Free Web NovelChapter 12: Chapter 12: Strawberries
He found Thaddeus exactly where he expected, somewhere he was not supposed to be, leaning against the wall outside the King’s private corridor with the relaxed posture of a man who had absolutely nothing to hide and wanted everyone to know it.
He spotted Drazeil the moment he turned the corner and immediately pushed off the wall with a grin so wide.
"Brother!" Loud enough that two passing attendants flinched. "You know, most people look relieved to be alive after a day like today. You just look annoyed. As always. Honestly it’s impressive at this point."
"Where is it," Drazeil said.
"Hello to you too. I’m doing wonderfully, thank you for asking. The Court was very exciting today, did you see that girl? The one in red who walked in and just —"
"Thaddeus."
"— absolutely refused to let you kill that butler? Because I saw it and I have to tell you, the look on your face was something I will treasure for the rest of my unnatural life —"
"The Codex."
Thaddeus sighed the sigh of a man deeply unappreciated by the universe and reached inside his coat, producing a slim volume that looked entirely too ordinary for what it actually was.
"One Celestial Codex," he said, holding it out. "Retrieved successfully, without incident, while you were busy being outwitted by a girl in a red dress."
Drazeil took it without a word. fɾeeweɓnѳveɭ.com
"You’re welcome, by the way," Thaddeus said cheerfully. "Truly. Don’t mention it. The gratitude in your eyes is more than enough."
"You were not seen?"
"Please." Thaddeus looked genuinely offended. "Who do you think you’re talking to? I was invisible. A ghost. A shadow in the —" He paused. "Well. Not a shadow. Poor choice of words. But the point stands. Nobody saw me."
Drazeil turned the Codex over once. The cover was plain, deliberately so.
"The interrogation," Thaddeus said, his tone shifting just slightly, still light, still easy, but paying closer attention underneath. "The butler. What did he say?"
"Nothing that concerns you."
"Mmm." Thaddeus fell into step beside him uninvited, the way he always did. "And the girl? Lady Celestia? Did she come up? Because I did a little asking around after the Court and she is —"
"Go back to your quarters, Thaddeus."
"Interesting," Thaddeus finished, as though Drazeil hadn’t spoken. "Very interesting. Nobody seems to know much about her which is strange because House Alwyn has been around forever and yet this girl appears like she materialized out of thin air and then proceeds to walk straight up to the Crown’s Monster and argue with him and somehow still have a pulse."
He tilted his head and then said, "You hesitated."
Drazeil stopped walking.
The corridor went very quiet.
Thaddeus did not back up. He simply looked at his brother with that same easy expression that occasionally made people forget how sharp he was underneath all the sarcasm.
"I saw it from across the room," Thaddeus said, quieter now. "You were right there and you didn’t finish it. That has never happened before. Not once. Not in all the years I have watched you work."
"Are you done?"
"I’m just saying —"
"The Inner Council," Drazeil said, cutting him off, turning the Codex over in his hand. "They said it amongst themselves, in front of your father. That you were unfit for the Crown Prince title. Too much yourself. Not fitted at all, those were the exact words used."
He glanced at Thaddeus once, then looked away.
Thaddeus looked at him for a long moment. That easy expression was still on his face, technically. The architecture of it was all there. But something behind his eyes had shifted, something real and unguarded flickering across his face before he caught it and pulled it back behind the smile where it belonged.
"Unfit," Thaddeus repeated, quietly, testing the word like biting into something he wasn’t sure was poisoned yet. "They said I was unfit?"
"And too much yourself, which they meant childish," Drazeil added. "Not fitted at all were the exact words."
"Childish." Thaddeus pressed a hand to his chest. "I prefer the term refreshingly unburdened by the weight of adult misery. But sure. Childish." frёewebnoѵel.ƈo๓
He laughed, short, dry. Nothing like his usual ones that filled entire rooms and made councillors forget they were supposed to be serious.
"You know what the funny thing is?"
