When Nilas was born, she was still holding hope. They'd taken her to safety and hired only careful people for the birth. It was not to ever be known that she was more than human — and when the child, pure light in the hand, had been delivered, no one had taken pictures or snatched him from her arms. It had felt reasonable, and right,, until it no longer did. Things were different now, they'd said. There was a child involved. Did Beatrice want them to leak these secrets, to turn the people against her? She had worked so hard to earn their love, what a waste would it be to become a vagabond again, traveling alone? She began to listen; Sayan had spent long enough on Earth not to trust the Safe Haven, not to trust anyone.

Nilas' birth changed everything. The Royals became more controlling. It started with the excuse of the mother of the new prince, the first grandchild of the Queen; then it became aggression. They wanted something more in all this return. Promise for protection, or safety. Beatrice was a weapon in waiting, something just-in-case. For Beatrice, without her Dishen, it was as good as she could expect of humans. Once they found out the truth they only knew how to barter, rage or kill. There was no appreciation for the greater, no true sense of glory in their understanding. So she deigned herself to accept it, to try and hope it meant her son on Earth would have a better life. After all, Fatian would welcome her back when it was time — but young Nilas was an Earth born and would stay for far too long to avoid the discomforts of humanity.

So, Beatrice used the stupidity of them against themselves. Humanity was a thing to manipulate quietly, without affecting the course of destiny as a whole. It was no different than pruning a tree; you taught it how to grow, how to mend. Nilas would need training, she told them. He would need privacy. A small manor just for them two. They would be in danger otherwise, she warned, and found shelter in that to be able to teach her son the truth of his talents. She taught him, too, how to keep these things from the others. It was hard, to raise a boy to lie to his family, but Beatrice was hardly focused on the difficulties of the now; she cared for the future, for the boy whose star was softer than others, was cautious and light. It helped no one that any time she tried to let him send word back to Fatian she recieved no word back. But diligently, all the same, she taught Nilas.

"Spine straight", she'd remind him. "Smile on right." The Royals welcomed this, a mother who focused on the importance of their image, on the upkeep of their tasks. And then, in private, she'd comfort him. Fingers through the hair in a reminder that this was safety — the only safety. "We must be careful," she'd ask before guiding her son to a mirror and starting to let flames erupt around them. He'd catch them in the palm of his reflection and twist them around, fold them like paper and turn them into doves that bloomed rainbows from their wings. Like there was not enough strict in her or the family that'd welcomed her in to ever crush the beauty of his imagination. For all the years Beatrice could see herself trapped on Earth she was glad for that; a son who would not be broken.

Years of Royal Travels on behalf of organizations and charity were secret rendezvous with gods around the globe, growing young Nilas' gifts as Beatrice learned more of the function of estates. Of laws and binding contracts, of ways to make sure there were subtle enough clauses in everything that Nilas would never be broken, abused or bent by the family the way she was. Beatrice wanted for more, for better, and eventually it came to light how easily that was achieved. 2018 came the forced Registration of all — even other Xihu — and Beatrice watched her fear abate. The public had their views, yes, but no one ran to them with pitchforks and fire. Not really. The people welcomed her even more. A celestial! Who had Chosen to care for them, to do for them! She was a hero, renound to the public more so than the Princess-in-Waiting. It was the most clever kind of spite she ever would have dreamed of.

But Beatrice had already begun her plans, had made sure Nilas' position could not change anymore. Gave up their rights to other claims — to allowances of absurd wealth, or security, or costing the people money in such public ways everyone loved her more — just so that Nilas would be caught in a generational claus. Never to be dismissed. Never to be destroyed. One day, should he want it, he would even be able to ascend to the throne properly and — wouldn't Denmark love that? The beloved son of the beloved celestial daughter, a polite and kind gesture handed down. And if Nilas found he had no want for that, he would be allowed every right to control he wished. Beatrice would make sure he was a liberated, as free, as the half-borns should have been allowed through all of history.

As for returning, she would wait a few years more. Now her desire was to watch the Queen die more than anything, before letting her light return to Fatian; knowing, then, that Nilas was well versed in taking care of himself and building a life that was everything he could want for.

To be born a prince
didn't necessarily make anyone royalty. Nilas did not have a single trait of a ruling man in him. There was no ruthlessness, no overflowing charisma, no steadfast confidence, cold precision, none of the things he had grown up observing in every single person around him. Family and otherwise. Anyone who fell within the umbrella of influence of royalty, of diplomacy, of politics, they all seemed to be imbued with something Nilas himself lacked.

