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The colourful dresses filling the throne room appeared out of place, as did the number of people in attendance. Dunstan appreciated that the kingdom would want to get a look at the prince thought lost, but he struggled to remember the last time there had been such numbers present in the throne room. It should have been joyous. It should have been something for the whole of Burasal to celebrate. And with the colour and music and movement, it appeared to be.
And yet, to Dunstan it felt unreal. As though it were a strange dream, and when he woke he would be alone again. Conversation in the room appeared louder than the music. The world was speculating as to how this had happened, and if it was the truth that Frayne was the prince.
The general stood apart from the crowd against a wall. His gaze locked on Frayne, as though he couldn’t look away. Frayne stood as though he was where he was meant to be. The brother who wasn’t stood beside him, and although he had insisted Nelda join them, Dunstan had not permitted it.
The three witches, ones he should not have allowed to live, were hiding in one of the best suites in Sunsong Castle. Hopefully where his wife could not reach them, for there were several guards on the door with strict instructions not to allow anyone entrance.
He wanted to smile, to show the people looking too often towards him that this was the way it should be, and yet he couldn’t. His worry for Nelda overshadowed the day—and his wondering who had been responsible for the fire twenty years ago. His queen said something indicating he stand, and he could only stare. She was not who he had thought she was, and Frayne would not accept her. She would blame Nelda for that.
He stood then, and a hush followed. Frayne stepped forward to stand beside him. In the golden tunic selected for him, he looked just as the king had imagined him to be so many times. The murmurs increased.
“He looks just like his father,” someone said.
“Such a handsome man,” another added.
“Where has he been?”
“Did the king hide him?”
The king cleared his throat. Gossip would continue no matter what story they told. Frayne would not say if he knew who had taken him from the castle that night, or where he had grown. He would say nothing other than Nelda was his mother, and yet Dunstan understood that she had not raised him. She had not been the one to ensure he grew to be a prince.
Frayne appeared to ignore the words that were too clear in the crowd. He bowed to the people, and a cheer went up followed by silence. Even the music stopped. The queen stepped forward to stand beside Dunstan and rested her hand on his arm. He wanted to shrug her off but couldn’t before so many people.
“I cannot explain the circumstances for this wonder, for we do not understand it. My son Francis has returned.”
A cheer went up, which died too quickly when the newly named prince shook his head.
“Frayne,” he said, his voice clear and calm. “The name I was given by those who raised me.” He glanced at the brother. “It is the only name I know.”
Dunstan wondered at who these people were and what they had thought they could achieve by hiding a prince. Unless they understood something of his birth and the other child, which no longer mattered.
“You will get used to it,” the king assured him. “You are home now.”
He wouldn’t—Dunstan understood that—and he bowed again to the people. “Let the festivities begin,” the king announced.
The music increased to a volume he wasn’t sure he had heard before in the throne room, even at his own presentation to the people before his wedding or at the wedding itself. It had been a far more sombre event when he had been crowned. Despite being where he had trained his whole life to be, he couldn’t be happy. His father had died to allow it to happen.
He glanced around the moving crowd, the flow of people dancing across the floor, the rhythmic movement, the order and rules behind each step and each touch that he couldn’t find anywhere else in his life at the moment.
Someone in this room might be responsible for the fire that had taken so much and had so definitively shaped the last twenty years of his life. Someone in this room might know who was responsible, or they might also have died that night. So many had been lost, it had been hard to identify everyone.
Aphera caught his eye as she moved in to stand between him and Frayne. Her arm snaked around Frayne’s arm, but he didn’t move—didn’t even glance at her.
“Would you like to dance?” she asked, raising a hand toward the brother who had joined the movement.
“I don’t know how,” he responded, still not looking.
“We should introduce you to some of the fine young ladies of Sunsong who you might like to teach you.” Dunstan found himself staring at her. How did the queen know any of the young ladies to make such introductions? For the last twenty years, she had hidden away.
“I don’t want anything from you,” Frayne responded, his voice low, his focus still on the movement before him. Over the noise of the music, the conversation and movement, Dunstan had only just heard the words himself.
