#i kinda thought he'd be like 'guess id turn to duke or knight errant or smth' or just bluster but he was like 'nah im dead by black magic'

[forgottenarthur]

50. Writer's preference - "And what if it is not you?"

The barb stung and Arthur turned away as quickly as if she had struck him.

These walks had become something of a tradition between the Prince and former Princess over the rolling weeks. With the out of doors near unpassable, Arthur's mornings had shifted to a shorter indoor practice before dawn, followed by a brief repast and then a stroll through the Orangery with the Lady Aria. Though they still argued as often as they didn't, there was something free and flowing in these conversations -- a strange sense that no subject was off limits...And that every single one was somehow taboo. It was perhaps true that they had each been raised as royalty, but it seemed their worlds could not have been more different.

Today, the subject had fallen to that all-encompassing theme of his life, the most pressing topic in the empire, and the one least likely ever to be openly addressed: Roderick's line of succession. It was an ache in his gut, this, a hill he had run up all his childhood only to find a sheer rockface confronting him. Now, scrambling for footholds in the brutal cliffside, it was a race to the top against those he loved most -- a climb now far too high to risk the drop. It was success or the death of all meaning. But what was he to do? Throw his siblings from the sides? They too held on by meager fingertips and he could not bear to think of them dashed against the teeth of the unforgiving stone so far below.

Arthur's jaw clenched. He kept her pace, but he no longer looked at her as she spoke; heard her only as if from a great distance. What was there to say? Yet, her last words burned, searing like vinegar in his cuts, and he turned sharply towards her, a rush sounding in his head.

"What? You favor someone else?" he demanded, all effort at bluster or calm stripped away. Surprise seemed to register in his face and, pressing his eyes shut, he shook his head, realizing she meant this only as rhetoric and, with a look of defeat, he sighed; shook his head. "How should I know? It would be the end for me."

He didn't look at her, now, gaze straying upwards towards the gently nodding trees, branches heavy and sagging with fruit. He thought of the tart-sweet of them, tawny and opening with a kind of crack. Fibrous chambers of juice attended the tiny seeds at the center and this, then, was life. Even trees limned their children with sweet cushions against the harsh reality of the world around them. When he laughed, it was a bitter sound.

Sighing, Arthur shook his head. "Aria, I--" but he stopped. He'd not said her name so baldly before and he gestured, helpless, voice trapped within his throat.

Her eyes were dark: not mere chocolate, but something else as if the sea had leaked into them and tossed against stormy shores within her mind. Her face was set, but he could not read it. He searched for something written there, something designed for him to read: he wanted it. He knew the message he wished to read. A very simple message. He wanted to read it again and again, see it roiling within the storm of her eyes. But there was nothing. She was no harbor. She was, perhaps, another deathly drop.

Aria lifted her chin. "Go on."

"I don't know what will happen if my father chooses someone else any more than you do. But I do know I will be a threat to whoever is chosen, simply for having been in the running, and..."

And if it were Edmund who were selected, whom Arthur regarded as the most likely alternative, he would not expect to long outlive his father -- or even his father's choice. Enemies of the House of Calainon had a way of disappearing. Arthur was not altogether certain they even lifted a finger: they were witches, after all. Likely, all they needed do was wish for a thing, and their dark magic did the rest. Edmund might not wish him gone, perhaps...but Amira would not hesitate. He could not help but think that would make for a horrible ending, all the demons of hell rising at her command. His would be a silent end, he had no doubt, yet he knew, too, that if it were by Amira's hand, he would die howling.

If Aria had said something else, Arthur had not heard it. At last, she said: "And what if the Emperor doesn't choose? What happens to us all, then?"

Arthur stopped short, and Aria beside him. "Then it'd be war."

He walked out without another word.