Quack Quack.

(I got bored and decided y'all need to know how Ducky and Royce became friends. It's kind of an important part of the whole thing, you know?)

Probably prudent to introduce myself first, right?

That’s easy. 

Lord Chancellor Atlas Remy Sewell, Duke of Barnegat, at your service. Once upon a time, I was just a little kid called Ducky, though. I say this like people don’t still call me Ducky. They most certainly do, and I most certainly don’t correct them anymore. 

My parents were sailors. Well, my father was first. My mother was a princess who had the good fortune to fall in love with a sailor. I’ll get into them later, but this is relevant information. For a very, very short time, Commodore August Sewell was in command of the Royal Fleet. I swear, this is relevant. The Royal Fleet is comprised of rather large sailing vessels. When my parents were married, my father decommissioned one of the largest brigantines in the fleet to gift to my mother. She loved that boat more than I think she has ever loved me. 

All that to say, I was born on the Merriweather. In the open ocean. During a rather nasty tropical storm. The ballasts nearly failed, she lost one of her three masts, and came home bruised and battered with a stowaway on board. Me. I should have died. 

Why’s that, you ask? 

My family is cursed. Well, my mother’s side of the family. Every firstborn son for generations died before or shortly after birth. Princess Teresa accidentally discovered a magical loophole. Curses don’t hold over water. I never asked her if she figured that out before or after, but I counted it as lucky. Being the first male child born to a royal family on the first try was a big deal. She may have broken that curse, but I wouldn’t know. All of my cousins had daughters first. I had a daughter first. Maybe it just evolved, who knows?

We lived in Barnegat, New Jersey, two doors down from my mother’s best friend, Novin Blackwell. The thing about Novin, which I will eventually get into, is that he’s a dope. I love him dearly, but he is dumb as a sack of bricks. 

The Sewells had lived in Jersey and commanded the Fleet for seventy years. Grandpa Bastien handed it down to Uncle Donovan, and Donovan had the misfortune to die, passing it on to my father. Who absolutely did not want it. It should’ve passed to me, but when my father had his accident when I was four, the post went to Novin. I couldn’t very well have commanded anything at four. I couldn’t even speak correctly.

Which brings us back to Ducky. 

I had a vicious stutter. I couldn’t form words correctly. I mumbled. I had a ridiculous South Jersey accent. Words like Duke tripped me up. So, for years, I introduced myself as a duck. My mother thought it was adorable, waterfowl and all, and it stuck. I swear, once she met my father, water became her entire personality. I won’t lie, I grew up on all manner of boats, and I loved it, too. Not sure I’d remember how to rig a sail now if you paid me, but I loved it then. 

The most impressive thing about my childhood wasn’t the massive ships, though. It wasn’t having imposing parents or coming from two families with very magical, powerful werewolf bloodlines. It was my proximity to the Royal Family. My mother’s brother, Runi, was king, and he had about fifty million kids.

Okay, six. But, still.

In age order, the children were Royce, Jara, Lorenzo, Barnaby, Navy, and Orla. Each of them will have their own stories, but for the sake of my own backstory, you need to understand that I have always been Royce’s shadow.

The first time we travelled from Jersey to Michigan, to the palace, I was three. Orla had just been born. Navy and I are almost the exact same age. Two weeks apart, to the day. July fourteenth and July twenty-eighth. 

I was terrified of the old stone castle, with its floor-to-ceiling windows that didn’t open, and the ancient wooden doors at the top of the entry stairs. The Gallants had this thing that they did every time they received visitors. They lined up oldest to youngest on those stairs to greet whoever stopped by. Real classy and official. It was always Aunt Prue on the top step, usually holding whichever baby she had just popped out, Uncle Runi on the one below her, then Royce, and so on. They were always so dressed up, I found myself feeling bad for the kids. Royce, especially. He always looked five seconds from crying and shifted around like he had never been more uncomfortable. 

Royce is three years older than I am. He may as well have been an adult, in my tiny little baby mind. I was obsessed with making a good impression at that first meeting. I tried my best to mimic the way he stood, the expression on his face, what he did with his hands, and how he spoke. But Royce didn’t stumble over his R’s. Words beginning with th didn’t take four starts to get out. He most certainly didn’t call himself a duck. He was a prince, for chrissake. 

