Stalsgard, 1st of Ýlir, 796 A.C.
How many scars had he justified because he loved the person holding the knife?
His eyes fell to his ribs, where the still-fresh scar of the word his father had had the guards brand him still tingled, now turned a soft pink by the time that'd gone by, although no less meaningful than the day it'd been made.
He'd justified all the cruelties his family had put him through all his life.
He'd forgiven every single one of them.
But no more.
No more.
"I don't understand why you treated her like that."
Queen Jordhanna had just left the barracks where he was kept.
Giving it a quick glance, he noticed once more how it was bare except for the metal bars and door that led into his strict living quarters. He'd never been told whether the arrangement had been a requirement of the King himself or a chosen one by the soldiers and the man in charge of his exile, but it honestly wouldn't surprise him either way. He usually just slept huddled in a corner since, at some point, he'd been deemed unworthy of even a bed to lie in — though his tantrum with the latest bed they'd given him had probably had something to do with that decision, as well.
When he saw her, though, Raiden had held out some hope that everything would be alright, that she'd come to get him, but she'd never meant to get him out of there.
Never.
Today had been the first time he'd seen his mother since he'd been dragged away from the capital.
The same day he saw daylight for the first time since he'd been taken away the second she opened the door and sunlight greeted him unlike all the other days he'd been here, when only the fog, cold, and snow of winter kept him company.
He'd thought the sun had been a sign of some sort of blessing.
He'd been wrong.
She'd come, knelt in front of him on the other side of the bars, placed her hands on his — no longer chained since he'd long stopped rebelling against the soldiers —, and in a quiet, remorseful voice, told him the truth of who he was.
The truth of his birth. The truth of his wyrd. The truth of his identity.
And when she'd finished, crying sorrowful tears, and he'd said nothing back to her, he remembered how she'd kissed the back of his hand and risen to her feet, right before she told him she'd given the King a true heir and somehow made it sound like she'd done it for him, so he'd be free of his torture, liberated from the King's possession. She'd sounded as if she'd made some form of a sacrifice for him, to save him from the wyrd he'd been given.
If hearts could crack, his certainly did, right then.
He'd wanted to strangle her, then, for giving the King what he'd wanted all along. For not seeing that giving him an heir wouldn't change the fate he'd sealed upon Raiden, but harden it into stone, as the child would grow, and when the time came, would be made to take the throne instead of him. Not that he envied the luck. He wanted nothing to do with his father's throne. Not if he could help it and had anything to say about it. But he knew that he would remain where he was, exiled and enslaved, guarded while the loss of an heir was imminent and rendered useless when the threat had passed. Useful only for a short while, to be disposed of when he made himself obsolete. Still, he'd only stared at her, then, seeing not the mother he'd once worshiped, who'd protected him and sheltered him and had valiantly fought for him.
No.
Instead, he saw a woman who'd given up on her love for a son she'd always known how to love just enough to keep him breathing. And when she leaned down to whisper her deceitful lies into his ear and caress his hair, he didn't fight or flee her touch. Instead, he merely closed his eyes and told her to leave and never return, because she only had one son from that day forth and it was her duty to care for him until the day he came of age.
She left bathed in tears.
She didn't return.
He didn't want her to.
And the beast clamored from its cage, honing its teeth until they were as sharp as a sword's blade. The stain of betrayal made the pain loosen some of its edges, leaving space for the rage to blossom further, and inside him, the beast grew firmer limbs, a more muscled structure, and an even more heartless heart. It rattled its bars, growling until a deep sense of fear made all the emotions inside his body become nothing if not specks of dust soaring through the shattered remains of his heart.
He'd wondered if maybe he'd been wrong that day in the King's chamber, as he realized, now, that no heart could ever make a greater crack than that of crashing lightning.
His.
His heart was shredded, bleeding, still racing, and so very bruised.
And now here was Nikka, coming to deliver more blows to his still-fragile organ.
Raiden tipped his gaze to her in the darkness, seeing her outlined on the doorway even with the lack of light, though he wasn't sure she knew that. "Like what?" His voice sounded grave from lack of use.
"Like you hate her and don't want to see her ever again."
He didn't hate her.
He lowered his lashes. "I don't."
But he never wanted to see her again.
"You don't know what you're saying." Her voice was low and her words resembled more a whisper than a factual statement — or an insult, for that matter.
Gods, he hated those words.
"Why would you ever assume that?"
Why would anyone, in fact? It seemed like an ongoing theme to the people around him, saying he didn't mean or know what he was saying. Like he was some foolish kid, running around in his diapers yelling stuff he'd overheard his parents say in hushed voices as they plagued their luck.
