Chapter Text
You’re not sure why everyone looks so sad lately, you are four sweeps old and for the last perigee your neighbours have started calling you ‘your highness’ more often, you’re not sure why. At first, they were quiet and gentle, tentative, testing something. You didn’t want to correct them and hurt their feelings. Furthermore, you have no idea why people keep talking to you like you’re about to flip your hypothetical shit, it’s starting to grate on your nerves.
Today is particularly tense, you keep hearing people rushing around outside your hive, occasionally you catch someone yelling about ‘the time’ or asking ‘what’s going to happen?’
You don’t know much about politics, but you understand something’s going on with the prince, you can see it in his face; a look of restlessness, anticipation. You wonder what happened to the young, spunky adolescent prince people speak of, the one that had so many plans for peace and equality. Only to be shut down by the Empress, and you probably shouldn’t know about that. The Empress is always in the background, shifting in the shadows, a quiet orchestrator of chaos and unease. You’re too young to understand why someone would be so malicious to a people she’s supposed to rule and protect.
There’s a knocking echoing through your hive. You imagine it’s another midblood come to ask you pointless questions about your views on the hemospectrum or if you have any lowblood friends. You don’t see how it’s any of their business, but you like the company sometimes, someone to talk to about yourself. Sometimes they come to tell you about them, tell you that they’re having difficulties and ask you for your advice. You don’t have the heart to tell them you have no idea how you can help, so you usually just tell them to go with whatever feels natural. It’s never come back to haunt you, so perhaps it’s a good bit of input?
But when you open your door, no sooner do you feel the cool ocean breeze on your fins is your vision is obscured and you’re being grabbed from behind, somehow they get a blindfold on you and you’re dragged away from your hive. You tried screaming for your lusus, but there’s a hand covering your mouth, and there must be two people because there’s someone’s hands trying to press on your chest while the other set pull you, kicking and attempting to scream. There’s a female voice ringing in your ears, shooshing you and telling you everything’s fine, they’re not going to hurt you. They’re here to help.
She tells you to stop struggling, so you go rigid, and whoever’s got you hostage stops tugging you backwards and lets you on your feet. You pant for breath through your nose, gills flaring because you’re panicking and not getting enough air. You’re lightheaded. You hear her voice again. “If you promise not to scream, he’ll let you breathe properly.” There’s a pause, your head is swimming and you’re dizzy with fear. “Promise?” You nod as best as you can.
Slowly, the restraining palm is removed. You take in quick gulps of air and you get lightheaded and flop forward slightly. The, now identified, ‘guy’ has his arm is around your chest in no time, holding you up and against him so you can’t run away.
“Alright. We’re going to take you somewhere. This is for your own good. Trust us.”
You open your mouth to say something but you choke, the arms holding onto you tense. You cough until you can form words. “What about- my lusus?”
There’s some shuffling, the guy doesn’t move so you know it’s the woman. “We’ll… Take care of him. Trust us.” The way she keeps saying ‘Trust’ is confusing, it does sound genuine, but if they really didn’t want to do you an harm, surely the would’ve just asked you to go with them instead of grabbing you. You probably would have gone.
You drop your head, and let them lead you away.
…
You’ve probably been walking for an hour when they stop and instruct you on how to walk up stairs. You snort and inform them, “I’m four, not a w-wiggler. I know-w how-w to stairs.”
There’s no reply, they just keep guiding you up.
Once you, presumably, reach the top, there’s someone’s hand holding yours, smaller than the hand on your face felt. You hear shuffling again, then someone unties your blindfold from behind.
It’s brighter than you thought it’d be this time in the evening, and your eyes are blurry from the pressure used to hold them closed. You blink through the glittering blackness until you can sort of make out a woman’s face. Your vision clears up pretty quickly after that.
She’s not scary looking at all, a bit sharp perhaps, she’s kneeling in front of you but you can still tell she’s tall, she has a hood on that covers her horns and a skin-tight, plain black body suit. She looks familiar. You can just about make out that she has a pair of pink glasses on under her hood, and her hair is dragging behind her. You twist your head to get a look at the guy, but she reaches out a hand to rest on your cheek, fingers brushing against your ear fin, you freeze.
“We’re going to go inside now, alright? Just keep quiet. Don’t answer any questions, or even look at anyone.”
You glance beside her and there’s a huge wooden door, complete with a giant knocker.
“W-where are w-we?”
“This is the palace. You know about the palace right?”
You roll your eyes, turning away from her slightly to get a better look at the door. “Yes. But this doesn’t look like the palace.”
