Blackwood [1]

The feast in House Sillon was not a simple one it was a battlefield woven of silk and woven candlelight, where the words cut harder than swords and the slightest movement carried weight.

Ladies and gentlemen assembled in their best, masks of wit firmly anchored, but behind them, calculations were already underway.

The scent of roasted meats, wine that was aged, and something else something chill.

The type of smell that stuck to a room when too many influential individuals shared the same table with too many ulterior motives.

At the opposite end of the table, diminutive but undeniable in person, was Nox.

A mere five years old, but in every respect the heir to his family.

His silvered hair surrounded a face too composed for a child, and his cold, sharp eyes watched the room with the detached accuracy of a scholar cutting apart a book.

He sat in silence, watching.

Learning.

And at his side, just as composed, just as quiet, was another child.

Margaret Windsor.

Six years old, and already a Windsor in all ways that counted.

She carried the traits of her abode dark hair like the darkness just before dawn, grayish eyes like a winter gale, and a countenance so frigid it was as if it were chiseled from marble.

She did not squirm, did not chat for no reason.

She just was with an aura of unspoken superiority, as though the world itself had already been inadequate for her standards.

They were cousins, although neither of them had ever addressed the other in that manner.

Blood tied them together, but feeling did not.

The room was filled with talk.

But between the two of them.

There was only silence.

A silence that was not awkward, but weighted.

Measured.

A silence of comprehension.

And then, finally, it was Margaret who broke it.

Not looking at him, not adjusting her stance only opening her lips just far enough for her voice to travel between them.

"The wine was tested."

An understatement.

No question.

No expression of concern.

Nox didn't flinch.

"It was always going to be."

Margaret produced a soft, barely audible hum of concurrence.

Her fingers ran lightly along the edge of her own goblet, imitating the refined movement Seraphina had made before.

A practiced movement.

An intentional one.

"And the steward?"

"Too afraid to do anything himself,"

Nox said.

"But his hands were steady when he poured. He was ready for another to bear the blame."

Margaret cocked her head a little, her face inscrutable.

"Cowardice is predictable."

"Aren't we all cowards when it suits us?"

Margaret at last faced him, her eyes slow, measured.

"Are we?"

Nox encountered her look.

Cold to cold.

Winter coming up against winter.

Two reflections staring at something too young, too keen, too artificial.

"Perhaps not,"

Nox conceded.

Margaret neither nodded nor smiled.

She simply took his statement for granted.

Then, from the side of the table, a voice smooth as calculated as an assassin's throw effortlessly compelling cut through the tension like a blade.

"Marget, dear, you can't neglect your elders for so long. It isn't proper."

Lucius Windsor.

The Duke of Windsor, the leader of the most politically powerful family in the kingdom.

A man whose presence altered seas, whose judgments rearranged destinies.

He wasn't all that tall, nor all that wide, but there was something about him that caused space itself to warp subtly around him, as if the world recognized to give way.

Margaret's eyes flashed to him briefly before going back to Nox.

"I am conversing with my cousin."

Lucius laughed softly, placing his goblet down with practiced dexterity.

"And does your cousin enjoy the attention?"

His eyes fell on Nox then, keen, mocking.

"Or does he find it dull?"

Nox raised his own goblet not in urgency, not in nervousness, but in calculated intent.

He stirred the liquid once before speaking.

"I find most things tiresome."

A silence.

Then, laughter.

Not the sort that had rung with real amusement, but the sort that was intended to be heard.

The sort that tested.

That judged.

Lucius Windsor let out a breath through his nose, shaking his head a little.

"Ah, the Sillon blood runs deep, doesn't it? Cold and unreadable. Even in one so young."

"Or perhaps,"

Seraphina, Nox's interjected, voice as smooth as silk,

"The child simply knows the company he keeps."

Another pause.

And then, a turn.

Lucius's face didn't waver, but tension in the room shifted, thin as a strand of yarn tightened.

Aldric Sillon, until this moment quiet, finally stirred.

He did not answer right away no, he allowed the silence to rest, allowed it to stretch just so before inclining forward ever so slightly.

Enough to remind everyone whose house they sat in.

"You talk of Sillon blood, Lucius,"

Aldric's voice was like tempered steel,

"As if you do not know it."

A challenge.

One couched in velvet, but a challenge nonetheless.

Lucius looked at Aldric for a moment, his lips twisting into something that was not quite a smile.

"Ah, but I do know, dear Aldric. Intimately so."

His gaze flashed briefly to Margaret before it came back to the Lord of Sillon.

"Which is why I talk of it."

Seraphina's fingers tapped lightly against the surface of her goblet.

"And yet, one cannot help but wonder if you talk of it in admiration… or in warning."

Lucius let out a soft breath, shaking his head.

"Must we always talk in riddles, Seraphina? You hurt me."

Seraphina said nothing.

