Excerpt from The High King’s Will

This may be considered NSFW, so fair warning for those of you at a desk.

Here is the first chapter of Steel for the Prince: The High King’s Will, the product of many months of sweat and tears. It’s the first in a serial telling the story of Dingus’s grandfather, Eagle Eye, as a very young man. If pretty hitul boys falling in love is not your bag, feel free to give this one a pass, but fear not. I’ll have another, more Menyoral-connected release pretty quickly after this hits Amazon. Let me show you what I’ve been doing.

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ONE

Eagle Eye lay broken and reeling on the floor of the cavern. The dark hulk of the great red Worm towered over him, the tail backlit by the gold that shimmered in heaps on the floor. Monstrously huge wings hung limp, casting strange shadows. The last dead twitches passed through Eleazar.

Eagle’s head ached. His vision swam, and distantly he heard the Crown Prince call out, “Hey-la-hey!” Brother Fox struggled over the thick tail with a blob of golden mage-light hovering just above his head. He called out again: “Eagle, brave Eagle, you’ve done it!”

He didn’t feel brave. He hurt so badly. The cruel black horns on Eleazar’s head, the knife teeth, and the massive eye, which had only a few minutes ago fallen upon him with hungry menace, sent a trembling to his soul.

Brother Fox blocked his view, partially, and he was glad of that. Light wreathed the Prince, making a glowing spirit of a flesh-and-blood youth, and Eagle understood why his stomach clenched when Brother Fox smiled. Precious metal gleamed in the gold threads that ran through his hair, and his face sent Eagle’s heart staggering. Impossibly beautiful.

The perfect mouth moved, but Eagle couldn’t hear. Blackness teased at the edges of his awareness. When the Prince bent over him, shadows swallowed amber eyes, like the bruises that so often marred the face. Eagle had preserved Brother Fox’s life, but he wondered if he had done the Prince a service.

Then—nothing.

Eagle had done for the Worm with a single, lucky arrow, but the Worm had nearly done for Eagle, too. More properly, Eagle had nearly done for Eagle. He’d dashed himself to pieces on the rocks. Broken bones, cracked skull. Two days he’d been deeply unconscious, in the care of the healers, but this morning, when he woke, the High King had tacked Vistridir onto his name. Wormsbane. Father had hustled him home straightaway, after Brother Fox had given him a scale from the Worm’s own hide. “You ought to have it,” the Prince had said. “You earned it. And after all, I did promise you one.”

He’d felt Rothganar’s biggest fraud when the High King called him Wormsbane. All his dreams of great deeds had fallen to ashes before the terror he’d felt in the Worm’s cave, and a numbness had come over his heart since, which he distantly feared would never go away. Even all the loveliness of the flowers and the sweet songs of the frogs had lost their power to move Voalt Vistridir. Nothing seemed quite real after Eleazar, and Eagle himself the least real of all.

The royal gardens showed spectacular on a summer’s night, especially a night like this, scented and breezy and clear. All the mage-lanterns shone in the cottage behind Eagle, who sat on a stool just outside the front door, gazing into his own shadow. In his hands he held the Worm’s ruby scale, the size of his palm. He rubbed at it unconsciously with a small, callused thumb, over and over.

He was alone. Father had gone on a hunt that afternoon, to stock the High King’s larder. He always took Eagle along, and today was no exception, but Eagle had asked to turn back. His leg, the site of the worst break, pained him. Normally there would have been no excuses accepted, but Father allowed it today, on the condition that he stayed inside.

He’d meant to obey, but the cottage stifled. Here he sat, with the achy leg stretched out in front of him, turning the scale over and over. Remembering, though he would sooner not: images cloaked in darkness, lit by flashes of red mage-light and gold, by a blast of flame bright as day. His memory tainted the sweet-smelling night with Worm stench. The world was half unremarkable dream, half nightmare, and Eagle wandered in it, lost, feeling only enough to realize, from a distance, that he hurt. So lost that when a figure stumbled around the yellow rose hedge, it surprised him. Ordinarily he would have heard someone coming, particularly someone so very drunk.

Brother Fox. The Crown Prince’s bruised face dripped tears and blood, and he shuffled toward the cottage, cradling a swollen arm that surely must be broken. Not drunk. Beaten. Father would have sent Eagle away to do some chore right off, but he stared, rooted to the spot, so much that the Prince nearly tripped over him. He popped up, overturning the stool, and remembered to bow. “Your Highness,” he rushed out, slipping the scale into his pocket.

“Please don’t,” Brother Fox rasped. He swayed on his feet. “Is your father here?”

“No, Your Highness.” Eagle bit his lip. Father would have sent him away, but Father wasn’t here, and one of Brother Fox’s eyes was so badly bruised he couldn’t open it, though tears still leaked from between the lids, a slow trickle. He couldn’t think how the Prince had managed to get through the gardens to the cottage. Had he used the tunnel? In any case, sending him back up to the Palace would be a cruelty not even Eagle’s numb heart could stand. “Come in.”

