Chapter 2: The reverie
The applause faded into the gentle rustle of silk and the low hum of conversation. The presence at Dane’s elbow was a cool vacuum, pulling all the warmth from the space around him.
He turned.
Prince Wren stood there, a study in controlled stillness. His stormy eyes were now a calmer, deeper green, but the intensity hadn’t diminished—it had just been compressed, layered under ice. Astrea sat at his heel, her tufted tail sweeping the polished floor once, then going still.
“Morgana,” Wren said, his voice quiet. It wasn’t a command, but it carried the absolute gravity of one.
“I was dancing,” Morgana said, squeezing Dane’s arm before letting go. She didn’t sound defensive, just factual.
“I saw. It was… inventive.” Wren’s gaze flicked down to her slippers, then back to her face. A hint of something—amusement? exasperation?—briefly softened the line of his mouth. “Your otter is attempting to eat the centerpiece orchids. You should intervene before he makes himself sick.”
Morgana gasped, spinning around. “Ripple! No!” She shot Dane a quick, apologetic glance and darted off into the crowd, a silver blur of concern.
Leaving them alone.
The noise of the feast seemed to recede, pushing back to the edges of a sudden, taut silence that stretched between them. Dane could smell Wren’s scent now, clear and distinct over the flowers and perfume: rain, cold stone, and the faint, clean aroma of parchment. It was unsettlingly familiar.
“You used her as a human shield,” Wren stated. His eyes scanned Dane, pausing on the orchid pinned over the wine stain. His expression didn’t change, but Dane saw his throat move as he swallowed.
“I danced with her,” Dane corrected, shrugging one shoulder. “She’s delightful. You should try it sometime. The dancing, I mean. Not that you need a shield. You’re practically a walking fortress.”
He expected cold reproach. A sharp remark about protocol. He braced for it.
Wren didn’t bite. Instead, he looked past Dane’s shoulder, toward where Morgana was now scooping a contrite-looking otter into her arms. His stern facade gentled, just for a second. A real, unguarded warmth softened his eyes. “She is,” he said quietly, almost to himself. “Delightful.”
The simple, unadorned affection in his voice was a physical blow. It wasn’t showy. It wasn’t for an audience. It was just truth. Wren loved his sister. Deeply, plainly. Dane watched as Morgana whispered to the otter, her nose touching its wet one, and Wren’s gaze tracked the interaction with a protective tenderness that made Dane’s own chest feel hollow.
Something acid and hot shifted in his gut. It wasn’t jealousy, not exactly. It was a deeper, more desolate ache. An awareness of a gulf he could never cross.
He looked from Wren’s profile back to Morgana, seeing the easy way the courtiers smiled at her, the way Wren’s shoulders relaxed a fraction when he watched her. This was what it was. A family. Not a political alliance wearing the mask of one. They belonged to each other. They worried about each other’s otters eating flowers. They cleared hawthorn thickets for each other’s awkward arrivals.
The hollow in his chest expanded into a cavern.
His gaze, desperate for a counterpoint, for anything to prove the ache wrong, swept across the pavilion. It landed on his father.
King Theron of the Sun Court stood near a pillar of iridescent glass, a goblet of fiery goldwine in his hand. He was surrounded by a knot of lesser solar nobles, his broad, gilt-winged back to his son. Even from here, Dane could see the rigid set of his shoulders beneath the ornate, sunburst-emblazoned jacket. As if sensing the weight of Dane’s stare, the king half-turned.
Their eyes met across the moonlit space.
Theron’s face, handsome and severe, carved by centuries of rule, showed no paternal warmth. No spark of recognition beyond the political. His ice-blue eyes—so like Dane’s, yet utterly alien—narrowed. The look was swift, a blade drawn and sheathed in a heartbeat. It wasn’t just disapproval. It was a colder thing: dismissal. A assessment that found Dane wanting, as always. Then Theron turned fully back to his companions, laughing at some comment, the sound sharp and hollow to Dane’s ears.
Suddenly, he wasn’t twenty-five in a moonlit pavilion. He was eight years old, standing in the blazing throne room of the Sunstone Spire, his small golden wings trembling. He’d just attempted his first formal bow at a high council. He’d stumbled, clipping the edge of the Sun King’s dais with his wingtip. The sound had echoed. The courtiers had stifled laughs behind bejeweled hands.
His father hadn’t laughed. He hadn’t even frowned. He’d just looked at him, that same icy, measuring stare, and then gazed out over the crowd as if his fourth son had simply ceased to exist. The silence that followed had been hotter and more punishing than any shouted rebuke.
The memory was a vise around his lungs. The music, the perfume, Wren’s presence beside him—it all blurred, smearing into the heat and glare of that distant hall. He felt unmoored, a scrap of parchment caught in a crosswind.
He had no glib answer, no deflection ready. The fortress of his charm had crumbled, leaving exposed rubble.
