The sharp chime of a silver bell echoed around the vaulted ceilings of the UnSeelie throne room, mimicking itself until it was heard in every corner of the vast space. Courtiers immediately ceased conversation, and entertainers halted and began to collect their instruments as swiftly as they could. Lords and their entourages swept from the hall through side doors that disappeared back into the smooth stone once they were shut, and the gentry filtered out the high double-doors.
Some lingered behind, dismantling complex instruments and sets for acrobats, or clearing away debris left by those of higher standing. A group of elderly looking fae with gnarled faces shuffled back and forth in one corner of the room, muttering between themselves and gesticulating with their withered hands.
The Queen sighed contently, gently setting aside the thin silver mallet she had used to strike the bell to indicate court was dismissed. She settled herself back into her throne, lifting a single elegant hand and curling her finger over her shoulder.
From the shadows two women emerged, one on each side of her throne. To her right stood a beautiful fae with a face similar to the Queen's, her gown made of white silk hemmed in soft blues and violets. She smiled at the Queen before casting her eyes to the handmaiden on the left. This woman was shorter, but of the same lithe build as her counterpart, her red hair twisted back in an intricate bun on the top of her head. Her gown was embellished with scarlet and peony, which brought out the pink in her eyes.
"Hakuei, darling," the Queen purred, turning a honeyed smile on the taller handmaiden. "What did you think of the minstrel with the golden flute? I don't believe she's played for my court before."
"As I understand it this was her first performance, my Queen." Hakuei replied. "I found her melodies to be very charming, though they sounded foreign to me."
The Queen hummed thoughtfully, as though her handmaiden's opinion truly made a difference to her. She glanced at her second handmaiden, lips pulling into another sweet smile.
"And you, Kougyoku? What did you think?"
A brief smile touched Kougyoku's cherubic mouth, just long enough to be thought of as polite, if not sincere.
"I thought her music was lovely. I think she would go well in a duet with one of the lute players, if it would please you, my Queen."
"What a delightful idea! But do you not think a lyre might be better?"
"I had not thought of that, my Queen."
Kougyoku did not think the flutist would go better with a lyre than a lute, but her opinion was of no consequence, and the question had been meant to try and trip her up. The Queen of the UnSeelie Court liked to play these kinds of games, twisting her words into charming niceties that could so easily get one killed. In the past Kougyoku had had her own fair share of slips, and it was only by the status of her birth that she was yet to lose her head for it.
She exchanged a look with Hakuei, who smiled in that lovely way that calmed even the most terrified of hearts. It just looked placative to Kougyoku, and she did not return it.
Their attention turned to the steps leading up to the Queen's throne as someone set their foot on the lowest step. At the base of the incline stood the Queen's favorite knight, wearing the sleek armor of their court beneath his heavy cloak. He swept into a low bow on bended knee, his fist resting against the cold ground.
"Queen Gyoukuen," he spoke to the stone. "I have returned. Though I should have sent a runner before myself, I desired to speak to you in person, if I could trouble you for the moments of your most treasured time."
The crimson of Gyoukuen's pretty mouth pulled wide into a girlish smile that almost didn't suit her face. It certainly didn't match with her icy eyes, deep as vaults beneath icy mountains and ten times more treacherous.
"Ithnan!" she said, sounding utterly titillated by the sight of him. "Such a pleasure to have you come home safely, my knight. Come, raise your head, there's no need to bow so low before me."
Ithnan rose as he was bade, smiling fondly up at his Queen. From behind his checkered mask Kougyoku could make out the sparkle of his topaz eyes. She refrained from grimacing, and instead swept her eyes around the hall in an attempt not to focus on the exchange going on between matriarch and servant.
Ithnan had always been a loyal servant of the UnSeelie Queen, more than happy to grovel at her feet since the moment he had been knighted. He had taken the heads of most of his superiors on his way to his current title, which on its own would not have inspired the disgust Kougyoku felt for him, but his gusto for doing so was revolting. It seemed twisted to call it infatuation, but whatever it was that kept Ithnan panting at the Queen's heels like a well-trained dog, it turned her stomach.
Then again, perhaps if she herself was at all loyal to the Queen she might understand.
"I bring news of the task you set me, my Queen."
Kougyoku's eyes snapped back to the knight, her focus once more on what he was saying. Ithnan had left the court some days prior with his subordinates in tow, and no one had been sure why. Not that his assignments were often widely known, but the timing seemed peculiar, since it was about then that murmurs of where a certain missing prince might be had begun to circulate.
Gyoukuen's eyes lit up, sparks dancing around her irises in a furious flurry. Both handmaidens averted their gaze, but the knight seemed too enraptured to do the same.
"Hakuei, Kougyoku," the Queen said sharply, rising in one fluid motion from her throne. "See to it that my affairs for the evening are postponed. Send dinner up to the west wing balcony, Ithnan and I will be dining there this evening."
"As you wish it, my Queen." Hakuei and Kougyoku said in unison, bowing their heads.
Gyoukuen swept down the steps from her throne, linking her slender arm through the crook of Ithnan's once she alighted on the ground. They began to talk in hushed tones as she led him away, tucked a little too closely against his side for anyone to more than glance at them without feeling uncomfortable.
