LAUCAN

"Is this what you wanted, Laucan?" the harmony fluttered and used his feathers as strings. "Was it worth it? You've gained the disrespect of the aristocracy. Those who live in the city dread the name you bear and would see you naked to the blizzard, to watch your skin turn to ice and crust off piece by piece." Blood splattered at the head of his bed, the sigil of an ancient family. Two wyverns, locked in an endless dance as they breathed life into a snow rose in full bloom. "Is this everything you dreamed of?"

No.

Wind ruffled the thick blinds across his balcony door and revealed the truth waiting for him in the capital. Broken pieces of the barrier joined the flurry eating itself through their last protection to blanket the lower quarters in snow, a white abyss creating roofs of ice over the stone walkways which came closer and closer to the palace. A veil of endless grief to stifle the hottest wyvern flames. Heating pots sat underneath his mattress to spread a sense of warmth unable to be given to the rest of Naveera. Arms against his sheets, he frowned down at his reflection in the steaming cup of chocoberry tea. Little bubbles popped against the steam. Bread and crackers went around a small dipping saucer as he kept the tray balanced in his lap. Bells tolled out in the quarter clock towers, with each section of the wall blazing against the blizzard.

He pinched one of the thick, fluffy crackers between his fingers and dipped it into the chocoberry tea like Mother used to do for him when he was a smaller boy — and things never changed as he chewed on the puffy texture. Books of law, rule, and the kings of the past filled his bookshelf, but his favorite passages weren't found 'twixt them. They were found in a song, in stories of Atoran of the Ice Glaive — the Snow Prince's right hand, one of two halves. He put the tray onto his bed stand, slipping out of the sheets to grab onto the thick, hardcover tome. It replaced the food unable to settle his stomach as he rifled through the pages of his childhood. The Tales of the Tundra Knights. Its pages fluttered against the bridges of his fingers when he tried to find one of the stories he found himself drawn to — a quieter, peaceful tale.

Ser Atoran Lotayrin, the best Knight in all of Naveera, his journeys which took him all over Old Naveera, into its deepest heart to fight beasts to protect his home. Laucan found his bookmark on the Great Joust on Hippogryph back — unbeatable by all accounts of myth and shreds of history. On the winning trot around the lanes, the picture went to one of an Avaerilian man on the back of a golden hippogryph, his horns wrapped in leather. Painted locks of pale golds curled across his long feathers as the figure held out his javelin upwards, with the winning wreath on the end to the royal seats.

Where the Snow Prince and his queen sat, though from the angle it made it hard to tell who Ser Atoran meant to give it to. It played out in his mind's eye, on the royal seats as the knights clashed together in sport and brought joy to their people again. A thousand turns without their influence... Laucan turned to the next page, of Ser Zahira's misfortune against the three ice wraiths of fate, who cursed her. Cursed her name. Cursed her being. Laucan dragged his fingers across the dark picture of the lady holding a glowing shield. Is it fair? He closed the book again and breathed deep, shaking to his shoulders at the thickening flurry outside. And... Hayvala seems cursed to... cursed from our bloodline. Over the fireplace mantle his icesteel chakrams sat, unused and wrapped with mist, with their coat of arms painted onto the brickwork. King Reyn's voice echoed a reminder of the duty he failed to uphold.

"We need your help, your stonemasons," Reyn wrote to him once more, too long ago. "It won't hold if the Teboran length of the wall fell. We need reinforcements. We need repairs."

We need your help.

He jolted against his pillow at the sound of quick, light footsteps. Two of Hayvala's Sentinels opened the door for their Princess, their eyes locked on the carpet below their feet as they let her slip inside. "Laucan," she said after a minute of silence. Weary shadows dug on her sunken cheeks as she came closer, then sat on the edge of his bed as the doors closed again. "I'm heartened to see that you're awake." Laucan drew his attention over her dress lined with furs at the hems. He flinched when her finger touched his cheek, and he followed Mother's voice as Hayvala's brow creased. "I've posted my Sentinels down the hall. Do you remember anything? Do you remember what you were hearing?"

Nightmares.

"I..." His voice came out a rasp. "I don't know, Hayvie... It's all a blur, I remember hearing something but... it was so distant for a while." He wrapped his own furs around his shoulders to burrow himself deeper into its embrace. "It's gotten colder outside, hasn't it? I've been bed-ridden and the barriers have been weakening, the Icehearts need my power." Dams built and broke, but he held his tone close to his song. "No, I don't remember much."

"You were seeing ghosts, from what you told me." Hayvala put her hand on his shoulder. "Hearing a wicked song which brought forth the pain in this palace — the pain inside you."

Laucan blinked at her, and tried to unsort his constant nightmares. "I... I don't recall any of that," he whimpered. "I remember I started hearing the first notes and then..." He tossed his hand upwards before slamming it onto the blankets. "Nothing, my memory goes blank." Blankets tucked closer to his chest, he swallowed a wad of dread. "What of the council meetings?"

Hayvala's expression softened. "What's done is done, Laucan," she said, and his question went answered without direction. "The Festival of Ice is over. I've given the Hanekan diplomats everything they needed to return to their King without trouble. The Lords can complain, but thanks to Lord Vlasiz they have no real footing on the ice." Her fingers dug deeper into his shoulder blade. "I have decided... that I will wed Lord Vlasiz."