The fortress of his charm had crumbled, leaving exposed rubble. He was back in the Sunstone Spire, but not the throne room. He was seven, watching from an archway as his three elder brothers, their wings bright and new, received polished hunting knives from their father’s hands. Theron’s laughter was a rich, rare sound, reserved for them. The next morning, they’d all leave at dawn for the high moors, their excited voices echoing down the hall.
Dane had been told to stay. Again.
“You’re too young, little spark,” his nursemaid Olena had soothed, her hand rough but kind on his head. “You’ll stay with me and old Barley.” The aging sun-hound had thumped his tail lazily on the tiles. That was his company. The help and the dog. He’d pressed his face into Barley’s warm fur to hide the burning in his eyes.
The whispers started not long after. He heard them in corridors, from courtiers who thought a child couldn’t understand thinly veiled pity.
“The king barely looks at him.”
“A little wild thing, that one. All fire, no focus.”
“Incandescently untamable. Like a weed in a curated garden.”
It wasn’t long before he grew up believing the words. If he was only seen as wild fire, then he would burn. He’d be incorrigible, brilliant, and disruptive. He’d give them a show so spectacular they’d never look past it to see the hollow, lonely boy behind the glare. Dane’s insides became twisted and thorned like a feral rose bush, a tangled mess of hurt and defiance that snagged anyone who tried to get close.
It was easier, so much easier, for Dane to pretend to be careless than to let others see how lost he truly was. The performance was exhausting, but it was safer than the silence of being overlooked.
“Prince Dane?”
The voice was soft, feminine, and entirely in the present. He blinked, the scorching memory receding like a tide, leaving him cold and oddly damp. A moon-fae maid in a simple grey dress stood before him, curtseying. She held a sleepy-looking Morgana by the hand. The princess’s head was nodding, her free arm clutching Ripple the otter like a stuffed toy.
“I’m to take Her Highness to bed,” the maid murmured.
“Right. Of course.” Dane’s voice sounded rough to his own ears. He cleared his throat, forcing a lighter tone. “Sleep well, moon-child. Mind the otter doesn’t steal the blankets.”
Morgana mumbled something incoherent, offering him a dreamy smile before allowing herself to be led away. He watched the small, trusting figure disappear into the darker garden path, the silver otter a smudge in the shadows. The sight was a sweet, fresh wound.
He took a sharp, deliberate breath. The cool night air helped. He fixed his expression, smoothing the haunted look from his eyes and settling the familiar, rakish tilt back onto his mouth. It was a mask clicked into place. It was easier to hide than let others know how lost he truly felt.
Then he turned to face Wren again.
The moon prince was watching him, had been watching him the whole time. Wren’s earlier sharpness was gone, replaced by a disturbing, silent acuity. He’d seen the crack. Dane could feel it. Those green eyes saw too much.
“Wow, look at you,” Dane said, the words tumbling out fast to bridge the silence. He gestured vaguely at Wren’s face. “With a smile like that? You’ll be able to scare off any potential partner. Lessons aren’t just for kids, you know. I could give you some pointers.”
He expected a frosty retort. A dismissal.
Wren’s lips did not smile. But something flickered in his eyes—not anger, not annoyance. A faint, perplexed glimmer, like light catching on the depths of a deep well. A bit of mirth, carefully restrained. “Is that so?”
The response, so quiet and devoid of bite, threw Dane further off-balance. He leaned into the momentum, crossing his arms over his chest. His wings flexed behind him, a nervous energy seeking release. “It is. I have tons of skills. Truly, a vast and wondrous array.”
He leaned in slightly, dropping his voice. He let a slow, deliberate wink crease the corner of his eye, a gesture both seductive and profoundly defensive. “Unlike you, I’ve always been better at mastering different things. Practical things. As opposed to just reading about them in some dusty scroll.”
He held the gaze, the wink fading into a challenging stare. He was dangling bait, desperately hoping Wren would snap at it, would give him a firm, familiar shove back into the roles they knew. Sun rogue. Moon prude. Simple.
Wren didn’t move. He just studied Dane’s face, his own a calm, unreadable pool. The noise of the feast seemed to swell around them, a distant wave. Astrea, at Wren’s feet, let out a soft, chuffing breath.
Dane held Wren’s gaze a little while longer, the silence stretching into something perilously close to real. Then movement caught his eye. Past Wren’s shoulder, across the shimmering crowd, his father was staring again.
This look was different. It was a direct order. King Theron’s face was stone, his eyes chips of solar ice. The message from that morning hissed in Dane’s memory: You will be on your best behavior. You will not embarrass the Dawn Court with your… theatricality. Control your impulses.
Suddenly, he looked past Wren and held his father’s gaze. He didn’t nod. He didn’t blink.