He leaned back against the wall, arms folding loosely across his chest, head tilting up toward the ceiling like he was having a quiet conversation with it. "They have been saying versions of that my entire life.
Thaddeus is too much. Thaddeus is not enough. Thaddeus is everything a prince should not be." A pause. "You would think by now I would be used to it."
He said it lightly. The way he said most things. But he didn’t quite meet Drazeil’s eyes when he said it, and his jaw was doing something tighter than usual underneath the easy expression.
The corridor was quiet for a moment.
"You are fit," Drazeil said. "For whatever you want."
Thaddeus blinked.
He looked at his brother, really looked, the way he rarely got the opportunity to because Drazeil was not generally the type of person you could look at directly for extended periods without something terrible happening. But right now Drazeil was simply standing there, Codex in hand, expression as unreadable as it always was, saying the most unexpectedly human thing he had said in recent memory and apparently completely unbothered by it.
Then Thaddeus smiled. Slower this time. Something genuine underneath it that he didn’t bother hiding.
"I know, brother," he said quietly. "If no one else in this kingdom believes in me —" He gestured loosely between them. "At least you do."
"Don’t push it."
Thaddeus laughed, properly this time, bright and sudden and completely himself, the sound bouncing off the stone walls of the corridor and startling a passing attendant into dropping their documents entirely.
"That is the most affectionate thing you have ever said to me and we both know it," he called after Drazeil who had already turned and started walking. "I am going to have it engraved somewhere. A plaque. Here stood Drazeil, who once almost said something nice —"
"Thaddeus." Drazeil did not slow down. "Go back to your quarters."
"Going!" He was already backing away in the opposite direction, still grinning. "But brother —" He pointed at the Codex. "Whatever you find in there — don’t do anything without telling me first. I mean it."
Drazeil had already turned away.
"I never tell you anything," he said, walking.
"And yet somehow I always find out anyway!" Thaddeus called after him, completely unbothered. "It’s almost like we’re best friends! Goodnight, brother! Try not to brood too aggressively — it ages you!"
Drazeil teleported back to Infernal.
The Domain was quiet when he arrived. The kind of quiet he had specifically requested and, for once, had actually been maintained. No interruptions. Just the familiar cold weight of Infernal settling around him like a second skin.
He went straight to his room, dismissed the attendant outside his door with a look, and closed it behind him. Set the Codex on the table. Poured himself a glass of cold blood and sat down.
For a moment he simply looked at it.
The Celestial Codex, written by his enemies, documenting everything they had taken, everything they had sealed away, every victory they had celebrated over realms and creatures they had decided had no right to exist freely.
His jaw tightened.
He opened it.
The pages were dense, written in old Celestial script that most living creatures wouldn’t be able to read.
Drazeil read it without difficulty, except for certain passages written in High Celestial language that even he could not fully decipher. Those he marked carefully. He would find a way to access them separately.
He read methodically, thoroughly through the pages.
He was three pages deep, past the early conquests, past the territorial expansions, into the section on containment seals, when something made him stop.
Not a sound, not a movement, something else entirely.
A pull.
Faint at first. So faint he almost dismissed it as residual magic clinging to old texts like this one. But it came again, Stronger, and then Stronger still. And it was not coming from the Codex.
It was coming from somewhere else entirely.
Drazeil set the book down slowly.
The pull intensified, deep and inexorable, the kind that didn’t ask for permission and didn’t wait for it.
Something ancient in him was being awaken, something that had been sealed for longer than most kingdoms had existed was cracking open and reaching —
Reaching for him.
He was on his feet before he made the conscious decision to stand.
No, he thought. It is not possible. The seal has not been —
The pull became a drag. His form began dissolving at the edges whether he wanted it to or not.
He had one second of clarity before it took him completely.
One second where the last thing that registered, cutting through ancient magic and centuries of seals and the specific fury of someone who did not appreciate being summoned by anyone or anything — was a scent.
Faint, sweet, entirely out of place in a room that smelled like darkness.
Strawberries.
Her.
And then everywhere blurred.
