The Deal

Overhead, he heard cannons fire. Gunshots rang off of the walls around him.

"You mustn't leave, your highness." His guards had told him. "You must understand."

And he did. As the eldest prince and next in line to the throne, he was a liability in battle. And despite his position and the expectations set out for him, his heart was weak. He was too self-sacrificing. When he watched farmers tend to their fields, he felt the temptation to empty the royal coffers for them. When he went on hunts with the sons of his father's allies, he couldn't help but shut his eyes when he heard the whistle of an arrow, the horrifying thud as it hit its mark.

If they lost this battle, everyone knew that he would allow himself to be taken hostage if it meant that his kingdom would survive. If they lost the kingdom, he would ask for his life to be traded if it would spare the life of another.

For that, he knew his mother loved him as the son she always wanted.

For that, he knew his father hated him as the weakling unfit to rule.

"When it's safe, we'll come back to relocate you to a better location." They had promised.

And if they didn't come back?

"You must pray to all the gods that we do."

They had left at sunset. Now, a blood curdling scream woke him in a cold sweat as the moon reached its peak.

His guards are yet to return.

An explosion rocked the castle walls, causing him to flinch as he thought about his family. The stone brick walls began to crumble, threatened to come apart.

Shakily, the prince stood, bracing himself in the event his strength failed him. And yet despite how boneless his body felt, his legs supported his weight as he slowly made his way to the window.

"To the gate!" He heard his enemies cry.

"For the king!" He heard his army scream in response.

He looked away, but the image of wounded horses and dead soldiers had already burned itself into his imagination. His heart ached for them, the men. The closest he's ever had to friends. Boys young and old. Boys enlisted and drafted. Pure and innocents as well as prior criminals alike. Boys that he checked up on as they ate their lunches, whom he'd had conversations with—

"For the prince!" He heard in the distance — or maybe he imagined it — and his guilt bore a hole in his chest as the castle shook again with the screams of the damned. The cries for mercy from his men.

A loud crash made him flinch, made him fall onto the ground in terror, scuttling back to the safety of his bed. But in the light of the moon, he could just barely make out the outline of his bookshelf, cracked and leaning on the wall opposite, letting the books slide onto a pile on the ground.

He watched them, a small sense of panic entering him as leather-bound pages began to fall.

Thud. A textbook on war and strategies brings him memories of his tutor. He wonders if she's still alive.

Thud. A box of letters from his brother when he studied overseas. The prince stares at them, the memories tumbling into the foreground.

Thud. A massive book fell open onto the box with an awful crunch. A sound so loud and awful it elected a quiet sob out of the boy, more than the gunfire and sword fights ever could.

Something overcame the prince then — whether it be fear or desperation, he was still left unsure — Something that made him pull the book out of the wreckage, watching the ripped and crumpled letters get dragged behind it.