Chapter Text
{It starts in a council meeting}
The council chambers were warmer than they had any right to be. Stone walls meant to keep winter at bay now trapped the heat in, holding it until the air itself felt stale. Outside, the season had been cruel — the relentless sun had turned the fields brown and brittle. Inside the palace, no one could pretend the kingdom was untouched. The heat clung to everything: the halls, the table, the men who gathered there. It was the reason they had been summoned, and the reason no one spoke lightly.
Lord Edison sat at the end of the great table, as he had for over twenty years, he straightened his back despite the ache settling into his bones. He is not as young as he was when he first rose to this position but now was not the time to think about his hurting joints, he needs to focus on the meeting and the king.
He looks from the King to the Prince sitting at his right hand. Prince Arthur was listening in silence, fingers tapping on the table, clearly fighting off boredom.
Edison sighed inwardly. The young simply did not have the attention span his generation had possessed.
“The grain taxes will need to be gathered and brought to the credential," Edison said, folding his hands. “Then we will be able to make sure those that are most prudent receive it.”
The king nodded slowly.
But the prince did not. Arthur’s eyes lifted, not to Edison, but past him—toward the window, toward anything else. When he spoke, his voice was calm, almost courteous.
“Or,” the prince said, “we make sure that those who actually grow the grain get it before we give it all to the nobleman.”
A few councilors shifted in their seats. Edison felt a faint tightening in his chest. This was not a disagreement—that was expected. This was a dismissal.
“I advised what has kept this kingdom stable,” Edison replied carefully. “As I always have.”
Arthur finally looked at him then. The prince’s gaze was sharp, assessing, and entirely without warmth.
“Yes,” he said. “So you have.”
The meeting continued, but Edison found himself speaking less. Each time he offered counsel, the prince countered it with ease, never raising his voice, never showing anger—only a quiet certainty that made Edison feel, for the first time, like a relic rather than a guide.
By the time the king dismissed the council, Edison understood something he had never had to consider before.
The crown would soon pass to a man who did not trust him.
And worse—one who might already be deciding how long Edison would remain useful.
He had seen what happens when a councilor fails to carry favour with a new ruler. Quickly shuffled back to their homelands to never be heard or cared about again.
At the time, he had thought it necessary, sending the old out to pasture to make room for the younger and the smarter (him) but now the thought that he too will be facing such irrelevance makes his stomach drop.
He knew he needed to act quickly; he needed to make the prince look at him favorably.
But what could he do? What could he possibly give to a prince that he doesn't already have?
He hears the door and the prince goes through there standing the Prince’s manservant standing far too uniformly for a high level servant. He could see the Prince's eyes lighting up when he saw the young man.
Then a thought hit him, a dark treacherous thought.
It was an open secret in the castle that the prince was in love with his manservant and that the servant did not return his affection. He wonders what the prince would give to the man that gave him what he wants most in the world.
–
He would have to be careful. Magic was still never much illegal but if he could pull this off, he could insure his and his families' relevance for decades to come.