“I know dear, this is the back entrance. Now hold still.” You’re about to ask why, but she’s lifting a cloak and placing it over your head, no holes for horns so it just sits on top of them like a veil. Just like hers. “Now. I need to explain something to you, but I’ll do it inside. We can’t risk anyone hearing us.”
Your gaze follows her as she stands to her full height, but the guy behind you grabs you by a horn and wrenches your head forward so you’re looking at the ground. You can only see her feet as she opens the door and slowly creeps into the building, and you get shoved in the back to follow her.
…
You can’t think, you’re overwhelmed, you don’t know what you’re doing.
The woman asks a servant to show you to the Prince’s chambers. You think the servant must recognise her because she goes completely still and nods, bows, and then rushes off as fast as she can while still looking respectable.
You’re shaking.
“Remember what I said kid. If you don’t go through with this-”
“I know-w.”
…
You’ve only seen the prince from a distance, this close up he looks older than you thought he was. He’s only supposed to be seven sweeps old. You suppose that’s what happens when you have that much responsibility weighing on your shoulders.
“I have a gift for you, my little prince. I hope you like it.”
“What? No. Oh no. No way!”
“Please hun. Don’t overreact, it’s unbecoming of someone of our lineage. You have a duty to uphold.”
“I am not. I repeat. NOT going to do this!”
“Don’t talk to me like that you little brat! We gave you options, ‘your highness’.” You almost wince at the use of the phrase, you flashback to people calling you that. You still don’t understand what’s going on. “This is the last resort. Trust us.”
There are a tense few moments where you could almost swear everyone left the room without you realising, you can’t even hear them breathing they’re being so quiet.
“Fine. Leave- uhh…”
“Him.”
“Yeah sure, leave him here. I’ll just… Yeah. I’ll see.”
You think you hear her walking away, then you hear the door click, the prince sighs.
“So…” He says almost immediately. “Are you allowed to speak?”
You’re not sure. So you stay silent.
“Okay, well as the prince, I order you to speak if I address you. And only me. You’re now my property, a gift from the Empress, and you need to learn to obey me.” You can hear the reluctance in his voice.
So was that the empress? Or just someone acting on her behalf? You remember what she had said, keep your voice flat, force your accent away. “Alright.”
“Good. So. What’s your name?”
“I don’t have one.”
“Oh, well… I’ll call you… Progen. Do you like that?”
“Yes, your majesty.”
“Right, Progen… Umm. Come here.” He sounds nervous, unsure. You don’t know if you can do this.
You walk over to him slowly, only peering up enough so you can figure out where he is by his feet. When you reach him you find him sat on a couch and just stand before him, you daren’t look up.
“Alright, umm. Do you… Want to sit on my lap? Or… Something.”
You decide to hell with your nerves. You have to do this. His legs are parted so you seat yourself on one of his thighs, facing inwards toward him, head still down, face hidden.
He goes to pull your hood away. “Don’t.”
“Oh, I just, wanted to see you.” He rests a hand on your shoulder and rubs circles with his thumb. “May I?”
You think back to everything you were told would happen, everything you were supposed to do. Keeping your hood up was on the top of things to do. He can’t see your fins, or your gills.
“No. Sorry.”
His grip on your shoulder tightens slightly. “And why is that? You are my property are you not?” You can still hear the slight waver, as if he’s not even sure if this is something he wants. You straighten your back, puff up your chest and brace yourself.
“Yes.”
“Then I order you to let me see your face.”
You try to figure out a loophole. You’re pretty sure it was also because of the horns, so you slowly reach up and roll the hood back enough to sit on the front most part of your horns and the lighting should keep your fins hidden by the shadow. Then you peer up at him.
He’s smiling. “Very good. Maybe this won’t be so bad.” His other hand comes between the two of you to lift your chin more, then he strokes your cheekbone with the back of his fingers. “How old are you?”
“Four, your grace”
He takes a while to process that, absently resting his hand against your cheek, by your mouth, stroking his thumb under your eye, high enough that occasionally his nail brushes against your bottom eyelashes and you can see how long his nails are, and that they’re sharpened.
He replaces the hand on your shoulder to your side, just above your hip, and pulls you further up his thigh and closer to himself. “Progen, have you ever kissed anyone?”
“No your majesty.”
“Me either.” His eyes fall to his hand on your side, and he takes in a sharp breath in preparation. He slips the hand on your face down to your chest and leans forward towards you. You guess he’s either so nervous or just too inexperienced to realize that you’re cooler than him as he pressed his lips to yours.
He pushes his bottom lip between your own and opens his mouth to force you to part yours, before he manages to slip his tongue past your teeth, he chokes into your mouth, and you taste blood.
“Wha-”
You pull back from his face, his violet eyes bright wide and confused. You use one hand to pull back your hood. As soon as he spots your ear fins he chokes up more blood. His expression reads ‘betrayed’.