The handmaidens divided up the evenings tasks between themselves and then took their leave through separate exits. Kougyoku walked briskly through the wide halls of the palace, stopping only long enough to relay specific orders to those who were meant to receive them. As the Queen's handmaiden, she was obeyed without too much conflict, and then on her way again.
Hakuei had ended up with the more difficult task of dismantling the scheduled events for that evening, while Kougyoku was only to see to dinner and the Queen's nightly bath. They were taken care of in short order and soon she was left to her own devices, which found her ducking down a shadowed side hall and away from prying eyes.
She wondered if she'd made Hakuei angry with her behavior today. Since that morning, Kougyoku had been ill-tempered, showing it only as much as she was strictly permitted without overstepping her bounds. Hakuei had done little to assuage her mood, or even find its origin, but Kougyoku thought it should be obvious.
Her face twisted into a displeased scowl directed at the carpet beneath her feet for the first time that day. She would like to apologize to Hakuei, but the more she thought of it the more Kougyoku thought she didn't have a reason to. If anyone should have been in dampened spirits today, it should have been Hakuei, not her.
Hakuryuu had not been to court for over three moons now. His absence hadn't worried her, he was more than free to come and go as he liked, and letters often arrived to inform his mother of his activities so she wouldn't send the hounds after him. Even though a letter hadn't come for some time now, it hadn't concerned her too greatly.
But then came the whispers. There had never been whispers before, querying where the young prince was, what he was doing, and why he had not returned to his mother's side in so long. Rumors like this did not just start in UnSeelie court, someone had to set them in motion. If there were questions now, it meant something was different.
Different, especially in regards to her youngest cousin, was never a good thing.
Kougyoku made her way through the winding halls of the palace with the ease of someone who had been born within them. Outsiders were always disoriented at first, unless they were old enough for the magic of the place to settle comfortably around them. The pure white walls became a clustered mess in their minds, and more than once a fae had become lost within the labyrinthine walkways for an eternity.
( You passed them sometimes as you walked, their hovelled forms caught just out of the corner of your eye. Some continued to wander, hands pressed to the walls and muttering that surely, just around the next corner, while others sat huddled in on themselves, eyes vacant. Kougyoku had learned very young that it was best not to try to help them to their destination. )
These halls were as familiar to her as the veins on the backs of her hands, though, and she traversed them with ease. A clear destination was set in her mind, and soon the colors around her began to shift from deep indigos and shimmering sapphires, to warm mulberry and violet. Red had been dipped into blue pigment here, mixed into rich royal purple that immediately made her shoulders relax.
This wing of the palace belonged to her, in a sense. It was the space where she and her siblings resided, designated to them as a branch of the bloodline holding the UnSeelie crowns. They were the most closely related to the crown itself, so they received an entire wing to themselves rather than just a few rooms here and there, as some of their more distant relatives did. It was the purple that gave them away, their color, meant to signify this as their territory in a sense steeped as much in magic as in instinct.
There was another wing, opposite theirs, that now stood mostly empty. The deep blues of the UnSeelie court faded there into pale robin and softer whites than the stone that they covered. It had been just as full as their wing, once upon a time, but the Queen's blood had thinned considerably over the centuries, so that now only her two remaining children resided there.
Hakuryuu had once confessed, in a quiet moment during a hunt Kougyoku had accompanied him on, that the vast wing felt lonely, and still as a tomb. She had made a point to try and visit him there more, after that.
Her steps still hesitated as she passed the door to the room she used to share with two of her older sisters, so used to entering the ornately carved doors even after all this time. She had been moved to a room of her own after the Queen had selected her as a handmaiden, though this too also played host to her sisters most of the time.
However Kougyoku passed this door as well, her brisk steps carrying her deeper into her family's halls. There was a destination in her mind, and when she reached it her footfalls became muted, until they were entirely silent. She crept to the door, touching her fingers to the polished wooden surface. Magic seeped into the wood, her very presence welcome and recognized by the threshold of the room beyond. Voices filtered from behind the closed door through the magic, brushing against her eardrums, and the handmaiden paused to listen.
"…as if they're being subtle about it. We have all heard the whispers."
"If subtlety has been forgone, then do you really think…?"
"Stop it, both of you! We can't entertain this notion!"
"It is no longer being entertained, brother. With Ithnan's return and the growing rumors, I can only take it to mean…"
"But, surely, we would have heard something more by now? Your informant, he only said it was a presumption, did he not? Could that not mean—"
"In another circumstance, I would indulge us all in optimism."
All three voices fell silent, a stifling pause blanketing the conversation. It lasted long enough that Kougyoku's fingers twitched towards the handle of the door before one of the voice spoke again.
"So, that's it then. We just have to assume…"
"That Hakuryuu is dead."
Kougyoku threw the door open so quickly that the sudden contrast in lighting, from the dim hall to the more brightly lit interior, almost blinded her. She blinked the spots from her eyes, and drew in a deep breath.
"What in the name of the sun and stars are you talking about?!" she hissed through her teeth, voice trembling with the barely contained urge to shout.
