Bowing down to someone in submission is the last thing you’d expect a villainess to do…but my limbs moved on their own. I received the education typical of every child of a noble family, and I have a more critical eye than the average person. As a result, I am able to tell at a glance if somebody is superior to me or even someone I could never match up to. And though people like Duke and Liz feel out of my league, Will is in a whole different dimension than them.
Every cell in my body knows I could never match his magnificence. How did he even hide it all those years?
“Ali?” Gill shouts behind me in surprise.
“Look at me, Alicia.”
Will crouches to my eye level, speaking softly. I slowly look up.
“I don’t want you bowing to me,” Will says, his eye lined slightly with stern wrinkles. It feels a bit surreal, being stared at with my own eye.
He gently wraps his arm around my shoulders and helps me to my feet.
“Alicia? What’s come over you? That’s just Gramps.” Gill stares curiously at my face.
“Well, Master certainly did change a lot.” Rebecca’s cheerful comment follows his.
“……What should I even call him?” I murmur.
Rebecca’s eyes widen in surprise to match Gill’s. “Huh? Like Gill said, it’s Gramps.”
“Alicia, are you okay?” Gill asks. “It’s him.”
“Yes, I know that. But…”
The one who stands before me is not Old Man Will… It is Will Seeker.
I’m not about to suddenly change the way I behave around him now that I know his true identity—I could never be that cringey. The next time I see him, I’ll act no differently…or so I thought.
And yet the man standing before me now is not Old Man Will, the lovable grandfather figure. It is shocking just how well he hid his dignity and wisdom all those years.
His left eye is my own, yet I don’t recognize it. It is filled with knowledge, wisdom, and a subtle sadness. It is an eye that sees through everything in the world. This man has lived an epic life, the likes of which I could never imagine—I know this, just by looking in his eye.
Suddenly, something Will told me long ago returns to my mind.
“Since he’d taught himself all the way up to level eighty, he became overconfident and assumed he could skip ahead to level one hundred.”
Will’s slightly sorrowful eye reflects in my own.
I hope I’m wrong, but was the arrogant boy in question…?
______“He lost the ability to use magic forever.”
“Alicia, I don’t care what you call me,” he says with a smile. The smile I know so well.
I tilt my head quizzically and meekly suggest, “Maybe…Lord Will?” I somehow manage to smile, but I know I look as though I am on the verge of tears.
“Yeah, he does strike me as more an uncle than a grandfather now,” Gill says. “Maybe I should call you Uncle.”
“Sounds fine to me,” Rebecca chimes in, chuckling with him.
Old Man Will—Uncle Will—looks over at them with a warm gaze. “Please just address me the way you used to.”
Seeing the peaceful smile on his face as he speaks to us makes me yearn even more to learn about his past.
Why were his eyes taken? Why was he banished from the palace to Roana Village? These are questions I’ve asked myself many times. But I always keep them to myself because I know it is a subject I have no right broaching.
But at this moment, I long for the answers with all my heart. I thirst for the truth more than anything I have ever thirsted for.
I take a shallow breath in and stand tall. “The boy who lost his ability to use magic… It wasn’t your friend. It was you. Right, Uncle Will?”
I stare straight into my old eye as I say these words. Will does not seem particularly surprised as he looks solemnly back into my eye and nods.
“…And is that why you were banished?” I follow up.
“No, it wasn’t that. It’s just…my little brother and I didn’t see eye to eye,” Will answers, smiling sadly.
“You and the king didn’t see eye to eye?” Gill frowns.
“Do ya really wanna hear my life’s story? It’s not that interesting,” Will says as he stares into the distance.
“Is it okay for you to tell us here?” Rebecca asks with concern.
She has a point. There’s people all around…but they all have a different look in their eyes from the first time I saw them. Their eyes seem to be full of hope. And it is clear they all love and respect Will.
“I don’t mind anybody here knowing,” Will replies. “My brother, Luke…he’s my half brother.”
Will’s voice reverberates through the silence. It is certainly shocking news, but there is quite an age gap between Will and the king, so I suppose the revelation shouldn’t be that shocking.