“So you-”
You twist the knife in his gut and he almost collapses forward onto your shoulder. When you pull the knife from him, you look down at it with disgust.
“It w-was you or me, ‘your majesty’.” You grimace at the words leaving your mouth.
You stand and nudge him back into the couch as he tries to grab at you, he doesn’t even fight back. You decide you should stick around to make sure he actually dies. They did say that if you failed, you would be killed.
…
“Your majesty?”
“It’s done. Now-w can I go home?”
She smiles fondly at you, and you start to feel less like your soul is trying to eat it’s way out of your body. “You are home, sweety.”
“W-what?”
“You’ve succeeded the prince. Now, you take his place. You live in the palace now. We’ll have your coronation tomorrow, I bet you’re tired huh.”
“But, my lusus-”
“Is dead. I’m sorry honey. This is the way it has to be.” She keeps up that wicked grin, and it’s only now you realise that her hood is down. “You did a good job. You wanna go to sleep?”
“Yes Empress.”
You don’t even argue, you’re so tired and confused. Maybe this is all a dream. You just let her guide you by the hand to a guestroom and help you up into the recuperacoon, and you fall straight to sleep while she combs her fingers through your hair.
…
The coronation preparations go by so quickly that you find yourself bathed and decked out in gold and silk before you even realize you’ve woken up. You don’t know how many of the servants know the prince is dead, but a few must do. They know the drill, and all of a sudden they’re getting a new prince dressed in ceremonial garbs and their old prince isn’t around.
So this is your destiny. You are a prince.
You wonder how long you have until someone comes along to assassinate you.
You hope it’ll be creative. Perhaps you’ll discover them before it happens and there’ll be a fight, or maybe they’ll come into your chambers and murder you in your sleep and you’ll never know what happened.
You wonder what death is like for a while. You decide that it’s probably boring.
Well, you’re alive now. You murdered someone to ensure your own survival, you should really make the most out of it. You should probably care more than you do that you’re only four sweeps old, and already, you’ve killed someone. Instead you’re more focused on the fact that you’ve kissed someone. Despite it being a pretty shitty kiss, and you still have the phantom taste of blood in your mouth. It’s not as bad as you thought, and you have plenty of time to worry about kissing someone properly later.
The Empress is gone. You asked a servant about her and, after he gently reminded you that you needed to lose the accent, he said that she would never be back. The man though, he’s still here. You didn’t recognise him at first obviously, because you’d never seen him. But you can smell him, he smells like hard work, exertion and sweat, but not unpleasantly.
He is the Head Captain of the bodyguards. And it should tell you something if the head of the prince’s bodyguards is helping to orchestrate his assassination. But when you were left alone in a room with him and he was supposed to explain how the bodyguard system worked, he dropped to his knees, begging you for forgiveness.
“Please your highness, understand. The prince- I mean, the late prince… He wasn’t cut out for the position. He never took his place on the hemospectrum seriously. He was a burden to the kingdom and there needed to be change.”
You place a hand on his head, his hair is flat and shiny, and you expected it to be greasy with how much he seems to sweat in general, but it’s strangely soft. He cringes when you touch him, you’re not sure if he’s afraid of you or if you just shouldn’t be doing this and he’s worried about protocol, he seems the type to worry about rules.
“What makes you think I’ll be any better?” You ask, so gently it almost sounds sad.
He doesn’t look up, he hunches his back more and you keep your hand resting where it is. “With all due respect your highness, there was no other choice. I just had to have faith that you were the one cut out for this. You were chosen by a greater power, and this was always going to happen. I just guided your hand.”
You think this over for a few seconds. “What’s your name?”
“Captain Zahhak sir. Equius Zahhak.”
“Well, should you introduce the rest of my guards?”
He looks up at you, hopeful, and you give him a small, reassuring smile.
…
You’re led out of the palace gates by your head guard, Equius, and are surrounded by the other four of your guards, you were worried that someone was going to carry you, but you were allowed to walk on your own.
You chose to walk of course. It felt right, you had to show that you could hold yourself up; you didn’t need anyone’s help. You feel more confident about this whole arrangement by the minute.
You were hatched to do this.
People are crowded around the streets as you walk, you are suddenly, highly aware of how short you are, and people kind of stare in disbelief. You catch slight whispers from the crowd. Things you expected like ‘is that the prince?’, ‘what happened to the old prince?’, and things you didn’t expect, but should have, like ‘he looks so young’ and ‘did he seriously kill the prince himself?’ there’s the odd ‘he’s so cute’, you kind of wish you were a horrible tyrant right now and could punish people for calling you ‘cute’, but you let it slide. Not on your first day.