Margaret and Nox observed.

Two children.

Silent.

Still.

Learning.

And then, finally, the food was brought out.

A banquet of delicacies roast duck basted in honey-spiced glazes, venison swathed in rich wine reductions, fresh butter and bread that was so tender it softened beneath the gentle touch.

But Nox and Margaret did not devour their meals forthwith.

Instead, they sat and watched.

As their parents conversed with measured, practiced words.

As allegiances spun and proved and were stretched over the span of a single interview.

As the balance of power crept forth in tiny steps too insidiously minute to be noticed.

Margaret grasped for her knife, slicing into her meat with smooth, economical motion.

"This is what they call a banquet,"

She whispered.

Nox finally picked up his own fork.

"This is what they call war."

Margaret's grayish eyes flashed toward him, weighing.

Then, at last…

A nod.

And the banquet went on.

*****

The clinking and the buzz of conversation created a subtle Symphony.

It hid the undercurrents of tension that ran just beneath the surface.

Words were spoken like razor-sharp daggers sly, calculated, lethal.

Nox and Margaret, in their advanced years, knew this.

They did not inhabit the realm of children.

There were no silly laughs, no useless chatter.

Only watching.

Only calculating.

Margaret cut her meat with soft precision, her grayish eyes flicking up for a moment as another lady, Lady Laurent, leaned in, her voice honeyed but with a razor edge underneath.

"My lord Aldric, I have heard rumors that the northern trade roads have been. beset, lately. Must not such concerns press heavily upon you?"

Aldric Sillon did not immediately respond.

He merely raised his goblet, sipping slowly from it before responding.

"A Lord who worries about rumors is no Lord at all, Lady Laurent."

A gentle laughter ripped through the table, but Lady Laurent didn't react.

She only just tilted her head then her lips curving into a small smile.

"Ah, but you know rumors have a habit of becoming storms, aren't they?"

Margaret's fingers drummed against the hilt of her knife.

She did not trust Lady Laurent.

There was something too oily about her, something that made Margaret think of a snake that liked the heat of a fire, biding its time until it could strike.

Nox, on his part, simply watched.

His mother, Seraphina Sillon, at last dispelled the tension with a smile that did not touch her eyes.

"Storms, my dear Lady Laurent, are only a worry for those who do not know how to weather them."

Laurent's gaze flashed to Seraphina, lips curling as if smiling.

"Of course, my lady. I would expect nothing less from a woman of your position."

Seraphina's hold on her goblet did not increase.

That alone was revealing.

Margaret turned to Nox then, her voice a whisper only he could hear.

"They want something."

"Of course they do,"

Nox growled back, his eyes still on Isolde.

"They always say that."

Margaret's lips were pressed into a thin line.

"And the north?"

Nox refused to reply. Instead, he picked up his wine merely a gesture, not to drink, but to mimic the actions of the adults surrounding him.

A silent statement that he was not a child to be overlooked.

Margaret observed.

Then, after a pause, she did the same.

Across from him, Lucius Windsor watched them with a ghost of a smile, but held his peace.

"House Windsor has ever… been well-familiar with storms,"

He spoke at last, his voice cutting into the discussion with easy authority.

Aldric's eyes turned towards him.

"Do you mean to suggest that House Sillon is not?"

A challenge.

Lucius merely leaned back in his chair the candlelight flickering shadows along the sharp edges of his face.

"I mean to suggest nothing, dear Aldric. Only that there are a few who rise with the storm."

His eyes flashed to Nox briefly.

"And some who are lost in it."

Margaret's hand clenched around her knife.

Nox, however, merely looked back at Lucius with the same icy indifference he had worn all night.

And for the first time, spoke to him.

"A storm doesn't choose who rises and who falls, Lord Windsor."

There was silence over the table.

Nox raised his goblet to his lips, sipped a single drop not enough to drink but enough to show he wasn't afraid and then put it down with practiced ease.

Only after that did he finish.

"Only the weak get swept away."

Margaret let out a slow, quiet breath that could have been amusement.

Lucius Windsor examined Nox for a lengthy period of time.

And then, at last.

He laughed.

Not jeering.

Not savage.

But something else.

Something that recognized.

"Cold to the core,"

He thought, shaking his head.

"You really are a Blackw…."

Seraphina's mouth curved ever so faintly as she interceded.

"He is a Sillon,"

She replied.

"…"

After a minute of silence.

"By the way, Lord Aldric you said that they are also coming?"

A nobleman averred as he gazed at Aldric.

"Yeah they accepted the invitation they'll be coming."

Then the nobleman became Serious and said,

"Then will that man also be coming?"

Lucius didn't answer.

As well as Aldric

But his silence was deafening.

The night went on, the feast proceeding, but something had changed.

Something irrevocable.

And Nox knew it.

*****

5-6 years kiddo drinking wine?? Different laws and system yk