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i.
Destiny was a heavy burden. She knew this as the daughter of a noble house, knew this as the wife of a man whose social standing outstripped even her own, knew this as a mother carrying a child who would be weighed down by their family name and honourable bloodline from the moment they drew breath. However, she never expected her child's destiny to be even greater than that.
The first time she'd held her newborn son – Edmond, that was the name they'd decided on together – she'd reached out and traced his tiny, perfect features with her fingertips, as if to map them to memory. His hair colour matched hers, but the shape of his nose and eyes were definitely from his father, as her husband so proudly pointed out as he gestured to their son's face. She reached out for his little hand and smiled as it reflexively curled around her finger when their skin made contact.
It was only then that she noticed the flash of deep blue on the back of his hand. For a brief moment she thought it was a horrific bruise, but a closer look revealed a raised, scintillating area of skin that resembled a precious jewel. She looked at her husband, a rapidly growing feeling of dread pressing down upon her as their eyes met. Their tiny newborn son stared back at them through unfocused eyes, lips drawn into a heavy pout that heralded the discontent mewl that escaped his lips a moment later.
It seemed that their son would shoulder an even greater destiny than they could have ever foreseen.
ii.
As it turned out, the gems that Grand Sorcerer Huey bestowed upon his followers could be passed down through family bloodlines. She didn't know exactly how it occurred – the workings of Huey's mind were a mystery even to his most loyal allies – but it seemed that it was her own blood that had resulted in this burden being imposed onto their newborn son. Some distant relative had been part of the Grand Sorcerer's clan a few generations back according to family records, something that may have been what originally elevated her family to nobility in the first place. The guilt ate at her heart like a physical illness as she cradled Edmond in her arms and held him as if the Grand Sorcerer was about to burst him and spirit him away.
They employed the services of a healer, a well-respected older man from the Water Territory who claimed he'd had previous experience with the gemstones. He cordially chats to them about a young boy whom he'd visited in his home territory about six months ago who had also been born with a gem embedded in his body; while he does this, he examines the gem on Edmond's hand and their son screams bloody murder in protest. The skin around the gem and the gem itself are extremely sensitive, he decides to tell them at that moment. Placing some sort of jewellery setting piece around it or using gloves would help to alleviate that, and it would get more tolerable once Edmond grew older. Infants were poor at regulating their own essence as it was and those with gemstones had a huge amount of it, so it was a problematic situation but not necessarily a dangerous one. They shouldn’t worry about their son suddenly being taken in the night; Huey had shown very little interest in the children who were born with gems, even when directly contacted. Instead he chose to seek them out – or have them seek him out – when they were older and more adept at handling essence. They just had to look out for irregularities with their son’s health the way any parents would.
His final words before leaving their manor were a warning to never remove the gem from their son's body, because it would cause disability or even death. It was very late in the evening by the time they were left alone in their chambers, and Edmond had fallen into a deep sleep in his cradle. Neither she nor her husband slept well that night.
iii.
Despite the uncertainty that had clouded their lives when their son was born, Edmond grew into a happy and healthy young boy, albeit not a typical one. He was an oddly diligent and obedient child; while he certainly had his moments of immaturity just as any child would, he spent most of his time in his father's office watching him work. When his father was out of the house or too busy to both watch their son and attend to his duties, Edmond would come and find her and together they'd sit in the drawing room with a book of fairytales and she would read to him. He seemed completely absorbed in the stories of heroes and knights, of chivalry and honour meant to serve a greater purpose than oneself. One of his favourite games was to have her sit in a cave he made out of the blankets and cushions on his bed and pretend to be the daring rescuer, coming to save her from being hopelessly lost in the "caverns".
As Edmond continued to grow, it occurred to her that her son didn't seem to have many friends his own age. It wasn't a matter of him struggling to socialise so much as he didn't seem interested in it at all; he wasn't impolite and carefully remembered his etiquette lessons when interacting with others but it simply did not appeal to him. It was a concern for sure, but Edmond seemed content with how things were and she didn't wish to force him to do anything he didn't want to do.
Edmond decided that he wanted to be a knight himself one day after one of the guards posted to their area in the noble district found and returned her son's single beloved childhood toy. It was a blue stuffed rabbit that had been sent to their house on the announcement of his birth by her older sister, her sister's wife and their large brood of children; it had become lost while they were out on a walk together and Edmond had been trying his best not to show his sorrow at the loss, but his trembling, pouting bottom lip had told her the true tale. Once the bunny was back in his arms he'd looked up at the knight with wide, shining eyes and thanked him in the most polite way he could manage as a small child. The next time they were at the market together he begged her to buy him a tiny wooden sword for the rabbit, and she'd spent the rest of the afternoon sewing the sword to the rabbit's front paw for him.
