Solanum Dulcamara

IV. The Torch That Flickers On The Wall;

Brendon really did mean to just forget the idea.

After all, he found that, when all three members of the royal family told him not to do something, it was best not to do it. Actually, he'd never really discovered this fact, as he couldn't recall ever having done, or even wanted to do, anything that even one member of the royal family had told him not to do (excluding Ryan. If Brendon took every time Ryan told him to shut up seriously, he'd probably be mute). Still, it seemed like a good rule to live by.

He actually managed to, for the most part, push all thoughts of town to the back of his mind for the entire week. Sure, there were a few times they had drifted into his consciousness- once, when seated before a heaping portion of veal and assorted vegetables, he found himself picturing the carrots in front of him bumping around in the back of Sarah's wagon as she drove it over one of the surrounding hills, and again when Z had to leave a riveting conversation about different kinds of mice (Ryan thought they all looked the same; Brendon thought he was an idiot and wanted to know if he'd ever actually encountered a mouse before in his life) in order to be fitted for a new gown, which Brendon couldn't help but mentally compare to the single thin, grayish frock Sarah had worn during both of their encounters- but he always hurriedly found ways to distract himself and direct his thoughts back to the castle, where they apparently belonged.

Which was why Brendon took it as a sign from the heavens themselves when, on the morning of the very next Thursday, he found himself lying awake in his cottage long before any sunlight reached the windows.

He tried to go back to sleep. He really did. But somehow his buzzing brain just wouldn't shut up, and eventually, he decided to go on a walk in the hopes of clearing it.

That's really all it was. A walk. Just a leisurely stroll around the castle grounds. A chance to enjoy the crisp dawn air, still just cold enough to turn each of Brendon's exhalations into a little white puff that danced away into nothingness only seconds after it's creation. That's what it began as, and that's what it continued to be.

Until, that is, the telltale pounding of a horse's hooves on the dusty path around the castle- along with the rattle of a rickety wagon moving across the slightly uneven surface- reached Brendon's far-too-eager ears, and all his efforts to forget about the whole ordeal seemed to drift away faster as the clouds of his breath.

If, in the past week, he'd resurrected some sort of protective wall in his mind, then that sound was the trebuchet that broke through it. As in any battle, soldiers poured in through the hole, except they weren't soldiers at all, but questions. Questions about the town and why Sarah seemed so dissatisfied with the conditions there, why she showed such blatant resentment towards so-called "castle folk", and, perhaps most worryingly, why King George seemed so adamant not to have these questions answered.

There was, of course, still a shred of rationality in his brain (or, at least what he presumed to be rationality. He was well aware, however, that it could've just as well been naivety, and this awareness was the entire reason he was fighting this internal war at all), which told him he was being ridiculous, and that he ought to just forget about it. After all, the king's reasoning was most likely just as Ryan had said- he didn't want to endanger Brendon by letting him into a place where he would be an easy target for the Rebels, who were very likely to attack anyone with even a semblance of a relationship with the royal family.

Brendon knew this. Of course he did. He'd be stupid not to. But he just couldn't shake his curiosity and found that he had a hard time focusing on anything else without doing so, so it was really his duty to both himself and everyone around him that he visit the town in order to put these absurd doubts to rest.