#cardan was named before i heard about the cruel prince book series btw! his naming story is a fun one but it's not from that book

[rainbowsandwhumperflies]

The Winged Servant - 3

cws: multiple whumpers, somewhat reluctant whumper, casual insulting of the whumpee (casual because it is not meant to make him feel bad, that's just how he's referred to), casual discussion of the whumpee's death (again, not threats, not meant to make him feel bad, just... discussion of it), casual discussion of whumpee being conditioned, dehumanization, mentions of whumpee being "punished" for making mistakes, non human whumpee

masterlist

Her Majesty was busy often. I supposed that came with the territory of being royal. Still, though, it used to just be a few meetings a week with paperwork all the time, and recently it had turned into weeks full of meetings with people that weren’t allowed to know I existed.

I didn’t question it, of course. It wasn’t my business. I wasn’t accustomed to change, but it was my job to be whatever Her Majesty needed from me, and I would fulfill that job.

Today was just my regularly scheduled chores, and her room was always first. It was easy, because she wasn’t in it all that often. Her sheets had four more days until they needed to be changed, so all I had to do was make the bed and wipe down the bathroom connected to her room. Two more days until it needed vacuuming.

The princes' room was next. That was… less easy.

Prince Ryan and Prince Cardan were identical twins, but still easy enough to tell apart based off of Prince Cardan’s smile lines and Prince Ryan’s worry lines. And Prince Ryan was never in his room by the time I started cleaning, anyway. He had more responsibilities than his brother, and was better than him at finding things to entertain himself with.

(Prince Ryan had once told me that Prince Cardan received “youngest child treatment,” though he was only twenty-six minutes younger. It didn’t make sense to me. It didn’t need to make sense to me; I wasn’t allowed to repeat when Prince Ryan said things like that.)

At any rate, Prince Cardan was the only one in his room by the time I started cleaning it. “Hey, birdbrain,” he greeted me as I walked in, glancing up from the graphics on the computer he was on. He had a desk in the corner—that’s where he usually was, away from the mess that I was supposed to clean every day.

“Good morning, Your Highness.”

He stared at me as I began making his bed. “Hey, I’m out of water.”

Almost certainly, he tried to toss his empty water bottle at me, ready to tell me to fill it back up. Unfortunately, the bottle almost hit my head, and I flinched away, causing it to sail over my head.

It hit a picture frame from Prince Ryan’s dresser, knocking it to the floor.

“Fucking hell, Onyx, that was a good throw!”

“Yes, Your Highness, my apologies,” I mumbled. “I didn’t mean to miss it.”

“God, you’d be shit at sports.”

Yeah, probably.

“Well? Are you gonna go grab it? I’m still out of water. Just pick up the picture while you're at it.”

Besides the water bottle and picture frame now on the floor, Prince Ryan’s part of the room was spotless. His bed was made, his clothes were put away, the surfaces were dusted. I wasn’t supposed to clean his things. I wasn’t allowed to touch his things. I knew what was in that picture frame—a picture of the two princes sitting on a throne together at six years old—and I knew that Prince Ryan would notice if it was moved from its original spot.

“Are you really too much of a pussy to do your one job and clean something?” Prince Cardan asked from behind me, and I swallowed nervously. This was dangerous territory. If I refused, I might be punished on Prince Cardan’s behalf. If I did put the frame back, I might be punished on Prince Ryan’s behalf. Of course, there was the possibility I’d be punished for letting the picture frame be knocked over in the first place, but I doubted it. I was almost certain that Prince Ryan held more disdain for his twin than he did for me, despite the framed picture.

Well. One of the princes was watching me and giving me an order right now, so I should probably listen to him. If I didn’t want to be punished, I should have just caught the water bottle.

I made my way across the room, kneeling down next to the dresser. My fingers had barely made contact with the frame before I heard a “What are you doing?” from the doorway. “You know not to touch my things.”

That was the other way to tell the difference between the princes. Prince Cardan sounded lighthearted about everything he said, and Prince Ryan sounded lighthearted about nothing.

“My apologies, Your Highness,” I managed to get out past the lump in my throat, turning around to face Prince Ryan.

