★ The Prince and The Mermaid [Giant/Tiny]★

XXI - Eden's Grave

"What do you mean you're all out" Kaine asked, looking down at Ava, the flower vendor. He crossed his arms over her as she shook, looking around at the barren flower stand.

"Please your Highness you bought all of the flowers already" She backed up slightly, looking up at him with a frown. This prince had consistently come over to her stool, even when her parent's flower shop was right behind her he always came and harassed her stand for lilies, no one ever knew why he bought flowers from time to time. From the first time she met him, he had gone from buying flowers for what could be assumed to be for a girl, to lilies. These flowers in pyror were typically given to the dead. He'd come every 3 days to buy these flowers, disappear then come back 3 days later.

"Look your Highness if it's for the dead these are good" she explained, holding out a bouquet of crimson roses, but a sour expression spread across his face. "I would give those to Mariana, not the dead" he glared down at her, while she pinched the bridge of her nose. This Mariana was just an imaginary friend for Kaine, that's what she thought, no way he found his partner (got bitches with rizz) before her.

"Take these" she sighed, holding daisies at arm's length, while he huffed and took them from her. "Thanks..." Kaine mumbled, then was about to leave when he turned again. "Have you got any breadsticks?" he asked, looking at her with a raised eyebrow and she shook her head.

"No" she sighed, looking away from him, and he sighed and walked about before remembering to say. "Thank you, lady Ava" her name. She said she had called Ava before but had never thought the prince would say it. Then a thought flashed across her mind, what would it be like to date the prince? His cold exterior seemed frightening yet he was here using flowers, she thought for a second before dismissing it, brushing back her strawberry blonde hair and wrapping more flowers into bouquets. Anyone who even tried to date that weirdo was a freak, and Irene bless anyone who somehow won his cold heart.

Kaine strolled around the secret passage around the back of the castle, the secret garden, well more like abandoned, to find the small grave dedicated to Eden. The imp. It didn't have a name, but Kaine had named it. He always came here, but now he had something to tell Eden.

Eden was the imp his mother sent to him, he had named it because he had no idea who it was before. But when it tried to torment Kaine, they only lasted a little while, he always got back up and the imp got tired. Kaine always stared at it with no expression on his face just pity. And eventually, it gave up, it wasn't cut out for killing or torturing a child. So it just sat with Kaine, clinging onto him like a cat, and Kaine didn't hate its presence, but the soul inside was painting the body, desperate to pass on. Its body was rotting, deteriorating, decaying.

Kaine was young, but he could hear and understand the pain it was in, he could see its body crumble and rot before him, he knew what he had to do. One day, Kaine sat beside the imp in the very garden and asked Kaine to do the unthinkable.

The act of freeing the imp required no blade, no tool, no weapon—only Kaine's bare hands and the strength to commit an unthinkable act. Bea, in her cruelty, had made the imp's body a vessel of suffering, bound to the mortal world by layers of dark magic and twisted flesh. To destroy it meant unravelling it entirely, piece by grotesque piece until nothing of the cursed form remained.

The imp knelt before Kaine, its misshapen body trembling, its oversized eyes shimmering with pain. Its voice was small and broken, the sound of a soul that had known only torment. "Please... I can't bear it anymore. End this. You're the only one who can."

Kaine's breath hitched as he crouched before the tiny figure. The imp's warped face bore an eerie innocence, a haunting reminder that it had once been a soul untouched by suffering—a child who never had the chance to live. He hesitated, his massive hands hovering over its frail form.