"Because you have no idea what it's like to not have a mother."
"I don't?"
She wasn't aware how alone he'd felt his entire life despite having had a mother throughout all he'd been through. Even though he knew firsthand all his mother had been through herself, there were days when the love he'd thought she had for him hadn't been enough to console him or to make things alright as the love of a mother should do. The truth is there had always been a part of her that had strayed away from him. A part of her she kept concealed from him, probably because of the exact reason she'd come to see him today — this truth she'd kept from him his entire life about who he truly was.
"No." She shook her head, curls bouncing. "You don't."
He arched a brow. "And I'm assuming you do?"
"I do."
He whipped his head at her. "Why?"
Nikka's bright, blue eyes turned to his, so very honest and raw that the emotion he saw there could almost be tasted if only he opened his mouth and let his tongue savor it. "Have you ever wondered why I'm here? Instead of at home? Why I came with my father to this forsaken place?"
He hadn't — ever.
He'd never had the chance, brain space, or the strength to wonder why she was here. He'd been so enthralled by his situation and everything that had happened to him recently he'd been completely consumed by it.
But it made sense, now.
"Your mother —"
"Died when I was five." Her voice was surly and curt. Her lashes lowered and even though her eyes closed, he could see her grief all the same, as strong as if the woman she longed for had died yesterday. "I can still feel her touch, sometimes. I still hear her voice, calling my name, telling me it's time to wake up. In the spring, it's like she's still here with me. It used to be her favorite season. We'd go out in search of the wolf packs to watch the new cubs being born," Nikka was whispering, but the power behind her words made something in his chest heave like she was punching him repeatedly. "I close my eyes sometimes and it's easy to picture a future where she could've been with us. Where she could've lived to see the woman I've become and love my father the way he deserves. But then, I open my eyes…" Her eyes brushed open gently, focusing on something above his shoulder. "And she's still dead."
He knew where she was going with this, but the situations were starkly different, in this case.
"My circumstances are different."
She pierced him with her gaze, head whipping up. "Do you think that matters? She's your mother. No matter what she's done, she'll never stop being your mother and you're here, wasting whatever time you have with her on a tantrum because you're hurt that she's given you a brother —"
"You're right," he interrupted curtly, voice permeated by both exasperation and exhaustion. "I'm here. I guess that's the part you're conveniently forgetting." His eyes narrowed menacingly. "I'm here… and my mother has done absolutely nothing to get me out."
Nikka's mouth opened —
"No." He pointed a finger at her, shaking his head as his palm hit the bars with a strength that rumbled through the small space. "Don't you dare try to excuse or justify her. You don't know," his voice sounded achingly cold like he was scolding her for an unforgivable mistake. "You don't know me or what I've been through, so you can't understand."
He saw her flinch from his cell, her eyes falling to the floor, foot stomping the ground.
He almost felt bad for lashing out at her.
Almost.
The rage and bitterness consuming him were enough to make the bite of shame feel like a breeze brushing past him, easing the heaviness pressing into him over this awful knowledge of knowing he'd hurt another's feelings.
She sniffed gently tears she hadn't yet shed. "Do you know how much I've begged and wished I could get my mother back? How much I've dreamed of seeing her again? Being with her again?" Her eyes welled up and she changed her weight, pulling strands of hair behind her ears. "You have no idea what it's like to miss someone so much —"
"I've missed her for months," Raiden replied with a disheartened laugh, shaking his head vehemently. "And you don't get to come in here and make me feel guilty for feeling this way about someone who gave up on me when you don't know shit about me."
"I would if you told me."
The accusation stung. "Yeah? Why would you care, then, if you don't, now? What would it change if you knew the truth? Would it make you feel less sorry for the crying woman who just left me, even though you just told me she's still my mother no matter what?"
"It would make me understand… if nothing else," she answered. Nikka's shoulders squared as if she was physically putting up a defense against his ranting words. "It would make me understand why you blame her for leaving when you're the one who told her to leave."
He looked away, to the wall, knowing there was hardly anything there to see but not being able to bear the sight of Nikka's pain and anguish when he could hardly control his own.
Unbidden, that bud of rage grew ever bigger inside Raiden.
No one could understand. What he'd been through… no one could understand what it felt like. The marks it left on his very soul. The wounds that would never heal closed. He'd loved his mother above anything and everything else, but she'd betrayed him. Betrayed his trust. Betrayed his love. It seemed like everyone came and stabbed their knives on his back, and then stood back wondering why he was bleeding, doing nothing to help even stop the bleeding. It's like he was the one to blame for their choices and mistakes.
Raiden scoffed.