Laucan jerked. "Wait, what?"

Hayvala sighed deep, shaking her head. "I could avoid it only for so long. We need stability, more than ever. As Queen Regent, I will still do my best for you, to make you the leader I know you're still capable of being," she said with a nod at the balcony doors. "I will always do my duty to Naveera, to you, Laucan, and quite frankly... Lord Vlazis could be a much worse match for someone of my station and condition."

"But, Hayvala." Laucan shook his head side to side. "No, I won't allow this. You've always told me you're not interested in those things—"

"Nonetheless... these things I must do," she said. "No matter my personal thoughts and feelings on the matter — at least I can make this single choice. I may not love Lord Vlasiz as he might deserve, but he is a good man raised in the same environment as us." Her hand tapped his cheek, and he shook his head again, but before he could open his mouth to argue at the inane concept and her one desire to never be forced into, Hayvala clamped it shut with her firm grip. "It's already settled, Laucan."

"But—"

Hayvala drew her hand down his arm. "Listen," she said the powerful tenet of their people.

"It's because of me," he pleaded and tore himself out of her reach and the safety of Mother's embrace and woven blankets. "Everything that's happened is because of me." He bounced out of his bed to rush to his desk, throwing aside quills and papers for any sort of answer. "If I can just figure out something and—"

He froze when Hayvala scrunched the back of his fur coat. "Laucan," she whispered, and he turned to face her. "As I said, what's done is done, all we can do now is adapt. As we've always done for thousands of turns. I want you to focus more on your studies. Find out your soulsong, and not the one which almost threw you to your death." Hayvala let him go and pushed her hands into her sleeves. "You're not ready, Laucan, and I bear some responsibility for that." Her hand waved to the tray he abandoned on his endstand. "You must eat, rest, learn and observe the steps to this dance. In the future, I know there will be a way to change the steps, but for now, that's how you'll survive. I don't want you to despair from this. I am making that choice."

Laucan shook his head.

"You need to reflect, too," Hayvala said, a touch firmer. "Reflect on your actions and mistakes, to learn from them to avoid the web that is a rhyming history. Once I'm gone—"

"You're not going to go anywhere," he said and came closer to her.

Hayvala's shoulders slacked with an unheard exhale. "Fenrer Pyren did much, you know. Did much when he had no reason to — when you gave him little inclination to after the choices you made when given easy steps to the answer," she said, her voice no longer as cold as before. "Laucan, the truth can be found, but lies can shatter its foundations and ruin everything. In telling yourself a constant lie, you've created a doomsong of your own making. We will survive. We always have. This is our home, blizzard or no." Her smile softened at the window. "Underneath those blankets of snow, the tundra awaits us still. I believe in it."

"Yokonei—"

Hayvala's expression flattened. "Ser Yokonei Traye believed," she continued. "His name may have been cursed by others, but I will keep his song to my heart so that he is not remembered as an incorrigible Oathbreaker to Naveera's hymn." The hem of her dress dragged along the floor when she went back to his door. "We'll get through this, Laucan."

Laucan opened his mouth, but stopped at a distant racket in one of the lower quarters. Flames spiked up from the streets, stifled quickly by the flurry. His heart pounded at the slow crawl of death held in icy claws. "It's like last time," he whimpered as Ser Yokonei held him close against his side as they stood on one of the rooftops, out of reach of the bloodthirsty mob who swung their sharpened knives in their direction, tossing packed snow straight at them. Each one slipped past Yokonei's spatial distortion when he dragged them out of view, into safer walls. "I just wanted to fix this, Hayvie..."

"But is it everything you dreamed?"

Laucan shook his head again and shoved his lower lip between his fangs.

"Undoing damage can take time," Hayvala mumbled. "Time that even sometimes we don't live to see, but that doesn't mean we leave it to the future. We can still do something in the present. If you truly want to hear Naveera sing... you have to open your heart."

Another burst of smoke rings fluttered out of the outer quarter. A magick singularity in the making once more.

Open your wings and sing, it sung out once more, but instead of the rattle of death, it was soft. Warm. Mother.

Laucan tried to push his tears back into his eyes as the blizzard drove itself into the weak points of the weak barrier made out of his magick, while the inside of the city crumbled to its bones. "I want Mom..." I want her to tell me bedtime stories of the Snow Prince and his round table. I want her to sing her lullabies again.

"You can visit her, you know," Hayvala whispered. "I'm sure she'd welcome that."

Laucan pushed his chin into his chest and shook his entire body in refusal. "I... I don't even have a snowrose bud to give her."

"You don't have to give her a snowrose," Hayvala whispered. "Just your presence, your remembrance of her memories. Speak her name to the grave and keep her song alive."

Keep her song alive? Laucan chewed on his tongue when Hayvala left his room and closed the door behind her. I don't know if I'm able to, with how many songs I've been carrying that were wrong... I don't want to taint hers anymore. He tucked his furs closer to his neck and stared through the glass out into the misty, endless night.

Auroras splattered across the pages of time, and a glaive pierced the heavens on the wings of a wyvern.