For the first year, his next-eldest half brother, Guaire, had visited monthly, making no secret that it was duty and not pleasure, to confirm how Somhairle was settling in. After the first year, he visited twice. He hadn’t returned since the third year.
The rest of his half brothers carried on, undisturbed by Somhairle’s absence, riding a courtly carousel upon which no mount remained for him.
Only Somhairle’s half brother Laisrean had visited frequently, together with Laisrean’s friend Tomman Ever-Loyal, because Laisrean knew Somhairle got on well with the Ever-Loyal girls. He’d always wanted sisters, and thought he’d found them, until even they grew old enough to forget their youthful summers together and ceased returning to Ever-Land’s idylls.
Laisrean still wrote, but infrequently.
Somhairle refused to begrudge them their freedom.
Regardless, it had been years since they’d traipsed through sunlit fields together. Years since anyone, friend or brother, had come knocking at Somhairle’s door.
The Ever-Land manor and environs were built to resemble a fae dream. No roads or walkways traced the grounds. Instead, summer gardens grew wild between the estate houses, framed by lakes and rivers, the occasional rocky outcropping leading to a waterfall. One could stumble across a gathering of vine-and-marble statues hidden amid a grove of lemon silkwoods, or an orchard hung with floating globes of sorcery-light. It had once served as the Queen’s private holidaying grounds, though after she made it Somhairle’s world, she hadn’t once returned to visit.
For Somhairle, it was exile.
He should have hated it, should have felt natural disgust at his predicament. Out of sight, out of the story.
But he loved the sprawling country manor. Its uncomplicated, old-fashioned wood-plank roof, upon which the patter of spring showers echoed like laughter; its white stone walls bathed in drowsy sunshine. Waking late and reveling in the slow creep of country life, the solitude of pale sunbeams peering through his leadlight window. Somhairle’s court was composed of birds, whose gossip was sweet song, who came and went freely in and out of open windows. No cages. They made their perches on the sturdy branches of Ever-Land’s undying trees, built nests, chattered to one another between breezes.
Then, one morning, Morien the Last had appeared with Lord Faolan Ever-Learning in tow.
When last Somhairle was at court, House Ever-Learning had been ambitious but unsuccessful in the ruthless hierarchy of Ever-Families jockeying to gain favor with the Queen. They’d moved up in the world, he noted, if they now had access to one of her most powerful sorcerers.
“Here on the Queen’s orders,” Lord Faolan had explained, flashing the Queen’s seal. Somhairle had limped down the steps to greet them, tousle-headed, wearing only a dressing gown with his steel-and-silver brace and crutch, which steadied and straightened him from ankle to hip and chest to shoulder.
The birds had already stopped singing.
Morien the Last hadn’t bothered to explain his presence. Sorcerers rarely felt the need to explain themselves to anyone. They answered to Queen Catriona alone, trusting the lesser princes to stay out of their way and usually affording them the same courtesy in return.
Before the hour was out, Morien had commandeered the dining room, locked the doors, draped a bolt of red linen over each one and curtained the room’s many windows.
Somhairle gave him a wide berth. It had been nearly a decade since one of his mother’s sorcerers had tried to impress her by curing him of his unacceptable flaws, yet the memories held a keen edge no matter how many years they’d lain idle.
If Morien had come to adjust the enchantments that kept Ever-Land alive and hidden, which sorcerers occasionally did, he’d complete that business and be gone within a week. Somhairle could manage the metallic taste the sorcerer’s visit left in his mouth for seven days. He’d have to.
As a lesser prince, without political value as an heir—he was nowhere close to ascending the throne, and even if he had been, he wasn’t the image of perfection Catriona would choose to crown—he demanded respect, but wielded no significant power.
He was a prince royal who couldn’t so much as ask his houseguests to leave.
So he avoided Morien the best he could and minded his own business, trusting it would all be finished soon.
Three days later, the doves nesting on Somhairle’s windowsill began to lose their feathers. The following day, his canaries refused to leave their roost. Treetops once filled with birdsong hushed silent as fresh graves, as if the hardening grounds were holding their breath. The balmy air chilled and thickened.