Luhan decided that he despised council meetings. Especially ones like these which, for some reason unknown to the golden haired boy, required the rest of the councilmen of the other eleven clans to participate. He wasn't really fond of the councilmen and being in the same room with all of them at once was not something Luhan could say he enjoyed.

He didn't know why he was brought to the meeting this time. He had only been brought to council meetings in the past to discuss unimportant, boring things with his father but there was a certain tension to this meeting. The greetings given by the council were strange and fake ones and Luhan could help but feel the impending doom.

Everybody sits down on their cushions in a circle around the room. Luhan didn't like these meetings but he had to admit that the room they were held in could only be described as beautiful.

The walls were white. The ceiling was white. The floor and the flowers planted in every corner of the room, too. Everything was white. It gave of a pure, innocent feeling and, even though the building was on a small island floating in mid-air without anything to prevent you from falling, he didn't find himself getting the jitters -- unlike the water clans son who didn't seem fine with floating.

The tapestries along the wall were decorated with more white along with silver and cream colours. The only things that added any actual colour to the room were the brilliantly golden symbols of each clan that went in a circle around the floor, showing each clan representative where they were to sit.

The Head of the water clan, also the king of the East, Reecius Dallion, sits exactly opposite of Luhan. Usually, Luhans father, Head of the mind clan and also king of the West, would be in Luhans place and staring back at the stoic man. But his father was on a travelling north so, Luhan, being the heir, had to take his place at the boring events his father had to endure.

Reecius sits up straight and powerful, young for his age and surprisingly handsome for a man so old. He looks serious and solomn when he begins speaking and Luhan dreads whatever the man has to say.

"We have called this meeting to inform you of the passing of your father."

Luhans heart stops in his chest. His eyes widen and he shakes his head, burying it in his hands.

It wasn't that he'd been close with his father. The farthest from it. He was the only person in his clan of telekinetics that didn't worship the ground the man walked on. His father realised that, at a very young age, Luhan was not exactly “normal” by his standards. They would argue constantly and Luhan could quite honestly say he hated his father. The only time he would stop fighting with his father was when his mother was around

After his mother’s death, he'd stopped pretending he liked his father. They had never gotten along and he wasn't about to change that. It was kind of twisted, he knew, to think that he wasn't hurt at all by the death of the man who raised him. What he's more worried about is the throne.

There is an awkward pause of silence and somebody clears their throat in the room.

"As you know, Prince Luhan, your father was the King of the West. And, in his passing, he has you as his only heir aside from your younger sister. A young boy you are but you've been trained in the ways of ruling." the Head of the Dragon Kin says, "And, along with being the new King of the West, there is something else."

Luhan nods, encouraging the man to keep speaking but instead Reecius stands up and retrieves somebody, a girl from what he could tell, from the back of the room. She pulls down her hood and Luhan grimaces to himself.

"Oh dear Gods." he says in in mock disgust and all of the elders in the room look scandalized, especially the girl’s father who glares at Luhan in a piercing manner.

"Luhan." The girl, Princess Lennandria of the East, says his name with resentment, but not as much as he is expecting. Her eyes are dull and lack the vibrancy that they usually held, he notices. He feels a pang of sympathy for the girl even though he had no idea of what caused her sorrow.

His focus goes back to Reecius and the older man clears his throat. The impending doom Luhan had felt earlier increases tenfold.

"Your father, rest his soul, had made arrangements with me when you were a young boy. We planned on having you and my daughter married within the next few years." the older man begins and Luhan decides he's ready to vomit, "As you are the new King of the West, we, the council, were hoping that this could happen sooner than we were originally planning."

His eyes flick over to Lennandria. The girl doesn’t look surprised at this information and he wonders why he had been the last person informed of his own marriage.

At least now he knows why his parents were always talking her up, mentioning her beauty or wonderful talent every so often and abandoning the two of them together as often as they could.

Luhan looks at Lennandria from across the room, taking in all of the information. Sure, the girl was beautiful with her dark hair and soft features that ran in the water clan family, but Luhan would never marry her. She had a personality he couldn't deal with. She was too much to handle. She was such a... girl.

Luhan pouts in a not-so-kingly manner and plays with his hands. If his father had said already arranged the marriage, there was no backing out. Not with his father’s passing and becoming the new King. Not with the fact that this marriage could forge an unbreakable alliance between the East and West for good, putting any hostility between the two countries to rest once and for all.

He couldn't be selfish. Not in a situation like this. Not when the safety of the country - his country - was at stake.

