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You know what? This entire thing was absurd. A short-circuit of his neurons as his body faded.
That humor filled the air again, and the King found himself… annoyed.
His irritation faded as quickly as it arrived, as images began to roll through his mind; Rhiannon, beautiful and whole, her smile, her laugh, the brush of her fingers across his forehead, the rites she snuck him out of bed for alongside Elizabeth, Bastien, and Caius. The keepers of the old ways.
Koa, smacking his back with a wooden staff as his feet clumsily parried.
Agamemnon, roaring with laughter until tears streamed down his cheeks, and Adrastos, incapable of resisting, joined.
Elizabeth, persistent as she was, demanding he teach her what Koa’s lessons entailed.
Bastien, showing him how to catch and fillet a fish.
Caius, shoving him into the water and roaring with laughter as he stomped onto the bank.
Agamemnon filling their brother’s boots with filth after that.
Elizabeth, bucked off a horse she wasn’t meant to be riding, and scowling at him and Agamemnon as they scolded her.
Marlana, with the voice of an angel, lifting her words to the heavens.
Koa, cuffing him upside the head until his footwork was perfect.
Elizabeth, too beautiful for her own good, catching the eyes of every boy in the village despite a claim on her name from birth.
He watched as his siblings grew. Evolved. As Moros grew distant. Quiet. Always agitated by their success, jealous of Rhiannon and Koa’s favor.
They were each presented to the oracle, and ranked—he and El marked for inheritance upon the next Heredis.
As, one by one, his older siblings left their incarnations and never returned. He grew suspicious, but Koa assured him he was wrong.
The first war band assigned to him had been more brotherhood than he felt among his surviving kin.
He watched outside himself as he and Agamemnon raced to the village only to arrive too late to stop the slaughter of Rhiannon and Elizabeth—both ascending far too young in their grief…
As he led the invasion of Ardensia, and Koa bestowed upon him the honor of executing their golden-haired King with a smile on his face. A man called Arlo, whose feud with Koa was explosive in both speed and devastation. It was the first time Adrastos performed a formal execution, and he couldn’t help but notice how much satisfaction Koa took in it. Like he’d made him proud.
“Wait,” he breathed as he recognized the next milestone in the wreckage of his life. Him, entertaining Koa’s incessant protectiveness and allowing his men to ride to the village to drown in a night of ale and dice. The night Koa died. The night everything changed.
But the images didn’t stop—kept moving at a steady clip, almost overwhelming as he watched it all play out; him, slipping out of the tavern to seek the warmth of Svenia’s bed, his man Domnell riding out to find him as the King’s horns blew. Him, bargaining for Agamemnon’s life with his own.
The hell that followed. The hell that blurred from one torment into another until all the world was ablaze in agony and suffocating loss, undaunted by the births of his cousins, or the attempted coup against Moros. Countless attempts to end his own miserable existence, forced to endure because of the curse.
“Stop,” he begged, as he witnessed his own wretched hands rob the world of something beautiful—rob his cousin of that sacred Bond. “Please.” The rightful King was no longer above begging. He didn’t want to remember. Didn’t want to relive the atrocities that plagued him. The cruelties doled out at the hand of the man that was supposed to be his brother.
Still, the visions continued.
And so, he began to play with fate. Began to take liberties with his orders, so long as it satisfied the Bond. The beauty of language was that each word was open to interpretation.
It wasn’t until he grudgingly befriended a clever little fox and her kin that he remembered what the light felt like. But Moros and Khaos saw to it that no light could shine brighter than their darkness—first in forcing the Solskari to agree to an alliance, and then in their betrayal of it.
One after another, he witnessed his heartbreaks—right down to the moment he tracked down that pull in his chest to a bar.
Once inside the walls, he followed that draw until he zeroed in on two beautiful witches, their souls so deeply intertwined he couldn’t see one without the other. But the blonde who danced her heart out… fuck, she was beautiful.
Not in the way his usual partners were.
In the way precious things are—the treasures of the world in need of his protection.
