Dragon Prince

The summons came like a slap through the chapel doors - three knocks too hard, the sound of mail striking wood, then the steward’s voice sharpening the air. Aurelian Varric had been kneeling over a basin of cold water, scrubbing the last remnants of travel from his hands, when the guards arrived for him with a paper sealed in black wax. They didn’t wait for permission. The steward only looked past him, as if the prince were already a rumor.

“His Majesty’s court,” the steward said, and the words landed wrong in the corridor’s stone. “Now.”

Aurelian rose, water dripping from his knuckles onto the flagstones, and felt the familiar pull of the birth-sigil at his wrist - faint, like a phantom bruise. The mark should have been there, a royal glimmer of etched dragon-bone and light. When he’d washed that morning, he’d stared until his eyes watered. Nothing. Smooth skin where the seal belonged.

He tucked his sleeve down anyway. Aurelian had learned young how to look composed even when the world pried at him. The guards ushered him through arches and into the palace proper, where the air changed - warmer, thick with polished stone and oiled hinges. Chandeliers glittered overhead, and every footstep seemed to echo twice, once in the corridor and once in the panic he refused to show.

By the time they reached the court antechamber, the missing sigil had already traveled ahead of him. He heard it before he saw it: murmurs like dry leaves, the sharp rasp of someone whispering “false” as if it were a blade. Names slid away from him in quick shuffles - young lords stepping aside, ladies drawing their robes closer, old advisers pretending they couldn’t recognize his face.

Aurelian pushed through the double doors and stopped, because the sound that met him was not the court’s normal chorus. It was silence with teeth.

King Orrenhal sat beneath a carved dragon canopy, broad hands resting on the arms of his chair. His gaze moved across Aurelian’s face and then dropped - too quickly, too deliberately - to the place where the sigil should have been. The king didn’t raise his voice, yet the room seemed to lean toward him.

“Prince Aurelian,” Orrenhal said.

The title sounded heavier than it should have. Aurelian felt it settle on his shoulders like a wet cloak.

A royal herald stepped forward, unrolling a parchment and holding it up to the light. “By the law of the dragon-blood, the birth-sigil is proof of rightful claim. Its absence - ”

“Absence,” Aurelian repeated, and his own voice surprised him with its steadiness. He kept his wrist hidden, fist clenched under his sleeve. “It was present last night.”

A ripple moved through the benches. Someone scoffed. Another hissed. Aurelian caught only fragments - stolen, tainted, staged - each word a stone thrown with no aim beyond shattering him.

Aurelian forced himself to breathe through the heat of the hall. He could smell beeswax and old incense, the sweetness of flowers pressed into vases. He could also smell something else beneath it: cold iron, faint as a memory, as if the palace had been scrubbed too hard and something stubborn remained.

The herald’s eyes flicked to the king, then back. “His Majesty’s physicians and the sigil-warders have confirmed no mark. Prince - prove your claim.”

Aurelian’s want was immediate and sharp: he needed the sigil back before the court pronounced him false. He needed it here, in this room where every gaze waited for him to fail.

He stepped forward half a pace, then stopped because the guards behind him shifted. One of them, a broad man with a scar that split his eyebrow, murmured something to another. Aurelian didn’t catch the words, but he saw the movement - hands going to grips, attention tightening, as if the room had decided he was already guilty.

King Orrenhal raised a hand. “You will be searched. If the sigil is not recovered before the verdict, the claim will be void.”

Verdict. The word struck like a clock striking in the dark. Aurelian’s mouth went dry, though he wouldn’t let his throat show it. “Recovered,” he said. “Then let me find it.”

A court adviser - thin, silver-haired, too polished - smiled without warmth. “By all means, Your Highness. Find it quickly, while we keep you under watch.”

Under watch. Not a request. A leash.

Aurelian bowed as if the decision were reasonable. Inside, he counted his options like knuckles under skin. He could fight, but fighting would scatter him. He could plead, but pleading would harden their certainty. There was only one thing he could do that might still turn this room: act before the palace finished turning him into a verdict.

When the court adjourned for “preparations,” it wasn’t truly a pause. Doors were opened and closed with a purpose that felt practiced. Guards formed around him as he was led out through a side corridor, their boots loud against the stone. The corridor narrowed, then widened, branching into a tangle of halls where banners hung heavy and still....