by Nick Martell
“We’d be better off without you,” I whispered.
“You are correct. Who am I to rule, when I could not even protect my own son?”
“Maybe the wrong Royal died that day in the Star Chamber. Maybe my father was trying to put an end to your incompetent stint as king.”
“I have had that thought many times.”
Silence.
“Do what you must, Michael Kingman.”
I looked down the barrel of the gun, with King Isaac at the end of it, my finger gently resting against the trigger.
I had done a lot of things that I regretted recently. Things I wished I could tweak or change slightly for the better, in my endless pursuit of the man I wanted to be and the man I thought I had to be. But, either way… I knew I wasn’t a king killer.
I was a Kingman, and I would not let my descendants be ashamed of me.
Gwen had said it herself: Kingman don’t kill Royals, no matter how wicked they were and no matter what a piece of the moon had declared. I wondered what she would think of this. Maybe she would be proud of me for doing what she had done: walk away from a Royal without killing him.
I put the gun on the table, sat down, and lowered my head into my arms. I was unable to cry. It was like my tear ducts were broken from lack of use. Everything I had sacrificed for the truth had led me to aim a gun at the king. I was a child playing at being a detective. Who was I trying to fool?
King Isaac moved closer to me, ran his hand down my back once, and then gently pulled me up by my shirt, motioning for me to follow him to the balcony. I did as instructed, watching the entire time as he held the gun gently in his other hand. Once we were outside, he put his hands on the railing and looked at the view.
The entire city was visible from up here, from the Isle with the Church of the Wanderer and Kingman Keep to the dye pits on the East Side. The sun was rising and its light shone through the gaps between the buildings, covering the entire city in a warm orange glow. It was morning, and nothing had changed. The rebels hadn’t started a grand revolution overnight, and the guards were not massing to save their king. A few citizens were walking below, bundled up like it was any other winter morning. I didn’t understand then… why, to me, it felt like the world had changed.
“We all make our choices in life, Michael,” he said. “Some good. Some for the worse. Your father made his a long time ago.”
“I miss him.”
King Isaac nodded. “I miss my son. And the family I once took for granted… I was a terrible husband… Then there is your father. He was my best friend, my confidant, and my trusted advisor. I lost everything the day he died.”
“Me too. Can I still love him even if I’m ashamed of what the world says he did?”
“We love despite a person’s flaws, not for their lack thereof.”
We stood in silence for a moment watching the sun rise further into the sky. The stars could still be faintly seen. The moon Tenere was whole and wide, a perfect bluish-orange marble. My brand didn’t even itch. It seemed the world was at peace.
“Did you know that no King or Queen of Hollow has ever reached their fiftieth birthday before? They have all died before it.”
“Congratulations on being the first.”
He shook his head as he leaned further over the rails toward the rising sun, a small smile on his face.
“No,” the king said. “My actual birthday is still a few days away. It’s always the case: we Royals have official birthdays and private birthdays. Very few people know that. Your father did and always made sure we celebrated the right day together. Even if some years it was just the two of us.” He rubbed his eyes. “I suspect your father would have made a better king than me. Everyone loved and respected him, from the High Nobles to the roustabouts. It’s why our laws stipulate there must always be a Kingman beside the throne—to keep the Royal Family in check and be someone the common people can trust. It can never be the king. It is too much of an occupational hazard.”
“Kingman stand beside the throne,” I said softly. My family’s motto.
King Isaac stood straight. “They do. I hope you and your siblings will protect the princess when she sits on the throne. Do not judge her too harshly when you meet her again. She had a rough childhood without her family to support her. But she will be a good queen. A smart and just queen. Much better than her worthless father. She reminds me of my sister.”
He took a breath in through his nose. “I was never meant to be king. The crown was an inheritance I had to accept, as your father had to inherit your family’s legacy. We both had older sisters who were taken from us too soon and left us with a duty neither of us wanted. I wanted to step away, once we had our revenge against New Dracon City, but, alas, there was always something more important. Citizens to protect from rebels, nobles to court favor with so no one starved in the winter, a political marriage meant to bring two countries together, children to keep happy, and so much more. The only good thing I have ever done was bring my children into this world. Can you do me a favor, Michael?”
I nodded. If I was going to truly be a Kingman and not a pretender, I’d have to serve the king. Regardless of my opinions of him or his son. I would not let our legacy end in ruin.
“Tell my family I love them. That what I do, I do for Hollow. This country will flourish without me. I hope they will understand when they are older.”
I looked at him. He was facing the rising sun, standing straight, a small smile on his face. What was he saying? I didn’t understand at all.
“Davey,” he muttered. “I will be at your side soon. Goodbye, Michael. I am glad I was able to greet this morning with you.”
King Isaac smiled as he lifted the gun and put it under his chin.
There was a bang, my ears rang, and blood sprayed across my face.
The gun clattered to the ground as his body fell against the rail and then slid over it.
