It had been a long day and Andreas was finally making his way back to his room to rest, though the sun was still high and bright in the afternoon sky, so searingly present that the Archspell was completely invisible behind it, washed out by ordinary light.
He had a great deal to process. The lesson had filled him with more questions than answers, which was usually how he preferred things, except today the questions had a different quality to them. Heavier. More personal. He wanted to know more about demon history, more about his family's lineage, more about the ancestors whose portraits lined that dusty corridor.
And most importantly he wanted to know about the red haired woman standing beside his father in that final portrait.
She was presumably his father's mate. But where was she? He had never seen her in the palace, never heard her mentioned, never encountered any sign of her existence beyond that single image. And his father had said that demons married strong mates to bear strong offspring, so what did that make her to him? What did that make him to her?
Andreas was nearly at his door, torn between the pull of sleep and the pull of answers, when the choice resolved itself easily. He had never been particularly good at leaving questions alone.
The problem was he had no idea where to find Arden. It had always been Arden who came to him. He set off through the palace without a clear direction, checking the places Arden usually appeared from, finding none of them productive.
He found Barderossa instead, near the eastern wing, carrying some kind of magical instrument Andreas didn't immediately recognize.
"Barderossa."
"Young Master?"
"Barderossa, I need to ask you something."
Barderossa immediately handed the instrument to a pair of nearby maids with quiet instructions and turned his full attention to Andreas with the composed readiness he always brought to the young master's questions.
"Barderossa, do you know who the red haired woman in the portrait with the lord is?"
The blood drained from Barderossa's face so completely and so instantly that Andreas could actually watch it happen. If his mana circulation could have stopped in that moment it would have.
"Young Master, it seems there is an emergency requiring my immediate attention."
And then Barderossa teleported away.
Andreas stood in the corridor alone, looking at the space where his teacher had been a moment ago.
It was suspicious. He noted that clearly and filed it. But he was also genuinely tired, and the mystery would still be there tomorrow, so he let it go for the moment and continued walking.
He tried Kaela next, finding her near the training grounds. The moment he began forming the question she walked directly through a wall.
Through a wall.
The maids wouldn't approach him closely enough to address, which was not new but was newly inconvenient. Andreas stood in the corridor for a moment, looked at the wall Kaela had disappeared through, and decided that sleep was probably the correct choice and that he would ask Arden tomorrow during their territory tour.
Except Arden did not come the next day.
Or the day after that.
And then the day of his next lesson with his father arrived.
Arden was standing outside the lord's office door. Andreas stopped when he saw him, surprised enough that he didn't immediately speak.
"Arden, where have you been?"
Arden was quiet for a long time. Long enough that the silence became its own kind of answer.
"Young Master," he said finally, and his voice had something in it Andreas had never heard there before, something worn through, "I hope you continue your life as you always have. I desperately wish for that." He paused. "If I could, I would prevent you from knowing what you are about to know. But it seems time has made that impossible." Another pause, shorter this time. "Please don't blame yourself. Whatever you hear today, please don't."
Before Andreas could form a single response Arden stepped back into the shadows of the corridor and was gone.
Andreas stood alone in front of the door.
There was only one thing left to do.
"It is I, Andreas, my lord. May I enter?"
"Come in."
Andreas entered and waited by the chair, noticeably more settled than he had been three days ago. Some of the stiffness had gone out of the ritual of it. Khalid gestured and he sat.
"Before we continue today's lesson," Khalid said, "is there anything you wish to ask about the previous one?"
There was, in fact.
"Who was the red haired woman in the portrait?"
Khalid's pupils contracted slightly. A small and involuntary thing. He turned slowly away from Andreas toward the window that overlooked the full expanse of Valekor territory, and Andreas lost his expression entirely, could no longer read anything from his face, could only see the rigid line of his shoulders and the long black hair and the black horns and the window full of his territory beyond him.
The silence stretched. It stretched long enough that Andreas began to think his father simply would not answer.
Then Khalid began speaking.
"Vivian Valekor née Ashspire was my wife. Another archdemon, like you and me. She was also your mother."
'Mother?'
"What is a mother?"
Something crossed Khalid's eyes then. Not quite surprise. Something closer to the recognition of a consequence arriving exactly as it was always going to arrive.
"It seems Arden thoroughly hid things from you."
He turned back to the window. The territory spread below it, three hundred thousand demons going about their ordinary afternoon, completely unaware of what was being said in this room. Khalid looked at it for a long time. Then he turned back to his son and looked at him properly, at the blood red tipped horns that were Vivian's, at the blood red pupils that were entirely hers, and something moved behind his full black eyes that he did not allow to reach his face.
Truth be told Khalid had never hated Andreas. He simply had never known how to face him. How to look at this child who wore Vivian's colors and be anything other than the thing he had become in the moment she died.
"I wanted you to die."
Andreas went very still.
"No, I ordered your death. When Vivian was giving birth to you, your horns were shredding her from the inside. We could save you or we could save her. I chose her." He held Andreas's gaze without flinching from it. "But you were more tenacious than I could have imagined. Even with all the healers in the territory working without pause, we could not save her."
The room was completely silent.
Neither of them knew how to continue. The words had been said and they sat in the air of the office between them like something that could not be taken back and would not dissolve on its own.
Khalid looked at his son and his son looked at him and the portrait at the end of the dusty corridor existed somewhere in the palace behind them both, the red haired woman with one hand on her round belly.
"Go rest for today," Khalid said finally. "Come back tomorrow."
Andreas stood slowly. He looked at the man in front of him, his father, he now understood, in every sense of the word and all that entailed, and something in his face suggested that the moment he stepped through that door and it closed behind him, Khalid Valekor might finally allow himself to do something he had perhaps not allowed himself to do in ten years.
Andreas turned and left the room.
The sounds of a man crying came trough the lords office.