Chapter 32: The Prince and the Pancake Debacle
The morning of the blessing ceremony dawned with a sky so fiercely, obnoxiously blue it felt like a personal insult to their grim mood. Jax, strapping on his polished Argent Guard breastplate, glowered out the barracks window.
"Look at that," he grumbled. "Not a single sinister cloud. Not one ominous bird circling. How's a man supposed to get properly psyched up for an ambush in weather that smells like laundry day and happy flowers?"
Liana, checking the edges of her daggers with a critical eye, didn't look up. "I'll stab some happiness into you if you need motivation."
"See? Poetry," Jax said, flashing a grin that was more bared teeth than smile.
The tension was still there, a live wire in their guts, but after five days in this gilded pressure cooker, a strange, gallows humor had started to seep in. It was either that or start screaming at the perpetually smiling court florist.
Their plan was simple, stupid, and the only one they had: let the Cabal make their move at the Ley-Well, then crush it. They'd pre-positioned Jax and Liana in the tunnel access points Liam had identified. Ryley and Maya would be the visible close-protection detail, with Liam providing overwatch and arcane support from a nearby observation tower, pretending to be a Kaminari apprentice charting stellar alignments.
The first hitch came with breakfast.
They ate in the guards' mess, a vast hall of sturdy tables and the smell of roasted grain and strong tea. Prince Caelan, breaking protocol, often took his morning meal here, claiming the palace dining hall was "too echoey with silence." Today, he slid onto the bench opposite Ryley, a stack of something golden-brown and fluffy on his plate.
"You look tense, Captain," the Prince said, sawing into the food with gusto. "You should try the sky-cakes. Cook uses whipped cloud-berry cream in the batter. It's absurd."
"Our job is to be tense, Highness," Ryley said, eyeing the sky-cakes with deep suspicion. In his experience, food that looked that cheerful was usually poisoned or tasted of despair.
"Nonsense," the Prince said, his mouth full. He was a teenager, after all. "A guard who's all coiled spring is a guard who trips over his own boots. My uncle Brenn taught me that. He also taught me this…" He leaned forward, lowering his voice to a theatrical whisper. "The key to a good sky-cake is a dollop of thunderberry jam in the center before you flip it. Creates a surprise lava flow of flavor. It's a culinary ambush."
Ryley stared at him. They were possibly hours from a deadly, ritualistic kidnapping attempt, and the Crown Prince of Aethel was giving him cooking tips.
Jax, overhearing, leaned over. "Highness, with respect, if my enemy is coming at me with a cleaver, I don't care how fluffy his pancakes are."
"But that's just it, Sergeant!" Caelan's eyes lit up. "If you only think about the cleaver, you miss the spoon he's about to throw at your head with his other hand. Or the fact he's standing on a wobbly stool. Details, Sergeant! The jam is in the details!"
He was quoting basic tactical doctrine using breakfast pastries. Maya stifled a laugh into her tea. Liam looked wistfully at the sky-cakes, probably calculating the magical energy density of cloud-berry cream.
The second hitch was the carriage. The royal conveyance to the Ley-Well was a beautiful, open-air thing of silverwood and living vines, pulled by two proud, feathered beasts called Sun-Striders. It was also, as Liana had dryly noted the night before, "a rolling death trap with no doors and excellent sightlines for archers."
As they prepared to mount up, the Prince patted the ornate side. "I know, I know. 'Sniper's delight,' as Captain Brann says. But today, we're taking the Undergate route. Slower, but it comes out near the observation tower. Father's orders."
Ryley's eyes met Liana's. The Undergate route bypassed the main approach… and went directly past one of the secondary tunnel access points Jax was supposed to be hiding in. Their carefully laid plan was already unravelling before they'd left the palace.
"A wise precaution, Highness," Ryley said, his mind racing. He caught Jax's eye and gave a subtle, pre-arranged hand signal: Plan B. Wing it.
Jax's expression soured. He hated winging it. Winged things got eaten.
The journey through the dim, cool Undergate tunnel was nerve-wracking. The only sounds were the clop of the Striders' hooves and the rumble of the carriage wheels. Every shadowed alcove looked perfect for an ambush. Liam, up in the driver's seat next to the royal chauffeur, kept muttering incantations under his breath, causing the light-crystals on their pauldrons to flicker erratically.
"Your mage is nervous," the Prince observed calmly to Ryley, who was walking alongside the carriage.
