Work Text:
For the first six years, his father had been just a shadowy figure, fearsome and deadly but safely somewhere outside the Queen's palatial apartments.
Then death came, all clawing hands and cruel laughter, and security degenerated into a second by second life ricocheting between fear and uncertainty. He learnt soon enough the things that made his father pleased with him, and the things that would earn him a random object hurled in his direction.
Slowly – piece by piece, day by day – that little kernel that had been his soul leached away under the King's withering care, until eventually it had disappeared altogether.