Once you’ve walked the entire high and midblood districts, you stop at an altar. There’s a man stood at the top of the steps, dressed in an offblue robe that you imagine is his blood colour, it would put him at around the middle of the blues. You’re getting sick of everyone around you being a blueblood, all of your guards are high shades of blue, your guard captain is the deepest shade of blue you’ve ever seen and you wonder if there’s anything between him and an indigo. Is indigo a shade of blue? You always thought it was purple but the way the servants were explaining things to you earlier made it sound like the only ‘purples’ were seadwellers, and indigos aren’t seadwellers.
Apparently, only pure violets can contest the throne legitimately, if there is a lack of violet competition and the current prince isn’t doing a very good job then he may be contested by a lower Seadweller. You had asked why they said ‘he’, and one of the servants gave you this cute, fond chuckle, then explained that there wasn’t such a thing as a princess around here. Any female seadwellers don’t get a chance at the throne in this kingdom, other kingdoms they do, but currently the only female seadweller with any power here, was the Empress.
You were worried about meeting the Empress again, but the servant assured you that you either never would, or it wouldn’t be for a long while. You didn’t think to ask why.
Once the ceremony is complete, the aforementioned blueblood announces to everyone within hearing distance that you are now officially the new prince, and would assume your duties immediately. You’re not even sure what your ‘duties’ are.
…
It turns out that being a prince is easy, and you regret not doing it sooner. Sure you occasionally remember that you don’t have your lusus around, but to be honest, he was always so bossy and grumpy. Your servants all think you’re adorable, and perhaps you’re using it to your advantage, you get your own way a lot, there are certain things you shouldn’t do. Things like, going into the gardens without any of your guards, or playing hide and seek with the servants. There were many things you could encourage them to do with you, lots of games, and they just couldn’t say no to your cute face for the longest time. Until you grew out of the games.
…
Days turned to perigees, to a sweep, and you found yourself at your first war meeting, now that you were old enough to understand that your kingdom was permanently at war with most of the others. There was a treaty in place at the moment, but the meetings continued. There were spies in the other kingdoms making sure no one was plotting anything, and anything suspicious was reported in the meetings.
Despite nothing really happening, you felt comfortable in the meetings. It was just you and a few of your generals all sat around a big empty table discussing whether or not there were any threats to the Empress, Equius behind you to make sure you were safe, in case any of them decided to try and assassinate you.
Despite you being very aware of why you always had bodyguards, the almost certain knowledge that there were people out there that wanted to kill you, and would try, you were pretty okay with generally being a prince. It was hard work sometimes, there were plans on residential and commercial issues, communication from the brooding caverns explaining how the mothergrub was doing and when there would be a new bunch of grubs for the kingdom, or when the imperial drones would be making their rounds. Not that you really understood what they were doing rounds for, but you knew it was important.
Occasionally you would have meetings with members of other kingdoms, asking to come and live under your rule, and you would ask them what they could bring to your kingdom, ask why you should disrupt the harmony of your land. They would explain what they could do, advertise themselves, and if you weren’t satisfied – which you hardly ever were – they would either be thrown out, or if they resisted - claiming that they couldn’t go back - you would have them culled by your guard drones.
…
Today started as another normal day, you were woken up, dressed and had breakfast made for you. But today, you heard a commotion from the kitchen and decided to go against the rules and check out what was happening, and found a couple of your servants were rushing around. When you stopped one and they realized you were down there they both froze.
“What’s the hurry?”
“Your majesty, sorry.” She bows to you. “Did we disturb you?”
“No. It’s fine.”
“Oh. Well, it’s just that we need to prepare for your meeting this evening and we’re…”
“Yes? You can tell me, I won’t be mad.”
“Well, we’re shorthanded. After… Well, you know, we haven’t been able to keep on top of our duties and we’re falling behind. Sorry your highness, we’re just struggling.” You remember the incident recently where one of the servants was found stealing from the palace, and that had led to an investigation that resulted in another servant being dismissed. You’re not sure if they were culled, you didn’t order it at least.
“Can’t you get more servants?”
“Well there are systems in place but actually getting servants is hard as they need to be trustworthy.”
“Your highness?” You recognise Zahhak’s voice and cringe. You shouldn’t be in the servant area, he’s bound to reprimand you.
“Umm, yes?”
“If I may, there is a way around the servant standards system.” He sounds hopeful, like he’s about to make a suggestion that would end all your problems in one go.
“Well if we’re in need a’ more, erm, helpers, then I suppose we could look into somethin’. What do you suggest?”
He bows, accepting his opportunity to advise. “Slaves, your grace.”