There is a unique silence that follows death.
The living who are there to witness it can feel the otherworldly wonder that surrounds someone's passing. In the pit, there had been no time to pause and reflect, but the prince's room was a different sort of place.
The awe is often followed by heavy despair, and I was no stranger to it, for I remembered how that same silence and feeling took hold of our home in the moments after Pa died.
I wondered if the king, with all his experience in war, was familiar with it, too. He stood at the foot of his son's bed for several moments, taking in the view of the boy's wide eyes and frail body with an inscrutable expression.
I was angry over the prince's end, for he died exactly as he feared.
The king knelt by the boy's side and Roland made no move to stop him, not even when the king reached over and closed his son's eyelids. He released a soft noise that was something between despair and rage, then moved from the bed.
Without another word, he left the room.
YOU ARE READING
The Beast Within
FantasyA family lost and a son alone. A boy's life at its end and beginning. An adventure filled with fantastical terrors, where a child becomes a monster, and a monster becomes a legend. *** These were the ominous words the ghost Marmy Jo spoke when foret...
