The Illegitimate Prince | Trylle Fanfiction

Chapter 24 - 19 Years Back

A/N: So, guys, for this chapter I have a couple of songs you can listen to, while you read - because apparently deciding just 1 song is too hard. So, enjoy!

Zoe was being lifted out of the water, by a Markis's telekinetic powers. She was so treacherously wet, almost frozen alive; her clothes were frozen in their wet folds, and some of her fingers were missing. Frostbite.

I shuddered. The corpse of Zoe Frank slumped onto the river banks, and a young Oliver Staad rushed before anyone else, yelling her name. He reached her, took the frozen little creature in his arms, and began shouting at her, in misery, pain and anger.

Oliver loosened his grip on her for some time, to place his palms on her heart, and he closed his eyes. For some time I thought, he was checking her heartbeat, but then I realised that he was working a spell instead. He was trying to heal Zoe.

Not that Zoe could be healed. She was too obviously dead. Wendy Staad, clad in a dark cloak, came from behind him and put a gentle hand on her son's shoulder, but Oliver jerked himself away from his mother.

In front of the entire Royal gathering, he burst into heartbreaking tears. He clutched his childhood friend in his arms, as if shielding her from anybody else's sight - as if trying to warm her. People approached the roaring prince, trying to calm him down and drill some sense into him; but Oliver remained the way he was, holding on to Zoe with an expression of determination on his face.

"I love you, Zoe. I love you, and I . . . I just wished I could've told you that, before you went away." He whispered in shaky breaths. "I love you. I always have, and I will forever love you. And I hate myself, because I couldn't save you. I hate my bloody self, Zoe!! I hate myself so much, I'd kill myself just to see you alive! Oh, please come back. Please come back. I need you, my old friend! I need you, Zoe! I cannot live without you. . ." He broke into tears at that, and I found my own heart breaking at the King's surprising - and heart rendering - conduct.

The scene changed. Oliver, wearing normal human shirts and trousers, was rushing through airports and subways of the human world. He was running after cabs, harshly knocking down random humans who irritated him. He was driving through forests at insane speeds, until he finally reached a black Disney fairytale castle - the one that is usually full of narrow turrets and red flags waving from the distance.

Oliver rushed up the steps, pushed past the guards and entered a majestic-looking throne room, nearly knocking the doors off their hinges. A withered old lady sat on the throne before him, fanning herself courteously. "Oliver Staad. I heard of your arrival." The lady greeted him.

"Of course you did!" Oliver snapped ruggedly at the woman. "And you must also know why I came here!" He kicked a sword away from under his feet. "Sara, I need your help." his voice turned weak - unstable, like he might collapse anytime. "I need you to heal her! I need you to bring her back!"

"Now, now, child." The woman called Sara explained patiently. "I am old and weak now, and my migraines are getting more frequent than ever. I shall die in the process, and there is yet no certainty if I might even be able to heal her or not."

"But you have to try!" Oliver insisted, like a child. "You aren't alone, Sara. We will heal her together!"

"Oliver, there are some things in the world that you have to let go of. Not everything can be attained."

"But I don't want everything. I only want her."

"She is your everything, Oliver. And like I said, not everything can be attained."

"You brought my father back from the dead! You brought him back because you knew that he meant everything to my mother! Why couldn't you do the same for me?!" The crown prince started shouting.

"I was young back then, and I had a deep regard for Loki. That's why I saved him."

"And now you won't save Zoe, because apparently she doesn't make the deep-regard cutoff! Because she's not a Royal or a Marksinna!"

"It is not that, Oliver. I am old and weak now. I can't be using my powers this frequently - and especially not at this magnitude."

My father began to shake all over in rage. "How can you be so selfish?! You madwoman! Edom's bitch!"

"You mustn't call me such words. Your mother and your father wouldn't be very happy." Sara warned, but in vain. Oliver picked up the sword he had just kicked aside, and holding it by its blade by both his hands, began to bend it. Blood dripped from his hands.

"No, don't do that." Sara rushed forward to take the sword out of his hands.

"Heal. Her." Oliver commanded, the blood vessels threatening to burst in his neck and his eyes.

"I can't. You must understand." Sara looked like she might cry.

"Then, kill me!"

"Oliver - you are not yourself, right now."

"I am more myself than I could've ever been in my life!" He shouted, startling the poor Queen. "Kill me! I command you, Sara Elsing, kill me!"

"No." Sara whispered, barely audible. Oliver stopped bending the sword, and instead turned it towards himself, stabbing his own body, clean through the stomach. Sara screamed, and my father's eyes rolled up to his head, as he went collapsing backwards onto the carpet.

Sara kept screaming for help. She knelt onto the ground and reached forward to heal Oliver's lethal bruise, but the haggard prince shoved her away. "You discriminative, traitorous bitch! How dare you scream and swoon and crawl forward to heal me when, when you refused to heal Zoe!? GET AWAY FROM ME! Do you hear it? Get . . .away . . ."

But Oliver could say no more then, as his wound began to take its toll. He collapsed, and the scene changed then.

Twenty-one year old Oliver was in his treehouse; his face looked dirty, unshaven, full of bruises and scars. His hands were bloodied, blistered, cut, full of black dust and smoke; his clothes were ragged, his skin dirty and unbathed for practically months.

It even hurt him to sit down on a cushion, but the King looked as if he deserved the pain and was proud of it. Very slowly, with his fleshy, dirty, wounded, scarred, bloodied and unbandaged hands, he began folding each one of Zoe's dresses and stacked them neatly inside the metal trunk.

He took out Zoe's pretty trinkets and jewellery, admired them one by one, and then placed them inside a smaller box. And then, the King began to cry. "Zoe . . . .oh, Zoe. The entire universe seems to have plotted against me. My own healing abilities prevent me from getting killed. I can't ever seem to hurt myself enough physically. I die a little more each day, and yet my body refuses to die along with my heart. Oh, what will I do without you? Just, what?

"The only person who could make me smile, has gone. I will never be able to smile again. I will never be able to live the same life again. I have lost the humane part of myself. Now I am dumb and indifferent to everything around me; I can't feel things anymore, Zoe; the only emotion I possess is anger, brutality and murder; I am the only person in my universe of idleness. I have nothing left to live for - only a world of cruelty and a kingdom of ruthless expectations. I will never be the same again, Zoe - not when you aren't with me."

I zoomed out of my inner eye's visions, and blinked out my own tears in my bedroom's darkness. The ghost of Zoe Frank had disappeared now. "And I shall never see you with the same eyes again, Your Highness." I whispered, before I lay down on my bed - only to realise that the haunted visions I had just now lived, had taken away all the sleep from inside me.