“I am your mother,” the queen whispered. Dunstan leaned closer, trying to hear over the surrounding noise as a fear that he might have to step between them overwhelmed him.
“Nelda,” Frayne said, still not meeting Aphera’s pleading eyes, as though the single word answered all of her questions.
“She is a witch,” the queen spat, the anger in her voice nearly driving Dunstan back a step. But her voice was low, and no one was listening to them.
The general might have been trying to listen, but he was too far away to hear their low voices over the music and talking. Either way, his focus was solely on Frayne.
Frayne looked down at her then—or was he looking at her arm on his? He removed it somewhat more gently than Dunstan expected, but then there was a castle full of people watching them. “I will only call her Mother.”
“I am your mother,” Aphera said, something desperate in her voice, something that scared Dunstan.
“You,” Frayne said, leaning down towards her, “killed my sister, and I will not forgive you.”
The queen paled as she stepped back from him. She glanced at Dunstan, who nodded once. Did she not think the secret would be understood? She might not have been responsible for the child’s death—one that would have been necessary if she was indeed a witch—but she had never spoken of the other babe. She had never given any indication that there had been two, nor that the son he had mourned all these years was alive. Dunstan wondered then if the sadness, the hiding away in her grief, was an act as he had recently come to fear. Or had she been mourning the child she would not talk of?
“Do you miss her?” Dunstan asked, uncertain where the question came from. But Aphera didn’t answer, just opened her mouth and then closed it, and the fear he thought he had seen the moment before was replaced by the hard, cruel features he had come to know.
“I do,” Frayne responded softly.
The queen looked up at him then, as though it was not something she would have considered. The brother reappeared from the crowd, as though sensing Frayne’s need. Although they were close and Frayne insisted the boy was his brother, they all knew him not to be.
“Should we try the ale?” the boy asked, his smile genuine, as though he were a friend and not interrupting. Dunstan had no idea how much of the situation he fully understood.
“There is cake as well,” General Graewyth said, stepping closer, and Dunstan was sure that Aphera’s jaw dropped. “Your mother loved cake.”
“We could take some back to her,” Heath offered. And before Dunstan could interject, the three of them stepped down from the platform and were lost to the crowd.
Frayne hadn’t even sought permission or glanced in his direction before disappearing. Dunstan couldn’t blame him; he was not used to seeking such permission.
“I am his mother,” Aphera said, and Dunstan struggled to understand whether she was saddened by the idea or angry. “I am the one who carried him. I am the one who pushed him into the world.”
“Both of them,” Dunstan said.
Aphera blinked up at him then, as though just realising he was still standing beside her. “That witch has taken enough from me—she will not take my son a second time.”
“You gave him away,” Dunstan said. She appeared as though she wanted to tell him something but shook her head instead. “Whether he was taken or not, the fact remains that he lived and you didn’t tell. You didn’t seek him out. You did not search the world for him. He has found a mother who would have.”
“Would you have done such a thing, knowing what you do now?”
“That his sister was a witch?” He maintained the eye contact, trying desperately to read just what this woman wanted and what she was trying to do. “Yes.”
“Because you loved the little witch who burned Sunsong all to dust?”
“Because he is my son. And she my daughter.”
Something in the queen relaxed. Although he couldn’t understand what she was thinking or considering to do next. Did she think he would have punished her for birthing a witch?
“How did you know what she was?” he asked.
Aphera shook her head then, turning and walking away, disappearing through the narrow door beside the throne. What if she’d had no idea at all and the child had been burned alive from a fear of what was not true?
The king caught sight of Frayne across the room, smiling and talking with his brother. He glanced across at him, and the smile fell from Frayne’s lips as he bowed his head towards the king. There was some level of respect there, it seemed. He could have denied who he was. It would have been hard enough to prove, other than the similarities of their features and that he walked like the former king. Frayne was gifted, so alike to the uncle he had claimed, and for the first time Dunstan wondered if his daughter would have resembled Aphera or been a kinder soul, like Nelda.