At his desk, his back toward Hikaru, the king twitched. “Must you make so much noise? You’re fidgeting more than a five-year-old. It’s ridiculous.”

“Must I be here? This entire thing is ridiculous,” Hikaru shot back, not moving his gaze from the rock garden outside. “I have an exam to study for, sir.”

“It’s not for ten days, last I asked Inchiki,” the king said bluntly.

Hikaru gritted his teeth. “It’s worth seventy percent of my grade and is on advanced theorems of calculus and trigonometry. Sir.”

The king’s pen scratched across a piece of paper. “You’ll do fine. Stop worrying.”

Hikaru snorted loudly, and continued drumming his fingers on the wall like a sulky child.

“Subaru-kun, why don’t you show Hikaru-kun the list you have so far.”

“Ah, yes, of course . . . Just a minute . . .”

Hikaru listened to the sound of papers being scraped off the floor and sighed as he could hear Subaru stand up and hurry over to the window, still shuffling his papers. He bit back a groan of irritation. He liked Subaru, he truly did. At seventeen Subaru was hard-working and remarkably intelligent. He was a bit disconcerting to look at though; tall, painfully thin, unnaturally pale, with disturbingly green eyes and black hair that never appeared to reflect light. He was also an optimist, and unfailingly cheerful. He wasn’t overwhelmingly cheery or loud, like his nuisance of an older brother, the humanoid tornado Kamui, but Hikaru was in no mood to deal with someone being good-natured and hopeful at him.

Subaru stepped into Hikaru’s line of vision, smiling rather shyly and bowing his head, holding a selection of papers out to him. “Hikaru-san, if it’s not too much trouble . . .”

“Yeah, yeah, let’s see what wonders are in store,” Hikaru muttered, taking the offered papers and feeling a pang of guilt as an unhappy expression crossed Subaru’s face, as though he had just been kicked. Hikaru sighed and patted the teenager’s shoulder. “Thanks for helping out like this, Subaru-kun, it really saves us a lot of time. I appreciate it.”

Instantly, Subaru’s face brightened as he sat at Hikaru’s feet, looking up at him with wide eyes. “Thank you, Hikaru-san. It’s an honour, really, I’m just glad I could help, since Nataku-obasan’s been delayed.”

“If she’d just show up none of us would have to deal with this garbage,” the king muttered, trailing off into a series of words Hikaru was grateful he couldn’t make out.

“Whatever.” Hikaru wasn’t sure if the absence of Inchiki’s aunt Nataku was a blessing or a curse, and was disinclined to comment in front of someone who would be wounded at anyone speaking badly of his family, and someone else who was notorious for taking any slightly disparaging comment the wrong way. He looked over the papers without much interest, stopping on occasion with a frown. “Jonathan Startredder?”

Subaru shrugged and smiled, “He’s expressed an interest, if his ship’s near Aura at the time.”

“Perverted freak,” Hikaru said inaudibly to himself, but saw no point in protesting the presence of one of Inchiki’s perverted Maretan relatives. He continued in silence for a minute before swearing, making Subaru jump in surprise and the king wince.

“Hikaru-san?” Subaru asked tentatively, touching Hikaru’s knee with one hand.

“Why,” Hikaru asked darkly, “is Sakamoto Aya on this list?”

“Aniki said . . . that he was a friend . . . and he is the son of a prominent household . . .”

“Not Sakamoto.”

“But aniki asked for him to be added . . .”

Hikaru bit down on the inside of his cheek, glaring at the name in the hope that the paper would burst into flame under the force of his stare. “Are you sure you didn’t mishear him, Subaru-kun?”

“Positive, Hikaru-san.”

“Whatever,” Hikaru said finally, after having stared at the name for several minutes in furious silence. “Maybe he’ll do the world a favour and not show up.”

“Maybe, Hikaru-san,” Subaru answered helplessly.

“He’s worthless without Ruri around, anyway,” Hikaru muttered, mostly to himself, scanning through the rest of the list. When Hikaru was on the last page of the list he spoke calmly, without raising his voice, asking Subaru if he could go and get him something to drink. Uncertainly, Subaru nodded, and rose to oblige, walking silently out of the room and shutting the door softly behind him.

Hikaru stood up, knocking his stool over, and stalked to stand in front of the king’s desk, throwing the last page down in front of him. “Explain this,” he ordered, voice tense.

The king pulled his work out from beneath the single piece of paper, putting them off to the side. “Eh?”

