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Your life is not your own: this is your oldest truth, your foundation.
You learned it first at three years old, when your mother arranged your arms to hold your newborn sister in your lap, and whispered to you the words that would change you. This is your sister, Nom, you still hear her say in your dreams. You'll take care of her, won't you?
You promised, and you meant it, and you failed; but you tried. Oh, you tried. Katie looks at you now with fear in her eyes. She tries to hide it, looking down at the table, but she can't stop glancing up at you between dice rolls. You look away, trying to make it easier on her. There's so much you want to tell her, so much you still want to talk to her about, but the words get tangled up on the branches growing inside you, caught in your throat, building into one silent, desperate cry: I love you, I love you, I love you, I'm sorry. It's for the best; there's nothing you can say that won't hurt her more.
"I guess the Creaking King didn't give you better luck," she says as she tallies her points. She's putting on a brave face. You're so proud of her, your little sister, the bravest person you know. You will do anything you can to help her be strong in the face of your mistakes.
"Yeah, well, maybe the next time I sell my soul, I'll ask for that, too," you say. Make it a joke. If it's a joke, it's not real. You both know that's not true, but you can pretend. As you pick up the dice and roll, you feel the roots growing through the muscles of your arm contract.
Katie kicks you under the table. You barely feel it through the bark under your skin. You say, "Ow," anyways and kick her back, so she won't know. She scowls. You smile. It's an act, but it's true. You're like a dancing puppet on a string: pull the right ones, and be her brother for as long as you can. You can do that. I love you, I love you, I love you. I'm so sorry, Katie.
-
You learned it again at nine, when your parents left. You wanted to go with them; you fought, kicking and screaming, to follow, while strong arms held you in place, impotent, helpless, and a soft voice whispered promises into your hair that everything would be okay.
Graecie doesn't lie to you like that anymore, so you try not to lie to her. She takes your chin in one hand and tilts your head up to look at her.
"Any… new developments?" she asks, peering into inhuman amber eyes without flinching. A boy, stars in his eyes, she'd said once, describing a younger you. You wonder what she sees when she looks at you now. There are so many layers of bark and sap and metal and blood between you and that boy.
"No," you tell her. "Just… more of the same." Which isn't a lie; you just haven't told her the full extent of it, the way you can feel him spreading through your body like roots seeking water, curling themselves around everything vital. Staking his claim on every part of you but the one you won't let him reach. "Everything that matters is still okay."
Graecie clucks disapprovingly; it's a sound that reminds you of being twelve years old and chasing Katie through her garden, carelessly trampling her flowers. You have forever been disappointing her. It is a role you have come to accept. "It all matters, Nom," she says firmly. Which isn't a lie, either, because you know she believes it, even though it isn't true.
Her hand lingers on your jaw, and her gaze softens for a moment, gives you a glimpse of the deep well of sadness behind her calm composure. You remember just how old she is, just how many children she's seen grow up to have their lives cut short by this stupid, endless conflict. You remember that she could have left; would have left. You wonder if she still loves you, or if she's thinking of that boy again, for whose sake she resigned herself to over a decade more of war and loss. You wouldn't blame her; you have done very little to be worth that sacrifice, and so much lately to make her regret standing by you.
It's for the best, you remind yourself. She may yet have to kill you.
"Okay, Nom," she says softly, and pulls her hand away. "Okay."
-
You learned it at fourteen, when the knight commander drilled you for hours in the baking sun and then even longer, until it was dark and you couldn't hold the practice sword any longer, and he finally allowed you to limp home to collapse in your bed, shaking, muscles cramped and screaming and twitching beyond your control. It was a lesson. Tune it out, he'd commanded. Ignore the pain. The pain will stop you. The pain will kill you. Learn to ignore it. You were forging your body into a weapon. And it burned.
Your joints are so stiff now, and they creak ominously when you move. There are roots curled around your organs that sometimes squeeze too tightly. It hurts.
You don't think you show it; you've long been very good at not showing it when you hurt. But Scott always seems to know. He appears at your elbow and lays a hand on your shoulder, and a breeze carrying the scent of wildflowers ruffles your rapidly-greying hair as a wave of magic washes through you. You can feel the roots relax, the strain in your aching knees relents a moment. You sigh from the relief, a show of weakness you only allow because it's him, and because you know he wants so desperately to help.
"Thank you, Scott," you say, and cover his hand with your own. You are glad for your gauntlets, because you think he would feel the wood and sap under your skin and despair. You wonder if he can sense it anyways; he's always had an affinity for plants.
"Of course." He smiles, but the fear doesn't leave his eyes. He's so afraid of more loss; he's experienced so much, lately, and you hate to add to his toll. You want to tell him what you've learned: eventually, you get used to it. But you know it would start a fight, and this isn't the kind of fight you're built for. "Are you feeling any better?" he asks.
"Yeah," you say. "It helps. Thanks." You promised not to lie to him. It's not a lie, though; it's just not the answer to the question he's really asking. It doesn't stop the guilt, but it turns out you get used to that, too.
