You Were Childhood Friends

The fact that you were seeing Azaniel again filled you with an excitement that could not be put into words. It had been many many years since you'd seen him in the flesh. Yet, he was the man who owned your thoughts.

Back in your girlhood, you were often expected to attend the royal balls and banquets your father hosted. For you this was a form of ****. You were not a very social child. Indeed, until the age of six, your parents had believed that you were a mute. In truth, you simply didn't like to speak. Yet, you were expected to go down and socialize all the same.

Many of the royal visitors pushed their princes to try to befriend you. To make an early match with the daughter of a kingdom such as yours would be a great boon to their houses. At that age though, most boys couldn't be assed to pretend to like the girl who barely spoke.

Yet, there was one who seemed to get you. A son of a Prince of the **** City of Black-Brand. Azaniel. The sandy haired, scrappy boy was only his father's sixth son. Not even born to his father's favored ****-concubine. Other sons would surely be the next ruler of his city, unless (as so often happened) one of his nobles betrayed him.

His father, a portly, jovial man, often made the trip up to your Kingdom. The invites sent to his court were mere diplomatic formality, yet he never missed an oppertunity to suck up to your father, a ruler far more powerful then he was. Which meant his sullen eight child was a common visitor.

You felt an instant kinship with him. Neither of you much liked to talk, so you often spent hours together exploring the dungeons of the keep or skipping rocks by the pond.

It wasn't a friendship between equals though. Azaniel could be quite insistent, as lad. It didn't mean he was whiney. He simply was assured that if he told you what to do, where to go with him, that you would do it. For your part, always anxious about getting something wrong, you were simply glad for the guidance. When your friend Azaniel was around, you never had to think for yourself.

You also sometimes thought of him as your protector. Whenever one of the other princes would try to talk to you, his cold glare scared them off. You were HIS friend. HIS. How dare they take you away from him? You liked when he treated you that way.

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