Before now, Ari hadn't known that there were different types of silence. Normally, when he and his mother ate breakfast together, there was a comfortable sort of quietude between them. She read the war reports and picked at her smoked fish while he traced shapes on the smooth oaken tabletop with his finger— not the loud, boisterous conversations he'd seen between some of the lords and their children, but it was something of theirs.

What was between them now was not peaceful. She still held the war reports in her hand, but the papers were crinkled at the edge from the occasional tightening of her fist. He was not tracing anything; his hands gripped the edges of his chair tightly. Every now and then, their eyes would meet and they would stare at each other for a moment, waiting for the other to speak first.

As uncomfortable as it was, Ari preferred the silence to talking. The way her fist clenched, the way she watched him... did she know? Was she going to ask him what he had done? The connection, the feeling...

You can never do this again, she'd told him, but he had. Not only that, but he'd done it to her. And he didn't know how to stop it from happening again because he didn't know what he had even done—

Ari took one shuddering breath and looked down at the napkin in his lap. It was nothing special, just thick, white linen, but he stared at it as if it held the secret of life itself. He couldn't bear the weight of his mother's gaze on him, couldn't bear the question that had to be running through her mind: What have you done?

"Skatten min?"

Ari's head shot up. "Y-yes?"

"Are you all right?"

"I-I'm fine." Does she know?

She nodded, and there was silence between them for a few moments before she said, "I didn't mean to upset you. You know that, don't you?"

"I guess?"

"There are just some things that children don't need to know— you understand."

He didn't. Not about what children did and did not need to know, but about why she was being so... cordial. But then, she had been fairly pleasant to Aleksander right until she threatened him. Was she simply being nice to him in order to extract a confession? He acknowledged her comment with the slightest dip of his head, hoping that the conversation would end there.

"What about you?" His mother's bright eyes were focused on him like a hunting falcon's. "Do you have anything you want to say?"

He swallowed hard. She knew, she had to; why else would she ask him? He could feign ignorance or he could admit to everything here and now. Both options sounded bad to him— if he chose the former, his mother might get frustrated enough to do something beyond giving him heated lectures, but if he chose the latter, then there would be no question of whether she knew or not.

"No," he whispered.

"That's not quite the answer I was looking for," she said, and his heart seized up. "You and I both said things that we regret, didn't we?"

"I..." He didn't regret a single word, but there was no way that he would tell her that. So he said nothing at all.

Silence built between them again, and it seemed that with each passing minute, his mother's eyebrow rose higher and higher.

Finally, she sighed and said, "I was hoping for an apology, Ari."

Ari opened his mouth, but no words came out. One finger at a time, he released his grip on the chair. She didn't know. She didn't know. The words played like the most beautiful music in his head. She didn't know.

"I'm sorry, Mamma," he said, and she smiled at him.

His mother returned to her documents, making sure to smooth out the wrinkled edges from earlier. Ari stared at his hands in his lap, at the red lines on his palms and fingers surrounded by blanched skin. He had to control this before it happened again and his mother realized it.

When breakfast was over, he was happy to leave the table. His guards held open the door for him and followed him at a loose distance. He had asked them a little over a year ago for some additional space, but not because he disliked them— he actually quite liked his guards; these two, Gotfredssen and Toralfssen, would often tell jokes when they thought he was out of earshot. He just wanted to have distance enough for a private conversation to truly be private. Most of the time, he barely noticed their presence at all.

Today, however, he needed to be away from their supervision entirely. There could be no one watching where he went if he wanted answers. So he peeked back at his guards and, noting that they were engrossed in a conversation, he took off running. It wasn't long until he heard their boots thudding against the gleaming wooden floor, and he knew that his short legs would be a disadvantage here.

Reaching the end of the hall, Ari entered the stairwell and slid down the banister. The wood was polished to a shine, but the friction still hurt his hands even as he let out a small laugh— why had he never done this before? He tucked into a ball and rolled after the banister disappeared beneath him, springing to his feet and sprinting.

Now he was in the Rotunda, and he grinned. Four doors in a semi-circle, all equidistant from the center of the room and all leading to hallways of multiple bedrooms for important guests. He opened the door to his left, then ran across to the other half of the room: instead of walls, there were pillars that separated the Rotunda from the space behind it, which was typically occupied by spectators whenever there was a ball.