-
You learned it at eighteen, coming home to find a hole in your life where your sister used to be. No sign, no warning, just one day your heart was beating in your chest and the next it's gone, leaving a gaping, bleeding wound, and there was nothing you could do. There is nothing you can do. I don't just want to be Nom's sister forever, she wrote in the letter she left behind. You have never understood. You have never been anything else but her brother. You don't know how to want to be anything else.
You don't know if everyone else is just bad at spotting her, or if Mae makes herself easier to see on purpose when you are around. You lean against the side of the barn and act like you don't feel yourself slowly petrifying in place as you watch the flash of green hovering in the corner of your vision.
"Hi, Mae," you say to the air in front of you.
A pause, and then, "I am still mad at you." And she's there, perched on the fence, her face etched into a frown. She is always frowning at you, these days. She always was, in fairness, but there used to be laughter behind it, threatening to burst through. Now you are always waiting for tears, instead.
You laugh, and ignore the way it wheezes. Your lungs aren't working quite right, anymore, despite the resin coating their insides, protecting them from everything but itself. Somehow it doesn't seem to matter. You don't question how. You are only glad it doesn't slow you down. "Yeah," you say. "You and everybody else. I don't blame you."
Mae's frown deepens. "Yes. I wanted to say. I am still mad at you, because you have done many very stupid things and you make it very easy to be mad at you," she laughs too, a weak, hysterical trill, and says, "But that does not mean I want to lose you."
You close your eyes against the throb of guilt, deep in your gut. You have done your best to excise your regrets; the guilt is harder to prune. "Mae," you say, low. "It's like I told you. Even if I go, I'm not—"
"Be quiet," she snaps, and it surprises you enough to open your eyes again. She is staring at you, narrow-eyed and intense. "You are easy to love," she says, and you immediately recognize the cadence. The mantra, reversed. "You are not easy to leave."
Your breath punches out of you. You reach out to take her hand and she clings to it with surprising strength. Maybe you aren't done with regret, after all.
-
You learned it at nineteen, when you swore an oath that made you the weapon of the monarch. The despair, by then, was an old friend, the nagging hollow feeling in the pit of your stomach that surely now you have nothing left to lose.
The kingdom cheered your name. Graecie was there to embrace you, to tell you how proud she was, to whisper in your ear I'm sorry that Katie couldn't be here, too low for anyone else to hear and turn sour. You thanked her and went home to an empty house where you cried, and raged, and broke things, throwing chairs and plates against the wall as if they were to blame, as if enough destruction would bring your sister back. And then you cried again, on your knees in the wreckage of your life. And the next morning you got up and reported for duty.
It's when you're fighting that you feel most keenly why you took the Creaking King's deal. Owain is strong and skilled; you have always been stronger, but now you are even more so. The roots entwined around your muscles pull and it becomes effortless to run. To leap. To raise your morningstar and smash it against his armor. You break through his parries. You hardly feel his own blows raining down on you. It is an inhuman feeling. For the length of a sparring match, you relish in the power you have traded your life away for: this is what will save your friends.
Afterwards, you take off your helmet and Owain doesn't. You run a hand through your hair out of habit, but there's no sweat there despite the heat of the day and the vigor of your training. Your hair is dry and brittle like dying leaves. It's the little things that keep catching you.
"Good work," Owain says shortly, after an awkward silence. You think he's getting better at recognizing them. You're proud of him, although you would never tell him that, and you think he would never want you to. "You will surely outmatch the Red Kingdom knights."
"That's the idea," you say, but there's no joy in it. You have no desire to see Cherri or Apo or Sir Bek dead. But then, nothing has ever been about what you desire.
What Owain doesn't say, but you hear anyways: you outmatch the Blue Kingdom knights, too. There are twin potions on your belt, two slight weights that weigh on your mind like anvils. Weakness and poison. Graecie can do it, you remind yourself. You'll help her.
"Owain," you say, as he turns away from you. He pauses, but he doesn't look at you. "I know you don't approve of my decision. And I'm… sorry. I know you asked me to stop breaking things, but, well…" You shrug. Breaking things is all you know how to do. You think he knows that, by now.
The lion mask turns, just slightly, not enough to even see you. "What's done is done," he says, after a heavy pause.
But you owe him, more than most, and you don't want to leave it at that. He's protected you; you're not used to that. You struggle to find the words for gratitude that he'll accept.
"I'm sorry if you've been… paying for this," you say. "At least if the worst does happen, and someone has to take me out—Graecie, or 4C, or whoever—well, at least you won't have to worry about my stupid mistakes anymore."
"And the Blue Kingdom will be bereft of its strongest fighter," Owain says, allowing frustration to color his voice. "Exactly what I have been trying to prevent." The tension passes almost as soon as it comes, and his shoulders sag under his armor, his posture taking on a cast of resignation. He sighs, barely audible. Your bones creak in the silence.
"What's done is done," he says again, with finality. "Come, Nominal. There are still preparations to be made."
