Loud knocking on the door was what woke him up the next morning. At first he had forgotten where he was and had been thrown back into the past when some over zealous slaves had invaded his room to kill him in order to get a reward from the King when he had only been twelve. He could not see anything as the curtains were still closed shut restricting light and forcing him to wave his hand around in search of any weapon he could use to protect himself from the slave. Grabbing the lamp by the side, he swung it as hard as he could and impaled the first slave in the eye before he made a run for the window to open the curtain and then the window, ready to escape the room.
Without much thought, he opened the window and threw himself off the ledge and down the castle unto the hard ground beneath him. The fall broke every bone in his body and the pain was sharp enough to have him gasp back to reality as he found himself huddled at one corner of the room with the blankets wrapped around him as he shivered in fear.
This happened very often, sometimes his past and present melted together so well that he could experience his past while his body was being a complete useless piece of machinery that huddled itself in one corner and shivered in fear. Feeling a very warm hand on his cheek, he looked up to see his sister on her knees looking at him with all the love and care anyone in his position was starved of. Focusing on her always helped him whenever he was in this state, she grounded him and reminded him that he was still alive and was awake.
"It's okay Nic, I will get the door." She said in understanding as she wore a night robe, after all she had been the first on the scene of his first near death experience, that was the day they realized that he had the ability to heal so fast it was almost spooky. The absence of the pain on his body as well as the faded colour of the scars he had receive the previous day was enough evidence of his great healing capacity.
"Your highness, your brother has not been found since last night." The female student began.
"That's weird, you and the entire student population have never bothered to look for him, why are you now concerned?" She asked.
"Forgive me princess, but it is not because of concern that we are looking for him, Edward is missing and now so is your brother, we don't know if your brother took Edward last night."
"My brother was whipped and was in so much pain he could barely function yesterday, so how on earth would he have been able to take Edward, a Saint, and get away with it?"
"We don't know, it is just a suspicion of everyone seeing as the Chief Inquisitor has summoned everyone to the assembly hall for a word and you brother's room-mates all claim to have not seen him last night."
"Well you can run along and tell my brother's sympathizers that he spent the night with me and would be down in a moment, with me." Nica said sarcastically and slammed the door shut in the face of the Saint. "Nic, I can't wait to be Queen."
Dominic chuckled as she said that before he got himself out of the corner he had placed himself in and walked to his sister. "Let us first of all survive this inquisition, then we can plan our regicide properly." He said as he hugged her.
"We better get in the shower if we don't want to be late and miss our window to plan the story we shall tell the Chief Inquisitor alongside the rest of our gang." Nica said and undressed before getting into the shower. This was not the first time they had showered together, and it might not be the last as long as his father lived and took every chance he could get to punish him.
A quick shower later, they were at the assembly hall in time for Lady Amanda to give her speech.
"Edward was not found yesterday and has still not turned up today which leaves me no choice but to declare him missing. We do not know where he is, but we do know where he was last seen and that was during the party two nights ago." Lady Amanda said as she spoke from the isle that faced over a hundred students. "I will ask everyone of you for your version of what happened that night with the help of a lie detecting spell, so feel free to tell me the truth and nothing but the truth." She ended while setting her eyes on him. "When you hear your name, you come with me into the Head Mistress' office." With a smile, she looked at him as if to tell him her eyes were on him, both literally and figuratively. "Anabelle."
This was going to be a long morning indeed, good thing they had time to plan their story to be as close to the truth as possible with the other three that looked at them from one corner of the room.