"Your crown is made of the people's bones and hunger."

The words are spat at me viciously from a young woman, filthy with dirt and blood, held on her knees by two of my Royal Guards.

The words echo in the vast room, off the painted roof and the ornate walls, soaking into the lush carpet beneath her like thick blood.

_The words echo in my skull just the same._

"That's an intriguing thought, thank you for sharing." I tip my head at her, a pleasant smile in place.

I was taught how to smile when I was four. Not too hard that my eyes crinkle, not too weak that I don't tilt my lips. Just right. Pleasant but firm, kind but not overly so.

I was taught the smile of a King, but not much else.

"It's not a thought, it's not a matter of opinion, it's a fact." She's seething, so much rage barley contained in such a frail body. "You are killing your people so you can keep parading around like some god, when you are just a man, and men can be kil-"

The guard on her right, Edward, shakes her hard enough to dislodge the word from her mouth before it can puncture the air. Too late.

"Better off dead, am I?" My smile slips, old and tattered like the crown upon my head. It's got a few chips from where I dropped it as a child.

Clumsy children's hands, not strong enough to carry the weight of pure gold.

She's smiling up at me now, but she looks more like a wolf than a woman. Her cheeks are gaunt, her skin pale. She needs rest, and food.

"You're better off like the rest of your awful family. Six feet under the dirt, where you force your people to live."

Edward doesn't do anything this time, Thomas does. His hand tightens on her arm so quick and brutal, it plays compelte opposites with his calm chilling voice,

"Watch your tongue before you loose it, Matilda."

The smile is off her face in seconds, but the fight stays burning like an inferno in her deep blue eyes. Deep blue like the ocean... endless and vast, a living breathing coffin, dragging you deeper and deeper...

"King Benedict?" Edward's voice pulls me out of the salty-cold-darkness of my thoughts, back to this room.

It's warm, and dry, and there's a tired girl in front of me. I sigh, long and suffering, but pulls it all back in with that same practiced smile. Thomas almost looks sad.

"Like I've said a million times, Knight Edward, call me Ben." Edward's smile lifts his greying beard, "Benedict was my father. I am not my father."

She opens her mouth to say something, but I cut in. It's quite rude to interrupt a lady, but from the looks of her feral aesthetics she doesn't consider herself a lady.

The title 'warrior' suits Matlida much better.

"Matilda, is it? The leader of the elite unite created to behead me, dethrone me, bury me six feet under the dirt with the rest of my family?"

She pauses, as if trying to sense a trap. But there are not traps here in the palace. Just endless rooms filled with ghosts, and silks never quite as soft as the love of family.

"Aye, that's me. Matilda Swenton." She lifts her chin, a beautiful sense of pride at her title. "The leader of my generation."

I smile, but this time it's like the rain. A gentle pitter patter, soft in its melancholy. I lift the crown off my head, ruffling out my tangled black curls.

It glints in the soft sunset light spilling in from the windows, the blue,red,green gems scratched with years of use. From the rough sack it was wrapped in all those years ago, on a sinking ship...

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Miss Swenton. I'm Ben." I set the crown in my lap, avoiding Thomas and Edward's eyes. "And you're wrong about one thing. My family isn't in the dirt."

She jolts at this, eyes widening, arms flexing as if testing their hold. Matilda opens her mouth a few times, thinking, but before she can find her words I speak mine.

"They're at the bottom of the sea floor somewhere in the middle of the ocean. So deep even God couldn't see them."

"Oh, so they're still dead." She sounds disappointed.

I laugh, a strange sound I haven't made in a long time. Edward lights up at the sound of it. Thomas is still eyeing Matilda like she's spit poison from her plump chapped lips.

"Yes, sorry to mislead you. They're still dead. All six of them."

There's a family portrait outside of my bed chambers. Each family member beaming at the artist for days, all holding as still as we could while laughing and joking and-

"Why did you survive?"

I'm the second eldest son. Not the rightful heir. That was so be Archibald. Archie was intelligent, calculated, charasmatic, and kind. He would've been such a wonderful King.

"Because I was..." The first one to notice we were sinking, I was the first one to notice we were tricked, that someone planned it, that the whole ship-crew weren't letting any of my family on the safety boats... "lucky."

"Lucky? God's favorite son?" Her hands are clenched into fists now, "You planned that, didn't you. The sinking ship? To kill the competition."

The first flare of anger ignites inside me, a little violent flame flickering inside my sternum. I rise from my seat, descending towards her.

I'm not much older than her, in fact, she might be my senior. But this anger is far older than the both of us, it belongs to my father. He kindled it, used it as a weapon when anyone tried to harm his Kingdom.

