“I am looking forward to it,” said Sylvanna. “I have lived all of my life in the Aelvinnwode and never been outside Tuarhievel. I would like to see the human world and find out what it is like.”
“It is different,” Aedan said. “Our cities are not much like yours, nor are our villages. Our streets are not as clean, I fear, nor do we live among the trees, as you do. We build our houses and our palaces differently, and we live behind stone walls. There is much to recommend your way of life. It is more peaceful and calming to the spirit.
Perhaps that is why time seems to pass more slowly here.”
“Still, I would prefer to be back in Anuire,” said Michael. “After all, I am emperor now, and I must claim my throne.”
“As I must serve you and the empire,” Aedan said. “Duty calls. But,”
he added sadly, “except for that, there is little for me to go back to now.”
Sylvanna frowned. “What makes you say that?
You would not wish to see your family?”
Aedan swallowed hard before replying. “My parents were my only family,”
he said. “I had no brothers and no sisters, and now I fear my parents are probably both dead. Perhaps my mother survives, but my father would have been too great an enemy to Lord Arwyn for him to have been left alive.”
“But … your father lives,” Sylvanna said.
Aedan stopped and stared at her. “What?”
“A message was received from him this morning,” she said. “You mean you did not know?”
Aedan could not believe his ears. “My father is alive? There has been a message from him? Are you sure?”
“My brother mentioned it to me this morning when he had word from the palace and was summoned to the prince’s presence,” she replied.
“Perhaps he meant for me to tell you, but I thought you already knew.”
“This is the very first I’ve heard of it!” said Aedan, his heart giving a leap.
“What was the message?” Michael asked eagerly.
“Did Gylvain say?”
“Something about how Lord Tieran had safely reached Anuire along with the empress and her party,” said Sylvanna. “There was more, but that is all I can remember now.”
“You have remembered the most important thing,” said Aedan.
Impulsively, he grabbed Sylvanna and gave her a hug. “Thank you!
Thank you! This is the best possible news!”
Taken aback, Sylvanna stiffened, and Aedan released her and stepped back, feeling a bit flustered. “Forgive me,” he said.
“No, it is I who must ask your forgiveness, Aedan,” she said. “Had I but known you thought your father dead, I would have told you right away. I had not realized…. How awful it must have been for you!”
Aedan closed his eyes as an immense feeling of relief surged through him. For a moment, he was so overwhelmed, he simply couldn’t speak.
He felt his lower lip tremble and was afraid that he might start to cry.
Sylvanna’s arms went around him and held him close. Then Michael’s hand settled on his shoulder, and they were all three holding each other for strength and support. For a few moments, no one spoke.
Aedan took a deep breath, and they stood apart, looking at one another.
“It must have been so very lonely for you,” said Sylvanna, “thinking you were the only one of your family who was left alive.”
Aedan nodded, struggling to compose himself.
He glanced at Michael, reached out, and squeezed his shoulder reassuringly. “You realize what this means?” he said. “Lord Arwyn does not hold the empress hostage and cannot enforce his claim upon the regency. He has failed. The moment he learns you are alive and well, he must either give up his bid for power or brand himself a traitor.”
“He has already done that,” said Michael firmly.
“And what is more, he knows it. He cannot simply be brought to heel.
He must be brought to justice.”
Aedan gazed at him, and for the first time, he saw not Prince Michael, but Emperor Michael. “Yes, you’re right, of course,” he said. “One way or another, there will be war, and there is no avoiding it.”
Michael nodded. “The empire is my birthright,” he said, “and if I must fight to keep it together, I shall fight to my last breath.”
“We both shall … Sire,” Aedan said. They clasped hands. “Come, Sylvanna,” he said. “Let us go and find Gylvain and see how soon the emperor and I may start for home.”
The Birthwright
**chapter One**
The Southern Coast, with its vast, rolling, grassy plains, gradually gave way to the patchwork farmlands of the Heartlands, roughly one hundred miles irdand from the Straits of Aerele. The two regions encompassed all the territory from the province of Osoerde to the east, on the shores of the Gulf of Coeranys, to the tangled woodlands of the Erebannien and its coastal marshes to the southeast, to the forests and lush meadows of Mhoried and Markazor in the north, and west to the provinces of Taeghas and Brosengae, on the shores of the Sea of Storms.
Located at the southern end of this whole region, which covered the lower half of the western portion of the Cerilian continent, was the capital city of Imperial Anuire.
When the land bridge connecting the continents had still existed and the first humans had crossed over from Aduria, it was in Anuire that they had established their first settlement. Over the succeeding years, that settlement eventually grew into a thriving town, and the town into a teeming city, and the city, as the people spread throughout the land, into the seat
