Zeven didn't bother entering through the grand doors at the front of the palace, instead he made his way around the back. Passing his horse off to the stable hand as he used the help entrance.
Using the small door by the loading brought back memories. Some good, some bad. Him, Brennan and Mae using the ramp to play on when Mae was first confined to her wheelchair. Playing games, darting back and forth out of sight from the nobility. Eating apples in the trees beside the stable. But the good memories were outnumbered five times by the bad ones. Tainting even some of the good memories.
He had no time to dwell on the past, his mind was made up and nothing would deter him. Expertly navigating the backway into the castle he made his way into the actual furnished, lavish part. All the years of training ingrained in him. The way he stood straight with his shoulders pulled back and his chin held high. The emotionless stare that seemed to pierce into a person's very soul.
Any fatigue that he felt was well concealed, he was the perfect model of a king. In control of oneself both mentally and physically. He paid no attention to the stares he garnered as he strode along the corridor. He knew how he looked, he had seen his father walk down the same path so many times as a child. Each step was learned and made intentional and now it came so naturally to him. So naturally that it conflicted with his sense of self.
If he thought on it too long he would make himself sick, all the things he had tried so desperately to distance himself from flooded back, rooted so deeply inside him that he would never be able to completely free himself.
But it did have its benefits. It was easy to see why his father would act this way, people moved out of his way. In their eyes he could sense the smallest fragment of fear. As his father had told him, fear was the root of all things. Respect, understanding, love… If you could make someone fear you, you could control them.
He approached the doors to the throne room. Nodding at the armed guard who waited beside it.
"I request an audience with the king."
The guard was not a small man. Zeven's equal in height and weight, if not taller. It would be unwise to instigate a fight against him, of course Zeven would win, but it would be too much trouble.
"It'll be three days before his majesty can see you."
"I'm his son, he can make an exception."
The guard obviously knew this fact. The resemblance Zeven bore to his father was unmistakable.
"My apologies your highness, but he did make a specific note not to let you in."
"That's bulshit. My coronation is in three days, his orders will soon be obsolete. Wouldn't it do better to be on my side considering the new chain of command?"
The man seemed to cower even more, completely bent in half in a low bow he refused to look anywhere but his feet.
"I am very sorry," he trembled as he spoke, "Your father has made specific note that you are not to interrupt until your coronation. Only then will he see you."
Zeven laughed without making a sound, anger seething from him. The loud puffs of air he let go sounded like a threat, "That's fine," the sarcasm dripping from his words did not go unnoticed, "tell him if he can find the time to squeeze me in, he knows where I'll be."
Zeven made his way to the third floor and all the way to the left tucked out of sight was his own private wing. Far enough out of sight that his father could forget that he had a son at all. But his mother never forgot. When he was little she would often come to visit him up in his room. Singing him lullabies and reading him stories. In those days, she spent more time in his wing that she spent with his father.
He knew that his mother and father had never loved each other. Despite the performances in public, the cold truth was undeniable. He was an unwanted child, brought forth only for necessity. He cursed the laws of his country. The laws that had been in practice for generations. The laws that required three children from everyone. The laws that took his mother from him.
It left a bitter taste in his mouth. Even more than her death, was the way that everyone seemed to forget that she ever existed at all. Her only remnants being the empty chair that sat beside his father. According to custom, that seat should have been filled years ago. If not by another woman, at least by the queen's crown. A national symbol that the queen's seat was not available because it already belonged to someone. It was mainly used for when a queen had died before her husband or a king wished to stop receiving marriage proposals because he had already found his new queen. But the law only applied to his father when it was convenient.
He crossed the threshold into his wing of the palace. It was as dark and desolate as he remembered. All the fixings had been dusted and polished recently, but it was clear that that was the only time anyone ever came up here. Which was just as well. No one ever came up anyways even when he was there.
His fingers brushed over the doors as he remembered asking once when he was younger why Brennan and Mae couldn't stay in the chambers up with him. The simple question turned into a three hour lecture about how they were nothing more than servants and he shouldn't defile himself by calling them his friends.
To this day that conversation had stayed with him. That and the other things he had done. He felt a surge of guilt flood as he looked at the rooms. He had left them here in this hell hole when he went to live with Gunter. It was years before he could get them out of the palace. They had to spend all that time under the thumb of people who saw them as little more than insects beneath their feet.
Zeven slammed his fist into the solid oak door. A loud thud echoed down the empty corridor. But he was going to atone for their suffering. He was going to be trapped there forever, there was no escape for him.