A young boy of Claude's coloring, barely old enough to spell his own name, is dragged by the wrist into the Almyran royal chambers. The woman dragging him is paler, her green eyes the same as her son's, her face drawn tight and fierce.

"What were you thinking?" She wheels around and snaps at the boy. "You idiot child, do you have any idea what could have happened to you?"

The boy shakes his head, teary eyed and not understanding what he'd done wrong. "He was nice to me! He said he'd take me to see the wyverns!"

The woman slaps the little boy across the face, her own blanched and stricken. That was all it took for her to nearly lose her only child. "He was lying!" She kneels down, taking the now sobbing boy by the shoulders and shaking him to get his attention. "Listen to me carefully. Unless your father or I say otherwise, you can't trust anyone. No matter how they act, or what they promise you. That man would have killed you. Do you understand?"

He doesn't, not really, not yet, but the boy nods anyway, tears tracking down his cheeks.

She releases her grip on him and stands, brushing at her skirt with her hands. "Wipe your face. You're too old to be crying like that. Stay here until I fetch you for dinner." She walks brusquely out of the room and the boy wipes his face on his sleeve, sniffling and hiccuping in his poor attempts to stop crying.

The boy is older, not yet a teenager, bandaged and bruised nearly from head to toe, and even though moving hurts he runs from his pursuers. The boys chasing after him are laughing, but it's not a playful sound-- more like when a group of hunters have cornered their prey so well, they no longer need worry about alerting it. And indeed, it does seem like he's run himself into a dead end.

Teeth grit, he scrambles on top of a table, jumps to grab the side of a wardrobe and pulls himself up on top of it with a pained grunt and straining arms. From there, his thin frame slips up into a hidden crawl space, a vent carved into the stone meant for air flow. He'd long ago dragged pillows and blankets up there, and there was a nice little hole in the wall, just big enough for him to look down at the room below. He's still trying to catch his breath when the group of boys catch up with him, their victorious and vicious grins soon turning to looks of confusion and frustration.

The boy puts a hand over his mouth to muffle the sounds of his breathing, peering through the peephole down at them.

"Hey, you rat, where'd you crawl off to?"

"Show your ugly face, coward!"

Being called a coward makes him bristle, but not enough to give away his hiding spot. It's not cowardice to avoid an unfair fight when he's still injured from the last time they successfully cornered him.

The boys start searching the room, turning over furniture in their attempts to find him. That's going to make getting back down harder, but that's a problem for later. For now, he settles into his nest of pillows and blankets, picking up one of the many books strewn about the tiny space. It's about Almyran flora and fauna, and he quickly turns to a section about poisonous plants, a determined look in his green eyes.