How to Make a Sinner Sleep

131 | farewell; journey to nowhere

The clamour of colliding swords and battle swarmed them, echoes in their ears telling of death. The aurora rippled above in the ever-night skies like a dance beckoning the end—of the beginning.

On the ground splattered with blood, a man's chest bloomed red.

Kaden gasped, shaking furiously as his hand gripped the hilt of the dagger. The sharp tip pierced Reed's chest flawlessly—years of training and ability taught him how to kill.

Never had he dreamed on the day he first took up the blade that it would one day pierce the person he most wanted to impress.

His heart screamed, pounding against his chest. His mind echoed, pain flaring and scraping against the walls of his flesh.

Everything was screaming, wailing.

Reed gazed at him through a dulling gaze, feeling the air warp around him and cling to his body. Kaden's dagger had not been straight, missing the killing strike and lodging shallowly. Enough to leave an eternal scar, but not enough.

Not enough as it had to be.

Reed's clothes were ruined, sticking to his chest and slicked with crimson.

Kaden's blessing quivered in the air, a low hum of chaos that continued to build into a torrential wave. It spilled into the air and seized the calmness of the reverie, drawing dust and fog into the space.

Reed saw the madness but he did not flinch. In this world, no matter how terrible he became or how frightening his blessing became, Reed could not hate that child.

Kaden Chauvet.

The child that Reed had thoughtlessly picked up from the streets. A child ragged and filthy with a pair of startling, vicious emerald eyes hidden behind a layer of grime.

His eyelids shuttered, half-closed as he grappled with his awakeness, the image of Kaden above him flickering with that awkward, adoring child that had looked at him with such admiration and love.

He looked at Reed as if he was more than a mere commodity destined to be an accessory to the throne and a mascot to the people.

The little child's gaze transformed Reed Chauvet from the King's perfect doll into a human.

The King had realized the importance of Kaden's existence and tried to eradicate him—and Reed threatened the King's most prized possession: himself. How would the arrogant ruler have expected that his carefully manufactured heir was flawed?

Flawed with the ability to love.

Reed had been so careful and that very caution was his undoing. The King's schemes manifested in abuse to the child Reed carefully trained, and he drew more and more distant to pretend Kaden didn't matter.

But when he discovered the treatment of the servants to the innocent and helpless child, he acted first and punished them all.

The years of pretending to be indifferent shattered and the King once more attempted to control and threaten Kaden in order to control Reed.

Reed's behaviour had become colder, crueler. Anything to mask his adoration, anything to protect that child.

Because his affection would've been the cruelest punishment.

If it meant he could never see those vibrant green eyes that loyally gazed at him, then so be it.

He realized then, far too late into their play, that his first mistake was made when bringing Kaden into the palace. Into their royal schemes, into his miserable reality.