And so while other children played at being knights, her son practised actual drills used to put squires in training through their paces under the watchful eye of his stuffed rabbit friend. She continued to worry for him, but as her son grows the other children begin to notice his unusually high level of essence and start to avoid him on their own. In a uniquely cruel way, perhaps it was for the best that he preferred to be alone.
iv.
They made the joint decision as parents to not inform Edmond of what his gem represented until he grew older. He already had so much pressure on him as their heir of a noble house; combining that with his inability to be easy on himself and relax, they were afraid that it might be too much for one child to handle. He obviously knew that it was unusual, and she was unsure if she could lie to him if he asked about it now that he was older and a little more mature, but he hadn't asked about it since he was very young and so the point was moot. She'd honestly be surprised if he hadn't figured at least part of it out by himself at this point. The other children avoided him for a reason, and children weren't known to be kind nor subtle.
Truthfully, she and her husband didn't really know much about the sort of man that Grand Sorcerer Huey was. They'd both exchanged the most basic of pleasantries in the name of etiquette with the older man at parties thrown by the other nobles and the king, but class divide existed even within noble circles and neither of their families were quite so powerful as to sit by the king's side as the Grand Sorcerer could. Because of this, their meetings with Huey were hardly significant.
Back when Edmond was a newborn she'd tried searching back through her memories to find a moment where they'd interacted with Huey that could have indicated that he held any power over their child being born with a gemstone, but even their most lengthy conversation had been a mere few sentences long and had been congratulating them on their then-recent engagement. That had been quite a few years before Edmond had come along in the first place, and there had been no indication that Huey even remembered them from their previous meetings. It took her time to get out of her own head and remember that there were most likely children with gems out there whose parents had never had the chance to see Huey, much less speak to him. With her rudimentary knowledge of the process, she could only assume that Edmond had inherited the gem by pure chance.
She didn't know what she thought of Grand Sorcerer Huey as a person. A few pleasantries exchanged in a setting where etiquette was paramount was hardly an accurate way to judge a person's true character. He certainly seemed very self-confident and assured of his own power. He seemed to expect to be waited on hand and foot when out and about, but that was no different from most of the Light Kingdom's nobility. She'd met a great number of demanding people in her life and from her brief personal interactions with Huey, he was at least tolerable. He reminded her a little of one particularly smug tutor that she'd had as a girl; very much aware of his superiority over his subjects and of his own intellect, and not at all afraid to express it. Between his noble birth, his aspirations of knighthood and his link to Huey and the strict standards to which he held himself, there was a concern in the back of her mind that Edmond would never be able to express himself as a normal person would.
The news that Huey had vanished became common knowledge when Edmond was still young. The sharp swell of relief she felt turned out to be short-lived, because she knew what his disappearance meant for the world.
v.
Edmond became a knight's squire at the age of twelve, and by all accounts worked extremely hard despite his fellow squires wondering why a nobleman's son would want to work such a difficult job. For many of the common folk, they viewed knighthood as a possible way to be elevated into nobility. For a noble child to want to join the knights was an oddity at best and an insult at worst, but Edmond merely overlooked his peers' opinions and got on with his duties. Her husband got the opportunity to speak to the knight under whom their son was apprenticed, and he had nothing but positive things to say about Edmond's attitude towards hard work, his politeness and his eagerness to please. As it turned out, the knight was close friends with another knight who'd also recently employed the services of a young man wanting to become a trainee knight, and through that link Edmond made his first friend. The other young boy's name was Lucien, and soon the two were inseparable. Lucien had been the first person outside of their immediate family to truly understand the sort of person Edmond was, and for a while she had suspected that there was something more to their relationship but Edmond had denied it easily, and her son was a terrible liar.
They advanced to being knights-in-training together, keeping up their friendly rivalry throughout the years. Edmond became close to Lucien's fiance as well, and then with Lucien's brother, the Captain of the Knights. Edmond seemed happier, less uptight with Lucien around, and for the first time she wasn't quite so worried about him.
And then came the petty territorial dispute that took Lucien's life.
Edmond had been the one to find him. He was a grown man now, a knight of the Kingdom, and she still longed to gather him up in her arms and comfort him the way she used to when he was a child because she could tell how badly he was hurting at the loss. Lucien had been the glue that had held their little group together; Lucien's fiance moved away from Light Territory a few months later to begin the long process of healing her heart. Edmond and the Captain fell back into the working relationship of a superior and subordinate, and that new dynamic only grew stronger once Edmond was promoted to Vice Captain.
Edmond was being harder on himself than ever. He buried himself in work. He left before sunrise and returned home long after she and her husband had retired for the night. She would wait up to talk to him on some nights, and he usually dismissed her concerns and said he was tired, but fine. However, the dark rings around his eyes kept growing, he began to skip meals, and he seemed exhausted despite his protests.
She wished that she could make it better, but she wasn't sure how.
vi.
