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Panic started to rise through Root’s body when she couldn’t find her husband anywhere in the palace. It wasn’t uncommon for him to be out late—or even into the next day—but this was the first time he’d done so without leaving a note or sending word back to her. She took in a deep breath, trying to calm her mind. Perhaps he’d been pulled over to Lurien or Monomon’s on short notice and had simply been caught up trying to console them again? The war had only ended two months ago and she knew the two were still grieving their lost loved ones—Monomon the loss of her parent and Lurien the loss of his younger brother. Perhaps he’d been at the hospital with Sovus again? The scholar had been spending much of his time there working tirelessly to help those who were still recovering. She checked for the time, letting out a breath upon reading that it was simply two in the morning. It was still early—well, early for him. She tried to convince herself that it was fine, however…
There’d been something that had been… off about him all day.
She took another breath. She wanted to believe that it was probably nothing, but she figured that it wouldn’t hurt to check around to see if she could sense him anywhere out of the ordinary. She closed her eyes and felt through her roots, scanning whatever they could reach. She stopped once she felt a familiar figure alone near the top of the western mountain, right at the spot that overlooked King’s Pass where she and her wyrm loved to watch the stars.
Without a moment of hesitation she made her way to their spot.
Upon reaching the mountain, she stopped, taking a moment to try and sense if he was still there. Much to her concern, he hadn’t moved at all. Holding her breath, she began to move up the mountain. It was halfway up when she began to hear a noise—the sound of sniffling. The fact that there was noise was reassuring in and of itself, but the fact that the noise she’d heard had been sniffling had opened a new set of concerns. She was careful to be as quiet as possible as she peaked her head just above the cliffside.
Her eyes grew wide as they looked above the cliff. Sitting there looking up at the sky, bottle in hand, tears rolling down his cheeks, was The Pale King himself. His gaze didn’t move from the night sky, not even as he knocked back another swig of whatever was in the bottle he clutched so firmly in his hand. Her heart sank. Something must be very wrong indeed. She quickly brought herself up.
“Root!” The Pale King stumbled onto his feet, quickly putting on a smile despite the tears that still fell from his eyes, “My love—I—well—hah—I must have—I must have forgotten to inform you of my whereabouts, deepest apologies if I worried you! Everything is alright!”
It had been centuries since he’d lied to her. Had she not known him as well she figured that she would have been upset by this, instead her concern only grew.
What’s making him hide away like this?
Root took a deep breath, putting on a smile of her own, “Ah, that’s wonderful to hear. So you’ve been stargazing, then?”
A look of confusion crossed his face, his balance wavering slightly before his eyes grew wide with recognition.
“Stargazing! Yes! That! That is exactly what I was doing!” He let out a laugh as he lied.
She kept the smile on her face as she moved towards him, “Were you imagining the stars telling dick jokes?”
She paused once a look of guilt crossed his face, then sadness, before finally that same smile he’d put on.
“Something like that.” The Pale King’s voice cracked as he spoke, but he tried his best to keep that smile on his face as more tears made their way streaming down his face.
She tried her best to maintain her composure as she tilted her head to the side curiously, “Something like that, hm?”
“It—” his smile fell as he looked away from her, “it’s… dumb.”
“Dumber than dick jokes?” She raised a brow, comforted by the snort he let out.
“Fair.” He looked up at her again, a small earnest smile on his lips as he let out a sniffle, “It’s just… it’s… higher beings, I can’t understand why I’m thinking of this now, but… when I was little my parents would show me the stars whenever I was sad. My mom told me that the stars in the sky had been our family… that we glowed like the stars did because we would all become stars once we died… I-I know now that’s incorrect, that we glow because of our connection to soul and that the stars are simply balls of flaming gas… I just…”
He cast his gaze away from her.
“I wanted to pretend it was true… at least for tonight…”
Root looked upon him sadly, “What’s bothering you, love?”
He looked up at her again, his eyes wide. He kept his gaze fixed upon her for a moment and she could see the gears turning in his head before he looked down in defeat, producing a crumpled piece of parchment from a hand he’d hidden behind his back.
“This came from the Kingdom of Serenity… from Queen Silyes.”
Her heart dropped as he handed her the parchment. Silyes, daughter of Blackwyrm. She’d not known much about the dragonfly, so she steeled her resolve and prepared herself for whatever the letter would contain.
Root had not been expecting what she’d read.
“This is…” she looked at him, “this is a thank you letter…”
He took a step away from her as he laughed brokenly, “Exactly. She’s thanking me. She’s thanking me for sending aid to her kingdom. She’s thanking me for sending her father’s body back to receive proper funeral rites!”
He moved further back and began to pace.
“As though I wasn’t the one who fucking killed him!” He hissed, “Like this entire nightmare wasn’t my fault to begin with!”
Root’s eyes widened.
“Your fault?” Root tried to move closer to him, “Dearest, none of this is your fault—”
“But it is!” He snapped, “Everyone knows it’s my fault, that’s why everything’s worse now! It’s why everyone hates me so much more…”
He quickly took another swig from his bottle.
“They’re all right to hate me, you know. Maera especially—I’m surprised he can stand to be in the same room as me!” The Pale King began to rant, “Blackwyrm destroyed Maera’s family because of me, Lurien lost his brother for this war, Monomon lost her only parent. Unn lost countless Mosskin, Deepnest lost its fucking king! Our own people died and lost family to this entire fucking disaster—what did I lose? What reason do I have to mourn?! I was the fucking cause of all of this and I lost nothing!”
“I… I don’t understand…” Root felt her heart clench, “how are you at fault? What could you have done?”
“ANYTHING!”
The Pale King froze, eyes growing wide as he began to sob, “I could have done anything else… I could have established contact with Blackwyrm—sent him resources. I could have submitted myself to him as his subject, told him that I was harmless—proven to him that I was harmless! I could have done anything else! But what did I do?!”
Root reached out to him.
“I did nothing!” The Pale King wept, “I did fucking nothing! And now what am I doing? I’m sitting here crying like a selfish fucking asshole despite losing nothing and for what?! For stupid reasons! All because I’ve killed the only other wyrm—!”
He’d not meant to say that aloud.
“I-I—” the grip he’d had on the bottle wavered as his hands began to drop to his sides, his voice breaking, “I killed the only other wyrm…”
Root moved quickly to catch him as he collapsed into her arms, unable to hold back his grief as he began to sob hopelessly.
“I don’t want to be the last one… I don’t want to be alone…”
Root looked up at the night sky, desperately wishing that she could make it so that the stars had actually been other wyrms.
Such a task was impossible, even for her.
So instead she held her husband tighter as he cried.