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Until he did, Reimund hadn’t known not wanting to die.

He had watched his mother die of illness, pale and bed-ridden. He had held her hand as it went cold, had laid his head on her chest and felt the last beat of her heart, the last rasps of her breath, the last of her life.

He was so small.

He had been too small to see over the bed from the floor, so he sat upon the bed with her, and despite being so young, he never forgot. He had not slept in days, during the worst of it, the days before, shaken with the fear of waking up without her. He had wanted every last moment, clutched it in his tiny fists. When she died, Reimund had not wanted to let her go, and neither had his father. It was his uncle who tore his hands from their grip on his mother’s sheets, who pulled him, forcefully, away from grief.

He was too small, too small to understand death. He knew he would lose his mother; he heard adults whisper, wonder how long she had left and how he would mourn. He felt it, when she died. A hollow, a silence, reverberating in his chest.

He was too small, when he locked eyes with death for the first time.

The night his mother died, Reimund had wanted, foolishly, to go with her.

He watched his father die not long after. Every day spent with his mother gone, his father died just a bit more. In time, he was not a king nor a man nor a father. He was nothing but days away from a corpse. Stone cold and apathetic, icy and tired, ill in his heart. The man he had known once tall andmproud, now gray in his hair and eyes, weak to the wind itself.

When his father died, it wasn’t a shock. He was young, but even then he understood that his father longed for death.

And he was young enough to know he was no king. His uncle was kind and mercenary enough to take over for him, rid him of duty, of guidance, of his sense of self. Everything too real, too serious for a teen boy to rule, his uncle did. Everything Reimund could not be. Little did he know, that whatever power his uncle pried from his hands, he would not let go of. He had given the thief the key to the vault, the fox thumbs with which to open the pen.

When his father died, he had been all he had left. When Reimund’s father died, he was torn in two like twine.

One half was the prince. Young and foolish, strong and proud. The other, the one he hid under bushy hair and thick skin, was a broken boy; too small to have seen death so many times. He was lost and wandering within himself, a king without a crown, a boy without a will. He did know enough men's hearts to know it was the same for them all; that inside every man is a boy who chases him mum, and a teen who puts on the face of his father. Yet different it was, for these paths and faces are not typically blackened and dark red.

Nothing he did was for himself, for there was no one in his head to call that. Having walked behind his father, stepping on his footsteps one by one, he had always thought his death would be much the same.

Reimund had watched himself die just a bit more each day that passed. He had thought he would go by his own hand as well.

He would have his father’s death, name and crown. It was the least he could do, for what little heart he had left.

Reimund had seen his mother wait for death and his father chase it. He understood death as a constant, as his shadow. He understood that somehow, death sat at the far end of his dining table, watching him as he ate.

Its eyes were fixed on him, predator ready to pounce.

The poets speak of death as something brought from above, pulled from below, as is the Devil and are Gods. Death to them is a lonely man, one who comes walk with us all only at the end of time. Reimund knew it a different case. As a boy, death had been his one true friend.

There was a hollow in his chest that rang in echoes of his wails whenever he was left alone. It spoke to him in waves, cold brushes of the seas he’d never gotten to feel tugging at his feet, beckoning him towards the unknown depths of the darkest ocean floors. It spoke to him in the stillness of a bath, where he would lay as if he were a corpse, wondering what he could do to drown. It had never scared him, it had never ocurred to him that it should.

For most of his life, whenever the king stood still, he hoped to stay that way forever. Whenever the king stood before paintings of his father, he aked the Gods for his face, his head, his death. Whenever the king thought of death, he wouldn’t mind if it came for him.

He had nothing else to wait for but his last breath.

Then Kirsi arrived, and the tides of grief receded to the tips of his boots.

She was lovely as love itself, pink as newborn blooms, warm as summer suns, joyoys as she could be cruel. She braided and cut his hair, caressed the sides of his face. He could tell she too, was unsure, was not quite herself.

When she kissed him, the tide receded. When she kissed him, he almost understood why his father couldn’t live without it; how it warmed the cold and filled the hollow, made him realize he could fear the end of something.

No longer alone, he would have been okay staying alive beside her forever.

They were not perfect, like his parents had not been and like no one ever has. She was brash and too quick to act without thought. He was a man who sat back and thought for much too long without doing anything at all.

She too was unsure of herself. She too was young.

He loved her nonetheless. She gave him something to live for, breathed faint gasps of life into him, against his lips, his neck, his bare chest.

So did, it seemed, her sister, in a myriad of different ways.

It was all her, because of her, that he opened his eyes to the truths of his own land. He owed his step up, his rise to his own throne and birthright, to her alone. Or rather, owed her his attempt to do so.

He hadn’t known the harm his own lack of caring did to his kingdom. He had reveled in the name, in the purpose it gave him, when he couldn’t find any within himself. He had none at all. Lucia, through scold and scorn and sisterly bonds had shown him the broken kingdom he feigned ruling. And the harm it had done to her, and her family.

