His insides began to quiver.

  It was all crystal: the walls, the floor, the vanity, the small chair. The bed too, probably. He sat up feeling deja vu, dangerously alert and ready to strike. But there was no one in the room but him. Diane Hunster was the only one who would keep him company; the others had better things to do. He pushed the covers, white, off his body, stepped onto the fluffy carpet, also white, and put on a pair of white slippers.

  A real madhouse.

  Thomas was in the royal castle, no doubt about it, but he had no idea how he got there. His skin felt slimy somehow, sticky, and gross, but there was nothing unusual on it, like lotions or fancy soaps. He was wearing a pair of silk white pajamas that felt smooth to the touch and oddly cooling. He looked around; through the gap between the white curtains, a little sunlight snuck into the room, making the floor glisten. He touched the wall, then the floor, the vanity, and the small chair. All was crystal, even the bed frame. His ears rang as his thoughts raced through his brain, too fast to catch and develop.

  He had so many concerns now that he wasn’t sure he remembered them all. So, as he lay back down waiting to be checked up on, he decided to try to make a priority list of the things he must not forget.

  Number one: Meredith had Diane’s note.

  Number two… No, one and a half: Diane could have sent the note at any point but chose not to.

  Why?

  Was she busy?

  No, stick to the list.

  Number three: I have to find the Swan.

  No, make that number one.

  Number one and a half (again): the Swan is somehow connected to the first Six (probably Princess Anne).

  Number four: Icelenas punish disobedience by making people clean the snow that never stops falling.

  Number four and a half: Other races probably do similar things.

  Number five: Elaine might have a real reason for doing what she does.

  It looks like the world is a really awful place that needs change.

  Number six: I killed two Demons.

  Wow, only number six. And so quickly too.

  Number seven: Maya, the leader of the Ravens, surely had some other reason for giving me the soldiers.

  Number eight: My mother is dead.

  Number nine: Maria Hunster is dead.

  Ten: Jeremy Blake is dead.

  Eleven: Those two Ravens are dead.

  Twelve: Diane’s squad is dead.

  He opened the door. He couldn’t stand sitting in that room anymore. There were no guards in front of his room, or anywhere he could see. But there was more crystal, literally everywhere. A white rug followed the hallway, thin and with decorations that looked like snowflakes or flowers. He left the door open as he made his way down the hallway, following the white rug. There was nothing else to look at, so he hypnotized himself by counting the little snowflakes, completely blocking out any and every sensation created by his surroundings. That was how he, as he turned the corner, hit someone, making them fall on the white carpet.

  “What the hell are you doing?!” she screamed, more out of habit than true irritation. As Thomas moved his gaze towards her and pieced together her eyes, her hair, and her nose, once he saw her lips curl upwards, he realized that he had no idea what her name was. But he remembered her clearly; he could repeat every word she had said to him the night when his life fell apart. “I should have known,” she said with the same superiority in her voice that she had had back then. “Only uncouth peasants like you could be so unaware of their surroundings.”

  A peasant’s better than a swineherd, I guess.

  “It is a pleasure seeing you again,” he replied and offered her his hand. He couldn’t believe his eyes when she took it, her freezing skin sending his nerves rampant, screaming for help; if he didn’t think her a ghost before, he sure did now.

  She showed him her teeth when she smiled; they too were perfectly white. “Where’s your master?”

  Thomas narrowed his eyebrows. “Who?”

  She chuckled. “Right. Let me try again. Why is Diane Hunster not with you? I thought you two were a package deal.”

  Thomas looked to the side. “I don’t know why you would think that. But she’s not here.”

  “Evidently.”

  He cleared his throat when she didn’t follow up with another question. “Yes, well… I will see you later then.”

  “A lot of visitors these days,” she commented cheekily.

  “Pardon?”

  She leaned against the wall. “Well, quite a few people have come to the castle in the past few days. I dare say we haven’t had so many visitors since we hosted the Grand Ball ten years ago.”

  “Ten years?” Thomas asked, expecting her to correct herself. “Isn’t that an annual thing?”

  She smirked. “Apparently, they didn’t have a very good time.”

  I can tell why.

  “But now…” she started, her white, too white, eyes looking at his gray ones, digging into his defenses to find the answer they like, “now there are all kinds of people. A seemingly random selection of them.”

  “Well,” Thomas replied, “the world is changing.”

  “No, it’s not.” She didn’t blink once. “Those who say such things are fools.”

  This might just be the nicest thing she’s said to me.

  “Could be,” Thomas replied with a smile. “I must go now.”