He leaves, and moving suddenly doesn't feel so effortless anymore. You are rooted in place. You are always, always breaking things.
-
You learned a different lesson, at twenty-one, staring through the bars at a slime, as painfully alone as you are, now. They wanted you to kill him. They wanted to wield you like the weapon you are against him.
I didn't do anything wrong, he begged you. You believed him. And there he was, abandoned. He had a family. You'd seen them. And yet none of them had come for him: they'd left him there to die.
Nobody would come for you, either.
You couldn't kill him. They called you a traitor, but you couldn't let them kill him, either.
As you raised your morningstar against your fellow knights and felt your oath snap like a puppet's strings you had the realization that will ultimately save you: your life is not your own. You are a blunt force object, you are the weapon that they made you. But only you decide who wields you.
The price of the lesson was fifteen lives' worth of blood on your hands. You will not forget it easily.
Instead of the castle ramparts, you and 4C meet in front of the arena now. Neutral ground. You can't hurt each other here.
You finish your game and just sit, dangling your legs over the railing. You can almost pretend it's like it was, before you broke things between you, but there's a careful distance between you that was never there before. He's too far for his hand to reach into your pocket, which you never thought you'd miss.
"How are you feeling?" he asks, looking at you.
You look down at the water below instead. The lilypads crowding the surface mercifully break up your reflection and let you pretend it would be recognizable. "Still me," you say, cutting to the quick. "I can feel him in me, 4C, in every part of me. But not my mind. He still has no hold over me." And he never will: you, and perhaps you alone, are confident of this.
"That's good, at least," 4C says, kicking his feet. "No, uh… lingering urge to kill people?"
"Not any more than usual," you joke. It's not really that funny, when his blood is still dried on your morningstar, but he laughs anyways. "But I'll let you know if that changes. I mean, it'll probably be obvious!"
He doesn't laugh at that one. "And if it does…" His shoulders hunch, his hands clenching around the edge of the stone. "You want me to kill you."
"Yeah, 4C." You try to say it gently, but he still flinches like he's been bludgeoned. "You're one of the only ones who can."
"That's the thing, Nom," he says. "I can't."
"You can." You know he can. You know, because if all else is lost, if the Creaking King roots himself in every part of you, if he pulls your strings and wields you like a weapon, there are some things that are rooted deeper still: you will not hurt your family. And he will have his opportunity.
"I'm telling you I can't," 4C argues back, setting his jaw. "Maybe—maybe you're right, and I could get in close and… and do it. But I can't hurt you, Nom." Softly, almost to himself, he adds, "I've hurt you enough already."
You almost have to laugh; he really is your brother: he's just as stubborn as the both of you.
"How do you think I feel?" you ask, and your voice is strained. "I've hurt you—I've hurt Katie, I've hurt Mae, I've hurt Graecie… I'm asking you to make sure I don't hurt anyone else."
4C is quiet, his brow furrowed, jaw working in a familiar expression: he's trying to work out how to refuse.
"Please," you add, to preempt him. "Look, it's not going to come to that. I'm telling you, he's not going to get control. This is just… in the worst case. So I know nobody I care about will die because of my mistakes."
4C relents; you can see it happen. He doesn't accept what you want from him, but he understands. He sighs and says, "I'll stop you. I—I can promise that much. I guess I owe you that."
"You don't owe me anything, 4C," you say, and have to laugh at the absurdity of the very idea. After everything that's happened between you, there can be no more debt. As far as you are concerned, it is a miracle that he even chooses to speak with you, to meet and play games and sit with you after everything you've done. You have no hold over him, except that you love him, with your rotten love that ruins everything it touches. You never learned how to love something without breaking it. "But thank you."
You sway towards him, forgetting, for just a moment, the distance between you. You catch yourself, but before you can pull away you feel his slight weight pressing back. The roots around your heart squeeze painfully.
"We're gonna save you," he says, with a fervent determination that gives away his fear. "We kill the Creaking King, and then you'll be fine. Right?"
"Yeah, man," you say. You know he needs to believe it, so you don't tell him how you can feel how tightly entwined he is with every part of you; how you fear it may already be too late, that if the Creaking King is gone, there will not be enough left of you to survive without him. There was not much to salvage to begin with. "We always bounce back, right?"
His shoulders shake with quiet laughter and it rattles your armor. "Yeah," he says, and you can hear the hope and the fear in his voice. "We always bounce back."
-
Your life is not your own: this is what the Creaking King tells you.
You have no choice, he says, his voice reverberating through your whole body, while your head pounds to the beat of his heart.
But it's not true. It's like you've been telling everybody for weeks: there is always a choice. You made yours already, in the same heartbeat as you accepted his deal and let him in: You will not bow to any more kings. You will not be used to hurt the people you love. You will die to save them.
After, standing on the cliff, your fears are proven true: you have changed too much to live on your own. You are too full of him, roots and sap and resin choking out what little humanity you had left. You invited this in. This is the price you pay: this is the price you asked to pay. You are dying. And they are not.
Your family is crying, but you still smile.
Your life was not your own. Your death is.