There was a brief, electric moment between them. A silent clash of wills. A simmering, singular fury ignited in Dane’s gut, a heat so intense it sparked through the connection of his feathers. His wings gave a subtle, involuntary pulse, radiating a low, dry warmth like sun-baked stone.
The heat washed over Wren, who still stood before him. Wren’s eyes widened a fraction, a flicker of surprise at the sudden, tangible anger washing against his skin.
Dane rolled his eyes, a harsh, dismissive gesture. He sidestepped Wren, his shoulder purposely brushing the moon prince’s arm as he moved past. “So,” Dane said, his voice now all false brightness and sharp edges. “Did you just come over to catalog my deficiencies, or was that your best attempt at being a good host? Checking the box? ‘Moon Prince makes polite, icy chatter with Sun Disaster’?”
A fae barmaid, weaving through the guests with a practiced grace, passed by with a tray of crescent-moon silver cups filled with dark, star-dotted wine. Dane snagged one without breaking stride. As he did, he let the lowered, sensitive tip of his primary wing feather trail slowly, deliberately, along the elegant line of her own gossamer wing.
She didn’t startle. She leaned into the touch, a subtle arch of her back, and glanced over her shoulder. Her smile was a clear, flirtatious promise in the moonlight before she continued on her path.
Dane chewed on the rim of the cold metal cup, the taste of bitter nightberries and wilderness flooding his mouth. He noticed, with immense satisfaction, how annoyed Wren looked. The prince’s jaw was tight, his hands clasped rigidly behind his back.
Dane kept walking, aiming for the open archway that led to a quieter terrace. He called over his shoulder, his voice carrying just enough to be heard above the music. “You know, seeing the Moon Prince at a party is like seeing a white rabbit in a green forest.” He took a long swallow. “Out of place. And downright boring.”
He didn’t wait for a reply. He pushed out into the cooler air of the night, the sounds of the feast muffled instantly. The terrace was empty, flanked by luminescent vines that drooped with heavy, glowing blossoms. The relative silence rang in his ears.
He set the cup down on the balustrade with a sharp click. He braced his hands on the cool stone, head bowing, wings drooping behind him. The heat in them still pulsed, a shameful testimony to his loss of control. He’d felt the warmth transfer. Wren had felt it. The failure was complete.
Behind him, softer than a shadow, came the sound of a deliberate footfall on the terrace stones. Then another.
Dane didn’t turn. He stared down into the darkened garden, where the paths were veins of crushed pearl in the endless black.
“A white rabbit,” Wren’s voice said, quiet and close. It held no trace of the anger Dane had hoped for. It was pondering, almost analytical. “Prey.”
Dane squeezed his eyes shut. Of course Wren would fixate on that. The predator’s mind.
“You see a metaphor,” Wren continued. His steps were slow, coming to stand parallel to Dane at the balustrade, though he kept a careful foot of distance. “I see an observable fact. Rabbits in open forests are vulnerable. Exposed. They stick to the edges, where the undergrowth is thick.” He paused. Dane could feel his gaze like a physical weight. “You, however, march directly into the clearing. You make a spectacle. You draw every eye.”
“It’s more fun in the clearing,” Dane muttered, still not looking at him.
“Is it?”
The question wasn’t rhetorical. It was genuinely curious. It was the most disarming thing Wren could have said.
Dane finally turned his head. Wren was leaning against the stone, facing him, one hand resting lightly on the surface. His profile was carved by moonlight, all solemn lines and that infuriating, beautiful mouth. He was studying Dane not with courtly judgment, but with a focused, troubling intensity. Astrea was a silent sentinel a few paces behind him, her eyes reflecting the faint light.
“What do you want, Wren?” Dane’s voice was worn thin. The act was crumbling. “A list of my transgressions? I was late. I’m stained. I danced with your sister. I breathed your air. Just write the diplomatic complaint and send it to my father. He’s expecting it.”
Wren was silent for a long moment. The nocturnal garden hummed around them. Finally, he spoke, his words measured. “The complaint was drafted the moment your shadow crossed our border. That is politics.” He shifted, turning fully to face Dane. “I am not here for politics.”
“Then why are you here?” The question burst out, raw and too loud.
Dane laughed, a short, brittle sound.
“No,” Wren said, simply. “You didn’t. You puzzled me. The cruelty was too clumsy. Too obvious. It was a deflection.” He took the smallest step closer. The scent of rain and cedar grew stronger. “The hawk who preens and shrieks on the highest branch is often the one who feels the ground is the most dangerous place to be.”
The accuracy of it was a lance through Dane’s ribs. He had no quip. No deflection. He just stared, trapped.
Wren’s eyes searched his face, the analytical look softening into something else, something dangerously close to understanding. “Your father,” Wren stated, quiet as the night. “It was about him.”
It wasn’t a question.