Edmond was home from work early for the first time in months, and he didn't seem particularly happy about it. When she inquired about what was upsetting him, he deflected for a while before he revealed that he'd been given a new assignment that he found particularly frustrating, but didn't go any further. Him speaking of his work at all was a rarity in itself, and so she decided to leave it at that and change the subject. She began to hear whispers of the Grand Sorcerer's return not long after that night, and it wasn't hard to put two and two together. When she asked him outright if his new assignment was related to the Grand Sorcerer, he didn't seem surprised that she had figured it out.
The whispers she'd heard through the grapevine had only been half-correct; the Grand Sorcerer had returned, but he wasn't Huey. In fact, according to her son, he was a complete and utter shameless fraud, and to hear her son say something so strongly negative about another person was an extreme oddity. Etiquette demanded politeness and restraint in all public settings, but Edmond seemed to take it to a whole other extreme by not daring to whisper a negative word about anyone… until now, it seemed. She wondered what sort of man the new Grand Sorcerer was, to be able to get under his skin like that.
Edmond gradually calmed in relation to his new post, and little by little she witnessed a change in him. At first it was little things, like him seeming a little less tired and being more lively and enthusiastic. Then she would catch him smiling off into the distance about nothing. And then came what was probably the most unusual thing she'd ever seen Edmond do: when she'd asked about the Grand Sorcerer during dinner one night, her son had actually blushed and mentioned with a fake air of nonchalance that the Grand Sorcerer would be visiting their manor to learn proper etiquette in a few days’ time. Edmond had cleared his throat three separate times before replying with his thanks when she'd said the Grand Sorcerer would be welcome in their home and that she was looking forward to meeting him.
So that's how it was, then. It was much different to how he'd reacted when she'd asked after Lucien, so much so that she didn't dare ask any more invasive questions.
The Grand Sorcerer wasn't the only one Edmond spoke of, though. He spoke of a young man with whom he enjoyed spending time in the kitchen (said young man must have had the patience of the God of Klein to put up with Edmond's odd taste in food), a priest hailing from the Water Territory whom he often met for tea, and an odd but well-meaning man who shared his love of reading… but none of them drew out the same involuntary blush that the mention of the Grand Sorcerer did. The latter of those men ended up accompanying the Grand Sorcerer on his visit as well, and she was thrilled to receive two of the people who had been making her son's life happier and more enriched into her home.
The other clan member was a cheerful and friendly white-haired man named Blade who greeted her enthusiastically and managed to walk perfectly with correct etiquette even while wearing high heels and a lengthy maid dress – her younger self would have been jealous of his skill. He seemed like a good friend to Edmond and that made her happy, but most of her focus remained on the new Grand Sorcerer himself, the man to whom her son would be forever intrinsically linked.
Eiden was nothing like Huey in the best ways possible. He was humble and unassuming, friendly and caring. He was polite although unpolished in terms of protocol, but there was a wonderful charm to him that she only saw from someone as truly genuine as he was. His good-natured teasing of her son was rather adorable, too; it was certainly different to how she'd been courted by Edmond's father. This was much more private and casual, and remembering the judging eyes of the older nobles upon her and her then-betrothed the first time they'd presented publicly as a couple, she couldn't help but think this way had more merit than the traditional method they’d been bound to. Edmond certainly seemed happy enough, if a little flustered and out of his depth.
It took her a while to catch Grand Sorcerer Eiden alone, and his first action after greeting her was to apologise for his unpolished demeanour. As far as she was concerned he could just be himself when they're talking casually in private as acquaintances, and he smiled brightly when she told him as much. She chatted to him for a bit before deciding to get to the root of the reason she sought him out: what exactly did he think of her son?
Eiden's smile only widened as he began to sing Edmond's praises; he was a hard worker, dedicated, extremely skilled and disciplined with a powerful sense of duty, the very picture of how a knight should be. But, thankfully, that wasn't all he had to say. Edmond was kind, he struggled to express himself but was working hard to be more open, he constantly worried about everyone else above himself, his love of desserts was surprising but charming, and he made the Grand Sorcerer feel safe with his mere presence. But perhaps he should stop working quite so hard, because he was so dedicated that Eiden often worried about him.
Eiden seemed to realise that he'd been rambling and offered her a sheepish grin in apology, but she dismissed his concern with a soft laugh and a gentle hand on his shoulder.
"Eiden, please take care of my son."
The man didn’t seem particularly surprised upon hearing her words, and accepted the burden that she'd selfishly placed upon him with good grace. It was then that Edmond joined them and questioned what they were talking about, but she shook her head and excused herself from the conversation. She watched contentedly from the dining room doorway for a moment as she went to leave, feeling strangely light as her son and Eiden continued to talk about something that made Edmond blush. They were quickly joined by Blade, and Edmond decided that now was the perfect time for them to get back to their etiquette lessons.
After all the worry her son had caused her over the years, it seemed as though he’d found some reliable and dear people to share his burdens with. And what was more, she felt comfortable in her decision to leave her son to a man such as Eiden.