He knew he was different, had been told as much as far back as his memory goes. Different in both ways of gifts and ways of danger. Different could always mean two things — brilliance or target. His mother taught him that the royals did not want anything to be different, and that any change towards it was slight of hand to maintain what they've had for centuries. What they felt belongs to them and they deserve. Them and they, not him or his mother.

If he was to survive being born of a family he did not belong to, Nilas would have to spend his whole life learning to be different than he was. By concealing himself, bars held close and tight to every part of him, freedom could come much later. Being polite was easy, knowing the rules, the behaviors, the right greetings and times to smile, times to speak, all of that was simple enough once trial and error straigthened him out to never want to commit error in any way. Errors could prove to be fatal. An error could mean his mother ripped away from him without any chance of her own liberation or joy, and his own life used for the gain of others and not lived at all.

His powers were not a difficult thing either. As beneath nature as his family tried to make them both seem, Nilas had seen the truth of light from early on. The depths of Beatrice's flames guaranteed she was a warm woman, but that warmth often ran hot and Nilas knew only to admire it. In a world that so often wanted to seem ugly and make him feel the ugliest part of it, Nilas knew his potential for beauty, for joy. He, like his mother, had come to this world to help it go on any way they could. He was now his mother's world and her efforts would go towards that. His world was hers and so would his, but there could be more beyond them both.

More was the stuff of fantasy. A life outside of light, his imagination a prism that turned every speck of light he could reach into a plethora of rainbows. Nilas spent his youth more comfortable being shadow in the eyes of other so he could spill his light in places that were made safe. Paper, mostly, visits abroad, lulls in training with his mother. As he grew older he found people who made bigger pinpricks into a sky that was too often night. He found more things that made him aware of how vast the sky could be, how much light there could be everywhere, through every harsh season.

Standing outside meant more time to stand within, to stand alone and pour out in private ways that felt safer than the world around him. Art, drawing, fantasy, imagination, all things that turned the whisper of his soul into something louder. Nilas was happy with it being private, for it being safe and his own. Yet when his mother and family gave him no other option but boarding school, there was little privacy he could cling to. Everything about him was even more on notice by a different kind of danger. Boys who envied him cruelly or rejected him on the premise of being himself.

Yet, Nilas would not be broken. He had turned hell flame into dream lights before and he would do it again, do it forever. Forge escape in a life that tried to deny him in. A single relationship was formed in Iris, a small island of safety outside the reach of all he had before. From there he found more, found canvas and paints and teachers who allowed him to be if only for respect for his title.

The one thing he thought of as his own, as private, soon became more attention than anyone had expected him to ever be able to get. Fame found him when he had little desire for it, for all the trappings and ramifications of it. But when Nilas heard what others saw and gained from what he did, he pursued it. Under anonimity and with the blessing of his mother and all those that kept them under thumb. It was another great power he knew he had but was always to be more for others than himself. Nilas gained more space to dream, to learn to forge those things into reality, to be himself and it never need adjusting.

There were many times over security was lost, where Nilas felt stranded even when his mother was around yet love was not a thing he could deny the world being full of. Love made the collar and chain he was born in extend so far out that he was allowed to live in New York. The royal family was confident enough in their grasp on him to allow his little venture as long as he kept the secrecy he had been bound to maintain. Love was found in many ways, as it was lost, regained in others, cultivated in the most unlikely places and light and strength were always to be found.

Freedom, absolute freedom, he thought would be born at the hands of his mother, forged by her the way the start of all good things in his life had been. Yet it came in the most unexpected of ways. Tragedy brought necessity into a world and secrets meant every bar he had been caught behind suddenly vanished. Registration meant everything his mother had worked for was more boundless than either had thought safety could be on this earth for people like them. It meant Nilas' life was entirely his own, something he had never truly been prepared for.

Now that safety was everywhere it felt harder to feel it anywhere at all at times. He remained attempting in the only ways he knew how, to figure out how he could belong in this world. Nilas knew every effort put into him could not turn out lackluster. Imagination remained easier than relationships that came and went often achingly, than every meeting and agreement and step taken upwards in a career that still confounded him at times. There were many things to achieve, many more dreams to dot around the world and mirrors to set up to reflect the light that was already boundless.