Dane’s last defense shattered. He looked away, out into the void of the garden, his throat working. He gave the tiniest, almost imperceptible nod.
“He gives the orders,” Wren murmured. “And you rebel. Publicly. Spectacularly. It’s a very old, very painful dance.” He paused.
The offer hung in the air between them, fragile and monumental. It wasn’t about politics or duty. It was a quiet, specific kindness. A seeing.
Dane couldn’t speak. The hollow in his chest was now a chasm, and it was filling with something terrifying and warm.
The hollow in his chest was now a chasm, and it was filling with something terrifying and warm. It felt like drowning in daylight. He opened his mouth, but no sound came out. His gaze snagged on Wren’s hand, resting so casually on the stone between them. The knuckles were pale, the fingers long. A ruler’s hand, not a friend’s.
Wren misinterpreted the silence. He pulled his hand back slowly, tucking it into the pocket of his jacket. “Right,” he said. The gentleness in his voice hardened into something more analytical. Disappointment, maybe. “You need it to be the performance. The predictable rebellion. It’s easier.”
He shook his head slightly, turning to gaze out over the garden. “All this,” he continued, a faint, weary edge entering his tone. “The grand entrance, the wine, the flirtation with the barmaid, irritating my father’s ministers. It isn’t confidence, Dane. It’s a tantrum. A very practiced, very public one.”
The words landed.
They weren't shouted. They were delivered with the calm precision of a surgeon’s scalpel, and they cut deeper than any shouted insult from his father ever had. They burned like acid, eating through the last of that terrifying warmth, leaving only a corrosive, familiar shame.
He loathed Wren in that moment. Loathed the perfect prince, standing in his moonlit garden with his perfect family and his perfect understanding. How dare he? How dare he, of all people, stand there and dissect him? As if his life was a scroll Wren could unroll and annotate with detached, scholarly notes.
His actions were never once done for mirth. They were a desperate, screaming combustion against the void. He was lonely. That solitude was a physical cavity inside him, and he would reach for anything—anger, pleasure, chaos, scorn—just to feel something else solid fill that hollowed space, even for a second.
Dane looked over at Wren. The moonlight carved the scrutiny on his face into something cold and clinical.
A new, brighter fire ignited beneath the acid burn. Because he heard it. Wrapped in the judgment, under the analytical tone, was a flicker of something else. A tightness. A strain. Wren’s voice hadn’t just been assessing. It had been taut with a sharp, familiar edge Dane knew intimately.
Jealousy.
The realization made the anger in his gut boil over.
“You don’t know a damn thing about me,” Dane said, his voice low and rough. He pushed off the balustrade, taking a step into Wren’s space. “Not one damn thing. You see a ‘tantrum’? You have no idea what it’s like.”
He didn’t tell him the rest. He didn’t say that where Wren was the axis around which an entire court, a sister, a people revolved, Dane was a satellite with a decaying orbit. No one truly gave a damn about Dane Aerion unless he was doing a favor, providing a distraction, or fulfilling a function. Even the lovers—the swift, heated encounters in shadowed corners of various courts—they only ever wanted the golden wings, the easy smile, the promise of a wild story. They wanted his looks, his charm, the thrill of pulling the Sun King’s rebellious son into bed. They cared little for him after he’d pleased their bodies, turning away to whisper about him as soon as he dressed.
Wren didn’t retreat. He held his ground, meeting Dane’s heated gaze with that infuriating calm. His green eyes were dark in the low light. “I see you perfectly well, Dane. I don’t need your self-pitying spectacles to do it.”
The sarcastic smile that stretched Dane’s lips felt like a crack in clay. “Oh, you see me?” he scoffed, the sound ugly. “The great Prince Wren, who sees everything. Tell me, then. What’s my next predictable move?”
He leaned in closer, until he could see the faint silvery flecks in Wren’s irises. He could feel the cool energy radiating from the moon prince’s skin, a contrast to his own solar heat. “Since you’ve got me all figured out. Am I going to fly off? Drink myself into a stupor? Find the nearest warm body and fuck the frustration out against a wall? Which part of the script comes next, your highness?”
He was breathing heavily. The words hung between them, crude and violent and true.
Wren’s composure finally fractured. A muscle jumped in his jaw. His eyes flashed, not with anger, but with a raw, startled hurt. He had not expected the coarseness, the direct thrust. He opened his mouth to reply, but no sound came.
From the pavilion, the music shifted again. It was a slower, deeper melody, the kind meant for private conversations in public view. A slice of laughter, bright and artificial, cut through the night.
The sound seemed to recall Wren to himself. He took a deliberate half-step back, putting precise, formal distance between them. The prince’s mask slid back into place, but it was crooked now. The careful seams were visible.
A bitter smile touched his lips. He picked up the forgotten silver cup from the balustrade. The star-dotted wine within was flat and warm now. He drained it in one swallow.