The Voices in the Shadows

He couldn't sleep.

They had just sent his family's corpses out to sea two days ago and he found it difficult to sleep more than three hours each night.

It did not help that he had been moved to his father's old room, a suggestion made by Count Pierre to help him appear more at ease with the process of being a king.

It was too big. It was too quiet yet too noisy. His father's presence was everywhere and it made him feel like he was being haunted by that foolish man.

He most likely was. His mother did used to say, in her moments of drunken bliss, that the dead always walked ten paces behind him. The memory made him think of moments when he was younger and her words filled him with curiosity instead of the fear she might've expected.

Undead that treated him like their master? What was there to fear? That was most likely one of the reasons his mother came to see him as something broken.

"There's something wrong with you." She used to say to him on occasion. There was just something not right with him. It was her reason for avoiding him since he was born. His nanny said she didn't even want to hold him after birthing him. Her abuse of choice for him was neglect.

She was a terrible mother, a cruel person, but he couldn't blame her entirely.

Made queen at the age of thirteen, a mother by fourteen, to a man ten years her senior. The stories of his mother's marriage he'd heard from the servants detailed the life of an absolutely broken person and the abuser she couldn't escape from. So he couldn't entirely blame her for her behavior, but he still despised her.

I should go for a walk. Sleep is still not coming for me.

As he crossed the room and opened the door, the loudness from the shadows increased. The small whispers he would pretend were his imagination or just outright ignored, suddenly started yelling. They still sounded like they were far away, but they almost began to sound like they were getting closer bit by bit. And again, he ignored them. He'd acknowledge that some other day.

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His walk around the castle brought him to many places he had never been allowed to visit prior to recent events. His mother's art room, where her mediocre paintings and sketches laid.

The eldest's, the first Princess, precious rose garden. She would've sold all of her siblings to preserve a single leaf in that garden. He was going to uproot every rose and replace them with something else. The smell of roses made his nose itch.

The twins' weapons room. They had the odd hobby of collecting rare and powerful weapons and scrolls. He planned on looking through them whenever he had the time, especially his brother's tomes.

The playroom, where his little brother spent most of the day hidden from their father's sight. His father may have found the little boy embarrassing but at the very least, he had acknowledged him as his son. Ísar had never received that privilege, not that he minded. Simply wasn't fair.

He ended up in the Hall of Kings, the gallery showcasing the portraits of all the prior Kings and Queens since the kingdom's founding centuries ago.

His grandfather, Olaf, had been a bit of a mad king. He took care of the kingdom, no doubt, but his love of killing everyone he took to bed, man or woman, put a bit of a stain in his legacy.

His sister had said he looked like their grandfather, only with little more color to his skin and his brown eyes like their mother. He could almost hear her boisterous laugh in response to his frown.

Does royalty of this land have a prerequisite of being so fundamentally wrong in some way?

He stopped in front of his father's portrait and took a step back. Ísar tilted his head from the left to the right, processing his father's features. Most people's faces didn't register in his brain.

He was able recognize his family, but if anyone asked him to describe what they looked like, he could only provide descriptions that resembled clouds of paint. He was most likely going to forget his father's face by noon the next day.

From what he did remember, his sister looked so much like father.

No wonder she went mad. He smiled at his own joke before letting out a yawn.

On his way back to bed, he made a mental list of all the places he had been restricted from going to in the castle.

He hoped his mother's spirit was livid. He didn't have the energy to home grudges, but pettiness was a different story.