In the spring, the boys caught insects, frogs, snakes, and all matter of creepy crawlies around the royal garden’s pond, carrying it with them proudly to display their bravery. Joint choruses of “Look what we caught!” would often be followed by terrified shrieks from the maids, and the boys would be repeatedly told that giving the maids a handful of worms or playfully tossing them a live salamander was not very becoming of future gentlemen. Bees’ nests were found and disturbed, once, and after a newly hired garden-hand got stung and had to be sent to the physician, Utarion gave a stern warning that no such play would be further tolerated, and the boys did feel quite bad about it.

Summer brought new interests for them. The birds that had laid bright blue eggs in the spring now had new chicks in the nests. Aurelius took it upon himself to discover every single one and the help now had new problems on their hands as the boys’ endeavors to climb the trees almost always resulted in one or more of them falling out of them. Tree climbing escapades ended the day Aurelius landed badly and dislocated his leg. Lance, taking responsibility as the oldest, urged Etraon into action and together, helped him back to their rooms. Clearly in pain, Aurelius was biting his lip to keep from crying in front of the other children who watched them with worried glances as they passed.

“How are you?” Lance whispered quietly, knowing that Aurelius had no intention of voicing his complaints.

“What do you think?” Aurelius winced.

“Don’t worry,” Etraon assured him. “Morgan will take care of it.”

And she did. Within three frantic knocks from Lance, Morgan answered the door with a wry expression on her slim face that was perfectly framed by her short, cropped hair. She looked them up and down, taking in what happened and brown eyes rolled skyward. Ordinarily, healers of any sort would not have dared to act in such a fashion to the three boys, but Morgan was different. As Derek’s sister, she was there when they were born, holding their mothers’ sweaty hands during the entire process, reminding them to breathe and assuring them that it would soon be over. She had cleaned them up every time that they had soiled their clothes and kept quiet about it. When they complained about how thoroughly the maids would clean their ears, she taught them how to take care of it themselves without all the fuss. Occasional accidents occurred that they did not want their parents to know about, and so long as they endured a scolding and wholeheartedly repented of whatever it was that they had done to get into the mess in the first place, Morgan would fix it. Between Derek and Morgan, Etraon was fully confident that they knew every secret in the castle.

“Sit,” she said simply, gesturing at the cot to one side of the room. Aurelius moved carefully, shuffling on one leg and hugging the wall as best he could. They listened as she retrieved something from a woven basket and chopped it briskly. She poured out some of the water that she constantly kept on boil into a smaller pot and they heard a light splash as she dropped a pile of yellow bits into it. She reached into an earthenware jar and retrieved dried herbs of some kind that they did not recognize and tossed it into the pot with a flourish. One of the flowers missed and drifted into the nearby flames, startling the boys as it was consumed with a loud popping noise.

“What is that?” Aurelius asked suspiciously, as she brought him a steaming mug of the stuff. The drink was brown, or so he thought, but it was really hard to tell given that the mug was brown.

“Drink,” she instructed, handing it to him. She turned and began laying out some splints and bandages. Aurelius looked back and forth between his two friends and sniffed at the beverage cautiously. And sneezed.

“My nose itches,” he complained.

“Drink,” came the reply. Aurelius did not reply but swished the liquid around in the mug experimentally. It was brief, but he saw it. A small shimmering object was swirling on the surface and he plucked it up between his fingers. His eyes widened in horror.

“That’s a bee’s wing!” he choked out, eyes bulging. “You were going to make me drink a bee’s wing?” he demanded. He shifted slightly from his position and peered over her shoulder into the pot where he saw several small lumps floating in the water. “You were going to make me drink bee water?”

“Wasp,” she corrected without missing a beat.

“Oh, that’s much better,” he retorted before he could stop himself from saying something that was about to make the healing process that much more unpleasant. The words were out. Turning, he saw expressions of pity on Lance and Etraon’s faces and knew he had made a mistake.

“Young man,” Morgan addressed him quietly, turning slowly, “you will never speak to me in that tone again. Do I make myself clear?”

“You can’t-.”

“Do we really want to get into the specific nuances of what I can and cannot do, Aurelius?” Morgan paused. “One word from me is all it would take for your parents to assign you a guard to follow you everywhere you go, report back on every little injury you incur, and effectively ground you for the next year at least.”

Aurelius whimpered something unintelligible, but looked sufficiently deflated of his previously defiant attitude. His eyes still looked a little wild as he gulped down the drink without a word. He made a face at one point from the odor, but finished it all. He blinked owlishly at them and the color in his face somewhat improved as Morgan held one of his hands, keeping track of his pulse as she waited for something.