If that wasn't the sickest thing he'd ever seen, he wasn't sure what could be.
And Nikka didn't understand why he'd told her to leave and never come back?
"I sent her away because that's what she did!" He yelled, coming unhinged for the first time in months and the very first time in front of Nikka. "She never came for me. Never tried to get me back home." His lashes lowered as the ache in his heart quietly hushed into the faintest whisper in his hollow chest. "I waited for her, but she was the one who made me feel like she was dead for a long time."
She moistened her lips and lifted her chin after swallowing, brows furrowed in stubbornness. "Raiden —"
"That's not my name," he growled, turning on his heel like a caged animal, which, to his utter surprise, was starting to sound like more of an apt description by the second.
"Then what is?"
He ran a hand through his tangled mess of hair and even though he knew the answer wasn't there, his eyes went up to the ceiling above him. "I don't know."
He truly, honestly, regretfully didn't know.
"Raiden, this isn't really about your mother, is it?"
He hated the way she was looking at him and he hated even more how it made him feel. Like he was being skinned alive from the inside. Or worse, like he was being put on fire from within. It was the same way Kerim had looked at him the past months. Sometimes, the old man made him feel like he was staring at a lost boy who didn't know who the hell he was. Like he was seeing an innocent child, struggling to remember his own identity and find himself amidst all the confusion and chaos surrounding him after getting stripped of all that made him a person with an entire crowd telling him who he should be.
He looked away from her, unable to bear the weight of that gaze so much like her father's.
"Was this ever really about her?"
A burning began in his chest, along with a scratching sensation that felt an awful lot like someone scraping at the insides of his ribs. The air escaped his lungs and a type of breathlessness he'd never experienced before overtook him.
He couldn't bring himself to say anything.
"Was this ever about any of them? The people who put you here? Who wronged you, mistreated you, and put you here?"
Who else would it be about?
A buzzing began in his brain, loud and painful enough to make him wince. Shaking his head, he let out a small grimace, stepping back until he had his back pressed against the wall furthest from Nikka like he was trying to put physical distance between himself and the words she was saying.
"Or is it because they lied to you? Because they took your identity? Because they took your sense of self? Because without the truth you felt like you were blinded, but with it, you no longer know who you are? Or what you are? Or even what you're meant to be?" Nikka stopped, her words beaming through his mind and ricocheting all around his skull until they were self-repeating mantras inside. "Raiden…" She whispered, stepping closer. "Do you want me to tell you what I think?"
No.
She did, anyway.
"I think your father's abuse was your identity. Your way of knowing who you were in this world. Your way of placing yourself in your life. Your entire existence was crafted around that hatred. So much so that the second you lost it, you don't know how to find yourself anymore," she told him solemnly and she was close enough now that he could see her through a few shades of light that'd cracked through the barracks' ceiling. Her eyes were serious and wide, but there were shadows beneath the stark blue crystal of her irises. Her shoulders were squared and her jaw set in a hard line. "That's why you say your name isn't Raiden. Because Raiden was the boy born prince to a king who never called him a son his entire life. He was the boy whose mother lived trapped in silence, shackled to the same man who spent his entire life beating him and torturing him. He was the boy whose blood hid a secret he carried every day all the while being oblivious to its weight," Nikka hesitated, taking a deep breath. She'd reached the bars, now, and her small hands gripped them until her knuckles turned white as she refused to rip her gaze away from the boy in front of her. "Raiden was the boy born from your father's hate."
He held his breath.
Raiden was the boy born from your father's hate.
Wasn't that an apt description?
He wanted to deny what she was saying, tell her it was all just stupid speculation on her part, but was it? Really? Was it really? Because she was right about everything. He'd spent sixteen winters being defined by his father's abuse, his cold indifference, his harsh words, his back-lashing punishments, and his lifeless eyes. He'd grown up with it, although, deep down, he knew now that he'd practically been born with it. Like a stain on his soul. A mark that tainted him so much that, right after birth, he started being slowly but steadily shaped by it. All his edges, all his molds, all his contours, all his outlines were always drawn under the light that shone from his father's eyes.
Never his own.
His hate increasingly became all he had to mold himself, and despite unknowingly, he'd shaped himself to be an almost exact replica of the man.
Cold. Lost. Resented.
"And now that you're free from it… now that you don't have it to define you, you don't know who you are anymore."
Her words resonated in his head.
Was she right? Was he free? His father's ruthlessness had always been a part of him. Part of who he was. Part of everything he'd become over time. It'd been the glue that'd kept him together. That'd molded him. That'd shaped him. He'd learned to be the boy whose father hated him and for all of sixteen winters, that's all he'd been. That's all he'd known to be. He never thought he'd get out. Never thought he'd be free. Never thought he'd have the chance to figure out who he was without him, without his hate, without his despise.
