Cole walked quietly up and down the hallway of the floor reserved for he and Elizabeth at the palace, pacing, a troubled look on his face. He could feel the stares of the younger girl behind him, like daggers piercing into the back of his head. Not angry, but curious, and concerned. He couldn't be mad at her for this. She wanted to make sure that her big brother was okay.
Honestly, he wasn't sure if he was okay. That man in the medical section at the arena, while un-threatening, had no idea what he could have almost caused. That talk was treason within the walls of the K Empire. While his grandfather did not seem to have realized it yet, Kaleb was a much different man than his father. Cole had watched Kaleb do some terrible things in the name of protecting the empire.
Treason was strictly forbidden, of course, and talks which doubted the might of the K Empire were almost always a sure fire way to get locked up, or executed. Cole had learned to watch his tongue, but he had it fine, being a member of the royal family. As if he'd speak out against his own family anyway. He understood that everything Kaleb did was for the protection of the people...
But he couldn't get the memory out of his head of... Watching, as just a young boy of twelve, the head of a commoner – a shop owner – get chopped off. Blood poured into the streets. Nobody said a thing out loud, of course, but he could see the pain in the eyes of the people watching on that day... The questioning they had behind this harshness.
The crackdown only got worse the next year, after the September Riots on Memorial. Sure, the universe had been in a constant state of warfare ever since the destruction of False Heaven. That didn't prepare anyone for the death of General Korm, one of the greatest military leaders in the Milky Way. He had been fighting for peace. With his death, and the end of the riots, many smaller riots began to rise up throughout various empires.
However; strangely enough, the K Empire had not seen any riots rise. After the day that General Korm died, everything stopped. Any political movements that the people had supported stopped. Kaleb Tyris was solidified as the ruler of the K Empire. His authority was not questioned. Why would it be?
Lizzie had been too young to pick up on the fact that anything was wrong with the society that they lived in, the questionable actions that the kingdom exerted. As she had grown older, she'd become more aware. She chose to deal with it like most of the royals did, including Cole's grandmother, Julia Tyris. They ignored it, acted like there was no problems. Cole did not find it this easy.
Lately, he HAD been hearing talk among the people, though it was not easy to come across such words, being the son of the emperor. He had heard rumors of foreign military crafts flying over K Empire airspace at nighttime, making questionable lands in restricted military zones, and then taking off. Not the kind of crafts that came for trade, but the kind that came for battle. Cole couldn't make sense of this, because he knew that if the K Empire were fighting a war, they could not keep it a secret, especially not from the royal family.
No, it wasn't that these military crafts were coming to fight the empire. They were coming to assist it. The fact that secret foreign military crafts could be flying over the K Empire airspace, guns pointed on citizens, at the consent and even assistance of the government gave Cole a reason to shiver. He tried not to think about these rumors. Now, though, after such a confrontation, he had no choice.
Slipping through the door of the hallway and towards the staircase, Cole was making way towards the exit when Elizabeth came up from behind and grabbed his hand. His first instinct was to fight the foreign touch, to prepare to fend off an intruder, but he relaxed, his momentary fighting instincts fading as he turned to his sister, her soft touch reminding him that she was there. She looked afraid. He knew that right now, she was terrified.
“Where are you going?” she asked, her voice just above a whisper.
“Kannin's house,” Cole revealed, before taking on off down the stairs, leaving his sister in the frame of the doorway, her blank stare fixed on her brother as he left her there alone.
