“The Sun, our treacherous forefather!”

-from the bumblings of Cyril Phelbseer, gatekeeper

For the fourth day in a row the boy arose to find that the sun had failed to keep his promise. Though the old garden-rooster squawked his alarm down below there was no new light for him to serenade, and from his bed in the discarded nursery Cort shared the unspoken disappointment. Without the sun’s face to look in on the room the ceiling was nothing more than stone, as pasty and irregular as a handful of oatmeal. There was no warmth to chase the cold from the corners and turn the space into something more ethereal.

The sun hadn’t heard his pleas after all.

For a time he lay open-eyed, trying to recall the golden morning-heat against his cheeks and recounting the colors he knew he would not find in the sky. Their ghosts sat in his mind like jewels of comfort, and he summoned them one by one in a lonely reincarnation. There were the primal reds and the softer oranges; the rosy pinks that leaked into the gray like radiance from an angel’s halo. The yellows came after everything else; an explosion so bright it made Cort’s eyes tingle. They had always been his favorite, and Cyrna only encouraged his love of the color.

“Your hair is as bright as the sun once was,” the nurse-healer was fond of telling him. “You are our golden boy now.”

Cyrna often spoke kindly, and Cort liked her words. They always brightened him no matter how cheerless he might feel, for he liked the thought of carrying a piece of the sun with him. Though she was small and never walked as fast as she might, Cyrna made better company than the ever-scowling Eldon, Lord Oscrit’s only son. Cort knew fully well what the older boy thought of their arrangement – “only suckling babes need nannies” – but Eldon was the closest in age out of anyone who came to see him, and Cort was grateful for his occasional knight-stories and tournament tales. He liked Cyrna, but she wouldn’t understand.

He would have to tell her about his unheard prayers, though it would make her scrunch her mouth in sadness. Consulting the skies had been her idea, but maybe Their ear had been turned elsewhere. Did Eldon grieve the sun, too?

There was a movement at the other end of the room – a shifting of shadows on the old nursery walls – and the boy propped himself against the cushions for a better look. He knew it was too early for Cyrna to come get him, and she never made this much noise. The frantic scuffle of shoes on wood was a stark contrast to the lady’s gentle silences. There was a conflicting click, the foreign titter of metal on metal (but Cyrna was always careful with her key), and a harsh sound that Cort could make no sense of.

“Eldon?” The shadows stifled his voice and changed it to something sickly and high-pitched. “Only girls and calves whine,” Eldon would scoff if he heard him now, and Cort held his breath in anticipation of the older boy’s scathing voice. But no answer came no matter how hard he strained his ears. There was no sound but for the clucking of chickens half a world away… and the quiet, measured breathing coming from the hidden doorway.

Who else would visit him so early in the day?

A gradual chill traipsed the length of his spine. The sound persisted, but Cort found it somehow imperative to swallow his words. Seconds dripped by like honey, and he suddenly wished that Cyrna did come, no matter what Eldon said of her. She had never warned him against anything like this. What would she have done in his place?

Moving as quietly as he could, Cort slipped away from the quilt and balanced his legs over the bed. Cyrna always brought his fresh clothes when she came, and she chided him against rising until she arrived (“The cold floor on your bare feet? Would you like a chest cough with that, too?”). The naked stone burned his soles with ice, but he was glad that the feeling didn’t last very long. He would hate to prove her right.

Lord Oscrit only ever visited on important days and birth-markers, and Cyrna would never skulk like a hideaway. And Eldon… what reason would he have?

Who’s there? he wanted to call, if only his tongue would unknot itself. Whoever had come was still there, breathing against the doorway, only the sound was less pronounced now – that of a runner who had finally regained his breath. Another shudder crawled through Cort’s body, and he crept forward despite what his instincts were railing at him. The door peered at him from around the corner, open far enough to let in a glimpse of the hallway and someone’s bent, unsteady shape propped against it.

“Eldon?” Relief flooded his voice. Even through the shadows the elder boy’s fiery hair stood out like a beacon. His head was bent, face hidden from sight, and for a fleeting moment Cort was too caught up in his joy to take note of the strangeness. Had Eldon come to take him to the tournament he had detailed the day before? Was that why he had hurried?

“Eldon! Did you see…?”

The boy lifted his face then, and Cort’s words faded at the stark whiteness of it. There was a severity on Eldon’s lip that had never been there before, and his brows were drawn in such consternation that his jaw seemed to tremble with it. He was holding his arms tightly to his heaving chest, and Cort could see the general shape of something bunched in one shirt sleeve.

“Not a word!” Eldon stepped toward him without warning, quick as a cobra despite his breathlessness, but seemed to think better of it. A bittersweet stench wafted from his gaping mouth. His forehead shone with moisture, and there was an uncanny sheen in his eyes that told of tears. But Eldon would never cry.

“Not one word to anyone! Especially not… to my father…”

Eldon’s fingers were at his arm as he wheezed, plucking at the sleeve as though to cure an itch. Already his eyes had slipped away from Cort; his back was turned before the younger boy could summon so much as a confirmation.

Speedy as a wraith, Eldon vanished down the corridor, leaving only the sour-sweet smell to hover in the doorway.