#also their ancestors were friends/ Viscerys and Rhedros grew up together 🥹🥹

[siderealxmelody]

Viscerys grins reaching for the dagger to cut deeper into his skin.

"I think he's been given enough no Viscerys?"

Viscerys turned and beamed.

"Rhedros! How are you? I didn't think witches were allowed here."

Rhedros shrugged and looked to Rhain, his eyes inspecting the chain. The links and subtle magic coming off it.

"He will break them."

"And what? Try to kill his Maker? Forget Neculai, Nessanyn will kill him."

Rhedros tapped his finger on his arm moving to begin undoing the chains. His voice low even if Viscerys had wandered to the portraits a few feet away. Rhedros knew he'd still hear, he didn't need his magic or shadows to know that Viscerys was just as cunning as his parents.

"Do not trust them Rhain."

He dragged his eyes to him, shadows sliding through his eyes and around his fingers.

"Do not trust any of them. Find the lighthouse portrait."

He stood leaving Rhain and moving toward Viscerys. The Asteri's blue eyes taking the Turned in over Rhedros shoulder.

"Fond off the Turned Rhedros?"

The male who would become known as the first Darkling shrugged.

"I don't like this chained call it a character flaw. Now, are we going to do something fun or just skulk around this forsaken castle?"

--------

Rhedros exhaled finding Rhain again.

"Good you came. Shadya sent me to fetch you. Can you walk? We can leave tonight."

When the tides had begun to turn, probably earlier if he was being honest he and his siblings had fought with the Fae.

It still ached to turn on the only really parents he knew. But he would survive, he would not die that easily. And if that meant allying with the new powers than so be it.

Shadya was a queen of a small kingdom in the mountains. Barely a speck in the snowy mountains. She'd had sent him to bring her brother back, by any cost.

Viscerys grinned, showing teeth.

"I am a god."

"You're a tyrant."

He stilled straightening to find Nessanyn alone. She held her head high, her eyes cold as she surveyed him. She looked and acted like the queen she was.

Viscerys's face softened but he didn't move.

"Neculai doesn't know."

Nessanyn tilted her head, her good earrings glinting in the candlelight.

"Knows? He knows everything in my life before him that is of importance."

Viscerys's fingers flexed but he didn't move. He only smiled, a sly fox like smile.

"So did you then use me like they all said?"

Nessanyn swept past him, making him step out of the way.

"If you think there could have ever been any other way we happened Viscerys then I question how illustrious and intellectual your bloodline actually is."

She deigned a glance at Rhain brief and unfeeling.

"And clean your blood will you? I don't need my court going into a frenzy if they find some of it."

Viscerys glanced at the small drops, the way they shimmered like molten lava. His words were amused, light - as if this didn't just pick at his heart.

"Are you ordering me then Nessi?"

He didn't move fast enough. The dagger slicing at his cheek and embedding into the wall behind him. She moved holding another to his heart. Viscerys kept very still, if he acted now this entire kingdom would rip him apart.

He'd seen it happen with his siblings and their children. The rooms covered in blood, the children's bones cracked and sucked dry. It had driven them mad till they'd exhausted themselves.

He would not die like his family. He would not leave Arianne without him. He would not spit on the respect that the Orys Lord of The North and Beasts had deigned to give him. He would not dissappoint him by dying so easily.

"Call me that again and I'll rip out your tongue and make your mate choke on it."

She turned and walked away, leaving that other dagger in the wall. Viscerys touched his cheek and finally looked to the Turned.

"So, do you want more?"