Anyway, that visit very much solidified, in my mind, that there was something different about us. Everyone in Jersey was on the same level. Like any other town, in any other state, we all had jobs and mortgages and went to regular schools. Here, at the palace, people bowed to us. There were house servants to bring anything we asked for. My family wore elaborate costumes and could do anything they wanted to. My cousins didn’t go to school; they had tutors. And combat trainers. And regency classes. I didn’t even know what regency meant. Again, I was three. 

I distinctly recall being put in a room with my cousins while our parents caught up with one another, and feeling a bit out of sorts. There was no shortage of toys and coloring books, but I just sat there on my ass and watched them. Lorenzo and Barnaby roughed each other up, laughing and rolling around on the floor like four-year-old lunatics. Jara sat at the window and drew endless flowers on a sheet of large paper clipped to an easel. Navy fell asleep in the toy chest with her knees pulled to her chin. And Royce sat on the small couch, staring at the door with his hands clasped in his lap, without blinking. 

The overbearing brightness from the windows made his hair look a bit like fire. Most of the Gallant children were redheads, like their mother; Navy and Lorenzo were the exceptions. Navy kind of looks more like my mom than I ever have. Dishwater blonde, blue eyes, dainty features. I’ve always favored my father. Permanently suntanned and beach blonde, but the same blue eyes that Navy inherited from her father. The same ones my mother had. 

That’s enough about that, though. What you need to know about the Gallant children is that most of them were redheads with shockingly green eyes. Prue’s Blackwell genes were strong. If Blackwell is a familiar name, you have picked up on the small, yet significant, fact that she was Novin’s sister. The same Novin who lived two doors down from our mustard yellow Victorian in New Jersey. 

So, anyway, I’m little more than an idiot toddler at this point, so I hobbled over to my eldest cousin and crawled up next to him, fixing my eyes straight ahead in the same way he did. The door didn’t seem all that interesting, but he was intent on staring, and I was intent on being just like him. 

“Wh-wha-whatcha luh-lookin’ at?”

He turned his head toward me and bunched up his eyebrows like he’d never been more offended in his life. “Nothing.”

“N-nothin’ nuthin, or nuh-nothin’ somethin’?”

“You talk funny.” He resumed his staring contest with the door and said, “I don’t like it.”

“Royce, that’s not kind,” Jara scolded without looking away from her drawing. “Don’t mind him, Atlas, he’s chronically rude.” Jara always spoke like she was a fifty-year-old woman, even as a child. She was barely five here, but if I hadn’t known better, I’d swear she was sixteen.

He spared another glance at me and sighed. “I apologize, Your Grace. Nothing, nothing, if you must know.”

“Yuh-you oh-okay?” God, I hated stuttering. My face got so red with all the embarrassment.

“Your name is Atlas, correct?” I nodded, and he continued, “Well, Atlas, I can think of about a million better ways to spend my time than watching a bunch of children dawdle.”

I don’t know why, but that response made my nose get stuffy and my eyes started stinging really badly. I blinked too many times to try to act like a big kid and not some crying, snot-nosed baby. I’d already blown my first impression with my useless voice, getting weepy would surely make this child hate me. Of course, I failed, and big, fat tears dropped into my lap while I kept my face toward the door. 

“Oh.” Royce scrambled to turn to me and wiped my cheeks with the cuff of his sleeve. “No, no, come on, none of that. I didn’t mean… what I meant was… don’t cry, Atlas.”

And I lost it. I choked out huge, gasping sobs and wailed like I’d skinned my knee. All the while, I kept my posture straight, my eyes on that goddamn door, and my hands in my lap, trying like hell to be impressive, same as him. 

“Atlas!” He shook my shoulders and stared right at me. “I’m sorry. Okay?”

“It-it’s f-fine. Sor-sorry. I’ll sh-shut up.” I held my breath and closed my eyes, willing myself to stop being an idiot for one second. 

“You need to slow down when you speak, kid.”

Slowly, I replied, “I know. I get, get ex, excited.”

“I promise you, I’m not exciting.”

I shook my head so fast that it made me feel wobbly and said, “Nuh uh. I think you are.”

“Oh. Well–”

I could tell he was going to say Atlas again, and I slapped my hand over his mouth. Truth be told, I hate my name. So, while I had him good and shut up, I whispered, “My name is Ducky.”