The North Tower was bathed in a glowy light that reflected on Zaliyah's closed eyelids.
Usually, in the Capital, the mornings was merely a shift from noir to a bruised violet. But here, the sun reflected off the endless glaciers of the Northwest, creating a brilliance that felt holy and entirely alien.
Harun and Iruna had entered his room at the break of dawn, their movements were silent.
They stood over his bed, watching the rythmique rise and fall of the fur duvets. Zaliyah was deep asleep, his body had surrendered to the bottomless exhaustion.
It was the pregnancy, the twins knew the tiny life inside him was a tireless engine, fueled by the very marrow of his bones.
"Should we wake him?" Iruna whispered to Harun.
"No," Harun replied, his voice a low rasp. "Let him hide in sleep for a while longer. The world is too loud when he's awake."
Iruna leaned down, pressing a feather-light kiss to Zaliyah's forehead. Harun nodded once before they turned and slipped out of the room. They had five hours of grueling training under Thalassa's icy gaze,it was a necessary penance to ensure they were strong enough to never let Zaliyah fall again.
Three hours later, Zaliyah stirred.
He woke up with the familiar heaviness in his limbs, a fatigue that felt like it was heavy rocks in his veins. He sat up slowly, his hands instinctively dropping to the firm, rounded swell of his stomach. The baby was quiet for now, perhaps sated by the massive feast from the night before.
The room was silent. No maids stood by the door with basins of floralwater, no tutor's waited for him in the balcony with grimoires and ear screeching lectures .
Zaliyah felt a strange, fluttering anxiety in his chest. He stood, holding his waist for support, and slowly navigated his way out of the chamber.
The hallway was a stark contrast to the Palace . The walls were polished to a mirror sheen, and the air was so crisp it felt like drinking cold water. He strolled sluggishly, his bare feet silent on the stone, taking a small, disoriented tour of the wing. Finally, he rounded a corner and stumbled across a group of maids polishing the silver sconces.
Upon seeing him, the maids froze. They rushed toward him, their faces a mix of awe and terror.
"Your Highness, You shouldn't be out of bed!" one exclaimed, reaching out to steady him.
Zaliyah opened his mouth to ask where the twins were, but only a dry, clicking sound emerged from his throat. He winced, the claw marks on his neck tightening. He made a sharp, sweeping gesture with his hands, miming an pencil and paper.
A maid scurried away, returning moments later with a charcoal pencil and a scrap of paper.
Where are my chamberlains? Zaliyah wrote, his handwriting shaky but elegant.
The maids looked confused. "Your... chamberlains, your highness? Do you mean the twins?"
Zaliyah nodded impatiently.
"They are on the training field, Your Highness. Commander Xulthas demands much of them. They will not return for another five hours."
Zaliyah rolled his eyes, a huff of silent frustration escaping him. Five hours. He wanted answers now. He wanted to know why the sky was so bright and why the air smelled of snow instead of sulfur. He pressed the pencil to the paper again.
Where is this place?
"Ah," the head maid smiled, though there was a flicker of something guarded in her eyes. "This is the Northwest Territory. You are at the Warlocks Castle , under the protection of Commander Xulthas."
The name hit Zaliyah like a bell tolling in a deep cave. Xulthas. Images flickered behind his eyes, the cold face of the warlock at the banquet. Xulthas was the one who had diagnosed the pregnancy. Xulthas was the one who had ruined the peace of the banquet.
Why am I here? Zaliyah wondered. Had Malachi sent him to the border as a secret punishment? Or was this a sanctuary? In his fragmented mind, Malachi was still the King who was "fascinated" with him in a twisted way. He convinced himself that the King had hidden him here to protect the nobility of the throne or maybe shelter him from the bloodthirsty nobles and the council .
But his stomach gave a loud demanding growl, cutting off his political ponderings. The monster was awake, and it was hungry.
Get me out of these clothes, he wrote.
The ritual of his morning began. While one maid stripped the sleeping tunics from his thin frame, another prepared a bath of steaming water infused with crushed white petals.
Zaliyah sat in the deep tub, his eyes closing as the warmth seeped into his aching muscles. The maids worked with a reverence that almost looked like worship.
They washed his back with sponges of sea-silk and poured jugs of warm water over his hair.
As the water cascaded over his shoulders, his long, silvery hair clung to the curves of his face and back. In the steam and the light, he looked ethereal. A creature of moon, fire and mist.
The maids whispered among themselves; he was a man so beautiful he could bring a King to his knees, and yet he sat there, humbler than a servant.
