Chapter Eight
Before they entered the first village, Hermione cast glamours over Theo and Draco making them look significantly older and scarred as though they were her bodyguards. Her travelling gear she traded for a riding dress and ridiculous hat that had been fashionable amongst nobility twenty years ago. She took a gulp of her polyjuice potion and she looked like Draco's aunt, the Duchess Bellatrix. The woman was mad as a hatter and was kept locked up in her family's palace, so no one would have any idea who Hermione was supposed to be.
As Hermione checked over her clothing and glamoured her magical amulets into a simple strand of pearls, Draco had Theo off to the side and was walking him through what to say and not say. Theo was trying not to look nervous, but he wasn't being entirely successful.
She and Draco had gone back and forth about whether they should tell Theo about the meaning of his tattoo, but they couldn't come to a decision. Hermione wanted to tell him. Draco did not. Hermione suspected that he was already attached to Theo and feared this information would make the young man leave them. They just had to hope that he wasn't too angry with them when he discovered the truth of the matter. Hermione hoped that he discovered it today. It couldn't stay a secret forever. Especially considering that Theo's father, the King, wanted the three of them executed. That did not bode particularly well for Theo taking the throne. Although looking over at the seer, Hermione could not imagine him as a king.
The town square was dominated by a huge gilded statue. Theo stared up at it in surprise, there was no denying to himself who he saw there. Not all of the scars were visible, but there was the face above him that Theo knew better than his own. He read the plaque again.
King Thoros of the Kingdom of Nott, tenth of his name.
If his father was a King, did that mean he was a prince? Like Draco? How could such a thing be hidden from him all his life. Why had his father, the king, hidden him away in a tower where no one would ever know that he existed.
He looked over at Draco who haggled with a shopkeeper while Hermione stayed on horseback pretending to be bored. Her disguise was positively eerie.
He wandered over to the town's large announcement board. Few of the signs put up had words, likely as the majority were illiterate. The wanted poster hung there too. The man in royal livery was hanging up a sign calling for the voluntary joining of the royal navy in order to obtain additional food and a cart horse for their family left behind at home.
"Sir," Theo called the man's attention, tapping on the wanted poster. "What did these three do?"
"One of the men escaped from prison and the woman and the other man aided in the escape," the man said with little interest for the fugitives.
"There's no listing of the crime," Theo stated looking again at his portrait.
"The king has not said, but the rumour is that the original prisoner was held for treason since he was a boy."
The blood left Theo's face then and he mumbled his thanks and headed back to the horses.
How could a child commit treason? None of Theo's books had ever covered such information. How could he have committed treason against his own father?
Draco was concerned with how quiet Theo was as they rode on from the small village. He seemed to be lost in thought and Draco didn't know what to say to bring the young man back to the present where he and Hermione waited.
Finally, Theo spoke, "Theoretically, how would a child commit treason against his own father, who happened to be the king. Theoretically."
Draco and Hermione exchanged a look.
Draco swallowed, "There are a number of ways this could happen, legally speaking." He ran through years of royal etiquette and politics lessons in his mind. "Shall I start with the most common and go to the least likely?"
Theo nodded, still staring off into the distance.
Draco pursed his lips. "The most likely crime would be that the King was not the father of the child and by existing the prince or princess was a symbol of adultery. Second most common would be that the Queen had committed treason against the King and her children were determined to be complicit. Again if they were especially young their crime would be simply existing. The King wouldn't want his in-laws having a way to claim the throne, especially if assassination plans were uncovered. In such an instance, it is likely that the Queen would be publicly executed. Or the child could have been illegitimate and was being used by rival factions to make a claim to the throne instead of the legitimate heirs, even a baby would be guilty in that case. Although it would most commonly be executed."
Hermione made a disgusted sound and Theo looked like he was going to vomit.
Draco wished he hadn't answered the question.
Theo sucked in a breath. His lungs felt like they were on fire. He had vague memories of his mother, but he wasn't sure if they were actual memories or dreams. A woman with pale golden hair who held him tightly and sang sweetly. He knew there had been several dreams where a painting of the same woman had been lit on fire. He could probably draw her from memory. Theo wondered if she was his mother, if she had been the Queen of Nott.
In the next village they rode through, there were far more royal announcements on the village's wall.