It leaves traces of smoke in my lungs it burns so bright.

"The competition? You mean my little sisters?" She blinks, her whole face softening with shock. "My little sisters Victoria and Marie? Or maybe you meant my little brother, Tobias, who was eight years old. Yes, he was quite the competitor."

She looks even filthier up close. Day old dirt caked in every pore. Blood dried on her clothes and scabs to match. Matilda needs a bath and a meal.

"Or do you mean my Father? My hero?" I'm standing above her now, my head tilted down and her's tiled up to meet in the middle. "Perhaps my mother, the kindest woman I've ever known. The woman who told me to escape, that they'd find a way."

Edward's hand twitches, like he wants to reach out. If anyone touches me I'll crumble. Like the glass of a cathedral. The back of my eyes burn, the pathetic sting of tears building.

"She lied." I laugh, and it's an awful strangled sound. "They all died. I snuck onto a lifeboat, with my Father's crown, and they couldn't get off the ship."

I close my eyes. I can see it, the rich velvet blue waves rolling in gently beneath the boat. No storm, no reason why we sank. The lights flickering out on the ship as it went down, the cries of my sisters echoing in the night sky.

The stars didn't shine, the moon was dull. It was a lifeless night that they died. I had to kill the two men on the boat with me. It was me or them.

I watched them sink into the black ocean, and I could picture perfectly how my family looked. Pale and beautiful, peaceful and gone...

"I only survived because of my mother's lie. If I would've known they're fate, I would've joined them." I sigh, letting my anger sink into that black ocean like those men.

I crouch down, eye level with Matilda. There's a redness to her eyes, sympathy and a kindness she can't seem to scrub away with blood and mud.

"But if I'd died that night, then you'd be out of a job, Miss Swenton."

Matilda laughs, and it turns her into something beautiful. She looks more like an angel than a wolf. It hits me in the chest like a wooden plank.

"Thank you for keeping me in business." The smile dims, that steely warrior slowly creeping back in. "This still doesn't explain the state of the Kingdom. Dead family or not, you're still abusing your people."

With one glance at Thomas he knows to tug her up so she's standing instead of kneeling. I'm a head taller than her, which is surprising considering I was the runt of my family.

She must be the runt of her's.

"Yes, I know. A tragic past does not explain an abysmal present." I set my eyes on Edward's chest plate, on the elegant carving of my family symbol, "When I returned home, it was not well precived by the Council men."

Thomas speaks up now, gruff and stony, "Ben's father, King Benidcted the second, was a good friend of ours. We weren't about to watch them tie Ben up like a loose end."

Edward's hold on Matilda is nearly just for show, his soft explanation easing the strain from my shoulders.

"No one could be trusted. So Ben was raised by us, alone, while the council has made the decisions for the last eight years."

Matilda's knees are knobby and shaking. She'll collapse at any moment. She looks at me like I'm some sort of puzzle, that if she stares hard enough it'll all make perfect sense.

It never does.

"So, killing me would do you no good, Miss Swenton. You'd have to kill the Council Men. And there are twelve of them. Far harder than one man."

"You're not a man." The words jump out of her mouth quickly, like she hadn't meant to speak them. Thomas eyes are suspiciously. "You're just a boy who- that can't- you've suffered, too."

The smile I give her now is not practiced. It's as soft and timid as the sun setting behind them.

"Thank you, Miss Swenton." I return to my chair slowly, legs shaky with the phantom feeling of a moving ship, "Take her to the Maids and have her taken care of. Wash, food, sleep."

Before she's hauled off, she digs her bare feet into the carpet and says, "I'll kill them. All of them. And then I'll sink them into the ocean so God can't find them, either."

Her ice cold voice could freeze the blood in my veins, but it wakes me up. Like a splash of ice water in the morning, or after a bad dream.

I feel awake for the first time in a long time. So does Edward and Thomas, both holding her like something holy now. There's a fire in their eyes that went out a long time ago...

"I suppose you were right about my crown. It is made of the people's bones and hunger."

Her chest rises and falls rapidly, like she's running rather than staring me down.

"My family's bones," I touch my chest, then point at her, "and the Kingdom's hunger for justice."

Her smile is as dangerous as a blade.

"See you in the morning, Miss Swenton."

"Night, Ben."

And then she's gone.

I sit in the quiet, listening to the sounds of Marie and Victoria screaming in my head.

The sound of Archie shushing them.

Tobias crying.

Mother singing a soft song with no lyrics.

Father yelling, screaming words I'll never forget.

"God will not rest until you have paid for this."

**_I will not rest until they have paid for this. _**