Ducking behind one of the pillars, Ari looked up. The capitals of the pillars were carved into the shapes of falcons; only the tips of their wings held the ceiling up and their beaks were open in a soundless, eternal cry. He always had liked the carvings, since he'd wanted a raptor of his own when he was younger. His mother had refused to give him one for fear that the bird would attack him.

The thundering footsteps jolted him out of his thoughts. Gotfredssen and Toralfssen were standing in the center of the Rotunda, chests heaving.

"Where did he—?"

"That door there, it's open."

Toralfssen cursed and ran a hand through his sandy-brown hair. "You don't think he went into one of the bedrooms that is already occupied, do you?"

"We're going to have to check."

Ari had to stifle a giggle. Usually, when he saw the Rotunda, it was filled with nobles and their wives conversing among each other. Polished shoes shone as brightly as the parquet flooring and women's necklaces gleamed under the lights of the chandelier, which looked as if it were comprised of falling stars forever trapped in time. To see two guards, breathing heavily and muttering complaints to one another, in a space typically occupied by the highest in the land and their cheerful babble, was absurdly comical to him.

As Toralfssen and Gotfredssen passed through the open door, he waited for a beat. He darted out from behind the pillar when he could no longer hear their footsteps and made his way back up the stairs to the second floor. With all luck, they wouldn't find him for a while. He felt a small pang of guilt; they were probably going to have to search for a long time. But in order to get information, no one could know where he was going.

Where to look...? The library first. Heading down the hallway, Ari trailed his hand along the white wall, only removing it to avoid the ornate frames that decorated the hall. One painting of a long-ago battle, uniformed soldiers following behind the pale-blue flag with their muskets raised. Another of his supposed grandfather surrounded by his wife and six sons. As he neared the council room, he could see that the doors were open and no one was there.

So he kept moving. The library was at the end of the hall, but a quick search told him that this wasn't the right place either: one man was perusing the historical tomes, running his fingers down the spines, and a pair of women leaned over the balustrade of the library's upper level. Not what he was searching for.

Then where? He didn't know where else to look, so with a sigh, he chalked the day's escapade up to a failure. It was best for him to go find his guards again before they alerted half the castle— although they would probably be just as apprehensive about his mother finding out as he would.

Once more, he went down the stairs, wondering how exactly he was going to explain this. Should he explain it at all, or should he only offer an apology and say nothing more? Maybe he could just say that he was testing their reactions. No, that sounds... He pinched the bridge of his nose.

And then he heard it: coming from the hallway opposite the Rotunda, two voices. That hallway led to the barracks; had Toralfssen and Gotfredssen warned all of the other guards there? He rushed forward, ready to stop them... and froze.

It wasn't his guards at all. It was a man, dressed in an impeccably crisp suit, murmuring a "Thank you" to one of the soldiers. His father. The soldier nodded once and turned around, no doubt going back to the barracks. His father turned as well, but when he saw Ari, his eyes flitted from side to side.

"Your guards," he said, keeping his voice low.

Ari tucked his hands behind his back to make sure that his father couldn't see them shaking. "I— I need to talk to you. About something important."

"If we speak now, we will be seen. I'll meet you in the same apartment as before at ten o'clock. Will that suffice?"

He nodded. He didn't really want to wait any longer, but a few extra hours was better than being caught and having the news get back to his mother.

His father smiled. "Until then."

Without another word, the man left. Ari stood alone in the hallway, ten o'clock being the only thing that he could focus on.

-_-_-_-_-_-_-

Ari's guards had found him less than ten minutes after he'd spoken to his father. He had apologized and they had spent the rest of the day standing less than a body-length away from him. Apparently, what they hadn't done was warn the new guard who stood outside his bedchamber. As a result, Ari had placed one of his pillows under the duvet and snuck out of the room while the guard paced the hallway.

Now he was sitting in the same apartment as before, directly across from his father. Moonlight streamed through the wide window, illuminating the table between them, but casting his father's face in shadow. Most of the room was entirely dark, but the little bit of the wall that could be seen was a washed out, light blue-grey hue.

And the room was quiet. So very quiet. Clearly, his father was waiting for him to speak first, but how was he going to start a discussion like this? He couldn't just directly... ask, could he?

Staring at a spot between his father's eyes, he asked, "Why were you there earlier?" There, he thought. A conversation opener of a sort.

His father sighed. "I heard a rumor that Aleksander attacked a physician, so I asked the guard who was on duty at the time."

