Chapter 4

Alcina follows Brendan into the maze.

Brendan cannot tell if it is foolishness or naivete that compels her to do so, given that anyone with half a brain would have not followed a man they compare to nightmares incarnate, into a labyrinth of which they know nothing about. 

It’s half the reason Breandan had headed in this direction, to begin with, having grown weary already of having to make pleasantries that he has no desire to make.

He had hoped the girl would have enough of a sense of self-preservation, to run away when Brendan gave her the chance.

Instead, the little lamb stumbles in after the lion into his den.

Though his back is turned, Brendan can hear with perfect clarity, the soft footfalls that come to a petering, hesitant stop a few paces away from him. Too frightened to come any closer, then, he surmises. 

He spins on his heel.

Alcina stumbles back a few steps, alarmed by the sudden movement. 

“A jumpy little rabbit, are you?” 

Alcina jerks at the sound - a deep, baritone voice, lower than most voices, enough to mark it as distinct as the face of its speaker. She realizes, a belated moment later, that it had come from her fiance. 

Apprehension and a scowl war on her feature for a moment, as she debates on how to take the comment. As a comment, or an insult.  

Brendan eyes the distance that abysses between them; a safe enough distance, that the rabbit could choose to turn and run, should the predator prove to be... predatory.

He looks up and locks gazes with Alcina, whose own brown eyes widen, almost imperceptibly. 

The first emotion Brendan had ever learned, as a child - at the age when one begins to decipher what human emotions are, from the ones expressed on the features around him - was that of fear.

It is, after all, the emotion he saw projected most and overwhelmingly often when people gazed upon him.

With a little hum, Brendan tilts his head. “Are you afraid?” he asks, and yet, Alcina feels as though it’s phrased as a question merely for empty politeness. 

Her heart pounds a damning rhythm in her chest.

Yes, she thinks. “No,” she says.

Brendan’s eyes, as unmoving as ever, still somehow manage to seem almost- disappointed. Ridiculously enough, it makes Alcina feel ashamed. 

Brendan begins to turn back around, and Alcina takes half a step towards him, impulsively. “I am trying not to be,” she blurts.

and Brendan pauses.

“Why?” He sounds faintly amused.

Did you hear? The youngest daughter of House Clair was born without a gift of her own.

None at all? 

None.

Alcina clenches her hand, tight enough she can feel her fingernails digging into her palm. She had never learned the art of conversation, not in the way that others of their class are taught from an early age.

she does not know, how to phrase things prettily and in such a way as to conceal their true meaning.

She only knows a stark and ugly honesty, that her bother Nordin has constantly sighed would be her undoing one day.

She starts to think that her brother was probably, most likely, right. 

“Because. I know what it feels like, to be judged by one’s gifts.” 

Brendan turns back around.

Alcina glances away. “Or the lack thereof,” she adds quietly. 

Brendan’s eyes, dark and unfathomable, stare at her for a long, long time.

* * * * * * * * * *

Flashback...

When Alcina is thirteen, it has been three years since she’d effectively become what might be referred to as an unacceptable person in her family. 

Most Gifts manifest by age five in some way or another, though they have the potential to continue to develop throughout the individual’s lifetime. The latest a Gift has ever been recorded as manifesting is at age nine. 

When Alcina turned ten, her parents came to the exhausted conclusion that, indeed, Alcina must be the first Clair in the house’s long and prestigious history, to have been born without a Gift.

It is unprecedented, and damnation.

From that moment onwards, it has been as though Alcina hardly existed in the eyes of their parents.

Alfred who was only seventeen, then, and already revered throughout the land for his famously prodigious telepathic Gifts, considered remarkably powerful even for a Clair, And it was all their parents needed, and Alcina immediately became the unusable spare.

One might think that such a dynamic would breed resentment or antagonism between the two siblings, but on the contrary, it had the opposite effect.

It was Alfred, who’d thoroughly argued for Alcina’s continued education, despite their parents’ initial considerations at dropping it altogether, after all, she’d never rule, so why did she need to be educated as a ruler would?.

It was Alfred, who’d held Alcina’s hand as she cried with abject misery and self-loathing, and had the painful but necessary conversation with her that the lack of a Gift did not mean she was any lesser.

But knowing, rationally, is not the same as feeling, in one’s heart.

No matter how much Alfred and Nordin attempt to reassure her, time and time again, that her lack of a Gift could not - and should not - in any way affect the matter of her self-worth, Alcina finds it nearly impossible.

How could she, given that everywhere she turns, she is confronted with the fact that she alone has failed the proud name of their house.

That of all the generations of Clair's before her, it is she, alone, who was born without a Gift; that she is the only one, who’d been born defective.

Alcina spends most of her free time, in plenty, now, given that her parents have altogether stopped most of her societal duties and expectations, imagining any and every power she could have, and would have liked to, be born with. 

Anything at all.

No matter how trifling, mundane, or useless the Gift is, she’d have given up her very soul if she could have it.

When she’s thirteen, she confesses to Alfred, once, that this is how she feels.

As if she is defective in some way; the spare that cannot ever be used, even if the occasion called for it.

This time, Alfred is silent for a long, long while, simply holding Alcina’s hand in his own in restful silence. When he speaks next, he tells Alcina a story.

“Do you ever wonder, if it is truly coincidence, that so few are born with Gifts, and yet, of those, so many are members of the Six Great Houses?”

Alcina has never thought about it much if she’s being honest. Of the fact that, although less than 1% of the population is born with a gift, and yet, every Great House invariably has several members who are born with one, in each generation.

“Did you know, that there are some - many - who believe that it is because of these Gifts, that the Houses remain in control of their kingdoms. That these Gifts are akin to a divine right to rule - irrefutable proof of their god-given right to rule as kings."

"House Walton is among those believers. The King fervently believes that his Gift is the sign from the heavens, that he has the absolute right to rule as the monarch.”

Alfred taps a gentle rhythm on Alcina’s hand. “But I think they’re wrong.”

Alcina starts.

“I think that we - all of us - have become so preoccupied with the notion of these Gifts; of the intoxicating idea that we are somehow better, because we hold these Gifts - that we are like gods. But I’ve always thought that it was foolishness.”

“We are not gods, Alcina. These Gifts, they do not make some men better than others; it does not make one a better person, nor a better father, nor even a better king.”

“We are all just men,” Alfred says.

“We are not gods, nor are we divinely blessed with an absolute right to rule over others, without regard to whether we are truly the best person suited for such a great responsibility."

"And to be honest, I truly believe that these Gifts have made us lose sight of the things that are truly important.”

Alfred raises his free hand and taps once on just to the left of the center of Alcina’s chest. 

“Heart.” Alfred smiles.

“As humans, it is our hearts that define us, in the end, whether that be for better or for worse. Not whatever Gift we’ve had the random chance of being born with.”