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The night Eris Vanserra's son was born had been sheer chaos. Forest House came to life under flickering candlelight as healers scurried from one end of the estate to the other, tending primarily to the Lady Evaline (his mother) then to the Lady Juniper (his wife) as both females had gone into labor the same evening. Eris knew his father well enough, knew the male wouldn't be around until sunrise or well-after despite the summons being sent out to every corner of Autumn. He was torn. Did he behave as Lord and Son or as Husband and Father? Where did his attention go?
The healers begged his input from Juniper's bedside on his mother's condition. Her labor had been harsh. They'd begun to suspect the child wouldn't survive, and how could they when Evaline had born 6 children already? Her body had been torn to shreds time after time to satiate Beron's insatiable urge to spread his family into every court. She'd been little more than a brood mare for him to mount as he pleased. Eris couldn't fathom treating Juniper in such a careless capacity. She was his everything, his life, his reason for breathing.
“Do as you must to save my mother.” Eris instructed the healers. A child's request, really. A selfish one, if he were honest to himself. He'd done his part as eldest to guide his brothers through life, but he was no substitute for Evaline. He could bear Beron's ire, take every punishment, but he simply was not capable of the kindness his mother doled out to them. If he were tasked with caring for his brothers, he would surely fail.
More healers had abandoned his mate to her own labors, attending to Evaline. Two remained. Eris prayed to the Cauldron they were skilled enough for whatever would come. Births involving High Lord lineages were rarely without consequence. Magic would take it's toll. For the eruption of new power in Prythian, there had to be an equal detonation of the opposite. Equivalent exchange, as his father had once referred to the phenomenon, maintained equilibrium between the courts and their leadership.
Just as the sun began to crest, Eris held his son for the first time. The boy nearly glowed with ethereal light. His heir, it seemed, had inherited his coloring, his hair, his everything. Hardly a hint of the boy's mother was present in the tiny, scarlet-wrapped bundle. Juniper's coloring was fair, the norm for Spring Court regents. Very few differences existed between her and her younger brother, Tamlin. Eris had almost hoped their child would have strawberry locks instead of burgundy. He'd hoped to prove his father with his beliefs on their “superior blood” wrong. Another generation of Vanserra blood had been passed on, another reason for Beron to be all the more insufferable. But this boy held all the bearings of his father despite his mother's work to bring him to life. For a moment Eris smiled to himself. The Cauldron had a funny way of repaying Juniper for her efforts.
He whispered sweet promises to the boy as the sun rose. They watched Autumn come to life from the security of their wing of Forest House, Eris pointing out places where they would play together once he was old enough from the windowed wall. His son, his court, his wife, his everything was sheer perfection. He couldn't help but bask in the morning glow as his wife slept peacefully across the room and his son softly cooed in his sleep in Eris’s arms.
Then a frenzied knock sounded at the door. Not the gentle tapping of the healers coming to check on mother and infant, but something wild. The impatient knock of his younger brothers, if he were to guess. Perhaps word of this youngling had begun to spread already. Eris had hardly uttered the word “Enter” when the door flung inward.
“Eris, you have to do something.” His youngest brother, Alphonse, frantically spilled out at once. “He's going to kill her!” Eris didn't need knowledge of who the boy spoke of. He'd heard the idle threats over recent weeks. Should Evaline fail to produce a healthy heir, Beron was done with her. Her last two pregnancies had ended in stillbirth and miscarriage. From the panic lacing Alphonse's voice, something had occurred this time as well.
“Where is he?” Eris strode to Juniper's side and began softly jostling her shoulder. Her emerald eyes popped open immediately. “My love, something has happened with Evaline.” Juniper gripped his arm to pull herself up.
“Go. See what can be done.” Juniper's voice was heavy with sleep as she rubbed her eyes. Her vision settled on her son. “Al, do you want to hold your nephew?” Her focus turned to the young male nervously pacing the room. Alphonse was only twelve, still half a boy with the weight of the world on his shoulders. His nod came quickly. “Go, Eris.” Juniper urged her husband again.
—
Equilibrium had prevailed in its most vile form. His son thrived while his brother had perished almost immediately after birth. Evaline had been sedated prior to Eris making his way to her chambers, but he did not need her affirmation of events. The corpse of a tiny, auburn-haired male rested in the bassinet next to her bed. No rapid heartbeat or pull of breath fluttered from the form, though heat still remained. The boy hadn't been gone long.
“Lord Eris.” The chief healer, a wise woman who had seen all of the Vanserra children delivered in his lifetime, approached him. “The boy's lungs weren’t developed. It was as if he'd inhaled smoke and ash. The phlegm he coughed up was black as night, dark as what a miner would.”
“Like the last one.” Eris commented easily recalling the girl born just two years prior.
“Exactly as the last.” The elderly female approached the bassinet with caution. “If I were a superstitious fae, I'd worry a curse had been placed on your mother.” Eris snorted, a sharp sound which pinched his throat.
“Her life's curse is being tethered to Beron. Perhaps his seed has gone as rotten as him.” The healer considered his words.
“The High magic works in strange ways, my Lord.” Came her reply. “How fares your own child?”
Eris stepped next to the bassinet beside her. The healer’s greying hair swung down her shoulders in tight braids, strands loosened from the nights work. His brother laid too still, color slowly leeching from his features.
“He is beautiful, though I fear Juniper will be angry. She carried him, she birthed him, and she will nurse him, but he could be my twin.” Eris’s gaze flicked between his nearly comatose mother and the boy. “He and this boy could have been twins.”
“Your father's line has always tended to produce males with strikingly similar features. As much as all your brothers look alike, so did his and his father's.” She nodded between brothers, one a life lived in the blink of an eye, the other burdened to survive Autumn. “Beron would never know the difference, never acknowledge the boy if a switch were to be made. As your heir, he would be front and center to the High Lord at all times. As his own, he wouldn't bat an eye.”
Eris’s head snapped to the healer.
“A switch?” His voice had a sharp edge. The healer’s idea was preposterous, absurd. He couldn't. He wouldn't. Eris took a single look at his mother, a glance to the boy who could pass for his own. Beron would divorce her for this. Divorce her, order her executed or worse. And as Beron's son, the boy would be overlooked. He was the seventh. Eris and Juniper had raised most of his siblings anyway; Alphonse still lived with them primarily. Beron wouldn't question them spiriting away another.
“When Beron arrives, tell him to come speak with me.” Eris picked up his brother from the bassinet. This boy was bound in a crocheted blanket of deepest yellow. “Tell no one of this conversation. When my mother awakens, you will inform her that a mix up occurred in the nursery. Her son did not perish tonight.”
The elderly healer’s lips perked at the corners.
“It will be done, my Lord.”
—
Juniper nearly leapt at every sound coming from the corridor outside their quarters. Eris had reappeared with his deceased brother wrapped in his arms and a hushed explanation. He'd told Alphonse not to worry, Evaline would be fine once she awoke. He'd lied so coolly to each person who stepped into the room. Juniper plastered on a face she hoped convinced the others of grief for a child she hadn't lost while doting on the son who wouldn’t be hers.
When Beron made his rounds of the estate that evening, Eris introduced his father the young lord under the guise of Juniper tending to the boy as Evaline healed.
“Why not keep him? I have too many sons as is, and Juniper will need something to keep her company without your own spawn.” had come the High Lord's response. His gaze never settled on Lucien the first time.