Your parents are dead.
Ienzo never dwelled on it. He suffered no lack of love or attention, no void in his soul. If anything, he had too many parents for an orphan.
Ansem and his apprentices found you. They decided to take you in.
Ienzo had been bundled in a basket and abandoned on the seat of the throne of the King of Radiant Garden. His hair had been a strange shade of gray-blue and his eyes impossibly large and somber. He hadn't laughed or cried, not until Ansem held him. Ienzo managed a smile for his king, his papa. Ansem, the bachelor monarch, had fallen in love.
There was an orphanage in town with a 95% adoption rate, but no one considered taking him there.
They raised you like a prince. You had everything that you ever wanted: tutors, books, toys, servants at your beck and call. Parents to read to you and play with you and ruffle your hair.
They taught you science, history, art, diplomacy, mathematics, strategy, magic.
No. They had raised him like a princess in a tower.
He could not leave.
He studied. And if he finished his studies they were reviewed and corrected. If he finished his studies he could help out in the lab or shadow one of his fathers.
They made you intelligent.
They had made him helpless.
Three of his fathers were warriors, but he wasn't permitted to hold a weapon.
No need. They were always there for you.
He had been alone.
There were other children in the castle, but there might as well not have been. Even would not permit him to play with a child that was not pre-approved, stuffy, of noble birth, and completely disinterested in anything a bookish orphan boy had to say. He was forbidden from talking about his magic or anything going on in the lab—anything interesting, in essence.
Aeleus would not permit him to stray from his side on guard duty, to wander into the town square to play kickball with the riff raff in the street. Braig had said he could, but warned that the other kids might not be overly friendly to a spoiled brat, might rough him up, even, which had done more to deter Ienzo than anything else.
They sent you to the academy. You could have made friends there. You did. You must have.
When he attended the academy, Ienzo could not let his professors see him slacking off or speaking with anyone below his fictitious pedigree. They would report to Even or Ansem and his fathers would threaten to pull him out of school.
In the rare moments when he could speak with them, he hadn't the faintest idea what to say. And, he had been advanced two years beyond his age, so they had no interest in hearing him say it. His classmates likely thought him shy and dull.
Unfortunately, they were the only people he found interesting. The scholarship riff raff—their cheeks hollow and pant cuffs flecked with dirt, their limbs skinny and fingers callused, but their eyes filled with fire.
They fascinated and captivated him, though he would never admit it, certainly not to them. The guttersnipes. The people his father, Even, called 'trash', his dad, Aeleus, 'bad influences', his uncle Dilan, 'rough', his papa, Ansem, 'charity cases'.
So Ienzo stalked them with his eyes, playing in the streets, smoking in the back hallways.
Your parents were trying to keep you safe.
His parents were trying to guard him like they guarded the castle and the secrets broiling underneath it.
You were happy.
Of course he was.
You love them anyway.
Of course he does.
Most of them.
Braig was the only one of the tight knit group of Ansem's apprentices that adopted Ienzo that he never called any variation of the word father.
Braig haunts him still.
The memories appear in the strangest everyday minutia.
A spill, the snap of a belt, an unexpected hand on his shoulder, and Ienzo would hear the low growl that emitted from Braig's throat when he made a mistake in his charge.
If it were up to me, I'd cuff your ears, I'd blacken your eye, I'd spank your ass. Those pansies are too soft on you.
You ever leave this castle, reality's going to be a bitch.
You fuck with me, I'll fuck with you.
Hey, gorgeous.
Buttons.
When Ienzo had begun to perfect the illusion of an alternate human form, he used it to sneak around the castle and the kingdom at will for experimental research and, if he was being honest with himself (and he never was) for fun.
He called himself Acacia.
Acacia was precisely Ienzo's height and weight but bore golden brown curls, a tan complexion, and a square jaw. Common enough to blend in, pretty enough to get away with something, he appeared four or five years Ienzo's senior. Acacia would have got on well with Ienzo's classmates Lea and Isa—a young, scrappy, well-muscled gent in a nondescript serving uniform not quite his size, prone to wandering, mischief, and avoiding his superiors.
Ienzo's outings as Acacia were usually successful, enjoyable, even, but every now and then, they were not.
When Ienzo was thirteen and Acacia seventeen, Aeleus caught Ienzo by the back of the collar on his way back from an excursion into the servant's quarters. Ienzo had been lurking a bit too close to their lab, picking his way toward his room to shift back to himself.
He could not reveal his identity to Aeleus without risking an end to his adventures and personal research, and in any case, he didn't have the chance.
"You!" a stern, familiar voice froze Ienzo in place. Dad. "You shouldn't be down here."
"I—" The shock of his father's ferocity set his voice into more of a stammer than Acacia usually supplied. The two made eye contact, Ienzo working his jaw, Aeleus softening when he took in how young the servant was with a sigh.
"Well, never mind it now. You'll have to do. Come. Make yourself useful."
"Yes, sir. Of course, sir." Ienzo had generally avoided his fathers in his disguise, certain they would see through him, that he would slip up, speak with over familiarity. At that moment, with solemn intensity replacing Aeleus' typical indulgent smile, pretending had never come easier.
"Here, child." Aeleus dragged his son toward the stairway. He handed him an envelope and a potion bottle with strict instructions to deliver them to the guard in 202. "Do as he says, make haste, and I will rethink telling your superior about your excessive curiosity."
"Yes, sir, thank you, sir. I—"
Aeleus halted his groveling with a raised hand and a stone face. "I really don't care. Get going. He doesn't like to wait."
Ienzo spent much of his trek to the guard's quarters thinking about his father and how differently he had spoken to him. Not that Ienzo had never seen it, but to be on the receiving end had not left a pleasant taste in his mouth. He could only hope the guard receiving the note Aeleus entrusted him with was in a better mood.