A HENRY STORY 1: Memories Of The Fallen Prince

Epilogue

Henry held out his arms and barely kept himself from screaming in joy.

Thanatos soared over the open water of the waterway, confirming the quality of the fabric the spinners had woven for his wing, so much so that he claimed he could nearly not feel the difference.

Henry grinned as the familiar sensation of freedom took over, always brought about by flying. He rose a little from where he lay on Thanatos' back.

"You know, I'm starting to get a hang of this outcast thing," Henry yelled against the wind and instantly regretted it as pain pierced his eye. He dropped back and down at the shimmering water. The bandage still felt foreign on his face, and it stung when he moved or rose too quickly. Or when he screamed, apparently.

"You only notice that now?" replied Thanatos, flying a lazy serpentine. The tip of his wing was still broken but, just as Henry had speculated, spinners were excellent medics too; now that it had been stabilized, it would heal soon.

A team of three had worked on the flier whom they had once kidnapped—all for their Bringer of Buzzer Wings—and they had even woven special fabric to more closely mimic the tissue on the flier's wing. When they had given the rest of the fabric that hadn't been used to Henry, he had adorned Mys' handle with it. Now he and Thanatos really matched, he thought, grinning.

"Well," he mumbled. "Let's just say that you were right, back at the nibbler colony. It's odd saying that now, after the eye, but I understand now." He touched the bandage and winced. "You can only change as much as you let yourself change."

"Well, at least we are learning."

Henry ignored the sarcasm and closed his exhausted eye. He smiled. What would his half-a-year-younger self—the spoiled, delusional Prince of Regalia, who had taken his power and status for granted—say if he saw him: Henry, the . . . whatever he was now?

He wasn't an entirely different person, but he had learned more about life in the last six months than in the sixteen years before that. That was what Thanatos had meant, no? He'd been compelled to adapt, learn, and change, but not change who he was. He had this.

Hadn't, in fact, the same traits that he had been judged for back in Regalia saved his life now? Those very traits that had once consumed him with so much bitterness and hatred, compelling him to conspire with Gorger against his own people?

Out here, his disdain for weakness and his fear of failure had animated him to not allow himself to succumb. His ambition and hunger for recognition, his neverending drive to prove himself, had pushed him not to remain idle, to find a way to not only live as an outcast but to be successful. He had won his challenge, he thought, smiling. And he had done so with flying colors.

For a moment, the self-doubt from earlier flooded Henry; how much of it could he still replicate now, with the state of his eye? The moment it rose, he drowned out the doubts in a wave of determination. Thanatos was right; this did not invalidate any of his achievements that had come before.

The damn eye could go sit on a tack. He would not let it diminish his self-worth or take away his achievements. It was an impressive list, and he decided it was far from complete. He had led a crawler colony into victory against an army of cutters. He had won a one-on-one battle against a former general of Gorger's. He had taken on a swarm of buzzers, made himself welcome at the spinners', and ridden on the back of a serpent.

They had been wrong about him, Henry thought with so much satisfaction that it almost overwhelmed him. He was not one to be dismissed or forgotten. He was the one who had, in the face of utter disgrace, learned to chase glory—the same that he had felt so deprived of back in Regalia. And what glory!