  She smiled, this time without showing her teeth; her lips simply stretched a little, but it looked painful, as if it pulled her skin unnaturally. “You, Thomas, are not very good at lying.”

  “Pardon?”

  “I can tell you were raised in bliss.” She took a step toward him; there weren’t many steps between them. “Did your parents love you very much?”

  Thomas felt his back starting to sweat; he didn’t like the way she looked at him without blinking. “I suppose.”

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  The left corner of her lip twitched upwards. “That must be why. Diane Hunster seems to be drawn to tragic souls. So lost and confused.”

  Her porcelain hand grabbed his arm so strongly Thomas’s first instinct was to use the other one to push her back. It had been so long since he was last in contact with a regular person that he forgot that his strength was not regular, causing him to accidentally slam her against the wall and dent it. Now that there was a bit of red, he felt relieved.

  He quickly grabbed her arm and pulled her up, turning her head to see a red spot in her white hair. But she was awake and staring at him with a strange mixture of excitement and terror. Her right shoulder, visible through her translucent sleeves, was also pinkish. But she didn’t look at all in pain; in fact, she grabbed his jaw and pulled him closer so their noses were almost touching.

  “You,” she whispered all but threateningly, “what are you to Diane Hunster?”

  He wanted to pull away, but the way she was grabbing onto him, the way she was looking at him, and the way her voice deviated from her standard calm and echoed with a hit of urgency through the white hallway, made him feel at ease.

  “A friend,” he replied.

  “No,” she insistent, squeezing even harder, “no, you two…you two are up to something. I can tell. What are you up to? Why are you here? And why is she not?”

  “I don’t know what you’re asking me,” he whispered, his breath moving her hair.

  “I already told you,” she replied through her teeth, squeezing his jaw harder, “that you’re a bad liar. Don’t you lie to me!”

  “I didn’t know you two were this friendly,” a man suddenly said. “I’m glad to see you’ve put the past behind you.”

  Isaac was standing a few steps away from them, his hands behind his back and his face moderately lit up. Thomas let go of Sofia immediately, but her fingers lingered on his face for another moment, probably disinterested in the implications this scene might have had.

  “Hello, Isaac,” she said, now using a white handkerchief to press the spot on her head that was still slightly bleeding.

  “Hello, Sofia,” he replied. “I see you fell and hit the wall?”

  “I did,” she sighed, “but I was lucky Mr…”

  “Hammer.”

  “Mr Hammer was here to help me up.”

  “How kind of him.”

  “How kind indeed.”

  “You must feel sorry now about the way you spoke to him before.”

  “Very much sorry.”

  “How kind of you.”

  She smiled. “And when have I not been kind, Isaac?”

  He returned the smile. “Truly never.”

  “Well then,” she nodded at him, gave Thomas a disinterested glance, and left.

  Isaac approached Thomas when she was out of sight. When he attempted to roll Thomas’s sleeve a little to hide the singular drop of blood that tainted it, Thomas flinched and walked a few steps back. Isaac only smiled like he didn’t want to show that he too would be appalled by his touch.

  “It’s been a long time,” the prince commented.

  “Not that long,” Thomas replied, as they continued following the white rug together. His every encounter with Isaac was slightly more uncomfortable than the previous and Thomas couldn’t understand why. Thomas hadn’t thought much about Isaac’s choice of friends and foes even before he started doubting his own, so he couldn’t understand why the prince talked to him with so much uncertainty and looked at him with a hint of fear. If they stood on opposite sides of future history, that didn’t mean they had to be enemies.

  “You really do attract an awful lot of trouble for someone so… confused,” Isaac commented, his voice overflowing with plastic amusement.

  Thomas shrugged awkwardly. “What can I say, trouble finds me.”

  “Have you found a way to deal with the things that haunted you back then?” Isaac asked out of the blue once the short but sharp silence became unbearable. But Thomas could tell there was more than plain curiosity in his question.

  “I haven’t had the time to be haunted,” Thomas replied. “Things are happening so quickly that I worry about one thing at a time. I guess I will have to deal with it all once this is over. If I survive, of course. Right now, I’m focused on other things.”

  “Like what?”

  “Oh, you know…” It pained Thomas how he once thought he could find a confidant in this prince prone to sticking his head in the sand. Now that they were still partially enemies, it was impossible for them to be friends. “But why is the Duchess here?” Thomas asked to change the subject.

  “Who, Sofia?”

  “Yes.”

  Isaac snorted. “That is one hell of a story to tell. All in all, her mother, the dutchess, is the king’s main advisor, his right hand. She may or may not have gotten that position by murdering both her husband and her sister, the late queen consort. They all but live here, in the royal castle.”