But would he really be able to find out who that boy was without it? What he looked like without it?
He honestly didn't even know.
"So, hate everyone, Raiden. Hate them all, for lying, cheating, and robbing you of the right to your own truth. It's your right and it serves the purpose of your evolution," her tone lowered to a deep rasp that made his heart squeeze in his chest because there was not only advice in her words, but a fervent request — almost a plea. "But once the hate is gone, you need to come to terms with what lies underneath. You need to search deep inside to look for the real person, the one hiding beneath all those layers of secrets, despair, pain, and bitterness."
His eyes lifted to her. "How do I do that?" His voice sounded as small as he'd ever heard, weak like a child's. It made him feel as fragile as he'd ever felt, even as a boy.
"You pick a name."
A name?
What sort of ridiculous stupidity was that?
He barked out a laugh, not finding the least amount of amusement in the conversation. "A name? A name doesn't mean anything."
It hadn't for his entire life.
"No, Raiden, that's where you're wrong. A name means everything. None can live long without one." She shook her head and looked at him from under her lashes. "That's what tells apart man and beast."
His heart jumped.
His skin tingled.
His breath wheezed.
He froze.
The beast inside of him roared to life. It'd heard Nikka's words as well and it, too, reacted to them. To be honest, he'd expected it to be a rather poignant one, but instead, he only felt it growl from its cage, staying similarly quiet despite the grumbling. He didn't hear any clawing or snarling. There were no sounds of movement. It accepted these words. In fact, it felt like it knew them to be true. But the strangest thing was it didn't fight against them. It wasn't worried that in the process of doing what Nikka was asking him to, something inside of him would change that could permanently alter what the two of them had — the existence they lived in. To be honest, it was almost like… it was expecting it.
Waiting for it.
He tilted his head to the side.
That's what tells apart man and beast.
Did she —
"For the first time in your life, Raiden, you get to choose. You get to decide. There's no more hate to control you. No more love to cower you. It's time you decide who you want to be. And that starts with a name. The road will be long and it'll be hard to take it, but you'll learn to withstand the pain because of what it's worth. Your freedom."
That's what tells apart man and beast.
Why did that make so much sense?
"Is that what you see? A man and a beast?"
"Yes." Nikka's eyes were shadowed with darkness. "I see exactly what you are. I see an heir robbed of his crown and throne, who finally gets to decide if he means to be a beast like the one who raised him or a man like the one who fathered him."
She had no idea how absolutely right she was.
She talked of the man who'd raised him and the one who'd fathered having no idea they were truly two different beings. But she was absolutely right about the difference. The conflict of those two birthrights was hard to accept and conceive, leaving him teetering on the verge of insanity, with no identity of his own to hold on to. Accepting his identity as the heir of the Thorden family meant becoming the man he'd never been given a chance to be… but embracing himself as heir to his real father meant becoming the beast inside of him. However, given how woven in lies his story was, he knew choosing the former would never allow him to reclaim his true birthright, and the one no one knew about, on the other hand, he didn't want anything to do with.
"Man and beast," he whispered.
He lifted his eyes and saw the proud lines of Nikka's face tense as she stood there before him, on the other side of the bars, her fingers twitching on the bars. "Man and beast."
Raiden's eyes closed as he heaved out a sigh.
"We will fight together. We will shape you like steel and sharpen you like a sword, and whatever haunts you, we will face it together."
Raiden's mouth closed, lips thinning, Adam's apple bobbing as he swallowed, making it hard to breathe. "I don't want the throne, Nikka."
She stopped, mildly surprised. "I know you don't. Maybe you never will. But I think you'll find quite soon that you can not want to exert your birthright, while still owning it." She shook her head. "But that's a lesson for another day, I'm afraid. For now… you have enough to think about."
He lowered his face to his chest, hiding it from view with his hair.
Nikka nodded once, smiled shyly, and turned on her heel.
That's what tells apart man and beast.
He watched her leave until he realized that, for the first time, he understood his objective. His meaning. His purpose. Not in the higher sense of the word, but right now. Right here. Right this moment. For the first time, he knew what he was meant to do. What he had to do. Because the truth was he didn't want to become his father, the embittered man who couldn't let go of the past that'd crucified him and tortured him. No matter how reasonable it would be to do that, and justified even, he wasn't like him and he didn't want to be. He loathed that man and he'd be damned before he lived to the day when he'd become his carbon copy.
His hands fisted and his eyes brushed closed.
