[ he doesn't know what sleep is. when the archbishop catches him and reminds him to rejoin the land of the living he remembers, otherwise he forgets and he moves through the living like a dream. each strange encounter with a person feels like he was talking to a ghost. glenn tells him he can't let his guard down. his father tells him that everyone is always out to kill him. their voices are too loud. everyone gives such complicated advice.
today the skies are cloudy and that is how he knows it'll be an awful day. more than usual. they are making plans, again, to split their forces, the kingdom being so poor, nothing else to be bled dry from this stone, and the archbishop tells him there is salvation at the end of it. feels like the way his father screams it in the flames. he nods and understands.
sylvain was not in any of the maps they've expected him to be. like she was holding him as a card. will he be in arianrhod, is that where she'll lay down her pieces and tell him to yield? he had thought many times of his once-friend, sylvain's easy smile, and rage ripples thru his body like a disease.
he was always a liar.
yes. yes he was. all the women he'd taken to his bedroom, they all fled afterwards, pain on their faces like indelible ink.
and you believed him, you stupid boy.
not quite, he wants to argue, feeling his head heavy again the way his migraines creep into his vision. dimitri pauses where he walks and grips the stone. in my childhood he was -
a thief. stole your friends. stole your smile. you were weak, should've been immune to such easy tricks.
i -
you cannot bring salvation otherwise if one man makes you falter!
he will not. dimitri clenches his fist. breaks the wall where he leaves it, his cloak of blue and ragged fur following him after. he will not, he will not, he will not, i am the king, i have heard your pleas, i will answer your call.
he wants to break something. some thing. the urge to commit violence always palpable in his air, no-one more dangerous when the king stalks through the halls with his matted hair and blue eyes and the way he drags his cloak behind him like a dead body, like multitudes of bodies. the guards fear him. in the dark, the night's watch runs as they talk to each other, spooked, about the king: he is talking to himself. he is counting bodies in the dark. he is naming names.
that night, it'll be noticeable that the guards of the night watch refuse a certain area of fhirdiad. they'll tell anyone that there aren't enough people to man the entire palace, lying baldly to church knights, the fraldarius heir. the king's den, they call it, the halls that run from dimitri's room - barely used save for an opportunity to fall like the dead on his bed - empty of guards if only because dimitri stalks the halls, muttering promises to the dead in the dark: ]
... yes. It will come. It will happen. I will kill her. Stab her in the gut. Break her neck. Grind her spine, bathe in her blood, bash her skull. To hang it on the gates of Enbarr. I swear. And him. Wayward son of Gautier. I do - I will - I understand. But it is not easy -
better off dead
today the skies are cloudy and that is how he knows it'll be an awful day. more than usual. they are making plans, again, to split their forces, the kingdom being so poor, nothing else to be bled dry from this stone, and the archbishop tells him there is salvation at the end of it. feels like the way his father screams it in the flames. he nods and understands.
sylvain was not in any of the maps they've expected him to be. like she was holding him as a card. will he be in arianrhod, is that where she'll lay down her pieces and tell him to yield? he had thought many times of his once-friend, sylvain's easy smile, and rage ripples thru his body like a disease.
he was always a liar.
yes. yes he was. all the women he'd taken to his bedroom, they all fled afterwards, pain on their faces like indelible ink.
and you believed him, you stupid boy.
not quite, he wants to argue, feeling his head heavy again the way his migraines creep into his vision. dimitri pauses where he walks and grips the stone. in my childhood he was -
a thief. stole your friends. stole your smile. you were weak, should've been immune to such easy tricks.
i -
you cannot bring salvation otherwise if one man makes you falter!
he will not. dimitri clenches his fist. breaks the wall where he leaves it, his cloak of blue and ragged fur following him after. he will not, he will not, he will not, i am the king, i have heard your pleas, i will answer your call.
he wants to break something. some thing. the urge to commit violence always palpable in his air, no-one more dangerous when the king stalks through the halls with his matted hair and blue eyes and the way he drags his cloak behind him like a dead body, like multitudes of bodies. the guards fear him. in the dark, the night's watch runs as they talk to each other, spooked, about the king: he is talking to himself. he is counting bodies in the dark. he is naming names.
that night, it'll be noticeable that the guards of the night watch refuse a certain area of fhirdiad. they'll tell anyone that there aren't enough people to man the entire palace, lying baldly to church knights, the fraldarius heir. the king's den, they call it, the halls that run from dimitri's room - barely used save for an opportunity to fall like the dead on his bed - empty of guards if only because dimitri stalks the halls, muttering promises to the dead in the dark: ]
... yes. It will come. It will happen. I will kill her. Stab her in the gut. Break her neck. Grind her spine, bathe in her blood, bash her skull. To hang it on the gates of Enbarr. I swear. And him. Wayward son of Gautier. I do - I will - I understand. But it is not easy -