Most would find that strange, but Marthen wasn’t like a normal anything. Especially given the fact that Marthen was sired by a yokai. That gave him all kinds of unique abilities. He easily traversed the land of dreams and could leave his physical body behind whenever he needed to.
To this day, Dash remembered the first time he’d met Marthen. It’d been on the night after one of his nastier punishments at the hands of Meara’s goons. He’d been lying mired in mud, staring up at the moon, wishing himself dead from the pain when he heard a faint gasp, followed by an annoying question. “Aren’t you a little young for a red horn?”
Dash had sighed wearily at something he’d answered more times than he’d cared to. “I was born with one.”
“Impossible.”
Even though he trembled from the pain, Dash had forced himself to stand and confront the source of his irritation.
To his surprise, it wasn’t a centaur.
At that time, he’d mistaken Marthen for some human servant. Meara’s court was full of them. “According to what I’ve been told, I’ve been angry since the moment I kicked my way from my mother’s womb and my hooves hit the ground.”
“Then you must be Prince Dash.”
He’d held his head high. “I am.”
Marthen had approached him slowly. “I was there at your birth, young prince. Your hornwaswhite at the time. I saw it firsthand.”
Then, the old wizard had reached through the pen to place a kind hand to his forehead, just below his red horn.
Dash had gasped as his pain subsided. It felt like Marthen was pulling it out through his hand.
With a tender smile, he’d ruffled his mane. “Tell me, prince... what do you want to do with all this pent-up rage you have inside you?”
“I don’t understand your question.”
“If you were made king today, what would you do? Would you kill Queen Meara? Take a piss? Roll in your gold? Name me three things you’d do.”
Dash had scowled at the old man. “Just three?”
“Yes.”
He’d considered that for only a second. “First thing I’d do is take a bath.”
Marthen had actually laughed. “Good answer. What’s the next thing you’d do?”
There had been a lot of things he’d wanted, including kill Meara. But if he was limited to only three... “I would free the others who are being held with me and take them home.”
“And your third... if you had all the power of a king?”
“It’s selfish.”
“How selfish?”
“I would have a necromancer or lich bring my sister’s mother back from the dead.”
That seemed to catch the old man off-guard. “Why?”
“Because I don’t know how to take care of her like her mother did. No one does. It hurts whenever I hear her crying because I know I can’t fix it.”
Marthen had fisted his hand in Dash’s mane. “All the power in the kingdom and that’s the most selfish thing you want?”
It was. Although, at that moment, there had been one other thing Dash had been near desperate for. “Dinner would be nice. But I’d rather Renata not cry.” Even if he did hate her mother who’d never had a kind word for him.
“Are you hungry?”
“Starving.”
