I woke up, wiggling out of the Count's hug, and pushed him away. He turned, whimpering in his sleep, and I let him have his dreams a little longer, trotting to the window.

The sunrise was still crimson-red, the first blades of sunlight stabbing into the clear skies with a vengeance.

A sure sign from my Princess, a command and permission to do what had to be done -- and when had I ever needed more?

I would not fail again. I would not let my Princess down again, no matter the cost.

I breathed.

In and out.

Today was the day.

“Today is the day,” I said to the Count, as he stirred softly in his bed. “Red sun rises.”

“I knew his mother,” the Count said, sitting up. Grief made his voice low, almost a whisper. “I was here, in Griffinstone, when the boy was born.”

I fixed my mane one last time and checked my makeup: Form was essential, after all, and today had to go right.

“Bluette will accompany me to the event,” I informed him. “And help me make the final preparations. Be ready, my little lord.”

He closed his eyes and fumbled with his magic for my flask. I could see him make a face after a drink, but at least it seemed to make him more at peace with what was about to happen.

I checked myself again in the mirror once we were about to leave Bluette’s cloud home.

The heavy Hind bracelets pulled on my legs, and the ashen pattern on my forehead made my skin itch, but I ignored it like I ignored the chill in my bones and the feral hunger gnawing on my guts. I was tired, hungry and cold, and yet, at the same time fully sated.

“Shall we go, my little lady?”

She came up behind me, and put a heavy coat around my shoulders, protecting me against the cold winds. I couldn’t help but note that the heavy fur slowed me down, and the hood obscured my vision, and I couldn't help but note that Bluette took note of this fact as well.

It didn’t matter -- the coat was warm and smelled of her: summer peaches and honeysuckle. Besides, I trusted Bluette.

I nodded. All that I came here for was done. Now, all that was left was to see where the chips may fall and be there to pick them up.

Together, we walked through the blizzard, towards the immense, rambling outline of Gormenghast, where the Prince’s judgement awaited.

Others were already there, and more to come. Griffons in droves, scant few ponies. We met with the Count in the crowd and looked up towards the top of the tower. The highest tower of Gormenghast, just as the Count had said, hanging over a ravine, a fall dozen dragons high.

The King was there, and Gwyr, by his brother’s side, and Galad with his wings bound in heavy metal bands, and a griffon judge, so young his feathers still bore the fluffy childish down.

Gideon gestured with the wing, and just like that, the snow had stopped, every cloud holding their snow on his command. The cold power he summoned raked against my nerves like a file taken to my horn.

Winds dead, the crowd went still and silent, and every word from the rock above could be heard crystal-clear.

The drama, to which I already knew the ending, inevitable as an avalanche after the first stones have already rolled.

"Galad, Prince of the House of Grover, you stand accused of the attempt of fratricide--",The crowd buzzed, "attempt of regicide," the whispers intensified, "and High Treason. Prince Gideon, is your accuser."

Gideon nodded slowly, never taking his gaze away from his brother.

"Do you stand by your words?"

"I do." the Prince answered. King’s wings stiffened, but otherwise, he did not move.

"Present the evidence." the griffon commanded, wings stock-stff in Accusation.

"His name has been scratched into the floor of Gesklethorn," a griffon wizard stepped forth, "That had been witnessed."

“His feather has been found in the vault,” a griffon-guard testified. “That we have seen.”

So they found it. Taken off the princeling as we descended into Gesklethorn, casual compliment concealing a twist of the hoof, and released into the winds when I was there with Gideon, and now it played out -- the daming bit of evidence, my trump put on the table without me ever having to play it.

"He wielded the power against the King. He wielded the power against the Prince. That we have seen," the nobles -- All of them young, all of them of Gideon's clique standing behind him -- raised their wings.

"We... we can't be sure that..." the young medic started, but under Gideon's gaze his words stuck in his mouth. He cleared his throat and tried again "The Prince is ill, and his power is waning, this we know."

"How do you plead?"

"I... I did take the power," the princeling confessed, "But I didn't mean to hurt Gid! I never meant to hurt anyone!"

"To take the winds is treason - that is the law." the young griffon-judge announced. "To threaten the power of the Prince, is treason - that is the law. To use magic against another, is crime and cowardice - that is the law.