What is more shocking is that the king has had an older brother all this time—I never even heard rumors about him. The only evidence was that one portrait I saw…
“My mother died right after she gave birth to me. And when I could use magic before the age of thirteen, I was hailed and adored as a genius. My overconfidence led me one day to suddenly lose my magic. I was a child prodigy who carried the weight of my kingdom on my shoulders, and in a moment, I was completely useless.”
“You said you and His Majesty are half brothers…so did the former king remarry?” Gill asks.
Will shakes his head quietly. “He had another son with a concubine.”
“Wait just a minute—the former king had a concubine?” I butt in.
I thought kings were forbidden from taking concubines in Durkis…
“Well, he needed to produce an heir, so they made an exception.” Will smiles faintly as he says that, traces of loneliness on his face.
Sure, the king needs to be able to use magic, but that’s still no excuse…
“But a son with a concubine… Surely the court wouldn’t—”
“They had to accept it,” Will cuts Gill off. “I couldn’t use magic anymore, and the kingdom lost its heir to the throne. So…they went ahead and made her his wife.”
My heart begins to ache. I can’t imagine how Will felt when that happened. He was worshipped as a child prodigy one minute, then he lost his magic and the throne to a half brother… Surely he must have felt like his heart was being ripped out of his chest.
“This concubine…the king’s mother…what sort of person was she?” I ask.
“She was in a lower class of the nobility, and she was very pretty. Though on the inside, there wasn’t much to her…”
From the slightly conflicted look on Will’s face, I can imagine the sort of person she was. If Will is having difficulty describing her nicely…she must have been quite horrid.
“My father told me it was my job to support the king, so I studied hard every day to become the smartest man in the kingdom. After all, I wasn’t hailed as a genius before just for my magic. I also had an outstanding intellect…” Will smiles at us, crinkles in the corner of his eye. “Or I guess maybe that’s the story I like to tell myself.”
Gill is frowning in anguish, and he isn’t the only one. Everyone around me has the same look of anguish in their eyes. It is clear just how deeply everyone reveres Will.
“When Luke turned seventeen, he became king…and I was twenty-eight then. Back then, I was doing most of the government work. This village wasn’t in as bad shape as it is now.”
Will’s face twists a little in pain. Now I know why whenever I read books about Roana, the picture they paint is completely unlike the town’s actual conditions.
Roana Village must have fallen into such a dreadful state after Will was exiled. And seventeen is awfully young to become king. Far too young to carry a kingdom on your shoulders…
“One day, not long after Luke’s coronation…our relationship fell apart.”
In Will’s eye, I can see he is bargaining with the past, begging to go back and change things.
“I proposed to Luke a divided rule—that he would split the rulership of Durkis with the other Great Five nobles.”
I agree wholeheartedly with this idea. I always thought that was why Durkis had the Great Five to begin with. Otherwise, they were just a collection of rich and powerful people with no purpose.
“That’s a great idea,” Gill says, his eyes sparkling.
Well, I doubt anybody would object to this idea.
“But Luke’s mother opposed it.”
“Huh?” Gill frowns.
“Why did the king’s mother even have a say?” I demand.
“Was she after the money?” Gill asks coldly, his eyes sharp as daggers.
“Did becoming queen give her a power trip?” I add. “But if she was after the money…then why didn’t the court stop her?”
“Maybe she thought just because she was the king’s mother, she had carte blanche to go hog wild…” Gill’s voice is getting deeper and deeper. The more we uncover the truth, the more contempt he feels for the king.
And I know the feeling well, but this wasn’t the king’s fault—it was his mother’s. Though, of course, as the king, he was obliged to step in and do something.
“Luke loved his mother,” Will explains. “And his mother adored him. I was nothing more than a thorn in her side, though,” he adds with a chuckle.
I know the whole evil stepmother thing is a classic, but was that really grounds for banishing him?
“Gramps, please don’t tell me that was what got you exiled?” Gill said.
“It certainly was. I was banished from the palace for plotting to assassinate the king, and my eyes were removed so I couldn’t pose a threat to Luke again. Naturally, I had no memory of plotting any such thing.”
Gill’s face twists in anger, and giant tears are spilling down Rebecca’s cheeks. I can hear sniffles from the others around us as well.
He’s such a lovable guy… Didn’t he have any allies back then? That’s right, like my father!
“But my father—”
“Only Luke’s mother and her attendants knew the truth,” Will says.