PENUMBRA // Tamaki Amajiki x Reader Royal AU

Chapter 16

"The king took me to his brother's kingdom." I was back in prince Amijiki's tower the next day. "He hasn't taken me out of the castle since... He wanted to impress his brother so he wanted me to... act normal, but like always, I ruined everything- 

"The king did that to you?" Somehow, the prince's habit of biting his nails had spread to me during this conversation but I stopped at once when I realised what I was doing. I instead, focused my subconscious on cleansing the air in the tower, which may or may not prove useful in strengthening the prince.

"No... I was told to stay silent until... the king left me alone," the prince drew a long breath and rested his head in his hands for a little while, his eyes were damp but no tears fell, "m-my two... c-cousins were supposed to... 'converse' with me..."

He stared into the air for a while, and then a bit longer so I started to get irritated as I thought he was ignoring me, "then your cousins attacked you?". His shoulders fell and the prince shook his head. "Then what happened." He flinched as I stepped closer to him.

"Sorry." I cringed as I said this. It was ridiculous having to tread so lightly and I worried one day my patience would wear thin, how could someone be this fragile, how could he let this happen?

"It was my fault." Letting out a sob, the prince curled into himself, "I embarrassed myself and the king... by doing what I always do. They must've got angry and... needed to release their anger."

"So they attacked you."

"It was my fault."

"Did they say anything?"

"...I-I... They were... insulting me, tormenting me, before they... but I deserved it." The prince closed his mouth for the last time that day. He did not say anything more after that, he did not even give any non-verbal responses to my questions. I let my persistence rest eventually, after all I was growing increasingly aware of my lack of understanding of the human psyche - or half-elf, half-human psyche or whatever he was.

-

I laid awake for a while that night, one of the monks was snoring particularly loud, although usually I was good at blocking out background noise. This meant I had time to think about my next move.

Obviously, King Amijiki's brother was the king of the Helios kingdom, due south of the Amijiki kingdom. It would not have been hard for me to find my way there eventually, or more easily, to summon a bird to travel there in my place and do my bidding. I could have shown the perpetrators the same fate they showed the prince. Or even, ended the prince's cousin's lives, then there would be no one to tell the tale.

Killing members of a royal family, however, would not go down well, and I was not naive enough to ignore that causing harm to princes or princesses could potentially end in a war - even if the Helios kingdom was as puny as I read - and cost thousands of innocent lives. And if everyone died then who would be left for me to be better than?

There were a couple of other ideas I entertained in my wake, ones which were more suitable and would maybe rouse the prince out of his ridiculous demeanour.

So the next day I headed to the tower with a plan.The prince was in his usual spot by the window, "Can you describe one of your cousins to me, the ones you were telling me about yesterday?" He opened his mouth but nothing came out, it did not seem like he even tried to speak.

"You know, like how tall they are, hair colour, gender, build etc." He continued to glance around like he was searching for an excuse to avoid the question but not really trying, "Well are they at least definitely biologically related to you?" He nodded. That was something.