I will not be him.
She'd been right, of course.
His voice stopped her. "Thank you, Nikka."
Nikka looked over her shoulder and the hope in her eyes made a bolt of lightning of longing crash into his heart, so strong and potent it seemed to wake his body and electrify each of his cells to the point he could feel the current streaming through his blood and flesh.
She smiled shyly. "You're welcome, Leif."
He held his breath as he looked at her from under the long strands of hair falling on his face. "Leif?"
Leif.
He liked that.
"Until you choose a name, that will be what I will call you," Nikka announced with a small smile. "Leif, the lost son of Thorden, heir to the throne of Arszden and prince to the people of the North."
The name 'Leif' actually meant 'heir' in his native language.
Raiden opened his mouth —
He was the son of no king, heir to nothing, and prince of no people, but if Nikka knew that, she would certainly tell him that blood held no importance in the significance he had to the kingdom. He would be considered heir as long as he was seen as so by the people.
His exile hadn't changed his position or role as heir.
She would be right about that, too.
He let himself fall to the floor, his back to the wall. Pushing his knees to his chest, he folded his body into a small ball, placing his forehead on his legs. Then, he forced himself to relax, unclenching all his muscles, one by one, from the back of his neck to the tip of his toes.
"Is he okay?" Kerim's voice sounded outside the door, a few yards to the right of Raiden's barracks.
"Father…" Nikka sighed, sounding winded.
"I'm sorry if I scared you. I thought I'd given you enough time, so I came to get you. It's starting to grow dark," Kerim chuckled, the sound muffled as his daughter hugged him. He exhaled roughly. "And cold."
"How did you know I'd be down there?"
The wind circled outside, whispering soft murmurs only those much too wise could understand. Many would say they were howling winds of change, but Raiden knew better.
They were winds of an oncoming storm.
"Because I knew you'd try to do what you do best. Help him find his way."
The silence stretched for a few seconds.
"He will be okay, I think. In time."
"Do you think he'll make it?" He sounded legitimately worried.
"I think he has a man and a beast inside of him, but it has to be his choice whether to be one or the other. He can't be both forever."
Kerim laughed. "I knew I'd picked the right person for the job."
Nikka laughed back, the sound joyous and tender. "I wasn't aware you'd planned this."
"It was a… fortuitous coincidence."
There was a smack and a gruff grimace before footsteps sounded as the two moved away back to the fortress.
"Liar."
Raiden closed his eyes.
And for some unknown reason, he found himself smiling broadly.
Deep within, he searched for the beast.
He pictured its image. Felt its coat. Stroked its ears. Caressed its mouth. Traced its claws. It roared at his touch, yearning to become corporeal to his mind as much as he searched to make it so. Slowly, he pictured the color of its eyes. The sound of its breathing. The feel of its muscles. Tentatively, he reached forward, placing his hand on the back of its neck, reaching under its belly, and stroking it tenderly. He gave it form, sharpened its edges, and rounded its curves. And with each small touch, it became less of a figment of his imagination and more of a real thing. He couldn't give it freedom and it knew it, but it craved his attention as much as he needed to give it and it softened at his interest, giving into him.
Then, it happened.
His eyes popped open. Dizziness swept through him, and the bars in front of him seemed to sway. Everything swayed. The room spun in a way that made him want to retch.
He blinked, but everything still moved.
Panic squeezed his heart — a kind he'd never felt before.
You'll learn to withstand the pain because of what it's worth. Your freedom.
Why did this freedom feel so much like ashes?
Through the haze of dizziness, though, he finally saw the being that lived inside of him, caged ever since he'd been born.
A raven-black crow.
He gasped.
A black crow breathed inside of him, elegant and lazily graceful. Its feathers glinted in the sunlight peaking through its cage beautifully and he could see shatters of fluorescent blue igniting under the sun, creating shattered shards of sunlight to radiate from its imposing body. He didn't know why, but something told him it was a female. No male animal could ever possess such beauty or elegance. She screeched repeatedly as she opened her wings, her long, threatening talons peaking downward as her feet wavered in the air, suspended by her flight.
And right before the image dissipated from his mind, returning her to the long remembrance in his chest he'd felt all his life, her whisper was her parting gift.
You are steel.
His vision cleared, perfectly focused in the growing darkness as the power unfurled completely in his chest, so powerful it was a wonder he'd never felt it this fully before or that it'd never manifested completely. But as he blinked, he felt the electricity zapping inside his veins, igniting his veins and then his skin with a lightning-blue light, making the entire space glow.
His lashes lowered and the power slowly died out in his blood until it went dormant.
But he now knew.
I am steel.