What sort of orphan would he be if he allowed the strain between them to be perpetuated under his crown. What sort of king would he be if he let his people, no matter their kin, be slaughtered for naught. What kind of son would he be if he did nothing more with what his father had left him than parade it around. What kind of man would he be if he let himself be forever tethered to the strings his uncle had dug into his neck.

When he was a boy, his father tied a rope around his neck and, in his chase for his shadow, Reimund had let a man of his own blood dig a claw into his own and tie one around it, had let him drag and pull like a puppet is played.

Death hadn’t meant much to him, not until he saw it in his own kingdom, saw the lengths some would go to run from it.

He had only asked about his uncle’s arm once before he, much like anyone else, committed the story to memory.

His uncle spoke of almost being encased in stone, of tearing knife through his very own flesh, meat and bone like butter. His nephew asked him why.

“To survive.” How had he not understood that?

There before him, the wolf found its helpless prey, not cowering, fleeing or unaware. Before him, the bloodhound found half a corpse for it to string along. The prey let itself be dragged, for what else is there for it to be? He is big as an ox, and he could ram his horns into the wolf’s maw and break all its teeth if he wished to do so. Yet, he does not. He is half dead and wants to go. His head is mounted on the hound’s wall, a trophy for all to marvel at, the prize to pay for apathy.

Death they both know well, but survival he does not.

What pampered pup thinks of surviving, after all? He was born with purpose, in soft cotton and hay, groomed and raised to reign. He was born great, with a crown and name, so that no matter how orphaned the world left him, he had a role in it to play.

His life was not his own, his life was not at stake. His life was a king’s. A king thinks of legacy, of what’s beyond life itself.

What will I be called, after I am gone? His father had cared too much for it. Reimund called him now a good king, not a father nor a man.

He himself had been a man, not a king nor a brother.

Blinded by the gold of a crown, survival was not a word he ever cared for.

What would he give up, just to survive? He had asked himself only once, after his uncle’s tale. What would he do, not for his crown, his image, or his people, but simply to stay alive?

Without Kirsi and Lucia, without a goal to run toward, in the opposite direction if his parents' walk; the answer was clear as glass. Nothing.
For his own life alone, he would have given nothing.

No wonder then, it was such a shock for him, to learn the fae under his rule would give all that made them magic. That they would give themselves up, and for what?

Simply to survive, if not live. What of mere survival made it worth it? What was he been living without?

He saw then, in the quiet of his study after dark. His people, all of them, winged, pointy-eared or not, should strive to live full lives.

There is love, he knows now. There is family, and there is duty. And there is the past he must ensure is carried forward unforgotten.

What makes mere living worth it, his sister, his people. A second light at the other end of the tunnel, where he can go instead of standing around in wait.

Mind not his uncle who stood for all he now stood against. Mind not his uncle, who will not let the puppet cut its own strings. Crack the wolf’s maw once, so he can no longer bite. Forget that he has claws.

The strings that uphold him are tied like a noose, and only his master ought to make the definitive pull.

He will do so, only when the puppet himself does not wish for it anymore. When he takes a step away from death, pull him back in. The ivy can only grow so high before the gardener must cut it back down.

His own blood has a blade to his chest, to his heart that had beaten alone. The chest of the prey is cut open and eaten, lest he try to push back against the iron clawed wolf who howls only to himself, in the moonless nights he reigns over.

Lord Ricon is a man who dictates death himself, a man who dictates kings. He should have known, from the very moment he dared defy him, that there was no choice to be had. Ricon is the reaper at his shadow, the man at the far end of the dining table, the wolf dragging him by the throat. And he would not have let him go by his own hand, for the pawn musn't move by itself, the mounted head must not scream in pain, and the vines should not grow higher that what he deems they must. And the readheaded boy, scared and alone, must not look in the mirror and see himself grown. It had to be him not at the helm, but turning the tide that pulls the ship under.

Reimund was a man who had finally found what kept him alive. Reimund was a man with a sister to aid. Reimund was a man with changes to make. Reimund was a king with a kingdom to rule. Reimund is a man who has been stagnant and foolish for all of his life, so now he is a man with much left to fix, to make up for.

He had had hope. They had time, he had thought. He is wrong. He is wrong once again, once again he has failed, has been and has done nothing at all.

It hadn’t quite hit him until now, just how young they still are. Just how he has finally managed to see his own face growing old in the mirror instead of his father’s scowl. Just how much he did not yet do, how much he could have planned.

He has managed to fill the hollows of his heart, before a blade runs them through, before he fails at his attempt to be anything beyond a nephew to death.

He feels the last of its beats, the last rasps of his breath, the last of his life.

Much too late, the king feels, for the first time, that he does not want to die.