The flames were pretty.
A disastrous art spreading across every cluttered surface of my bedroom. I liked to collect pretty things, and if I could have bottled the scarlet flowers creeping toward the carpet where I lay, I would have. Enthralled by the vibrant color of flames, I watched with lidded eyes as they approached.
I huffed a quiet and sated laugh that squeezed the knife wound in my abdomen. My body jerked with pain, and I let out a grieving moan.
These fascinating flames had created a dry and smoky atmosphere, making it difficult for me to swallow. Screams and horrified shouts sounded from different levels throughout the castle. That and the roar of crackling fires created a symphony of chaos that only encouraged the assassins currently attacking the people of our beloved home.
Tears lined my eyes, and perhaps they were glad beneath the grief. Relieved. For a fated end like this surely must have been better than the revilement I'd endured for the last twelve years, and all for my impoverished upbringing. Mockery followed me wherever I showed my scar-bearing face, a blemish that signified my unworthiness.
And a laughingstock of a Prince I had become for the beggarly habits I still claimed, like fetching my own bathwater from the lake across our courtyard or using my fingers to detangle my long hair because all of my wooden combs had been splintered growing up.
I had always liked to think I'd assimilated into royalty just fine. If there was anything I could do well, it was take direction, and the King of Avalon, my father, had emphasized to me in the beginning that I was never to taint his image.
However, my obedience, kindness, and my forgiving nature had never satisfied my family enough to acknowledge me as a genuine son. And perhaps…I could have never actually been one of them. I was not beautiful like them. Respected or admired like them.
I was still a farmer's son to my core. A man who knew how far to plant potatoes into the earth to guarantee a good harvest. A man whose fingers were trained to bend and bleed from the strain of repairing battered garments with a too-short needle and fraying thread.
Even my family's servants were above me.
By having just been myself, I had brought shame to my family every day for the past twelve years.
I'd been worthless.
And now I was receiving punishment for it.
Trapped in our beloved castle burning to hell, as though to purge itself of me, and while my life bled out of me.
I let my head fall onto the floor and stared at the painted ceiling as colorful embers fell like snow around me. A feeble, primal sensation deep inside me was screaming, begging for someone to rescue me. The self-preservative ache was senseless.
No one cared about what happened to me.
No one but my beloved doctor, the one who'd taken me fondly beneath his wing since before I'd even become a member of the royal Avalon family. And I wondered where he was. Hoped desperately that the only person who had ever acknowledged me these last twelve years was safe.
The kind man who'd cared for me had the rooting of my heart. If anyone should survive the kingdom's demise, it should be him. Maybe he would even come back to the ashes of our fallen home and save what remained of me.
But that wasn't right either. Men should not have required saving. They should not cry. They should not scream, even at the strike of a blade. They should do nothing but stand tall against life's devastating lashes.
It was shameful I was even bleeding from a mere knife wound.
Real men didn't bleed.
Yet here I was, in a bed of scarlet flowers, watering their roots with my bleeding life. I closed my eyes helplessly and let the heat engulf me.