Snarling, Hikaru stabbed one finger at the paper, next to a name near the bottom of the list. “This!”

The king looked at the name, as an alternative to looking at Hikaru’s furious, trembling face. “It’s traditional and it’s part of the ceremony. People will be disappointed if she’s not there, and it will look bad besides. Then, gossip will start, and it would put you on very bad footing with the people indeed.”

“I don’t care,” Hikaru snarled, lowering his face so he was nose-to-nose with the king. “You are not inviting my mother to the wedding.”

“It’s part of the ceremony,” the king said flatly, narrowing his eyes. “It’s traditional.”

Hikaru snorted. “Since when do you give a damn about tradition? You didn’t even get married in Aura. Chi wasn’t even born in Aura! You sure as hell didn’t get permission from your parents, sir,” he said, mouth twisting as he spat out the final word.

“Inchiki isn’t me, and you sure as hell aren’t Uula, brat,” the king’s voice began to rise from it’s formerly level tone as he stood up, growling. “Put aside your feelings for once and stop behaving like an idiot! I’m just trying to make this entire stupid mess easier for Inchiki, and for you! Excuse me for trying to minimize the amount of shit the good people of Aura will start circulating about you!”

“They’re already spreading bullshit rumours! They’ve been spreading them for years, and one stupid empty gesture will not make them all go away! You fucking politicians, you think everything can be repaired with lies . . .” Hikaru panted, hands clenched into fists on the top of the king’s desk.

“We’re just trying to minimize damage. It’s hardly a lie, the woman is your mother, whether you like it or not.”

“She’s tried to disown me! The only reason she didn’t succeed is because you’re the one who that kind of thing has to go through! Ancestors, I don’t know why you didn’t just let it go through. Everything would be a lot easier if you had.”

“It’s important, especially for the public ceremony, that the Aurian people can see you’re one of them. That’ll make . . . everything easier for them to digest.”

“Not everything, just the fact that I’m a man.”

“You don’t have to get offended about it, dammit! We’re doing it for your own good!”

“No you’re not!” Hikaru slammed his fists down onto the desk, sending stacks of papers to the floor. “Stop saying that! It’s a damn lie and you know it!”

“You ungrateful little asshole . . .”

“Don’t even try to pretend that you haven’t a clue what I’m talking about, sir! You aren’t doing anything for me. You’re doing it all for Chi.”

The king fumed. “I can’t be doing this for both of you?”

“You could be, but you aren’t. It’s all for Chi. Everything you do for me, and to me, has nothing to do with me at all. It’s just for Chi.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“No, it’s not. It’s the complete truth. If it weren’t, you’d have bawled me out at the beginning and thrown me out of the office instead of standing there and letting me swear at you! Which means you know exactly what you’ve been doing, even if you can’t say it. You don’t give a fuck about me except as someone to look after Chi, because spirits know he needs someone to look after him! You and Uula, that’s what you’ve been doing almost since the moment I met Chi, manipulating me, my feelings, the way I think, my family, everything, just so you’d have someone to watch Chi’s back when you bugger off to wherever you go when he becomes king! And maybe it’s okay for Uula to do it, because it’s not like he has even the slightest concept of how human morals work, but you, you should know better, you should be ashamed of yourself, for manipulating a kid and fucking with his life so much that if he ran into his own mother on the street, she wouldn’t spare a glance for him, even if she recognized him!”

“You brat! You’d be slaving away on some fishing boat right now if we hadn’t taken you in after your father died! You’d have nothing, no education, no future, and you damn well wouldn’t have Inchiki! We do all this for you and you have the gall to complain about it?”

Hikaru choked, then began laughing, slipping to the floor. He pressed his forehead against the warm wood of the king’s desk, shoulders shaking. Startled out of his righteous anger, the king leaned over slightly. “Hikaru-kun?”

The young man lifted his head, shoulders still shaking slightly, meeting the king’s confused green eyes with furious black ones. “Forgive me, your majesty, for even thinking to question your wisdom. Where would I be without your favouritism, the guiding hand of Uula-ojisan? I’d have nothing, absolutely nothing, I might not even be alive, I certainly wouldn’t have Inchiki, you’re right, so very right, and I hope you’re happy, you fucking bastard, because everything has worked out exactly as you wanted it.” He leapt to his feet, spreading his arms wide, and smacking the king back in the process. “I, Takahashi Hikaru, am madly, hopelessly, helplessly in love with DyBane-Startredder Inchiki, thanks to you, and there’s nothing I can do about it, absolutely nothing. By the time I noticed it was happening, it was already too late. As soon as you’re able to see it, you’re already lost. Do you have any idea what that means to lose yourself so completely to someone by the time you’re ten?”

