The Thirteenth Prince

"The riddle wasn't only about answering them," I said, my voice firm, though my chest felt hollow.

"It was about forgetting why I started this path in the first place. You made me think the answers I wanted were the most important thing. That if I just kept going, if I just dug deeper, I'd finally understand everything."

The stone around me held its breath. Cold. Watching.

"But that's not why I'm here."

And just like that, something stirred inside me—a memory, sharp as flint, cutting through the fog.

It was six years ago, I was in the Palace Infirmary Chamber, West Wing. I remember that the rain hadn't stopped in days.

It beat gently against the windowpanes, threading down the glass like the sky itself was mourning. I sat in silence, legs pulled to my chest, staring out at the blurred gardens below. I hadn't spoken in nearly a year.

Not since Varethiel burned.

Not since I watched Master Aldric die—shielding me with his own body, his final breath a whisper that I would live because he believed in me.

Not since I opened my eyes on a narrow cot, built from splintered wood and wilted leaves, tucked inside a cave that breathed in the salt and silence of Varethiel's shore.

My skin sticky with blood that wasn't mine, my hands scorched and trembling with a power I didn't understand.

I watched the rain because it was the only thing that felt real. The storm asked nothing of me. It simply existed—wild, unrelenting, and free. And that felt safer than the crushing weight I carried every time footsteps passed my door and someone whispered my name like it might shatter me.

I remember that day. I wasn't alone.

The door hadn't been closed properly. Maybe someone thought I was still too hollow to notice. Or maybe... maybe the Queen wanted me to hear.

Either way, I listened.

Her voice drifted in—measured, regal, but tired in the way only the powerful are allowed to be.

"How is he?" Queen Seraphina asked.

A pause. The Royal Attendant's voice followed, hushed with the cautious tone of someone who'd carried too many burdens not meant to be theirs.

"He hasn't spoken. Not a word in over a year. He eats only when we remind him. The healers say his body is whole, but... Your Majesty, grief that deep doesn't scar the flesh. It rewrites the soul."

The Queen was silent for a moment. I imagined her staring out toward the borderlines of the Crownlands, her thoughts heavy.

"And yet he survived," she said softly.

The Attendant hesitated, then I heard her footsteps step closer to the Queen.

"Forgive me, Your Majesty, but... do you ever question whether it was the right decision? Not just saving him, but everything that came after. Instead of—"

She trailed off, the unfinished thought hanging heavy in the hallway, outside this infirmary chamber. But even unspoken, the name lingered in the silence like smoke that refused to clear.

"There are still those who believe you should have named Lord Alden Valcaeryn heir after he returned from the borderlands of Thaloria. His son has proven himself—Valtor is strong, disciplined, and already commands respect among the nobles."

The Queen didn't respond immediately. When she did, her voice was cool and unwavering.

"Respect born of fear is not the same as loyalty. Valtor is what the court expects. Aric is what the kingdom needs."

The Attendant's voice dropped to a whisper.

"But they don't see it that way. They say the boy has no lineage. That he's not royal. That the thirteenth prince is an insult to the bloodlines."

Thirteenth prince? I don't understand. Who are they talking about? I thought there were only twelve named heirs. Who is the thirteenth, then?

"Then let them choke on their lineage," the Queen snapped, more sharply than I'd ever heard. Then her voice softened, laced with something deeper.

"He came from the ashes of the Temple, marked by light and darkness both. He endured what none of my court-born princes and princesses ever have. And he did it alone. That means something."

"But if Lord Alden makes his claim—"

"He won't," she interrupted, but there was a flicker of doubt there, buried beneath the conviction.

"Not openly. He knows I still wear the crown. But if I hadn't made my move, my younger brother would have rallied the Council. They would've declared Valtor heir by default. And the realm would fall into hands that believe strength is the same as wisdom."

A long pause. Then the Attendant spoke gently.

"You haven't told him what he is to become."

"Not yet. He's not ready," Queen Seraphina said. "Let him walk among them first. Let him understand who they are, what they want. Only then can he decide what kind of ruler he might be."

"And if he decides he doesn't want it?"

"Then I will honor that. But I suspect..." She exhaled slowly.

"The world won't give him a choice. It rarely does, to those who've already been broken and rebuilt."

There was a quiet then. No more words. The rain tapped harder. And after a long pause. That's when the attendant broke the silence.

"You sent an entire fleet to find one boy in the ruins of Varethiel."

Because she had. Because when I was half-dead in the makeshift cot of wood and leaves, hidden in a cave near the crashing shores of the Island of Varethiel, it was her ship that found me. Her soldiers that carried me. Her hands that brushed the hair from my face when I couldn't even recognize her crown.

I held my breath.

And the Queen's voice softened. "No child should live through the massacre of their home... Aldric died saving the child."

I gulped when I heard the name of my master. I tried to comprehend what they were talking about but I was too weak to dig further.

Another pause followed, heavier than before, like the weight of a prophecy still unspoken.

"When I looked into his eyes, I didn't see weakness," she said. "I saw a question. One so deep, it terrified me. He's not ready to ask it yet, but when he does..." She exhaled. "I want him asking it for the right reasons."

I blinked. Once. Twice.

The storm outside blurred through my vision, but this time, it wasn't just rain. It was a memory.

Of fire clawing up the temple walls.

Of screaming, shattered voices torn from the only home I ever knew.

Of holding Master Aldric's hand, still warm, then cooling. His final breath, the last thing tethering me to the world.

And of every question I had swallowed, every truth I had buried because I was too afraid to dig it out.

That night, I finally spoke.

Not to her.

Not to anyone.