The village was filled with glass blowers and glaziers and someone had built a case around them to protect it. The thick glass distorted some of the words and images in some places, but Theo could make out enough to make sense of what he was seeing.
There was a marriage announcement that looked a few years old. The Queen was young, with short dark hair and a stern expression in her official portrait. Theo struggled to make out her given name and finally determined that it was Pansy, like the flower. He'd never seen a woman who reminded him less of a delicate blossom. She couldn't be much older than Theo himself.
There had to have been a Queen before her, his father was far too old to have just wed for the first time.
A larger notice showed the birth of a baby, a son, an heir for the kingdom. It was a least a year old, and the baby depicted was not a newborn.
Crown Prince Thoros of Nott.
He'd be the eleventh of his name when he was crowned. The baby was drawn particularly chubby with a small crown on his head. Theo clenched his fists thinking of all the times his father struck him when he wasn't much older than this tiny babe. Was his father abusing his Queen and new son as he had done to Theo?
He looked at the wanted poster with his picture on it, and looked at the baby. They were clearly related. He wondered if people who had seen the two posters side by side had put that together.
"My father is the King," Theo murmured as the three of them sat around the fire later.
"We know," Draco responded, not looking up from where was roasting a couple of pheasants he had shot earlier.
"How do you know?" Theo's eyes shot up to the blond. "I didn't say that I recognised my father's statue in the town centre."
Draco sighed, dramatically, and pulled off his shirt, turning so that Theo could see his shoulder. There is stark relief, even more detailed than Theo's own tattoo, was an ornate crest dominated by a stylised "M."
"It's my heir tattoo," Draco replied, tapping the ink embedded in his skin." I was tattooed as you were just after birth, then on my 15th birthday more colour was added as part of a ceremony acknowledging me as Crown Prince in front of the nobles of the kingdom." Draco pulled his shirt back over his head as he returned his attention back to his cooking. "You clearly got the first part when you were born, but never got the second tattoo on your fifteenth birthday. Probably because your kingdom believes that you are dead. Your father probably only kept you alive because he didn't have an heir to replace you."
Theo thought of the chubby baby prince that he had seen that morning in the last village.
"He's had another son," Theo supplied. "There was an announcement posted in the last village."
"He likely plans to kill you now. You are a threat to his new heir." Draco stated, still not looking at Theo. "Or you wouldn't have been if we'd left you in the tower. Perhaps he only wants to put you back there."
"I don't want to be the king."
"Nor do I, nor do most crown princes of my acquaintance. Some for fear of failing, some for love of their fathers, for if you are king then your father is dead, some for the binding it takes preventing you from having your own happiness." Draco's eyes trailed over to where Hermione was casting spells within the woods to keep them safe later as they slept and alert her if someone came too near.
Theo's eyes followed Draco's. He knew that the sorceress loved the prince from the dreams that he'd had of them when he was still in the tower, but they never gave so much of a hint of it away. In fact, it was Theo who slept in Draco's bedroll each night. So far nothing had happened between them but cuddling for warmth, but Theo knew what he wanted. He wondered if Draco only had eyes for Hermione though. He admitted to himself that he wouldn't mind being in the middle of the two of them.
Late the next day, the three of them were riding down the forest road and a shock wave went through them and all of Hermione's illusion magic was dispelled by the force of the magic barrier.
"Hermione, hide!" Draco shouted pulling his sword from his sheath as the sound of hoof beats could be heard galloping towards their position.
"I will not leave you my prince!" Hermione shouted.
"We are doomed to be captured, but if you aren't taken you can free us or send word to my father." Draco's sword was in his hand and he was putting himself in a fighting stance as the sound of riders grew louder as they drew closer. "I mean it Hermione, get to the other side of the barrier and hide yourself. Now!"
She looked as though she was going to argue again, but one look at the seriousness of Draco's expression had her pulling the reins of her horse and riding back the way they had come. Once she was on the other side of the barrier, a huge cloud of mist and fog billowed from her staff and looking at Theo and Draco one final time she disappeared into it.
"You should have gone with her," Draco looked at Theo in concern.
"I wasn't about to leave you," Theo replied, pulling his long dagger (a gift from Draco) out of his saddle bag.
"Well, please try not to die," Draco ordered. "If I saved you from that tower, just for you to die here, I'll be very put out."
And then the soldiers were upon them.