Across from her, all three of her elder brothers relaxed.
Kouen's hand relaxed, sliding his blade back into its sheathe. He was still dressed in his hunting clothes, the only thing he had removed being the heavy riding cloak tossed over the back of the couch he'd settled on. Koumei and Kouha had similar reactions, each lowering their respective weapons back to where they usually rested at the sight of their sister. Kouha had apparently been pacing, his bangs mussed from where he must have been running his fingers through them, and Koumei looked wearier than usual.
"Shut the door, Kougyoku." Kouen said, gesturing her into the room with his hand.
Kougyoku wrestled a momentary defiance to stay just where she was, but ultimately shut the door as instructed. Koumei flicked his fingers lazily, and magic flickered through the air towards the door. An almost imperceptible hiss whispered its way from the cracks in the wood as the door sealed itself from further intrusion.
"Is it true?" Kougyoku demanded, her small hands curled into trembling fists at her sides. "Is Hakuryuu dead?"
Kouha resumed his pacing, arms crossed over his barely clothed chest and scowl directed at the carpeted floor as if it had done him a great wrong.
"It is best," Kouen said carefully. "To proceed under that assumption."
"And what does that mean?! We can't just write him off, brother, he's-!"
"Kougyoku, while I understand your distress, now is not the time to be emotional. We cannot afford overreaction, for any of our sakes. Breathe, sister."
What Kougyoku wanted to do was scream a bit and maybe hurl a bolt of fury tainted magic at something, but she restrained herself. It took several calming breaths for her to loosen her fists any.
"Until now, the Queen has made a great effort to quash any talk of Hakuryuu being anything but loyal." Koumei began, after a moment. "Even if we all know he's never stood with her, it was how she wanted him to be seen. He may have left the court of his own will, but it was in her interest to paint that as freedoms she gave to her favorite child."
"Now, people are beginning to talk. Mutter and gossip like a bunch of bored pixies around a bottle of daffodil wine, the damned—" Kouha snarled through his teeth rather than continue his cursing.
"The timing is all too convenient. Hakuryuu stops sending word of his wellbeing to the court, Ithnan is sent on some assignment from which he returns a great deal of men lesser, and people ask for the first time in memory where the prince has gone…"
"What does any of that accomplish, though?" Kougyoku asked as she sank down on the chaise beside Koumei. "It's as you said, Hakuryuu has never taken too grand a stand against the Queen, so simply taking his life without reason would cause too much discord to be worth the trouble. He has supporters, even she knows that."
"Not if she can assign the blame to someone else."
"What—Seelie? You honestly think she'd go so far as to accuse the Seelie court of-?"
"She has taken great pains to accuse them of plenty already, no matter how sugarcoated her words were at the time." Kouen remarked gravely.
"Can't you question Ithnan's whereabouts?!" Kouha snapped, spinning on his heel to face his eldest brother. "You have more than the status to do so, stars know!"
"I doubt it would serve us any to question him. His loyalty to the Queen is absolute, he would sooner die than unveil her plans."
"If he'd have need to do so at all." Koumei sighed. "He headed south when he left the court, did he not? It's no secret that there's been some sort of stirrings out there, a rebellion of some kind they say, though against what no one's got much idea."
"Oh that's a lot of dung, they know exactly what they're rebelling against!"
But still, none of them said it aloud. Despite the locked room, the magic sealing them in, and hour freely they spoke with disdain for the Queen, a certain anxiety rested in all of them with the thought that she may just be listening.
"…Do you think," Kougyoku said softly, her hands twisting into the fabric covering her knees. "That Hakuryuu was involved, somehow?"
"If he was, then he's been remarkable about hiding it."
"Yes, but I can think of at least one fae who may know."
Kouha stopped his pacing, and all eyes fell on Kouen. The four siblings sat in silence for a second time in only so many minutes, tension twisting knots into the air around them. Implications laced their every word, and the more they talked the more obvious it became that this may be a tipping point.
It was ingrained in every fae to possess some loyalty to their court, and by further extension to their Queen. But it was not something that controlled them, it was not a thing they were driven to live by. Like any relationship it could be strained and broken altogether under the right circumstances. It was lunacy, a death wish if ever there was one to go behind the back of the Queen, but some things were more important than that.
"She's gone too far." Kouha said, his voice sounding both pained and vicious in the same breath. "I can't—I don't think any of us can bear to let her cross this line any further. We shouldn't have let it come this far at all."
"I agree." Koumei murmured, and beside him Kougyoku nodded.
Kouen closed his eyes, sighing through his nose before bowing his head.
"It's settled, then." he spoke calmly, his voice holding a dark edge to it that one rarely heard off the battlefield. "I will make contact the rebellion. I will not allow her to use Hakuryuu's life as a piece in her war game."
Notes:
As I mentioned in last week's notes, this chapter's something a bit different! Don't be put off by the title of "Insight", as this refers to it simply being a chapter that is separate from the others, dealing with another part of the plot. In this case "Insight" will further refer to chapters that follow the goings-on in Sidhe while Hakuryuu is not there. They do not fall anywhere specific on the fic's timeline, since time in Sidhe moves differently than in the mortal