Furious, Hikaru swung a punch at the king’s face, only to have his fist caught moments before it contacted the king’s nose. “Hikaru-kun . . .”

“Do you have any idea how much it hurt? Feeling all sorts of shit I couldn’t even understand, that I shouldn’t have felt for any guy, ever? Bringing greater and greater shame on my family every time I looked at my best friend? What would you have done if Chi had ended up falling in love with someone else? What would you have done, Gods, Ancestors, Spirits help us, what would you have done if he had liked girls? How would I have fit into your little plan then, eh, sir? I sacrificed my friends, my parents, my brothers and sisters, my body,” he gestured furiously with his free hand to the scar on his face, “my very soul because of him, because of your fucking brilliant plans. Would you have expected me to sacrifice my manhood if he hadn’t taken after you?”

“But it didn’t turn out that way!”

“But it could have! It could have, so easily!” Hikaru screamed, trying to pull his hand free from the king’s grasp. “You Startredders, you think you’re so fucking almighty and infallible, and instead of worrying about how one of you might react to a situation, you fuck with us humans, do things to us that can never be healed, just so your lives run a bit more smoothly. Well, hooray, let’s rejoice, praise the sun and the sky, because, by some miracle, your idiotic ideas to keep your idiot son just a little bit safer managed to work! Are you happy, now, huh? Now that your great plan is just a few months from completion, are you fucking happy?”

The king let go of Hikaru’s hand, only to grab both his wrists instead, glaring at the furious young man. Somehow, just barely, he managed to keep his own temper from getting out of control. “Aren’t you?”

“Of course I’m happy! I’m fucking ecstatic! It’s more than I ever could have dreamed of,” Hikaru snarled, jerking at his wrists. “I’m so damn lucky, I worry about him constantly when he goes out to do his job, because he might not come back. And when he does come back, half the time I have to deal with the fact that he has to deal with things that are so disturbing, so emotionally scarring, that it’s a wonder he even bothers to get out of bed in the morning. And he’s not even king yet. Gods alone know how maddening that’s going to be, with people constantly trying to kill him. People could be trying to kill him even now, as I deal with your shit, because they’d rather see that prick Kuroneko on the throne, or that idiot Kamui, or psychotic Seishirou, or anyone else! I don’t know how many times people have tried to kill you, and you have a homicidal sorcerer watching your back! Your own brother is crippled for life because someone tried to kill you, and you don’t even like him!

“That’s what I have to look forward to, right? I get what I want, and now I just have to spend the rest of my life worrying about assassins in the shadows, and in the daylight, people creeping around, lying to me constantly, trying to kill the people who mean more to me than anything else in the world. That’s what’s in store for me because you,” Hikaru pulled savagely at his hands, making the king stumble, “made me fall in love with your son, without thinking for a moment how maddening it would make every waking moment of my life. Thank you, your majesty. What would I have done without you?”

The king gritted his teeth, glaring at Hikaru. “Are you quite done?”

“Quite,” Hikaru snarled. “Let go of my wrists, you asshole.”

“You going to try and hit me again, you stupid brat?”

Glowering, Hikaru shook his head, and the king released his hands. Hikaru stumbled backward and caught himself on the wall, panting slightly.

“Feel better, idiot?”

“No,” Hikaru snapped, straightening and heading to the door. “I’m going home to study.”

The king glared, stalking forward and grabbing Hikaru’s shoulder. “We aren’t done here, brat.”

Hikaru shook the king’s hand off. “Yes, we are.”

“We haven’t decided what to do about your mother.”

Slowly, hand poised to open the door, Hikaru turned to look at the king, an unpleasant smile on his face. “Go ahead, invite her to the wedding. Invite my entire family. I don’t care.” He pulled the door open, stalking into the hallway. “You can deal with them!” The king moved to follow Hikaru, and got the door shut in his face. “I’ll see you later, your majesty!” he could hear Hikaru call as he walked away down the hallway.

“Fuck,” the king said eloquently, rubbing his nose and staring at the door. “Cocky little asshole,” he muttered, and went back to his desk, grinning.