typus,’ she says, still focussed on the report in her hand. ‘This isn’t a good time.’

  I’ve never known why my mother hates me so much. I once asked her; she didn’t deny it but merely told me not to be so childish.

  ‘You knew what was going to happen,’ I say, hating the quiver of emotion in my voice.

  She exhales, irritated, puts her papers down and turns to face me. We are not alike, my mother and I. My hair is dark and curls almost to my shoulders, hers is blonde and kept precision short. She has neither the time nor patience to maintain it. Her eyes are grey and piercing. Her features angular and usually set in a frown. At least, they are in my company.

  ‘I didn’t know you wouldn’t inherit, but I thought it possible that the ceremony would not go as planned.’

  ‘Why?’

  She tidies the reports away in a cabinet behind her, so I can no longer see her expression. ‘You’ve never shown any aptitude for the inheritance.’

  Anger rises through me. ‘No one does before they face the tree!’

  ‘And you’ve never been able to control your emotions,’ she says, keeping her voice deliberately measured. ‘It’s a disadvantage for leadership.’

  I force myself to breathe slowly and deeply, but her rejection cuts deep.

  ‘It’s the tree that gives us the inheritance.’

  A look of condescension crosses her face. I realise in that moment that I irritate her. ‘Are you so naive? The inheritance isn’t a gift from outside. It is in your blood, or at least it should be.’

  ‘But the tree…’

  ‘Is just an old tree. The family draw energy from it. But the power comes from within us. The ceremony is theatre. To show the masses why we are born to rule.’

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  ‘But…’

  ‘But but what, Aradrath? I don’t have time for this.’

  ‘Why do I not have power?’

  ‘You will have to ask your father that.’

  ‘Are you telling me that I do not have the inheritance in my blood?’

  ‘I’m telling you, you need to speak to your father.’

  ‘Is he my father?’

  The words are out of my mouth even as the thought forms in my mind. My mother looks up at me sharply. I have her attention now.

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Is it another man’s blood in my veins?’

  She strikes me across the face. I stumble back against the great table, scattering miniature goblins and griffins. I taste my own blood in my mouth. I’m shocked by my mother’s rage.

  ‘I married the King when I was seventeen. I have been his partner, his confident and his general. My loyalty to him is beyond question.’

  I wipe the blood from my mouth on the back of my hand. A tooth feels loose. I should keep my mouth shut, but I can’t. ‘That doesn’t answer my question.’

  My mother approaches me; it takes everything in me not to flinch. ‘I was a virgin when I married the King. He remains the only man I have ever lain with. Although, sadly, the same cannot be said for him. Now, are we done?’

  ‘Have you always known? Is that why you can’t bear to look at me?’

  ‘Your self-pity is beneath your station. We are at war. Has the military implications of a false heir even crossed your mind?’

  I curse you false heir. I see the elf staring up at me, my hand around its throat.

  ‘That’s what it called me.’

  ‘What did?’

  I explain exactly what happened in the petrified forest. How the elf placed those words in my head even as I strangled the life out of it. Only now does my mother take an interest in my plight. She orders me to follow her. As she strides down the corridor, one of her clerks is returning from the square. A young woman from the north, who has buried her accent since she took the post assisting my mother. We once spent the night together in my apartments, although this morning she is utterly professional, having adopted the Queen’s almost religious devotion to the war effort.

  ‘Congratulations, Aradrath,’ she murmurs. The people do not use our titles, our power gives us our status, it doesn’t require ornamentation. But if I don’t have the inheritance, what will I be?

  ‘Ask the King to join us in the mortuary. Raylee too. And we’ll need Old Cadoc.’

  A look of puzzlement crosses the girls face - she’s wondering why the Queen would want to visit the mortuary.

  ‘Oh, and Cadoc will need livestock. Something small. A rat, no, a rabbit.