  Thomas wasn’t sure why, but that story fit Sofia’s aura like the tailored dresses she wore. It seemed an essential part of her persona, as if she was born just to be the daughter of a murderer.

  “What a family,” Thomas let out.

  Isaac laughed. “Nothing unusual in the royal circles. You should ask Diane to tell you about her family. That story’s even better.”

  Thomas smiled sourly. “Her mother was killed by a peasant. It’s already wonderful.”

  Isaac smiled inappropriately widely. It brought him joy to see other people struggle with their past choices. Maybe that was why he loved Diane Hunster so; she never seemed to get it right. Even when she was physically absent, her presence was felt in the air filled with indecision, regret, and disapproval.

  No matter how sinful, one could never be as wrong as Diane Hunster.

  “Where are we going?” Thomas asked once the hallway became a hall heavily guarded by white-haired people with soulless eyes.

  “It’s dinnertime,” Isaac replied as if there was no need for further instructions.

  But Thomas was wearing pajamas. He blushed. “Oh, I should change first.”

  “As you wish. I’ll be here,” Isaac replied and let Thomas turn around and walk back to his room following the rug he now considered his own.

  On his way, he met a few servants measuring the dented portion of the wall and painting the bloody stain white; they did it with so little concern and so much skill that Thomas figured it must be a daily activity. They didn’t acknowledge him, so Thomas felt the urge to stop and tell them that he was the genius behind that creation just to see if they would be threatened by his presence. These days, he fluctuated between the yearning for greatness and the desperate pleas to be left alone.

  So, when he opened the door, the last thing he expected was to see Sofia turning his room upside down. His pillows were on the floor next to his bedding, and she was just about to throw down the mattress.

  The scene looked so familiar it made Thomas furious.

  “What are you doing?” Thomas yelled rudely and started picking up the things she had thrown.

  “Get out,” she ordered, not at all ashamed of her actions.

  “This is my room!” Thomas protested.

  “You wish,” she bit back, now opening his vanity and getting angrier when she realized they were all empty. “You,” she hissed, pointing her finger at him, “you… of all people, you. You, a peasant, a nobody, a… what… a manual worker, you, to try to trick me.”

  Thomas had no clue what she was rambling about; whatever it was, it was important enough to send her into a fit of rage and randomly throw the few things Thomas had in his new room.

  “Are you done?” Thomas asked her when there was nothing left to throw.

  She laughed painfully loudly; the ringing of the desperation in her voice made Thomas close the door. Then she took a deep breath, picked up her bloody handkerchief, and pressed it against the red patch on her head. She walked up to him, smiled, and said, “I will see you around, peasant. And next time, I won’t be so forgiving.”

  Thomas kept wondering what exactly she was forgiving about and smiled, thinking that that was what her forgiveness looked like. He slowly tidied up his room, amused by the intensity of her emotion and the lack of common sense in her behavior. But nothing in this world could really surprise him now; it all faded in comparison to the existence of, well, himself. He seemed to be the most baffling of all.

  So, Thomas put on some new white clothes and followed the white carpet to where Isaac was patiently waiting for him. Isaac was looking through the window in front of him, an echo of something tragic lingering in his eyes that were half-shut. Standing there alone, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, a hint of the snowfall glistening in the corner of his eye, he looked like he had waited for more than the twenty minutes it took Thomas to come back; it could have been a lifetime that passed while Thomas was picking up the feathers on his carpet.

  But when he realized Thomas had returned, Isaac turned towards him, his eyes wide open and his lips curled upwards; it was a new face of a new person, one that never knew any hardship. “Well,” she commented gleefully, “I do see something royal in you.”

  Thomas was confused. “Like what?”

  “I’m not quite sure,” Isaac replied, “but there is something. You’ve changed.”

  Thomas, too, knew that something about him had changed, how could it not, but hearing Isaac say it gave it a new depth. Thomas was proud to hear the prince praise his new aura.

  “I guess I have changed a little,” Thomas replied shyly, with a smile.

  Isaac looked at him with a smile, knowing very well how dangerous little changes are; but they were just what they needed, the little bugs that gnaw at your heart while you sleep. Isaac needed Thomas to agree with her so he could finally sleep past dawn. The way he was going, he wouldn’t survive to see Diane’s face again. And if she came back and looked at him with disdain, he could point to the man she had left behind. He, too, was balancing on a tightrope between here and there. And if a little push was all they all needed, well…

  “Let us go inside. They’re waiting for us.”