"He's… calibrating the ambient ley-energy, Highness," Ryley lied smoothly. "For the blessing."
"Ah. Of course. It's very flickery-calibration."
They emerged near the observation tower as planned. The Ley-Well park was stunning. The Well itself was a pool of glowing cerulean water, surrounded by shimmering grass and trees with leaves like spun crystal. A crowd had gathered—citizens in their finest, priests in flowing robes, musicians with instruments made of hollowed crystal and stretched sinew. The air hummed with peaceful magic and the scent of blooming light-lilies. It was disgustingly idyllic.
As they took their positions for the ceremony, Ryley spotted their first real clue. Near the secluded clearing they'd identified, a group of Drac'num "groundskeepers" were working. But their tools were too clean, their movements too coordinated, their eyes scanning the crowd, not the flowerbeds. One of them, a broad-shouldered woman, had a faint, soot-like smear on her neck—forge-soot. Forgemaster Kaelen's people.
The ceremony began. Chants rose. The Prince stood solemnly by the Well, accepting blessings from robed priests. Ryley and Maya stood three paces behind, senses screaming. Liam was in the tower, a nervous silhouette against the bright sky. Jax and Liana were gods-knew-where, hopefully adjusting.
It happened during the libation. A senior Kaminari priest stepped forward with a crystal ewer of Well-water. As he raised it, the music hit a sustained, high note. And on that note, the "groundskeeper" woman dropped her rake and made a sharp, cutting gesture with her hand.
From the flowerbed beside the Prince, not from the clearing, a dozen pale, thorny vines—Silvertongue Weeds, a Syl'endi assassin's tool—erupted, aiming to wrap around the Prince's ankles and yank him off-balance, towards the waiting "gardeners."
They'd been out-thought. The clearing was a decoy.
Maya was already moving, her hands erupting in a golden glow. But the vines were fast, magically accelerated.
Prince Caelan, however, did not look surprised. As the first vine snaked towards his boot, he sidestepped with a dancer's grace, and in the same motion, brought his ceremonial cup—still half-full of morning tea—down in a hard arc, dousing the central cluster of vines.
The reaction was instantaneous and bizarre. The Silvertongue Weeds, soaked in tea, shuddered, let out a faint sizzling sound, and recoiled, withering on the spot.
The Prince looked at the stunned assassin-gardener, then at his cup, then at Ryley. A slow, impressed smile spread across his face.
"Thunderberry jam," he said, as if it explained everything. "Highly acidic. Disrupts vegetative enchantments. Uncle Brenn's third rule: always have a snack."
In that moment of perfect, surreal confusion, the counter-ambush hit.
A section of the park's decorative stone wall near the real attackers exploded inward. Not with magic, but with pure, brute-force Jax. He came through the dust and rubble like a cannonball, greataxe already swinging, a roar on his lips that drowned out the choir. He crashed into the group of disguised Drac'num, scattering them like ninepins.
From the shadow of the now-breached wall, Liana flowed like smoke, her daggers a blur as she disarmed and disabled the would-be kidnappers with ruthless efficiency, targeting tendons and weapon hands.
The crowd screamed, panicking. Priests dropped their ewers. The ceremony dissolved into chaos.
Ryley and Maya closed ranks around the Prince, who was watching the violence with a keen, analytical eye, not fear.
"Sergeant Jax's form is excellent," the Prince noted clinically. "But he's leaving his right flank open when he follows through. You should tell him."
Ryley could only stare. The kid had just been attacked with magic assassin-vines, and he was giving them combat critiques.
In minutes, it was over. The attackers were subdued, bound with their own tools. Jax stood panting over them, looking immensely pleased with himself. Liana was already checking the perimeter, ensuring there were no second waves.
As the city watch finally pushed through the crowd, Ryley looked at the Prince, the shattered wall, the terrified citizens, and the wilted, tea-scented weeds.
Day Five. The Cabal had struck. They had failed. Their plan had been smarter, but the Prince had been weirder, and Jax had been, as always, an unstoppable force of nature.
Prince Caelan brushed a speck of dirt from his sleeve. "Well," he sighed. "I suppose the blessing is concluded." He looked at the ruined flowerbed, then at Ryley, his hybrid eyes gleaming with something that wasn't quite humor, but was closer to it than despair. "Next time, Captain, remind me to bring a whole pot."