  The Queen leads me through a warren of passageways beneath the citadel. I haven’t been down here since I was a child. Raylee and I would escape our tutors and play hide and seek amongst the servants’ quarters and storerooms. This morning, the air is thick with the smell of slow cooked meat, reminding me that the people are preparing to enjoy a day of celebrations in their subterranean homes, as well as the family in the banquet halls above. A group of children charge past us on the way to the surface to enjoy a day without school. Before the war, only the poorest lived down here, but since the enemy’s airborne assaults erased entire families, subterranean lodgings are at a premium. What were once the gloomy slums of the citadel, have become aspirational neighbourhoods; their passageways brightly lit with lamps and decorated with large, ornate tapestries.

  We leave the populated areas behind and descend further down to dank, musty tunnels and eventually Old Cadoc’s realm. The Citadel’s mortuary is series of low ceilinged, interconnected stone cellars, poorly lit by a few lamps. The air is full of damp, the bitter tang of ethanol and beneath that, the sweeter smell of decomposition. All three slabs of the first room are occupied with the elves I killed. Their bodies are too long for the tables; their long arms hang down to the stone floor. They look so young in death. I’m reminded that they weren’t soldiers, barely more than children, their youthful idealism manipulated and perverted to a cause. Their corpses have been stripped, revealing multiple entry wounds in the chest of the one I used as a shield. Clisteoska - was that its name? The one I shot in the face has been covered in a sheet, for our decency rather than its. Old Cadoc stands over the third, the one I strangled. The one that called me false heir.

  Cadoc is only a few years older than my father but already looks like an old man. His eyes are sunken and his skin pale. His back is bowed from a life spent tending to the dead. It is hard to believe that this man was born to be king. I never refer to him as uncle, the family studiously avoid mentioning anything that would remind us that he is both the true head of the household, and a coward. He fled his first battle, a fate that would usually have cost a prince his life, but my father agreed to spare him in exchange for the throne. My uncle has spent his life under the same roof as us, but in exile down here in the dark, where the people won’t be reminded of his stain on the family’s reputation.

  Cadoc examines the bruises around the enemy’s neck and then focuses his rheumy eyes on me. ‘Your work?’

  I nod and he comes over, ignoring my mother at first. ‘Show me your hands?’ I offer them and he squeezes the third finger of my right. I inhale sharply through my teeth. It’s still agony.

  ‘You broke it on his neck. I could tell by the fainter grip mark it left. Stay. We’ll heal it after….’ He glances at the Queen and the small white rabbit in the cage that hangs from her hand. ‘Whatever has brought you all down to the shadows.’

  The King joins us, my sister on his heels. Raylee’s eyes sparkle with excitement. She is in the middle of the action for once and is clearly loving it. My father acknowledges me with a curt nod and quickly turns his attention to the Queen. So, he already knows what Raylee did in the square. He knows I am unworthy of the throne. I feel myself flush with shame.

  ‘Necromancy? Today? That’s a little macabre, even for you, my dear.’

  My mother relays what I told her. My father finally turns his attention to me, questioning me about how the enemy placed its voice in my mind. He’s heard of this but never experienced it himself. I try to read his expression for what - disapproval? Disappointment? But he remains businesslike and focussed on the issue before us. Finally, he nods at Cadoc, a decision made. The older man produces iron manacles from beneath the mortuary table, and fixes the corpse’s wrists and ankles to the slab. I remember the hatred in its eyes as I squeezed the life out of it. Now, those same almond-shaped eyes stare lifelessly out of its angular, pale green face.

  My father takes the rabbit out of the cage by the ears and passes it to his brother. The animal squeals in distress, its feet wheeling beneath it as it desperately tries to get a purchase on something. We gather around the elf’s body as Cadoc holds the struggling animal in one hand and places his other on the braided hair of the pale green corpse. The corpse’s eyes flicker once and then focus. The elf takes a huge gasp of air, and coughs violently as life returns to it. It tries to sit up and realises with horror that it is restrained. It pulls frantically at its manacles.

  ‘Where am I? What is this?’

  The King looks down at the elf’s indignant face. ‘You don’t have long. When the animal dies, life will leave you. Answer my questions and we’ll save you.’