Just into the silence, to the one person I couldn't bring myself to say goodbye to.

"I won't let it happen again," I whispered into the dark, my voice scraping through a throat unused to sound.

"Not to anyone else. Not like it did to us."

My breath hitched. My hand trembled.

"I don't want revenge," I said, quieter this time, more to myself than anyone else.

I slowly returned to the present, feeling a little foolish for speaking into the empty air of a dark, silent chamber—hoping the Serpent was still listening.

"I just... I want to understand why. Why did it happen? Who let it? What let it? So I can stop it."

I let the words settle into the stone.

"I'm not only here to feed my curiosity. I'm here to protect the people I care about. To serve the kingdom that gave me a place when I had nothing. My pain, my past, even my questions—those aren't the point. I can't let them become the point."

I was barely eleven when we left the palace, tugged along by the Queen's Royal Attendant through the crowded markets of the West Quarter. Smaller than I should've been for my age, still hunched from the months I spent curled up in the infirmary, watching the window. I hadn't spoken in nearly a year until last night. And even then, it was only a whisper.

The Queen had ordered her attendant to take me outside the palace walls—for fresh air, she said.

But I think she knew.

I needed to remember people.

The city's market district was alive, chaotic, and warm in a way the palace never was. Stalls overflowed with fruit and cloth and spices. Music played in fragments from somewhere far off. Children ran between tables, chasing each other and laughter.

And then I saw her.

A little girl, no older than five, was standing quietly near a bakery cart. Her dress was torn at the hem. Her hands were clasped behind her back. And her eyes, wide, brown, and tired, never left the single round loaf on the cart's edge.

The baker didn't see her. Too busy haggling with a noblewoman over pastries.

She didn't steal. She didn't ask.

She just stood there, hungry.

I didn't think. I just moved.

Before the attendant could stop me, I walked straight up, pulled a single coin from the pouch she'd given me—my first one, ever—and handed it to the girl.

She looked up at me like I was magic. Like I'd handed her the sun.

The baker blinked, confused. "You buying that for her?"

I nodded. Didn't speak. Just watched as he wrapped the loaf and placed it in her hands.

She smiled.

It wasn't bright. Not dramatic. But it was real. Gentle. Like a light in fog.

And something inside me cracked open.

That night, back in my quarters, I whispered to the dark again, for people like her.

"I don't want anyone else to feel like I did," I said, my voice low but steady, staring down at the scars lining my hands and arms. "The one who was lost. Forgotten. And alone."

My breath trembled, but I didn't stop.

"Hungry—not just for food, but for a place to belong. For a voice in a world that never asked for mine. For warmth that wasn't bought or borrowed. For love that didn't come with conditions or crowns. I was starving for meaning. For truth. For home."

I paused, letting the silence stretch around me like a veil, as if waiting for the final thread to be pulled.

"And your riddle?" I said, lifting my gaze.

"It wasn't about cleverness. Or knowledge. Or even the past. It was about cost. It was about what happens when power becomes more important than people. When the hunger for control outweighs compassion. When kingdoms forget the ones who bleed quietly in the dark."

I stepped forward, shoulders squared now, as if every word carved something into the stone around me.

"The answer wasn't just a word. It was a truth I've seen etched into graves and policy, into broken homes and bent backs. It's why Varethiel burned. Why did my master die. Why was I left behind."

I stared into the stillness—into the echo of the Serpent or whatever it was that had demanded this trial.

"And the answer to your riddle... is Greed."

The word struck the air like iron.

"Not just the greed of gold or land. But the greed for legacy. For bloodlines. For control over who gets to matter and who doesn't. It's the kind of greed that wears silk and calls itself tradition. That wraps cruelty in ceremony and names it justice. That silences those who dare to be different. That chooses power over mercy. And it almost made me forget why I started walking this path."

My fists clenched, and I let the final words fall with quiet fury.

"But I remember now. And I won't let that kind of greed define the world I'm trying to protect."

There was no laughter.

No flash of lightning. No sudden roar.

Just a single breath of wind, curling around me like the sigh of something ancient. And that's when the chamber began to dissolve. The walls faded into mist, the stone beneath me fell away, and for a heartbeat, I was falling again—weightless.

But this time, I wasn't afraid.

I landed gently. The scent of earth replaced stone. The cold gave way to firelight.

And when I opened my eyes—

"Elara?" I breathed.

She turned sharply.

Her stance was battle-worn—legs braced, boots skidding across frozen stone, frost curling around her fingertips. Her arm was raised, trembling slightly, though the bow in her grasp was splintered, cracked down the middle like it had taken a blow meant for her. Shattered arrows lay scattered at her feet, broken like ribs. Blood stained the edge of her sleeve, a bloom of red against the white.

And behind her—

An Ice Reaver.

Looming. Crawling. Its limbs were jagged with glacial bone, its body stitched from living blizzards and teeth made of blackened frost. It had her cornered—its breath alone froze the air between them, slow and thick as smoke over a battlefield. Chains of ice dragged behind it, screeching as they scraped the floor, reaching for her ankles.

She didn't flinch.

But she looked tired. So, so tired.

Her bowstring was pulled taut—one last arrow notched, the tip cracked—but her gaze flicked toward me as I appeared from the veil of light.

And everything in her broke.

Her arms dropped.

The arrow fell.

She took one step forward, eyes wide. "Aric?"

My name left her like a gasp. Like a breath she didn't know she'd been holding.

Her voice cracked. Shook. Shattered through the silence like glass.

I didn't speak.

I didn't need to.

I moved.

The Reaver lunged for her—and I was already there.

Light burned in my grip. The magic surged not for me, but for her.