My body moved on its own, snatching the gun off the floor. It was still warm and reeked of black powder. With shaking hands, I grabbed the rails and looked over. Maybe it hadn’t happened. Maybe he wasn’t—
King Isaac’s body was spread out on the ground below, staining the stone around it red.
My hearing returned in a rush and I heard the screaming as pedestrians began to rush toward him. There was a Raven at his side, checking for any signs of life as another pounded on his chest, demanding he stand up as she cried. Advocators, Scorchers, and other nobles gathered around them, silent, hands over their mouths.
Then one of the Ravens saw me from below, gun in my hand and blood splattered over my clothes and face.
“KING KILLER!” she screamed, pointing at me. “HE KILLED THE KING! GET THE KING KILLER!”
Deep breath in. Deep breath out.
My first instinct was to throw myself off the balcony and land next to Isaac Hollow. It would be a clean and easy way to go. A moment of fear in exchange for it all to be over. It would be a better death than any traitor or king killer would be given.
Yet my body wouldn’t move, as my mind had escaped to a place beyond madness once faced with the realization that I had let my ancestors down. The Kingman legacy would end with me. And it hadn’t even been my choice.
I don’t remember moving back into his chamber or how long I sat in his chair, but eventually someone came for me as the pounding on the suite door intensified. With a gentle hand, they guided me through a hole in the wall, down a set of steep stairs in the dark, and through hallways of gold and blue. The gentle hand told me when to follow, when to stop, and when to remain silent as monsters with metal hands patrolled the hallways.
It wasn’t until we were outside that I felt anything. My face felt warm under the new sun. It only lasted for a second before a strong wind blew against me and I was cold again. So cold that my teeth chattered and my knees buckled. And then: nothing. The gentle hand drew a cloak around me as they took my hand in their own and led me through the falling snow. It crunched under my boots
like shards of glass until we entered a house and I was settled on a divan. Time continued to elude me as I drifted off to sleep soon after lying down. When I awoke, there was odorless and bland food waiting for me along with mild water.
That routine continued for as long as it could. I slept without dreaming, ate without pleasure, drank to survive, and visited the bathroom without conscious thought. As if I were kept in a prison in my mind. My eternal punishment for the consequences of my actions that had brought me here. Those actions that had caused me to watch King Isaac kill himself instead of having the courage to face the city that had stolen his family from him. I understood him better than I wanted to admit.
I almost wished I had followed him. No Royal in Hollow’s history had ever taken their own life. And after the world had seen me on the balcony with the revolver in my hand, my chances of convincing it he had were nonexistent.
My only solace, I suppose, was that I felt closer to my father than ever.
As I lived under an endless night in a sea of darkness, the only respite I had was the few moments when I ate before returning to sleep. This pattern continued and continued and I thought I would be trapped in this state forever. A slave to my own mind and body. Once, when I slept, I awoke surrounded by white. A stark, blinding white that was like looking directly at the sun. It burned my eyes and awoke me from my dream, so, afterward, I ate and drank some more. When I went back to sleep, I returned to the strange white place and found it didn’t bother my eyes as it previously had. It was the only possible escape from this broken life I lived.
At first the desert of white seemed to be similar to the sea of darkness I had been a resident in for so long. Yet, it was different. In this desert of white, I could see my hands and feet. They were light white things, the skin as soft as a baby’s. My calluses and bruises and cuts were gone, as if the slate had been wiped clean. My only thought was that I was dead and I had gone on to whatever afterlife would have me.
“You’re not dead,” I heard. “You’re just having a hard time remembering.”
My ears rang as if another gunshot had gone off. I turned to the voice. Most of her features were indistinguishable in this sea of white, except for her brown hair. But I felt warm for the first time in a long time.
I opened my mouth to speak but found no words. Not even a grunt or murmur.
She spoke for me. “It will hurt at first. But that’s what happens when you’re healing. There’s always pain before you fully recover. Take it slowly. Focus on me.”
I tried. Brown hair tied back in a ponytail, a few strands hanging over her forehead. A pair of front teeth that were slightly too large. A smile that made me feel warm. And not the same warmth that I felt when I nullified things. It was more soothing than that. More comforting. Motherly, even. Familiar.
“Don’t strain yourself,” she said. She took my hands in her own and then slowly brought them up to her lips and kissed them. “All better.”
I swallowed. “Who are you?” I said in little more than a croak. But they were my words. Bought and paid for with my pain and suffering.
“Don’t try to skip steps, Michael,” she said as she swung my arms back and forth.
It was childlike. So innocent. I couldn’t help but smile, as if I was reliving my childhood with her.
“Now,” she said, her voice growing more serious. “I want you to tell me a story.”
“A story?”
“A story,” she declared. “Tell me a good story.”
I did.
We sat down together in the white, holding hands as I told her my tale of a man who had become a hero by killing a dragon. I stretched the truth as far as I could to fit the majestic scope of this story, filling in the details of the dragon’s scales, metallic grey with freckled green that had dulled with age.