"Did he?" It wouldn't surprise him at all to learn that Aleksander had done it — he seemed like a horrible man.

"Yes." His father passed a hand over his face and sighed again. "But you aren't here to talk about that, are you?"

Ari looked at the edge of the rug between his shoes for a moment, then forced himself to meet his father's gaze. "I... something happened and I don't..."

Something sparked in his father's eyes, but his voice was low and calm as he said, "I'm listening."

And so Ari told him what had happened, the strange feeling in his chest, even his memory from all those years ago. "And I— I don't know what to do," he finished, the words spilling from him. "She told me not to do it, she told me not to, but I didn't know—"

"Ari," said his father, reaching out a hand. "It's all right, Ari."

"But she said—"

"I know. But it's all right. This ability of yours, it's entirely natural."

"It's theirs. The enemy's..." He covered his mouth, remembering exactly who he was speaking to.

Luckily, his father seemed more amused than anything. "Am I your enemy?"

"Well, no..."

"Then there you have it."

"But what does it say about me?" he asked, leaning forward. He hated how desperate he sounded, voice wobbling and unsure, but if he had this... what was he?

"That you're my son, which is exactly why your mother told you to hide it. If anyone found out, you would not be king."

"Oh."

"And your mother would not be regent."

"...oh."

"All the same... did she never tell you about any of this? It seems that you've repressed it for years— I wish I had known; I thought you had simply learned to control it well."

"She told me not to do it again." You can never do this again. You can never do this again.

His father's jaw tensed, then relaxed just as quickly. "Go on, then," he said. "Try to use it on me."

"You want me to...?" How am I supposed to do that? He'd been happy in his memory and angry speaking to his mother, but he'd been happy and angry at other times too, and nothing had happened.

"Focus on me," his father said.

So he did, staring straight into his father's eyes. He wasn't sure what, specifically, he was supposed to be focusing on, so he just looked, trying to concentrate on everything he knew about the man. Moravskansk. Politician. Father.

"Now... can you recall something powerful? An emotion, a feeling...? Focus on that as well, on me and on it."

That morning, the way he had felt, like he wanted to shrink and shrink until his mother's gaze couldn't find him. The way his heart had felt, like the full weight of Castle Avmakt was crushing it into nothing. And then there was something new: that strange tug, a link between him and the man across the table.

His father's pupils were dilated, almost engulfed by the blue of his irises, and Ari noticed the man's fingers were tightened around the table's edge, leaving small half-moon marks in the wood. His father's breathing hitched.

How do I stop this? He's— he's— how do I stop this? He didn't know; the only thing he could do was tell himself, Stop, Ari, you have to stop—

He pulled hard at his hair and let out a gasp of pain. And then it was over. That tug was gone as quickly as it had come. Ari looked down at his hands. What had he just done? Was his father angry now, angry at him for... for using this against him, whatever this was?

"Ari."

His eyes darted up to his father's face. "I'm sorry! I didn't mean to!"

But his father didn't seem upset at all; in fact, the corners of his mouth were curved upward in a slight grin. "Don't hold yourself back. For your first time consciously doing this, you did very well, but I know you haven't even neared your limits yet."

"I don't want to find limits, I want to control this!"

"The better you know yourself, what you can do and what your limits are, the easier it will be to control."

Ari buried his head in his hands. "What was that?" he asked, voice muffled.

"In Moravsko, we call it nad rovnováhou." His father's true accent slipped back into his voice, and Ari started a bit. He'd never heard it before. "Above the balance. The average Rikensk is below— pod rovnováhou. And then, Ari, there's you and me. Rovnováha. Not above or below, but the balance. The true nature of life, both good and evil, light and dark. The truth of this world, if you will."

Ari blinked. "So they kill people for being... below?"

"Isn't that how all wars go?"

"Not when I rule. Then there will be no wars."

"No," said his father slowly, assessing him with those pale eyes, "I don't doubt it."

This one needs some work... I'm so behind, so pushed on my own personal deadlines. I've had this one brewing for a while, but I hit a wall in editing it, so hopefully someone here will tear it to shreds so that I know what to fix. God, what a mess this week has been.

Nad rovnováhou: (NADH rohv-nohv-AH-ho), and this time the meaning is given in-chapter since Ari doesn't understand the other language.

Pod rovnováhou: (POT rohv-nohv-AH-ho).

Rovnováha: (rohv-nohv-AH-ha).