"The punishment for treason is death." the tips of his wings shivered. "That too is the law.

“Shall you give pardon to the accused, Your Majesty?" he asked, almost desperate.

"Take back your oath, boy!" the King commanded -- asked -- begged. "This has gone far enough!"

"I will not." I could not see his claws, from all the way down there, but I knew they were tightening, cutting grooves into the stone floor of the tower. “The traitor must die.”

"Brother!" Gwyr stood forward, shocked.

"Brother!" Galad begged.

"I swore on my power! I swore on the Idol, I cannot -- I will not take it back! The griffon's word is as immovable as the mountains. Without his word, Griffon is nothing."

"Tell us who made you do it, Gally, please," Gwyr begged. "Then we can punish them instead. Please!"

"Brother, I..." he looked down, his eyes finding mine from all the way up the tower, begging silently.

"Silence." I raised the fan to my lips.

He swallowed his sobs "I can't!" He forced himself straight and still. "There is nothing to tell," he repeated, struggling the words out, "I did it all by myself, and for my own reasons."

"Then you fall." Gideon snarled. "Or you die by my claws. Decide, Father."

"...Your Majesty?"

The King and the Prince stood motionless against each other. They knew, as I knew, as everygriffon knew that in that moment laws didn't matter, the evidence didn't matter, rules, traditions, titles, nothing mattered -- it is will against will, power versus power.

"Dad?" the little prince said, "Daddy, please."

The King moved his wings, lowering his head, and shifting his weight. The winds screamed and stopped, and not a breeze moved as he stood choosing between his son and his son.

The princeling wiped his tears off his face.

"Gideon," he said, “Father.” His voice was calm, and his wings moved suddenly light despite the chains. "It's ok. I release you."

Quick and graceful, before anyone had a chance to do something, he jumped on the parapet.

The Count closed his eyes by my side.

The princeling stepped. He stepped, he fell, and his wings didn't open.

And there was one less Prince in Griffonstone.

"Much later, the Count even wrote an epigram on his death," Sunset frowned, recalling.

"He fell, a slave of tinsel-honour,
A victim of the misplaced trust;
The little Poet's head, the noblest,
Bowed on his broken wings in dust...

"It was done in the young prince's style even, all iambics and odd-rhymes. Lengthy, but quite droll."

"You killed him," Twilight gasped. "How could you?! How can you mock that?"

"Did I?" Sunset asked, "It was not my hoof that pushed him off the ramparts. It was not my voice that sentenced him to death, not my oath that made him take a step--"

"Yeah, you did." Applejack cut off the flowery prose. "As sure as if you did them things, you caused this fella's death."

"So I did." She took a sip of her tea, setting the cup back on the saucer carefully. "And it was far from the worst thing I've done -- not even just that day.."

In the halls where I found him, Gwyr was pacing. He walked to and fro along the walls of the room, like a caged lion, his tail lashing nervously against his sides.

Outside the griffon nobility stood, unsure, scared. Waiting. The King was weak, and they needed the new one, but none was willing to breach the topic with Gwyr.

So it fell on me, the silent consensus of fear that made the crowd of griffons part before me, that let me into this door, to watch Gwyr pace, and listen to him talk.

"I.." he started, “I never thought it'd go so far -- not until the very last moment. I thought it a cruel joke, a prank gone too far, lunacy he might yet wake up from. It’s not like my brother, not at all! Could it possibly.."

"It was not the poison," I interrupted him forcefully. "I know my alchemy, and so do you. None of those compounds could've influenced his mind, not in those doses, not without destroying his kidneys and liver first. What we're seeing was in your brother all along."

“Why did Father...” He clicked his beak, and resumed his pacing. “I don’t know what to do!”

"The griffons wait outside." I said, "Gideon went too far. They wait for your counsel, for your command. They need a King -- their King. Someone has to pick up the crown, and sit on the throne. Your brother is dead so you’re the only griffon who can make that choice. "

"They shouldn't. I cannot...." his wing trembled. "Gideon should be the King, I never..."

He grew silent again.

"Your brother died because of you," I said, poisonous compassion reaching for that chink in his armour, striking right where I knew it would hurt the prince. "Because you hesitated. You can’t repeat the same mistake." ‘Scientific vivisection’ the Count had called it, pushing on one nerve, again and again, till it is raw. “For his sake, at least, as well as for Gideon’s.”

