"Haghh."
'I am tired.'
"You seem quite exhausted, young Master. Do you require anything?"
"No thanks Arden, I just need to lay down for a while."
It was yet another day on the training grounds. Andreas was six now, and for a good while his days had settled into the same comfortable rotation, touring the palace, taking lessons from Arden, training. He had no objections to any of it. He liked his life. But lately something had been stirring in him, a restlessness he couldn't quite name, a feeling that the palace walls, familiar and comfortable as they were, had started to feel like the edges of something rather than the center of it.
He wanted to see beyond them. He wanted to—
"Arden, I want to tour the territory."
"As you wish, young Master."
Andreas blinked.
For the past month, every time he had asked that exact question, Arden's answer had been a flat and immediate refusal. He stared at his butler for a moment, searching for some indication that he had misheard.
"...Did you change your mind? Then we can contin—"
"NO! Let's go right now."
He didn't know what had shifted, and he wasn't going to wait long enough to find out.
---
"It seems the young Master has taken quite a strong interest in the territory lately."
Arden paused, gathering himself, and then spoke with the quiet certainty of a man who has arrived at a decision after considerable deliberation.
"My lord, I believe the time has come. The young Master should see the territory he will one day rule over."
Khalid said nothing for a moment. He looked at the man who had been at his side since before he could remember, who had watched him grow the same way he was now watching Andreas grow. Then he thought about his son, about the boy who asked questions about everything and ran ahead down corridors and was, in some ways Khalid could not fully look at directly
"Do as you see fit, Arden."
---
"So this is it."
"What do you think, young Master?"
"I think it looks very good."
The Valekor territory was indeed beautiful, and what made it singular among demon territories was its variety. Where most territories were dominated by a single demon race, Valekor was a confluence of kinds different shapes and sizes and natures moving through the same streets, trading at the same stalls, living alongside one another with the ease of people long accustomed to difference. It gave the territory a particular texture, something alive and layered that no single-race settlement quite managed.
Andreas was taking all of it in with both eyes wide open.
"Arden, what are those demons, the flying ones?"
"Harpies, young Master. Not demons, strictly speaking."
"Why do their wings look like that?"
Harpy wings were a riot of vivid feathers, the color running through most of their bodies as well, save for their legs. Andreas's own wings, like his father's, were membranous and dark, structured more like a bat's than a bird's, and the contrast clearly interested him.
"Because they are not mammals but birds, young Master. Feathers rather than membrane. The structure follows from the nature of the creature."
Andreas absorbed this and moved on, his attention already pulling toward the next thing.
Their tour continued through the territory's winding streets. Many people noticed Arden as they passed and offered small nods of recognition, a few raising a hand in greeting. Several demons, more perceptive ones who caught the significance of a child moving through the territory at Arden's side, averted their eyes and gave them a wide berth.
Andreas noticed this without needing to ask about it. He had been thinking about it since the maids in the corridor weeks ago.
'Arden said that since I am the young lord they must be nervous and scared. I should handle it with grace.'
He carried himself accordingly, with a six year old's approximation of dignity, which was its own quietly endearing thing.
Then something else caught his attention. Further along the street a faint but distinctly unpleasant smell drifted across their path. Andreas's nose wrinkled.
"Arden, what is that over there?"
"That, young Master, is a slime."
"Isn't that a monster?"
"Technically speaking, yes. However the people of the territory make use of them, as even a child could dispatch one without difficulty."
"What do they use them for?"
"For the management of waste, young Master. Most households in the territory lack dedicated facilities for such purposes, so people attend to the matter outside and out of sight. Left unaddressed this produces considerable filth, deeply unpleasant odors, and in time disease. The slimes consume the organic waste entirely. Both parties benefit from the arrangement."
Andreas turned this over. It was practical. The people solved a problem and the slimes ate. Neither side lost anything. He gave a small nod of genuine approval and moved on.
The streets grew livelier as they went deeper into the territory. Stalls and workshops, demons at work, children darting between adult legs. Andreas watched everything with the same open and unhurried attention he brought to the palace corridors, only here there was simply more of it. More to see, more to hear, more threads to follow.
One thread in particular kept surfacing as they walked. He noticed it the first time, then a second time, then enough times that it settled into a pattern. Children his age moving through the streets were almost always accompanied by two adults, one male and one female. On the occasions when only one adult was present, it was more often than not a woman.
He looked at Arden walking beside him. He thought about the palace corridors and the lessons and the training grounds and all the mornings that had accumulated between them.
"Arden, why are most children my age I see out here with two adults of opposite gender, unlike you and me?"
Arden did not answer immediately.
He had known this question was coming. He had known it since before they left the palace gates, had felt it approaching with the slow inevitability of weather. He had prepared for it, had turned over possible answers in the hours before their departure, had told himself he was ready. And standing here now on the street with Andreas looking up at him with those clear and patient eyes, Arden found that a small and very human temptation rose in him without warning.
He could lie. A small lie. A gentle one, the kind that costs almost nothing to tell. Just a few more years of this, of the questions and the morning light and the boy who ran ahead down corridors. Was that so wrong? Was he not still too young? Could he not simply be happy for a little while longer?
"It must be their father and their nanny, young Master."
Andreas's curiosity was satisfied immediately, his attention already pivoting toward something across the street before the words had fully finished landing. He moved on without a second glance.
Arden exhaled very slowly.
"Come, young Master. Let us go to the walls. I want to show you the great forest."