The Water Howlers - Book II ✔

Chapter 29 - Rylan

I was flipping through a history book up on the top floor of the library, avoiding people I didn't want to see, at the very back by the corner wall when the angry sound of my father's voice reached me. I stilled in my browsing of Aethorin families and strained my ears. Clearly he was furious about something, but his voice was too low for me to make out the words. I closed the book softly and put it back on its place on the shelf, then ventured down the row of shelves until I reached the wall with the small vent by the floor. 

When I was a child I would sometimes sneak up here to try and listen in on my father's council meetings, though they were usually so boring that I had to shake myself to concentrate. That had been before I was old enough to officially sit in on the meetings and before the realisation had set in that I would someday be at the head of the table. Now, however, I found it far too interesting to not try and listen. 

Through the vent drifted sounds and voices from the chamber on the opposite side and my fathers rose above them all. 

"Incompetent fools. How hard is it to follow simple orders?"

I frowned, raking my brain at whom he might be talking to, but it could be a numerous amount of people. You couldn't see anything through the vent so I could only guess whom my father was angry with.

Leaving the library I ran into my uncle in the corridor. My father's brother, Duke Roger, had been staying at the palace for longer than usual. Normally he would leave his estate on the southern part of Aethorin and come visit for a week or so a couple of times a year, but this time he'd been here almost a month. 

"Rylan, just the man I wanted to see," uncle Roger said, smiling warmly at me. His dark hair was greasy and slicked back, bound low with a leather ribbon. His beard had a streak of grey in it and his breath reeked of liquor. His clothes looked scruffy and several stains showed on his breeches. My aunt was back at their estate, but it was no secret that whilst my uncle was at the palace he enjoyed the company of many women as well as bottles of ale and liquor. I wouldn't be surprised if my father joined him. They had always been close and apparently that also meant they shared their women.

My uncle's green eyes practically sparkled even in the sparse light. The same shade of green as that of my sister Amberlee. 

"Hello uncle," I replied with a stiff smile. Knowing what I knew now my feelings towards both my mother and uncle had grown colder and I wanted to distance myself from them. 

"I hear you are engaged to an Eslean princess. I don't know what my brother is thinking. I simply shudder to think what wildling those Four come home with. I hear they eat with their hands." 

Heat rose to my face and I clenched my fists behind my back. 

"I am sure my father has a reasonable explanation that he would love to share with you. If you will excuse me, uncle." I sidestepped my uncle and hurried down the corridor wanting to put as much distance to him as possible before he could call me back. 

Ducking into my room I sprawled out on the bed, sighing deeply. 

Had my parents really been that unhappy with each other for all those years? That my father had accepted Amberlee like his own, because there was no chance that he didn't know she wasn't his. History books may omit such things, but whispers didn't. And the whispers that followed the Dukant royal family were not white puffy clouds. No, they were more like rolling dark thunder clouds waiting to crack open the skies. It was safe to say that through more than nine generations the Dukant bloodline hadn't always strayed far. Marriages between cousins and second cousins had not been uncommon back in the day, but the union of siblings or half-siblings were fewer and far between. 

But they were there. Written down in the history books as dark smudges on the Dukant history.

Stories, as that of my great grandfather, King Ragnar II, who married his younger sister, Princess Rania. She had been beautiful with shiny dark hair and the face of a goddess. He had been several years older than her and not quite right in the head. It wasn't spoken about often, but I had heard the story of how Ragnar had pursued his sister, claiming her as his bride as soon as she had reached womanhood at age fifteen. Their first child, a boy, had not developed properly in the womb, something had been wrong with his face and how he acted. The baby died before his first year. Their second child, a girl, had been born blind and missing several fingers and toes. She hadn't lived long either. It was after the death of their second child that my great grandfather decided, that if he were to have any living heirs he needed to marry outside the Dukant family. But by then Rania truly loved him and was desperate to keep him and keep her title as queen. 

Ragnar held many balls to find a new queen and finally met and married Lady Amora, my great grandmother. My grandfather, Roald II, was born less than a year after their first meeting. Ragnar was eager to secure the bloodline and disregarded Rania without a second glance. Heartbroken and humiliated, Rania left Aebor on a ship and was never heard of again. No one knows what happened to her or where she went, but that had been the last time that an actual incestual marriage had taken place within the Dukant family. I shuddered to think of what other things that hadn't been publicly displayed, had taken place within these walls. 

Ragnar's mother, Queen Ragnara had to marry her cousin, Radek because of the old law that stated if the firstborn was a daughter, she would be required to marry within the Dukant bloodline in order to rule as Queen. It had only happened that once in the past nine generations of Dukant, so it wasn't thought of often, but it was a vile law, one that I vowed to banish should my firstborn be a girl. 

There were other stories from before that and sometimes I thought that the gods had cursed our family for what they had done in the past. Because this was not the workings of a normal family. The lies, the deceit. Years ago I had vowed to myself that I would change that. I would be better than my father. I would be faithful to my Queen, whoever that would end up being. 

It was time for change. The Dukant bloodline may be cursed and rotten, but I could at least do whatever I could to create a better future for Aethorin.

I missed Kianna. I missed her company, even as friends her mere presence had the ability to brighten up my day. Knowing that she was now in Eslea, spending time with my betrothed had my stomach in tied up in knots. 

I hoped Kianna approved of this princess.