Page 15 of Grim and Oro
He just killed the king and queen ... if their second son’s response is any indication, every single person on that island will be attacking our forces soon, with a vengeance.
We’ve already lost so many. And I ... I can’t fight like this. I need time away from battle, away from bloodshed, away from the father Ihate, to restrain these emotions again. To forget. To reinforce the walls that the Sunling’s own feelings and words demolished.
“We need to surrender,” I say, my voice firm.
Anger flashes in my father’s eyes.
“You need to focus on how to survive this,” I say, pretending I care at all about his well-being, beyond my own fate. “Even if we win ... we are not in a position to keep Lightlark. They will overpower us once more. We can’t take more losses. Not with you in this state ... it could mean the end of Nightshade.”
My father refuses. He tries to make a stand at the next battle, as if to prove his strength, and it almost kills him. It wrecks me. For without these walls around my mind and soul, I feel everything. The sadness. The pain. And it calls to my own, drawing it out, until I am nothing but flesh and armor holding together endless shame and self-hatred. It almost costs me my life, on the battlefield. I almost wish it did.
My father loses weight. He pales further. He’s practically a husk by the time he calls me back into the throne room several weeks later. He has another plan. One that starts with surrender.
He’s so weak he can barely lift a palm to sign the terms of the treaty.
“Go,” he says. “Find a way to claim the island once and for all, from the inside.”
The second I’m rowed onto Lightlark’s shores again, I’m imprisoned.
And for months, prison is where I remain.
PEACE
Today I was finally moved from the prisons into the castle.
I’d have preferred to stay in the cell.
In the cell, no one daredtouch my things.
An attendant scurries out of my room the moment I walk inside, and she had the nerve to make my bed.
No one touches my bed but me.
I don’t like people in my space.
In Nightshade, my father kept a close circle. Only a handful of trusted attendants were allowed in the castle’s private quarters.
Here ... people are everywhere. These royals don’t even make their own food. They don’t even sharpen their own blades.
No wonder that ridiculous King Egan didn’t dare step foot on the battlefield. He probably has someone hold his own sword for him.
Weak bastard.
His brother, on the other hand ... Oro. Second son. Prince.
His brother visited my cell so often, I started to wonder if he was just as lonely as I was, even with that crop of irritating friends.
I could feel his emotions, his hatred of me matching my hatred of him. But then, after a few months, after a deadly adventure, both of our hatreds subsided into something that resembles ... friendship.
I frown, even thinking the word. But it’s the truth.
My enemy has become my only friend.
What a sad existence this is.
I stop portaling home in the night.
I tell my father I’m scheming, looking for a way to get the island, but it is a lie.