The door slammed behind Brother Fox. Eagle knelt by Father’s trunk, which he shouldn’t have gone into, but he felt this warranted the intrusion. His fingers brushed one of the shiny wood boxes Father brought down sometimes after he’d answered a summons, but he didn’t feel the least temptation to open it. He found the little glass jar of all-heal salve.

“Where’s Falcon Eye?” Brother Fox pleaded.

“I’m sorry, Your Highness. He went out this afternoon. Hunting. He hasn’t come home yet.” Probably wouldn’t until late tomorrow morning.

“I thought he always took you with him.”

Eagle said simply, “Not today.” The agony in the Prince’s voice made him rush. He went into the washroom and fetched a bowl of hot water, and a pile of clean rags. Brother Fox stood in the spot he’d occupied when Eagle left him, rocking slightly and staring into the distance, hunched with pain and—if Eagle read him right—shame. “Your Highness?”

“What?”

“I can help you, if you want. My father taught me. But it’d probably be better if you sat down.”

The Prince nodded vaguely.

Eagle arranged the supplies on the window seat. “Your Highness. Please—”

“Bey.” Fox.

Eagle shook his head and carefully guided the Prince a few steps, to the window seat. Brother Fox didn’t sit, and he was the taller by more than a head. Eagle couldn’t work on this mess reaching up. He screwed up his courage, laid his hands on the royal shoulders, and pushed. “Sit down, Your Highness,” he said.

“Call me Fox.” The Prince sat down hard. He probably jarred every injury at once. A pained little sound pressed between his teeth.

For a moment Eagle clenched his hands, angry. So he could feel, after all; not entirely numb.

“If you’re—if you’re familiar enough to help me after—this—you’re familiar enough to call me Fox.”

“All right. Fox.” He pushed the long glory of hair behind Brother Fox’s shoulders. It whispered over the backs of his fingers. “Father calls me Eagle,” he offered. The most serious injury, the arm, he’d treat first, no matter how badly he wanted to fix the Prince’s face. He remembered it swimming over him in the cave, all the lovelier against his horror.

“How old are you, Eagle?”

“Fourscore years and two. Hold still now.” Carefully, he examined Fox’s arm.

“Ah!”

“This is broken.” He could feel it just there.

“I know,” Fox wrenched, sweat standing out on his forehead.

“Wait here.” Eagle went and fetched the leather strap from Father’s chest. “To bite on,” he said, giving it over.

“I know. Talk to me,” the Prince said suddenly. “What’s it like being Wormsbane?” And he put the strap in his mouth.

“Oh, well…” Eagle didn’t know how to answer that for himself, let alone Fox. He rubbed the nape of his neck. “I’m not really sure yet,” he decided. “It’s only today, you know? I was talking to Vercingetorix, and he said—”

“Vercingetorix?” Fox interrupted. He had the strap in his hand now. “The unicorn?”

“Bite down.” That was none of anyone’s business, though why anyone should be surprised Eagle didn’t know. He wasn’t anything special. The Prince obeyed, and he snapped the bone into place before he could lose his nerve. Fox’s scream, even with the strap, rattled his eardrums. He reached for the jar of all-heal. When he opened it, the scent drifted up to prickle green, herbal magic into his nose.

“You—can still talk—to Vercingetorix?” Fox panted.

Eagle’s face heated. What a thing to ask about, while his fingers stroked all-heal over the living silk of the Prince’s skin.

“It’s nothing to be embarrassed over.”

“Well, it’s just…” He wet a cloth in warm water and began to clean blood from the Prince’s face. He’d always been apart, and when the others around his age had started stealing kisses and touching each other, he’d been outside of that, too. He’d been outside of everything for so long, kids younger than he was were starting it. “Nobody notices me,” he blurted. And if they did, it was only to call him odd or stuck-up. “Only Father.”

Under the cloth, Fox’s split mouth curved into a smile Eagle could feel. “You’re sort of small.”

That was true. He was small and slight, even for his age. “And quiet,” he admitted.

“I see you,” Fox said, with a husky note in his voice and a gleam in his amber eye. The open one.

Eagle’s stomach jumped. And something else. “Mm-hmm.” It was all he trusted himself to say.

“I do. I see you around, working with Falcon Eye.” Fox dragged in a breath and added, “He loves you.”

“He does.” If there was anything real left in Eagle’s world, it was Father.

“Why are you so serious? I never see you smile. But your father loves you and teaches you. You get to talk to unicorns. If anybody has a reason to smile, you do.”

Eagle raised Fox’s chin to clean his neck. It felt intimate, trading secrets. If he leaned in six inches, he could steal a kiss, and what would happen then? He longed to find out, but—no. He contented himself with sponging blood from golden skin, leaving it damp and gleaming. “Guess I just don’t need to. Why do you smile all the time, when your father does this to you?”