"Aye. I cannot." The Prince finally stopped pacing, his eyes still empty. "I just wish ...I wish that I could've said something, or prevented something from being said much earlier... Done something which might have let him grow differently, something which would have seen him not become that bitter thing so obsessed with his own power." He sighed. "What we do is for the best. For his own good."

We entered, with me hidden in the cavalcade of older griffons, Gwyr at the helm of our little coalition, pushing the doors of the throne room to the sides.

"Come in brother," Gideon welcomed the delegation of griffons.

He sat on his father's throne. He was not alone, but the other griffons sat aside, fearing to come closer, leavening wide empty space before the leaden throne.He was in one of his darker moods, the kind that came more often these days, silent and staring at his reflection in the glass of wine in his claw. One of Gwyr's bottles, already almost empty, stood by his side.

"Drink with me."

He threw the bottle, and it exploded against the wall just next to the dog's head, making nearby servants and griffons flinch. "More wine!" he demanded, his voice slurred with the drink. "I will drink with my brother!"

The dog scurried away, and the griffons stepped back one more step away from their drunken Prince.

"I'm not here to drink with you, Gideon," Gwyr said gently. "We need to talk. You are not well. Ga--"

"I'm not drunk!" the Prince protested unprompted. "I have the petabo-- metalob-- I have the endurance of ten griffons!"

"I am not here to drink,” Galad repeated. "Where's Father? You should really not sit on--"

"Dad's not here." His wing pointed at a dented leaden coronet, lying on the floor like a common trinket, no one daring to touch it. "He's still sulking."

It was still lying right where the King threw it in his last fit of pique. For all the subtlety you may want, all the illusions you may weave, ultimately power matters, and weakness is not appreciated in Griffonstone.

"I suppose I am the King now, ain't I?" he looked at other griffons. "Am I not your King?"

The whispers grew more intense, but no one dared contradict.

"Liars," he was feverish now, "traitors. Cowards!" The last word echoed through the room in a sudden shot. "That creature betrayed me. Galad conspired against me. Father was too cowardly to give me my justice! But I can trust you brother, though, can't I? Will you stand by my side when everyone else leaves me?"

“About that, Gideon,” Gwyr started. “After what you did to Galad--”

“I did what I had to!”

"Do you at least feel guilty about it?" Gwyr asked incredulously.

"Of course I do, but I gave my word, Gwyr! My word! On the Claw and Wing, Ice and Storm and--"

"I know, brother. We were all there."

"Well, what did you expect, then?! What was I supposed to do? Give up my power? My honour? My pride?! The griffon word is--"

"Galad was our brother, our kin! Do you truly think your foolish oath was worth his life?"

“It was his own fault--!”

“His own fault?!" Gwyr reared, incredulous. "Do you even hear yourself, brother?"

"He plotted against me!" Gideon roared, "He broke into the chamber, he took my strength, my Power, he did this--” he opened his wings, trailing falling feathers on the floor, “--to me!"

Griffons stepped back.

"He didn't do that..." Gwyr murmured.

"What?!"

"It was I, brother! I did it! I poisoned you!" Gwyr finally screamed stepping forward, his infected guilt bursting in a fountain of ill-timed truth, like a boil bursting with pus. “I’ve been poisoning you for a week now, to stop this madness you started!”

Gideon’s looked wide-eyed at the wine-glass in his claw. At the fresh wine-bottle just brought by the dog, still bearing Gwyr’s waxen seal. He looked at his brother and swung his claw.

Griffons -- eyes of gold, claws of steel. And blood, red blood spilling in spurts on the white marble floor from the slashed throat.

For a second I saw the white in the red blood, and I thought I would be ill.

But the moment passed and the Prince fell, and a pile of bodies hit Gideon, pulling him away. He did not struggle, staring instead at his brother and his own bloodied claw, as if unable to comprehend what he had just wrought.

I turned away and disappeared into the shadows. The final countdown had begun, and I had places to be.

There will be not a sad reflection,
There will be (I am betting on)
Much more gaily celebration
When I am dead, than - born.

Galad, Prince of Griffonstone
Purported to be his last work
Scroll found in Gormenghast