He looked up from his hands to face the eleven other councilmen, Lennandria, and her brother. Luhan sighs and drowns out the voice in his head that is telling him that this is a bad idea.

"I'll do it."

--

He doesn't have enough time to regret the decision because they are to be married within the month.

With all of the preparations and with her off doing gods-know-what when she should be helping, he doesn’t even have time to see her and complain about how much he does not want to marry her.

One morning, the head of the Dragon Kin comes to Luhan unexpectedly.

Luhan invites him in, only to see that there is a cloaked boy in tow of the man. The boy has his head down so there is no way for Luhan to see his face. He also has ropes tied around his hands and Luhan is immediately on guard.

"This boy is a present from the Reecius. A wedding gift, per se. After your fathers passing, he thought you could use a helping hand. I guess he didn't know too much about your relationship with your father, may the gods bless his soul."

Luhan nods in acceptance at the kind-of condolence, and his becomes less tense. Then he looks towards the boy.

"Let me see your face." Luhan orders him. The boy lowers his hood and Luhan does his best to prevent a gasp. The boy looked like he came from the heavens, not from the slums of the East. Coincidentally, all of the attractive people in this nation were high-borns, Luhan had noticed. But with his silky, dark hair and smooth, unblemished skin with sinfully luscious lips and a tongue that swept over them every few seconds in such a captivating manner, he wouldn't blame somebody for thinking him a prince instead of a slave.

"Do you have a name?" he asks gently. He had never really believed in slavery, but refusing such a "generous" gift would be considered rude. He didn't want a war to break out over a slave.

The boy opens his mouth and Luhan’s heart skips a beat, "Sehun, Your Majesty."

--

Chanyeol looks at his father’s body and wonders what he did in his life to deserve this.

It was all that princess’ fault. Everything was her fault. If she hadn't started come down to the blacksmiths shop with her father, if she hadn't started a relationship with Chanyeols brother, none of this would have happened. His life would be normal. He would be normal. He would be able to feel.

He feels someone hugging him, but he can't hug them back. He can't do anything but stand there because this was his doing. He hears condolences but he can't accept them. Doesn't want them. Doesn't want people to feel sorry for him. He doesn't deserve such kindness.

The funeral goes by in a blur. People say words and Chanyeol feels numb. He feels numb when his father is lit on fire, his ashes being carried with the wind and sent to the Gods above. He feels numb when he goes back "home", too. Back to the house that had started all of this.

He can’t deal with it.

He goes straight to his room, ignoring his new fathers watchful eyes and intent on sleeping, but finds he can't. Flames swirl around in his mind and he can't quite push them away. If only he wasn't born with the ability to wield fire. If only Chanyeols father had not been so involved with the King in the East and his daughter. He wonders how differently it would have went if somebody else had killed his father. Would they have saved his brother like he did? No. They would have been brutally murdered. Both of them.

Chanyeol eventually finds sleep in the comfort that what he did was for the good of his new family and for the good of the people, even if it would never be good for him.

He wakes up to find he has slept through the entire day.

He rises from his ridiculously comfortable bed and gets ready, dressing himself in the rich, soft fabrics that the nobles wore that didn't seem to suit him well enough yet. He tries not to think of the last few days and the horror that went with them. It's ridiculously hot today and he hopes his new father, Sertius Tagetheon, won’t make him do any gruelling work like getting out of his room or socializing. 

He's not up for the nobles and their fake, polite ways or their patronizing stares. He's not up for any of it. Not after what it's caused him.

If anything, he’s not up for Lennandria.

Lennandria was the reason he had to kill his own father. If she wasn’t in love with Chanyeols brother, Devlin, everything would have been fine. Normal.

But no. Nothing could be normal for Chanyeol.

He was born with the power to wield fire. That already was weird enough. Then, at the age of 14, Chanyeols talent with his power was discovered by none other than the head of the fire clan, Sertius Tagatheon, who ended up taking him in and away from his father to live under him as his new apprentice and heir.

Chanyeol, of course, was allowed to visit his father and sibling. Sertius was not a malicious man and would not keep Chanyeol from the man who raised him or his brother.

That’s where things went wrong.

Lennandria, Princess of the East, would insist on tagging along wherever he went. She would come every single time he went to visit his family and it was not hard to notice her infatuation with Chanyeol’s brother. It became apparent that Devlin felt the same way about Lennandria that she did him and it was so obvious that even Sertius, the man who wasn’t even her father, knew.