As a maid poured water over his stomach, Zaliyah caressed the white, stretched skin. A sudden, sharp kick jabbed against his palm. He let out a silent, bubbly giggle, his shoulders shaking. A greedy little monster, he thought fondly.
Once dried, the dressing began. Because of the harsh Northwest cold, the light silks of the Capital were discarded. The maids layered him in white silks, then added a tunic of heavy wool, followed by the icing on the cake: a long, floor-length coat of white fur. To finish, they placed a fur hat atop his head and soft, fur-lined ear muffs over his ears.
Zaliyah looked at himself in the tall mirror. He felt like a giant snowball. He looked "fat" in all the layers, his bump making the fur coat flare out significantly. But the moment he stepped toward the door and felt the cold air , he stopped complaining. This wasn't just fashion; it was survival.
The dining hall was a big space of dark wood and roaring fires. Zaliyah sat at the head of a table large enough for thirty people. Maids stood in a silent circle as the human chef began the procession of food.
Zaliyah ate like he hadn't eaten for Forty days forty nights, Venison stew, bowls of thick porridge, honey-glazed root vegetables, and loaves of crusty bread vanished at a rate that made the maids' jaws drop.
He wasn't just eating for himself and the baby he was fueling the core that had been dormant for five months. Finally, he leaned back, rubbing a hand over his belly, and offered the maids a small, shy smile. They all smiled back, enchanted by the strange, mute consort.
He gestured again for his paper. Take me to the library.
If he was going to live in this frozen purgatory, he needed to understand the terrain.
The library of the Castle was not as grand as the one in the Capital ,which housed scrolls from the dawn of time , but it was meticulously organized and filled with plenty Poetry and leather-bound tomes.
Zaliyah found a book titled "Geography and Lore of the Northwest Territory." He settled into a plush velvet chair, his fur coat bunched around him, and began to read.
The book explained that the Northwest had been the sovereign domain of the Warlocks bloodline for generations. It was a land of harsh mountains and perpetual winter, making it inhabitable for the lowly beasts or mud freaks as the subjects called them of the Underworld.
Only the high-class demons and hardy nobles lived here, surviving on specialized agriculture and the protection of the castle.
Then, his eyes widened as he read about the Snow Monsters. Every three days, massive, wolf-like creatures with ivory tusks and fur as white as the drifts would descend from the high peaks. They were lethal, ancient predators. Xulthas and his warriors spent their lives hunting them to keep the territory safe.
It's not a prison, Zaliyah realized, sipping on a glass of freshly squeezed fruit juice a maid had brought him. It's a fortress.
The book described the culture here. Surprisingly, it was more similar to the Human Realm than the Capital. There were theaters, academies, and even snow playgrounds for children. It was a self-contained paradise of ice, isolated from the politics of the Underworld.
The warmth of the juice and the weight of the book eventually took their toll. As the afternoon sun began to dip, Zaliyah's head nodded. The maids, watching from a distance, giggled softly as they heard a tiny, snore coming from the "snowball" in the chair. He fell asleep right there on the reading table, his cheek resting on the map of the mountains.
Four hours later, Harun and Iruna burst into the castle, their armor covered in a fine dusting of frost. They had rushed to Zaliyah's room, only to find it empty. For a terrifying minute, they thought Malachi had taken him back.
"He is in the library, " a maid informed them, bowing low. "He has been there for nearly five hours."
The twins hurried to the library. The sight that greeted them made the tension melt from their shoulders.
Zaliyah was fast asleep, his fur hat slightly crooked, his face squished against the pages of the geography book. He looked peaceful, his breathing deep and even.
The twins stood there for nearly fifteen minutes, simply watching him. Iruna thanked the maids in hushed tones bowing her head so low , her grey eyes shining with happiness.
"He ate everything the chef made," a maid whispered. "And he read nearly half that book before he drifted off."
Harun stepped forward. With a grace that belied his heavy armor, he slid his arms under Zaliyah. The boy didn't even wake he merely let out a soft mumble and tucked his face into Harun's chest, his small hands clutching at Harun's tunic.
Harun lifted him gently, Zaliyah usually weight like paper but today the weight of the fur coat and the baby made him feel heavy in Harun's arms.
Iruna followed close behind, her hand resting on Zaliyah's wrist as they carried him back to his bed chambers.
As they walked through the quiet, icy halls, the twins didn't need telepathy to know what the other was feeling or thinking. Zaliyah was awake. He was eating properly even more than he did in the palace, he was reading and He was curious as usual.
The "mummy" was gone, and in his place was a boy who was trying to find his way in a world of snow.