“Mm. Answer the question. What are you doing?”

“Prince Cardan asked me to refill his water, but when he tried to give it to me, I didn’t catch it, and it hit your picture frame, so I tried to pick it back up. My sincerest apologies, Your Highnesses.”

“He tried to give you the bottle, and it ended up across the room from him?”

“He, um, he tossed it to me.”

Prince Ryan glanced at his brother. “Can you go one fucking day without trying to throw something at him?”

“He could’ve caught it!” Prince Cardan said defensively. “It was a very well-aimed throw.”

“He’s a servant, not a court jester. He has better things to do than play catch with you.”

“His things to do are whatever we tell him to! He doesn’t care. Onyx, do you mind when I toss things to you?”

There was no right answer to this. Or, really, there were two right answers, one for each twin, and picking one right answer would make the other twin mad at me.

“No,” I whispered, and they both rolled their eyes at me.

“No one knows what you’re saying when you talk that quietly,” Prince Ryan reminded me.

“I only exist to please the royal family,” I said, loud enough that they could hear me this time. “It is your right to order whatever you wish from me, and it's not a problem if that includes throwing things.”

“See?” Prince Cardan was laughing, and Prince Ryan glared at both of us.. “He doesn’t mind. It’s fine.”

“Onyx, go refill Cardan’s water,” Prince Ryan ordered. “Leave the frame on the ground.”

Prince Ryan wanted me to leave, I thought. He didn’t like to yell at people with me there. I heard him tell his brother once that I’d get a big head if I noticed people yelling at each other on my behalf. He was smarter than me, of course, so I wouldn’t contradict that theory, but I knew my place and was almost certain I’d stay there no matter what I heard people arguing about.

Refilling the water bottle did not take as long as it was supposed to. The princes were still arguing by the time I returned.

“Just because he’ll let you do shit like that doesn’t mean you should! It’s hard enough to get him to complete all his responsibilities after his regular punishments; he doesn’t need injuries from you or punishments from things you make up and exaggerate.”

“He’s not even human, Ry. You’re taking this much too seriously. There’s no harm done, honestly.”

“I have been training him to be the way he is for half a decade. Just because there’s no short-term problems with what you do doesn’t mean it won’t affect his behavior. If you give him impossible tasks, he’ll give up on trying to complete them because he’ll learn he faces punishment whether or not he tries, and then he’ll stop doing the tasks I actually need him to do.”

“You don’t need shit from him! You think you’re so much better than everyone else because you trained a bird to make beds and make your own anyway, but you’re just a pretentious dick! Let me have my fun. It’s really not a big deal.”

I cleared my throat from the doorway. “I, um… refilled the water bottle, Your Highnesses.”

”I am not pretentious,” Prince Ryan said, ignoring me. “I do not think I’m better than everyone; I just think I’m better than you, Cardan.”

“Right. That’s why you have so much more say over the way we treat the servant who belongs to all of us. You know, he probably won’t survive tonight anyway.”

“I was only a few minutes late for Her Majesty’s breakfast this morning,” I tried to explain. “There’s no other punishments for tonight. The punishment I earned might not be pleasant, but-”

“Do not fucking interrupt me,” Prince Cardan snapped. “Ryan, the fact that you’ve worked half a decade to make him absolutely pathetic will not help him now. He couldn’t handle a fight if I aimed a gun and pulled the trigger for him. He couldn’t handle a fight even before all this—that’s why he’s here! You know he’s dying tonight, right?”

“What’s happening tonight?” I asked. “Your, um, Your Highnesses, I mean.”

“None of your business,” both of the princes told me together.

That made sense. Just because something made me nervous didn’t give me the right to demand information from people above me. What the royal family did to me was always in my best interests, and Prince Cardan’s vague statements didn’t change that.

“What else are you doing today?” Prince Ryan asked me after a moment.

“Cleaning the bathroom, Your Highness, and the living room, and the kitchen, and helping Jayden make dinner.”

“Right. Can you busy yourself with some of that and finish here in… half an hour? Just give us some time to sort this out.”

“Yes, Your Highness, of course.”

They were arguing again as soon as I was out of the door.

~

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