The Palace

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   His footsteps echoed as they hit the dark marble and bounced off the walls. Crow would never understand why his mother had needed such a big castle-it was a little too warlike to be called a palace-when it had always been only her, his father, and the bare minimum of servants, and then him and Dryr near the very end. Maybe she had been planning to make her own court someday, people of her choosing to throw her balls and parties for. He couldn't see any other reason for such a big, gaudy ballroom. 
   He placed his palm on a gray marble column. There were cracks running through it, a few chips coming off where the divisive stone webs made crossroads. The rest of the room was full of dust, cobwebs criss-crossing the spaces between draped velvet and the walls and hiding in corners around the ceiling. 
   His eyes fell down to the crest above the double doors he had come in through. It had an enormous chunk gauged right out of its center, a wound just a little bit older than the cracks in the wall and cobwebs on the ceiling. Lack of care and time had cracked the columns, but it was King White's soldiers that defaced the crest.
  When King White had overthrown his mother, the force he took to deal with the few troops she had left at home defaced every crest around the castle they could find. 
   Crow couldn't really remember it, he and Dryr had only been five and three when it happened. They had been sent down and away with their nurse through the escape tunnel trolls always feel the need to have. All he remembered was the white light from the lantern of the guard sent to retrieve them, and how bright and clean the eyes of King White had been, even when they were tired and sad too. 
   Crow walked over to one of the carved tables at the end of the room and swiped a hand across the top, sending a wave of dust washing to the side. There had been such a strange feeling knowing that his mother was gone. He hadn't paid much attention to it then, but now he thought it was freedom. Even as the five-year-old prince of her country he had felt relief when she was gone. 
   Dryr of course could only remember shadows of it. He'd been only three when King White issued their sentence, or their father's sentence anyway. Their father would be imprisoned in his wife's castle for the rest of his life, never able to leave it again, and then buried with the rest of his family, as he had requested. It was more than he deserved, most people thought. He deserved to be executed, and he knew that. But King White had shown mercy, and even let him keep his two sons and raise them here in their own kingdom. Even though they were also the sons of the most wicked woman in all the kingdoms. 

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