Fox’s larynx bobbed under the cloth. “I’ve never thought about it.”

Not for one moment did Eagle believe it. He paused in his cleaning and looked Fox in the eye.

“I suppose… I need to, because if I don’t, I’ll cry.”

He nodded slowly. Seething. He wanted to do something. He wanted to throttle the High King, even knowing he’d die for it. “It’s wrong, you know,” he blurted. “What he does to you. It’s evil.”

“If I were a better—”

“Shut up.” Oh God. He’d just told the Crown Prince to shut up. “It’s not about you. He’d do it if you were perfect, because it’s all and only about him. You think I never make my father angry?” He was always making Father angry and having things taken away from him, or being given extra chores. But this. This was fists and no holding back. “Difference is, I don’t look like this after he punishes me.”

Fox didn’t answer. He looked ready to cry again.

“Why don’t you just leave?”

“Where would I go?” Fox said, so small and sad that Eagle wanted to take him away this very minute, into the wood and the wild, and keep him safe.

“Where wouldn’t you go?” Eagle stepped back, holding the cloth, reaching for words. Where wouldn’t he go? “Anywhere,” he said. “Everywhere!” He threw his arms wide, and his face broke into a smile for the first time in days. “You could have adventures, all kinds. Save beautiful princesses, and find buried treasure, and slay dragons and—and—”

God, the look on Fox’s bruised face. That gleam in his eye, hotter now, hot as the lava sprites when they got too close. There was a savage pulse in Eagle’s groin. You are something extraordinary, the look said, and he couldn’t understand it.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” he asked.

“Because,” Fox said, “I just figured out why you don’t smile. You don’t want to be here any more than I do.”

The Prince really did see him. Unnerving. He had let someone see him—the insane, secret part of him that wanted to run, and run, and never look back. “I want to see where the round-eared sailors come from,” he said, feeling stupid, and went quickly back to patching up Fox.

He had his fingers under Fox’s eye when the Prince asked, “Which ones?”

“All of them.”

“What if I went?” Fox sounded hushed now. “If I went away and had adventures, would you come with me?”

In a heartbeat. “Sure I would.” No doubt Fox would forget by morning, but Eagle would never forget. He wished it could be a true thing.

He pulled up Fox’s stained shirt to spread all-heal on the Prince’s ribs. The bruises there took longer to fade than they should have. “You should go,” he said, very quietly. “Go, Fox. Before he kills you.” He glanced up from where he knelt and found Fox’s eyes on him, both of them now, those hot amber eyes. He couldn’t have looked away if he’d tried.

“You’re probably right,” Fox said. His look held Eagle’s for a long moment, unreadably.

Eagle slid his hands out of Fox’s shirt.

The Prince leaned forward, near and nearer, until Eagle could feel air stir against his mouth. Fox lifted his chin with soft fingertips, whispering, “Eagle… I want—to thank you.” The moment shattered. Fox snatched his hand back and rose. “Good-bye,” he said at the door, and whipped out in a flurry of hair, leaving Eagle sitting on his heels with forgotten manners and fierce arousal.

“I would’ve let you,” he said, to the empty space the Prince had left behind. He would’ve let Fox do a lot of things, if Fox had wanted to bother. Sometimes the haylofts in Shirith overflowed with naked flesh, and Eagle was never in any of them. It was a lonely feeling, he thought, to have nobody want you. And it would have been nice to know what it felt like when somebody did.

Sighing, he stood and went about cleaning. He stuffed the rags into the incinerator, rinsed the bowl of bloody water, and scrubbed blood from the carpet where Fox had stood. He tried to turn his mind away from what had just happened, but in the cedar-paneled shower, surrounded by steam and scent, he propped his forearm on the wall and stroked his prick with a soapy fist. Whether it meant what he thought it had or something else entirely, the memory of Fox’s fiery gaze brought a moan out of him. Fingers of hot water coursed down his back. He came on his hand with a ragged little sound like a sob, and afterward leaned there trembling in the billows of hot vapor.

Fox had spoken to him. Listened to him. Seen right into him. Whatever was there, the Prince had found it pleasing. And he was so used to the eyes skidding right over him, the mouths that called him spooky and strange where they thought he couldn’t hear. He’d welcomed their thinking he was odd, and hardened his heart. Or thought he had. One look from Fox had been enough to crack him open to the soft meat inside. He was as weak and stupid as the rest of them.

He shut off the water and dried himself with a towel so old it was ivory rather than white. What he wanted, he realized, was for somebody to want to touch him, and most of all, Crown Prince Bearach of Shirith, who had seen Eagle’s real self, and liked it.

Eagle put on his nightshirt. He climbed into the sleeping cupboard and slept hard on top of the blankets with all the lights blazing and the windows and bed-door open.

When he woke, there was an emerald fairy perched on his nose. It took forever to get the glitter off.

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That’s all for now! The book should be ready within a month — and I hope you stick around for it. :)