It caused problems. Lennandria would get into arguments with her father about Devlin and who she was and wasn’t allowed to love. She insisted that his status didn’t matter. Chanyeol came from nothing and people still respect him, she told Chanyeol she had said to her father.

That’s when Reecius informed her of her arranged marriage to Luhan, the Prince of the West.

She was furious. How could she be in love with one man while married to the other? She didn’t even like Luhan. They had always been enemies of sorts from what Chanyeol knew. They had a kind of malicious sibling rivalry even though they weren’t siblings.

Chanyeol didn’t think anything bad of Luhan, though. If anything, he considered the boy a friend. The councilmen and their families lived in two realms side by side, and the only thing separating them was a teleportation portal. It didn’t take much for Chanyeol to hop through and visit Luhan, who was always vibrant and full of smiles and a bit quirky. His personality matched Chanyeols to a tee. People often stated they could be twins if only they looked the same.

Luhan wasn’t his best friend, but he was pretty close.

His best friend was his brother, Devlin. Chanyeol had saved his brother in the fire. He couldn’t kill him. Not after what he had already done to his father. So he let the boy escape into the slums, a place Devlin knew well and would be able to survive in.

To this day Chanyeol wishes he would have been able to do the same for his father, but if he would have, nobody would have thought him dead. There had to be at least one body to prove that the family was dead.

He thinks he hates Sertius for making him do this, but he can’t. The man was just following orders. It’s Lennandria’s father that he hates. Reecius was the one who ordered Sertius to make Chanyeol kill his family. Apparently, Lennandria was too in love with Devlin to go through with the marriage. He was a distraction they had to dispose of.

They couldn’t hire an assassin. That was suspicious and it raised the chance of them being found out. They couldn’t get them arrested, either. That would cause a stir in the peace. They couldn’t send any guards or army men to dispose of them. Word could get around.

That was where Chanyeol came in.

What with Chanyeols father being a blacksmith, there was bound to be an accident some time. It would be rather convenient if they died by fire. And what with Chanyeol being a frequent visitor to his father’s shop, there would be less of a chance of it seeming suspicious that he was there. Chanyeol was loved by the people, so who would suspect him?

Nobody would. And that was why Chanyeol’s adoptive father had barged into his room on that beautiful summers day and told him to kill his best friend and the man who had raised him.

“You have to do it.” Sertius had said, “I don’t want you to. I told him that. But there’s no other way. If you don’t do it, somebody else will and I’m sure as hell they wouldn’t be so nice about it. It’s for the good of the people. Think about that before you do something rash.”

Every night since that day, Chanyeol cries at the uncaring sky, wondering how his father feels about raising such a useless coward.

--

Chanyeol thinks he hates Lennandria but finds he can’t. Sure it’s all her fault but she was like a sister. Always there. Always caring. He knows she feels as upset about the fire as Chanyeol does. He wonders if telling her about Devlin`s whereabouts would change anything. She had already agreed to the marriage. She was already in too deep to back out.

He tells her anyway. She is mad at first. She doesn’t talk to him for the entire day and he finds this a bit childish, though he understands why. He knows she isn’t mad at him. Just mad at the situation.

Later on she comes to his room and cries. She doesn’t say anything, just cries and sobs horrible, gut-wrenching sobs and he feels so bad that he sobs with her. She thanks him for saving Devlin, finally, and leaves to her room for a day, not coming up.

Luhan complains about her lack of help with the wedding. Chanyeol doesn’t say anything.

Another day passes by and Chanyeol thinks his day could not get any more boring until Lennandria trudges into his room without knocking and demands he kill her.

“Just do me this favor. Please. I don’t want to marry Luhan.” She pleads, tears threatening to fall.

“I’m not going to do that.” He declares and gets up from his bed, clicking his tongue. Was she crazy? Did she really think having him kill her would work? He had already caused enough pain t himself and to her. He wasn’t going to do anything more, even if he knew she wasn’t actually serious.

“I don’t want you to actually kill me. Just... on the wedding day. Make it look like I’m dead. Please. I want to see Devlin. I don`t want to marry Luhan. I want Devlin even if it means giving up my status and living as a peasant. I love him.”

Chanyeol thinks it over for the next few days. He thinks about what it would do. Ultimately, it would make his brother happy. Lennandria, too. And if it all seems like an accident, what harm can be caused other than the sorrow of Lennandrias father? A small fire and Lennandria would be “dead”. No need to start a war over that.

Or so Chanyeol thinks.

--

END
DUN DUN DUNNNNN

 So Luhans a flamer and Chanyeol is angsty. Uhm yea.