• CHAPTER ONE


    What did the prince think he was doing?
    Keiran rushed down the streets, fuming with anger. As an esteemed member of the king's court, and a personal friend of Adakias, he felt it only his duty to warn the young noble of his brother's anger. The Light was already beginning to sicken him, but still he pressed on, crow's-wing colored hair falling into his eyes and matching perfectly with his dark skin. Palis's own words to the younger heir had been "if you elope, I'll hunt you down", and it was now perfectly clear that the prince intended to follow through on his statement.
    Kei had only gone to find Adakias to warn him of his impending doom, and now he was just in a whole mess of trouble. The king of the Light had apparently put out a bounty on his friend's head, and now he was going double time in order to warn him.
    Retching at the bright, too-clear air of the alien realm, the young man hurried along, shooting harried glances at other people on the street and searching for faces he knew. Palis was bound to be around somewhere, and he wasn't in the mood for a confrontation.
    In his attempt to be aware of everything at once, Keiran neglected to pay attention of what was immediately in front of him, and crashed headlong into another young man, with sandy brown hair that stuck out everywhere and almost unhealthily pale skin.
    “Sorry…sorry!” He apologized to the stranger, who laughed, and accepted the hand that was extended to him.
    “Nah,” The strange, tall man replied with a half-grin that highlighted his crooked nose, “happens to me all the time. S’ no problem.” He pulled himself to his feet, running a hand through his hair, which only succeeded in making it stand up more. “M’name’s Eron.”
    Eron…Eron…Keiran had heard the name before, but he couldn’t remember where. Snapping his fingers mentally as the memory came to him in a brilliant flash, he felt his stomach sink a very uncomfortable amount. Eron was the princess’s older brother, the very princess that Palis had set out to kill. And Kei would have loved to stay and chat, but it would remind him all the more of the prince that he was supposed to be saving.
    “Keiran. Kei.” He replied, attempting a pleasant smile and failing spectacularly. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have business to attend to.” Coughing softly, he attempted to sidestep the other man.
    “Really?” The prince, who he now noted was dressed in commoner’s clothes, loped after him as he started off again down the narrow streets of the kingdom. “What kind of a business?”
    Anhura’s supposed favorite brother, Keiran noted dryly, was much like Adakias in his demeanor. He could see now why she had married his friend.
    “Making sure Sangara doesn’t get to my friend before I do.” He responded absently, then stopped dead where he stood. He hadn’t meant for that to come out. “I meant-“
    “Sangara?” Too late. “The descendant of Toba the Tura himself?” The prince almost floated on air next to him, as Kei continued to mentally slap himself, and spoke Toba the Tura’s name with reverence. “You know Sangara?”
    “Yeeeeesssss…” Keiran hissed, clenching his fists and preparing for what came next.
    “But that means…” realization dawned on Eron, and he almost visibly dropped down off his cloud of daydreams. “You’re from the Dark, aren’t you?”
    “Graduated the School of Dark Arts and Music, top of my class.” He retorted proudly, jamming a thumb into his chest. “Anyway, have you happened to have seen my friend? I believe he eloped with your sister.” A smirk offset this sentence. Kei knew he was already in deep, and he didn’t foresee a chance to get out of it soon, so might as well make the best of it.
    “You mean Adakias? I met him two days ago, in my father’s court. He made a pretty good case for himself, I thought, but Malka apparently didn’t.” Eron pronounced the king’s name with bitter distaste; almost the same way many had heard Palis say Adakias’s. “Anyway, he and my sister ran off afterwards. I haven’t seen them since, but I was just going out to look for Anhura.”
    The Dark noble almost fainted from relief. So here was someone who was not going to turn him in, but rather help him look! “Mind if I tag along? I don’t exactly know my way around.”
    “Not at all.” The taller, rail-thin man replied, eyes shining. “I’ve always wondered about the Dark, to tell you the truth. Adakias promised to tell me more about it if we ever met again.”
    Keiran nodded, and they began to walk once more. That did sound like Adakias. “So, where to first?”
    “Well,” Eron gave a small, slightly devilish grin, “I was hoping we could maybe go stop off at the palace for a bit. See, I haven’t really told Malka that I’m leaving yet, and…”
    The dark-skinned man shrugged, inwardly fuming. This would almost certainly prove a setback to his plans. And what if Palis or Sangara followed them to the palace? What then? On the outside, he smiled cynically. “Sounds good, but what if someone notices, oh, I don’t know, that I’m from the Dark?” He raised an eyebrow. “I’ll be executed for sure, you know.”
    “Just be inconspicuous.” Eron advised, shoving his hands into his crudely-sewn pockets. “It always works when I don’t want to be noticed. Be careful, though. The king could sense the Dark in Adakias, so he might sense something in you as well.”
    “Sense the Dark? What does that-“And Kei never got to finish that sentence, because he found out exactly what it meant. An uneasy air of Darkness descended upon the once-bright marketplace, and the nails-on-slate grating of steel against the gravel could be heard from a distance away.
    Sangara had arrived in the Light.