Then a strange thing happened. Given how he had been behaving up to this point, Etraon knew that Aurelius had a tendency to be jittery when he was in pain or when he was nervous. Yet, as time passed, a dreamy expression grew more and more apparent on his face, and his eyes began to close. They opened again with great effort and his head was already nodding with fatigue.

“Why am I so tired?” Aurelius murmured a few minutes later. Morgan sighed with satisfaction and stretched her arms back.

“Because that’ll make it hurt less when I do this.”

Etraon yelped in surprise even as Lance staggered back a few steps in shock when Morgan brought her right leg up, and pinning Aurelius’s leg in place, set the dislocated joint back in place. He screamed once and passed out on the bed.

“It’ll take a little while, but he’ll wake up when he’s ready,” she told them, wrapping Aurelius’s leg in a splint and securing it with bandages. Etraon still stared at her in shock. Morgan tolerated no nonsense, he knew, but for her to make any of the three of them scream was somewhat terrifying. “Now, I don’t want to hear of anyone else falling out of trees, particularly you, your Highness.”

Now that, Etraon felt, was distinctly unfair. They had done well thus far, only having a few accidents here and there, and it was entirely by chance that Aurelius actually injured himself.

“But-,” he protested.

“You now know what I do to boys who fall out of trees.”

“You wouldn’t feed me wasps,” he said confidently. Morgan turned to him, expression unchanging and Etraon found a desperate need to disappear into the underside of the bed.

“Wouldn’t I?” she asked of no one in particular. “Now, I think I would like to have a word with my nephew.”

“Oh, go ahead,” Etraon agreed amiably. Morgan looked over her shoulder at Lance and her expression hardened slightly.

“In private, if it would please your Highness,” she told them and strode out of the room with a terrifying note of finality. Lance was somewhat pale and grasped Etraon’s shoulder reassuringly as he passed. Etraon sensed his friend was doing it more to comfort himself with the thought that someone was waiting for him to return than anything else. They entered the room next door, and Etraon, forgetting his manners regarding eavesdropping for the moment, pressed his ear up against the wall.

Eavesdropping, most certainly, was not a nice habit and considered the worst sort of habit in Mother’s opinion, Etraon knew. But he had long since realized that every time he was being sent away, the conversation was, with a certainty, going to be interesting. More often than not, it concerned him as well. Father had caught him once, listening in on a council meeting, but told him that he would not be punished for it, so long as he did not repeat anything that he had heard. As an individual, he would have preferred it if his conversations were kept private, but as a father, he said, he wanted Etraon to be able to keep his eyes and ears open to keep himself safe in the future. Unfortunately for him, not only did he not hear a thing, but he was so focused on hearing what transpired on the other side of the door that he did not see Morgan approaching him from behind.

“Why, your Highness,” she greeted him smoothly, “whatever might you be doing? Not eavesdropping, I hope.”

Etraon started guiltily.

“What did you hear?” she demanded.

“Nothing,” he replied somewhat unconvincingly. Morgan said nothing, simply raising an eyebrow. “No, really!” he insisted. “I heard nothing! I missed you entering the room because I was so busy trying to!”

Morgan appeared somewhat startled at the admission, but showed no hint of anger at his attempt to eavesdrop. She smiled instead.

“Trying to, indeed. Thank you for telling the truth, your Highness.”

Only an idiot would lie to Morgan, Etraon thought to himself. Try that stunt and you’d be subjected to something worse than wasp tea.

“Where’s Lance?”

“He needs a few minutes to think over what I said to him,” she replied. “I would give him some space for the moment.” Then, pleading some errand, she left the room.

Ten minutes later, Lance stumbled into the room with a tear-streaked face. He smiled weakly as Etraon approached him and sniffled a few times, wiping away the remaining tears that were threatening to spill out at any moment. In all his years, Etraon realized, he had never seen Lance cry. Finally, the one day where there was actually a use for those blasted handkerchiefs that Mother had always told him to carry with him had arrived and he was ill-prepared.

-----

Author's Note:

I hope you love this precious trio of good bois as much as I do as the story progresses. I knew I wanted to create an "iconic" trio as soon as I started this series (my original inspiration was Hatori, Shigure, and Ayame from Fruits Basket, I think). (⊙_⊙(☉̃ₒ☉)⊙.⊙)

Also, the whole "bee water" thing was based on a real thing that happened. In my life. My mother made literal "bee/wasp" tea (I use that term VERY loosely) because Chinese medicine gets REAL weird sometimes and I knew from that moment on that I was going to immortalize that awful moment in this story. Because why not. It's awful. But hilarious. Sorry, Aurelius. Please forgive me (╥︣﹏᷅╥)

Chapter 2, incoming! Hope you enjoy!

xoxo,

Elfarine