THE KING IS DEAD

16

II. Save the Sorrow
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❝BAH.❞
*ృ༅*. 𝕾𝖔𝖑𝖊𝖆𝖓𝖓𝖆 is far too cold for Shadow's taste. There is nothing more annoying than stopping whatever he is trying to do every five seconds just to wipe his nose. Annoying, but he will not complain. He is safe here—Maria is safe here. Who cares about anything else, when he and his love are, at last, free! For her, he will brave the coming winter that is slowly clawing its way through the country and the folds of his coat.

It is a frosty autumn in the diverse city and he is bundled up to the brim (he has a fretful human to thank for that) as he walks down the streets, his destination the bakery. More humans walk this route than Mobians, so they accidentally bump him here and there, and only some have the decency to apologise for having not seen the small hedgehog.

Which is also annoying. Soleanna's other downside is that he is surrounded by humans, and Shadow does not like feeling smaller than he already is. Thinking about it has him shrinking deeper into his coat and scarf, quickening his pace toward the cinnamon doughnuts awaiting him at the shop.

After crossing the street, he passes by a newsstand before he turns the corner. He is not one to read gossip or politics or bias reviews on the latest moving picture, so he normally glances at the front page and then ignores it—but this headline in bold, black capitals grabs him by the neck.

THE QUEEN IS DEAD

If he had a paper cup of coffee like most of the humans around him, he would have dropped it. It would have crashed to his boots, staining the white sidewalk in a bitter shade of brown. But Shadow's hands are empty, trembling fists in his pockets, and his breath puffs out over the rim of his scarf in frightful little clouds.

He wishes he could say that he cannot fathom it. He wants to say he does not understand why a thirteen-year-old girl is dead the day before her birthday.

But Shadow can, unfortunately, fathom it.

Shadow does understand why.

Tears blind him and he forgets about the doughnuts he has been thinking about all morning. Tears steal his sight away and he turns back the way he came, walking, jogging, running.

He is crying the entire run back home.

♚♛♜♝♞

❝MARIA!❞
*ృ༅*. 𝕿𝖍𝖊𝖗𝖊 is a rattle in chest and frost in his lungs when he shuts the back door behind him. Slams it, rather, but by accident, having fallen back against it. A cough takes him prisoner, then a battalion of them he cannot stop. A minor cough, nothing to do with sickness—just the frigid air mixed with nerves, the lack of air—but even so, Shadow cannot catch his breath, cannot breathe, so he slides to the floor to curl into a ball, his only defence against his anxiety.

Maria—that damn fretful human who is the same age as him yet is just far too motherly for a young girl—is rushing to the kitchen, pale as a ghost from his scream. She is kneeling at his side as soon as she sees him.

"Breathe," she pleads. "My love, I'm here. I'm here."

The coughing stops. Shadow, in a tight, hedgehog ball, manages to stifle them, winning the battle for air. He does breathe, long and deep, slowly, and just as same, uncurls out of one safety net and into another.

"You're burning." Maria runs her hands down his face, his forehead. She fears a fever, but it is not so. He does not have the strength to tell her that he is not ill, that he burns from crying, from running, from all the damn layers she put him in. "Come, undress."