A/N: Here we are, again, folks. Here’s the second chapter. I was really intending to update this rather quicker, but this is the best I could do. Don’t give up on me? Please review, whether you liked it or thought it would better if… anything. I love to hear from you. Now, with no more ado…

"Have you any new tricks to show me?" Oran asked softly; his back was against the tree - where his love had knelt waiting for him, Eruth sat now between his knees. His pale hand rested upturned in the grass and a woodmouse sat in his palm. Eruth smiled uncertainly, hoping he was ready. He sat up straight and shut his eyes, his hands came up flat before him. Oran watched in silence - hearing the orchard's chorus singing, Wizard's Child is conjuring...

Above the outstretched hands a spark appeared in the air; it was but a tiny glimmer, and flickered in and out of life for a moment - winking like a miniature star. it shuddered and started to fade, Oran could see Eruth shaking with the effort of keeping it alight. Carefully he reached out to touch his hands. Instantly, the light flared - big enough to see its shells of silver twisting and splitting into shivers and slivers of incandescence.

Eruth opened his eyes, gasping. Oran's smile met him across the boiling sphere of light. His simle widened as the light lifted from their hands, rising above their heads, to ice them in silver and multiplying itself in a thousands black-night eyes. Oran leaned across their joined hands and pressed his lips to Eruth's, and as they kissed the star exploded - shattering to all edges of the orchard and for a heartbeat setting every leaf and eye and tail and fingertip ablaze with silver. It faded to whispers. Oran Moonlight should be more careful.

From a window, long ways above the lovers' heads, the Crown Advisor gazed down with eyes of stone at the sudden burst of light though the pair were hidden from his sight by the leaves of Eruth's magical orchard. "He is getting ahead of himself," Denoth said to a wordless servant, who looked up briefly with craven, darting eyes. "What mischief is he making down there?"

"When did you start conjuring energy?" Oran asked, releasing Eruth's hands and allowing the mouse to scamper back into his palm, where it sat sniffing at his fingers; the tiny creature felt no alarm as a fire-green snake wove through the grass towards it and knotted itself about Oran's slim wrist to taste the magic that lingered on his skin.

"Last week," Eruth answered shyly; he had meant to keep the trick to himself until he could use it to impress his lover and was embarrassed to have needed help. Even in his orchard, it seemed, there wasn't power enough for him to do it alone, though it was easier than in the castle with its soulless stone and cobwebs. "He... hasn't been giving me much guidance with it," he said apologetically.

"Because he's worried that you will be better than him." Oran guiltlessly dislodged the mouse again, who this time climbed up onto his knee, so he could take Eruth's face between his hands. "What are they doing, keeping you here?" he asked quietly. "You're a prince, not a servant." Careful! hissed the snakes, making a breeze with their voices. Oran heard and understood, but took no notice of them. Eruth hung his head.

"You told me before. But I still don't see how it can be true."

"Because Draeger is a coward and an old fool who can't control his sons." The snake about his wrist tightened sharply, its small eyes flashing and its tongue spitting warnings: Care, Oran Moonlight! Have care! But he still let the whisper pass over him; the madness the snakes had tasted was glittering in his eyes. "But you could be greater than any of them, Eruth! Easily! You could take back everything they have kept from you. You just have to- Agh!" Fool, Moonlight! Would you draw the night's ears as well as its eyes? What about its blades? Fourth Son has greatness enough without lusting after fool's gold! The bone-bright serpent pulled its knot on the arm until the flesh disappeared, becoming only insubstantial breath and shadow, long enough for the bothersome creature to drop to the ground. It skated away over the grass and vanished though its voice did not. I have warned you, Oran Moonlight.

Eruth looked concerned, his hand reaching up to anxiously caress his lover's wrist, to find what harm had been done. No mark was on the snowy skin. His eyes flew back to Oran's, from which the mad lights had faded, leaving only stars. "Don't you want more than this, Eruth? More than this... vile servitude?" Eruth hesitated, then shut his eyes. Oran was immediately sorry he had pressed him. "I'm sorry, love," he whispered, pulling the boy close enough to embrace him. "Eruth, Eruth..." he murmured, as he touched the light brown hair - turned to spider's silk by the drift of moonlight. "My magic prince..." he chanted soothingly. Eruth pulled away and startde to stand up. Oran followed - worried; his mouse had finally scurried away.

"I'm not a prince!" Eruth told him distractedly; the quiet words made him feel peculiar and the feeling upset him. "Stop saying those things," he ordered him, as imperiously as any of his brothers, but with a hideous, trembling edge of fear. Without another word, or waiting for a reply, he ran - breaking the hush of his orchard with fleeing steps.

"Eruth!" Oran shouted after him, but he did not stop. And the night snakes whispered their warnings.

The apprentice child reached his room out of breath and half blind with tears, so unnerved was he by Oran’s strange insistence. He wished his lover would not have such disturbing ideas; they frightened him. He had his magic, and his orchard, and he had Oran. That was as much as he wanted. What did the odd chore and a few stupid orders matter? It hurt him, that Oran would not be satisfied with the life Eruth had. With Eruth. No good were soft words and apologies, when they would expire as surely as night – and the entreaties, as surely, return. His room had never seemed so far away, or atop so many stairs. He half collapsed against his bedroom door as he stumbled onto the dim landing.

“Late, to be running around the grounds, is it not, boy?” Eruth’s heart was already crashing painfully against his ribs – he was not a boy made for running, and his flight from the orchard had done him no favours; he though the frantic leap it gave as the wizard’s voice lanced out of the shadows would finish him. He turned, breathless and trying to keep his shoulders from heaving or his legs from buckling, and blinked into the dark corridor. Denoth, it seemed, had waited for him here. “You shall sleep through your chores tomorrow, I don’t wonder.” He was uncaring of the panic he had caused.

“I’ve always finished my chores, sir,” Eruth protested meekly, dropping his eyes from the craggy, unsympathetic face.

“I’m not a man to keep young boys from their wanderings, Eruth,” Dentoh said with halting gravity. “But if I see so much as a slip in your attentiveness tomorrow, I will not feel so generous.” The boy nodded. “We understand each other then. Now, off with you. You’ve a few hours before I want to see work being done.”

“Yes, sir,” Eruth mumbled, wincing as the words raked his run-raw throat. “Goodnight, sir.”

“Goodnight.”

Somehow, Denoth had gone by the time Eruth got his door open and turned inside. The corridor he glimpsed for a second was empty. As though it had always been so.

Unsettled by his master’s strangeness and sternness, Eruth flung himself quickly inside his room and threw the door shut, before more shapes could appear out of the shadows to chastise him. And when he was alone he felt down on his bed to hide angry, confused tears in his thin pillow. But his miserable plaints did not go unheard, even though Oran had gone back to his moonlight and Denoth had returned to his own landing. The thin shirt that Eruth wore was joined at the neck to a scraggy hood – perhaps it had been better protection for the shirt’s first or even second owner – and out of this slithered a tiny, hissing snake. Fourth Son Wizard’s Child is crying… it said to the darkness.