This is supposed to be imprisonment, but it’s the freest I’ve been in a long while. The people here hate me, but some don’t mind my company.
I have women, from time to time, and never see them again.
The pain never subsides, but slowly, I’m able to live around it. Little by little, I open myself up. Oro and I duel. We talk. I spend time on Wild Isle. There are glimmers of something resembling happiness. Peace. A life without bloodshed. Nearly two decades pass like this, and then a Wildling comes to my room, seeking me out. She demands a flower on the remnants of Night Isle. Fine. It’s something to do.
I find it for her, and give it to her, and have her, and it’sfine. Nothing memorable, or enough to feel much of anything at all.
I don’t stay. I never stay.
I’m asleep in my own bed hours later when I hear it.
One scream.
Another.
Then, the world is screaming.
The pain rushes to the surface. It’s just like the day my father learned of my flair. The day that changed everything. The day that still haunts my every dream. Somehow, I know it’s the same.
I know if I leave my room, I’ll find everyone dead.
I leave anyway, and I’m right.
From the castle windows I watch Skylings fall from the sky. I watch Sunlings catch aflame. I watch Wildlings rip hearts out with their teeth. I run through the halls, over Starlings who blanket them in silver. Dead.Everyone is dead. Just like my siblings. Memories blind me, merging with the present.
It’s a curse. I sense it everywhere.
By who? What happened?
I turn the corner and almost crash into someone kneeling on the floor.
Oro. My friend. My only friend.
Cold relief fills me, seeing him alive.
He’s clutching his brother’s guardian, a Starling. She’s dead. Next to her lies her daughter, Ara. The girl we saved together, years ago. I feel his crushing sorrow. His crater-deep anguish. It’s enough to fill the entire castle.
Then, his fiery rage, as he looks at me.
He looks like he wants to kill me.
I blink. He hasn’t looked at me that way for years. Just yesterday, we were sitting side by side on a cliff, planning a more hopeful future for both our realms.
Now ... now, where there was once trust and friendship, I just feel pure and utter hatred. He thinks I did this. He thinks I’mresponsiblefor all these deaths.
Could it be my father? It’s a Nightshade curse ... could my father somehow have sent someone else? Did he grow tired of my increasingly infrequent visits, and drawn-out strategies?
It wasn’t me. But his mind is made up.
It’s not just our people that die today. Our friendship dies too. Forever.
And a jagged piece of myself, of trust and hope and a sliver of happiness, dies with it.
I run in the opposite direction, closing myself off, building walls, burying any emotion that I let slip in the last two decades. A mistake.Always a mistake. I go back to my room, and I do the thing I’ve been avoiding for years.
I go back to my father.
He is barely more than flesh and bone. His chainmail hangs off him as he hauls himself to his feet, with trembling effort.
