THE KING IS DEAD

22

I. The Grave
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❝IT'S DONE.❞
*ృ༅*. 𝕾𝖎𝖑𝖛𝖊𝖗 whispers this to the moon-kissed sunflowers around him, his breaths thick with labour. He leans on the shovel to support his wobbly legs, tilts anyway, but manages to remain on his feet.

Shadow is lost in the maze of nothingness, drenched in blood and staring blankly at the fresh mound of dirt, unblinking, unmoving. As he has been since he limped his way back to the palace, to his friend, to the end.

A boy is buried here.

The moon—a sharp crescent—is witness.

A boy is buried here, amongst the sunflowers of the palace gardens.

And the corpse holds a fraction of Shadow's heart. Just a piece.

But it is buried. Dead. Gone.

Shadow is free of it.

Silver knows this from the lack of sorrow in those scarlet eyes. Shadow is calm with acceptance. He has let go.

They mark the grave but not in stone. Sonic is honoured in death, but the wood will rot and fade—just as he will, from history, from memory.

Maybe it is petty of them to feel this way, to want Sonic to be forgotten. For his memory to die when Shadow and Silver do. Neither of them care.

"What next?" Silver still cannot catch his breath from digging.

"I'm going home." A whisper so soft, almost unheard. "What of you?"

"Start over. There is nothing left for me here. The Abbot will figure something out." A shrug. "The Emerald Crown is blood-soaked."

There is silence, a time that feels both forever and not. When Shadow speaks again, his words are bubbles, a symptom of sobs beginning to ascend his throat and burst. "Do you think she will let me come home?"

"Why would she not?"

Shadow tells him why, tells him all Maria said, through bubbled words and eventual sobs, and Silver feels ice in his chest. Ice because he knows of Shadow's great love for Maria—can see it in his eyes, his actions, hear it in his words—and learning of her disownment of their shared heart at the drop of a hat guts him. Fumbling for words, for comfort, he manages, "You never know unless you try. Anger often gives life to words not meant to live."

To this, Shadow gives an absent nod. Silence follows, until the knight whispers, "I am a demonchild."

Silver's widened eyes are a silent What?

"I am a demonchild." His blank stare becomes a glare to ward off the fresh tears of his confession. "I'm not real."

"Of course you're real." Silver has caught his breath only to lose it again. "You bleed. Same as I do."

"But I'm not normal." Scarlet eyes are on his shaking hands. The tears fall. "I tried so hard to hide the power. All my life. I helped every human I ever encountered during the war, because the power hungers for death. I refused to kill, and that makes me weak." But there is no self-pity in that proclamation, only relief. "He obtained that power through my father. He killed—" Killed Amy, he does not say. "—and became strong. He bested me, as I knew he would. As my father wanted him to. Trained him to."

His mind a whirl, Silver finds a calm. He remembers the blood, Sonic's violent breaths, the relief of his end. "So you poisoned him." A confirmation, not a conclusion.