I described the heat of the dragon’s breath perfectly so she could feel the prickle of it on her skin and how it was so pungently sour and rancid that people fainted from smelling it. I made it whole and real and perfect. The description of the battle between the hero and dragon was as painstakingly detailed. From the notches on the swords to how he had to oil his sword behind a boulder as the dragon tried to melt it. It was all about the small details in stories, the ones that no one paid attention to but made everything feel whole. The story was perfect, and it was the greatest story I had ever told.
When I was finished, she simply shook her head and said, “No. I asked for a good story, not an exaggerated one.”
I took a deep breath. Half of storytelling was finding the right tale for the audience. Maybe the exaggeration hadn’t been for her. But I would find her story eventually. All it took was time. So I told another, one about a man who did anything for the love of his life, until she died tragically in a starless night. The man yearned for a second chance to see her, and was willing to do anything to see her face one more time… so he made a deal with a trickster god to etch her face into the moon and make him its keeper, bound for eternity.
Every day he pulled her across the sky by hauling on a long chain attached to a massive anchor on the sea floor. I described his torment and pain and how his hands would rip until they were raw and bleeding in the first few weeks of his torment. And how they soon became callused and hard as diamonds.
Then I told her about every time he saw the moon in his underwater cave for those brief moments before he released his love back into the sky again. I described the pain that stabbed at his back with every pull of the chain. That sorrow as he dragged the moon and its light down into the darkness of the water. That anguish that can make a heart numb and cold, and the shame of his selfishness that he had done all of this because he couldn’t let her go. Then the release and joy when she was bright in the dark sky, giving the world her light.
But once again, when my story was finished, she shook her head and said, “That’s not what I asked for either.”
I told story after story. All the tales I knew about my ancestors and every tale I had created myself. But she always shook her head at the end and said, “That’s not what I asked for.”
It wasn’t long before my confidence was as drained as my treasure trove of stories, unable to even make her smile. Yet, there was nothing. She was hidden behind a mist I couldn’t pierce through as I tried to tell her a good story.
“I don’t have any more,” I said. “I’ve run out of stories for you.”
I felt that warmth from her smile again. “Then tell me a different kind of story. Something that you haven’t told someone before.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
She pondered for a second as the silence settled between us.
“Tell me a true story.”
A true story.
“I can do that,” I said.
And I did. My story began with a keep on the murky river’s edge that dozens of people walked in and out of each day. How it was almost its own city nestled within a much larger one. I described the windows and the stained glass and how it shined vibrantly like a lighthouse when it was first light and last light, and everything else I had ever known of this keep down to the minor details of which stair boards creaked where and how the wind howled through the hallways on spring days.
I saw my parents’ bedroom with their massive feather bed draped in red and grey. Only the right side of the bed was disturbed, the left side still and flat. I explained how the carpet was soft and fluffy and how toes would cling to it. I described how the glass doors to the balcony were always without a speck of dirt on them. And how the Moon’s Tears sprawled over the balcony like vines with their pale white glow. I told her how my father always sat outside on warm nights to work. How the night sky always seemed to calm him even though he carried the weight of a country’s future. Whenever he was stressed, he would just sit outside with a glass of wine and—
“No,” she interrupted, “that’s not the truth.”
I blinked. “Yeah,” I muttered. “You’re right. My father never drank a
fter what happened to my mother. He wouldn’t sit outside with wine. Just water.”
I held my head as a low, dull growl filled my ears. The lines in the room seemed to grow darker, too.
“Why were there glasses of wine out there, though?” she asked.
My story became real again, and we stood in the room together, staring out onto the balcony. On the small side table were two glasses of wine: one empty and the other half-full. Why was there wine out there when my father stopped drinking years ago? That was wrong.
“I don’t know,” I said. “One of the last memories of my father involves him outside with two glasses of wine. Something is wrong.”
The darkness opened and swallowed me whole. It surrounded me instantly, dulling my senses and mind. It pulled at my limbs and scraped at my skin. It left no marks and yet kept trying to take everything else. I felt my mind drifting away, just as it had before the sea of white appeared. My memories were lucid in that moment. Everything was going blank except for the fact there had been two glasses of wine on that table and that my father stopped drinking.
I held on to those memories like a scared child clutching a lantern as the darkness tried to peck away his eyes. I repeated the memories to myself. Two glasses of wine when my father didn’t drink. Two glasses of wine when my father didn’t drink. With every repetition, I felt the warmth of my power swell inside of me. Two glasses of wine when my father didn’t drink. The warmth soon covered my entire body and I knew peace. Two glasses of wine when my father didn’t drink. It wasn’t long before the warmth was everywhere, overwhelming me. I wasn’t the child I had been. I could protect people. I had my own power.
I repelled the warmth in my body as I screamed.
The darkness dispersed around me, a blinding light replacing it. I stood in my parents’ room, screaming as I watched the darkness fizzle out around me. I didn’t stop until there wasn’t even a shadow in the room, only the blinding light I was radiating. I had never felt better… like I was finally whole.