Chapter 218: The One Child the Queen Had Not Yet Met (A Tragedy, Apparently)
Chapter 218: The One Child the Queen Had Not Yet Met (A Tragedy, Apparently)
The Kitsunegawa Territory was a beautiful territory.
The mountains that framed its borders rose in great, sweeping arches, their peaks disappearing into low-hanging clouds that drifted lazily as though they, too, had nowhere particularly urgent to be. The forests that spilled down from those peaks were dense and ancient, deep jade where the canopy thickened, bright where sunlight broke through in long, shimmering columns. The air carried the scent of earth and sweet fruit and something faintly floral that clung to the skin long after one had stepped indoors.
And in the middle of it all — winding between orchard rows heavy with fruit, through clearings where the grass grew thick and soft underfoot, past hedges trimmed with the particular obsessiveness unique to fox demons who believed disorder was a personal failing — was the private garden behind the Vulpyr estate.
It was quieter here than the rest of the territory. Although, the Kitsunegawa territory was quieter than most other territories.
The hedges were tall enough to muffle the distant sounds of trade routes and the general industry of the Kitsunegawa. The carpet of grass was so perfectly maintained it looked as though each individual blade had been spoken to sternly.
Flowering vines climbed the stone archways in deliberate arrangements. Fruit trees lined the far edges of the garden in neat rows, their branches heavy with produce — round, waxy fruits the colour of deep jade, called velinfruit, known throughout the demon realm for the obscene amount of juice they released the moment teeth broke through their skin, a quality that made them delicious and deeply inconvenient to eat in polished company.
Aurelixa was sitting on a wide carpet spread beneath the shade of one of those trees.
She was dressed loosely in a free-flowing gown for comfort. Her nine tails fanned behind her in a relaxed arc, swaying faintly in the afternoon breeze, the crimson tips catching the light. She had a book open in her lap and had been reading it with the focused quiet of someone who had arranged the entire afternoon specifically around that activity.
Beside her, slightly to the left and reclining on the carpet with an ease that suggested he had no intention of moving for some time, was Xaleron. He lay propped on one elbow, his seven black tails spread behind him, dark against the grass. His fox ears, each adorned with their long hanging beads that swayed when he moved, were angled slightly upward in that idle, half-attentive way of someone who was relaxed but not entirely asleep. He had no book. He never had a book in the garden. He had long maintained that the garden was not for reading — a position he held firmly despite the fact that Aurelixa had been reading in this garden for centuries and had never once asked for his opinion.
It was peaceful.
For exactly as long as peace was permitted.
The sound reached them before he did — the rapid, uneven thudding of small feet against soft ground, punctuated by the occasional swish of something being dragged through the grass. Then he appeared from around the side of the orchard row, moving at a pace that suggested urgency, or possibly that he had somewhere to be and had already decided the fastest route was directly through the garden rather than around it.
Zayrion.
His hair was black and slightly dishevelled despite whatever effort had clearly been made to tame it that morning, the strands catching the light with a faint reddish undertone where the sun hit them directly.
His fox ears rose from the crown of his head, black and sharply pointed, tipped at their edges with the same deep red as his eyes — eyes that were currently fixed on his parents.
He had two tails. Both black, both streaked at their tips with deep red, both currently raised in a way that communicated that their owner was not happy and intended to make that known.
He was dressed in a fitted deep green tunic with a short collar, the sleeves cuffed neatly at his forearms, over slim dark trousers that had already acquired a small grass stain at the left knee. A single beaded piercing hung from one ear — red beads, striking against his dark colouring, swaying with each step. His glasses sat on his nose at a very faint angle, likely from wherever he had come from before the garden.
In one hand, he held a velinfruit.
It was half-eaten.
He bit into it again, wiping the juices with his hands before adjusting his glasses as he stared at his parents.
Aurelixa looked up from her book.
She regarded her son.
"I am not impressed with this, Zayrion," she said to him.
The boy shrugged at that.
Xaleron had noticed the book going down. He turned, glancing between his wife and his son with the measured interest of a demon who had learned, over many years of parenting, to assess whether something was going to require him to sit up or whether it could be managed horizontally.
He sat up.
"What," Aurelixa said, her voice smooth and even, "is the matter?"
Zayrion’s tails flicked.
"I haven’t met the queen," he said.
There was a pause.
Aurelixa’s expression did not change.
"Zayrion—"
"Aziren has met her," he continued, cutting in with the particular energy of someone who had prepared a full argument and intended to deliver it without interruption. "He told me. He met her. He said she was nice. He said she was really nice too and he had a picnic with her—" his tone gave the word a weight that suggested Aziren had conveyed this with great emphasis, "—and that she likes children." He adjusted his glasses again. "Both of you have met her. I haven’t."
"That is because the introductory—"
"And Velira has met her too," Zayrion said, tails rising slightly higher.
Another pause.
Xaleron’s bead earrings swayed as he tilted his head very slightly, the black and white of his eyes moving between his son and his wife in a way that suggested he was calculating something.
"So this is because the succubus has met the queen and you have not?" Aurelixa asked him.
"No," he shook his head. "This is because everyone else has met the queen and I have not. I want to meet her too."
Xaleron spoke up then. "Zayrion, you do know that we just had the introductory ball, right? The queen may be tired."
"It’s been a day, Papa. And you both promised to take me to her," Zayrion said with a pout, his fruit forgotten.
The garden went rather quiet.
Even the breeze seemed to pause, or at least Aurelixa would have sworn it did, because that particular word, delivered in that particular tone, had a way of making the air around it feel very still.
Xaleron and Aurelixa looked at each other.
It was a brief look. The kind exchanged between two people who had been married long enough to have entire conversations in a glance.
Did we promise that? Aurelixa asked with her eyes.
I don’t recall a promise like that, her husband replied with his eyes too.
"And don’t pretend like you’ve forgotten, you both promised me," Zayrion told them.
Aurelixa cleared her throat. "Um...when did we promise this exactly?" she asked him.
"The night you came back from the ball. You and Papa were swaying as you walked and Rupert suggested you were drunk, but I asked and you promised me," he told them.
Aurelixa turned to her husband then. It seemed their son had set a trap for them and they fell into it, or perhaps they were the ones who had set the trap for themselves.
But they were not able to give a reply because then they heard footsteps approaching them.