Even when he had to listen to pleadings of supplicants, the endless parade of requests for assistance or favor or kindness or mercy, or the endless reports from advisors about wheat or water or tariffs or trade—What did such things matter? They were nothing he could see at all!—he could muffle the voices by leaning deep into his cushions. And all the palace—the marbled walls, the polished floors, the vaulted ceilings—would seem to sigh with relief. Ssaaaaa, breathed the stone all around him. Ssaaaaa, sighed the cushions on which he reposed. Ssaaaaaa, breathed the boy-king in response.

But better still—better than the days when he sat by the hornbeams—was that before, he’d had to sit alone listening to the voices of Cook or Gardener or Mother drift to him from distant parts of the house. Now someone was always beside him. And he might say, Bring me a cloak; I feel a chill, and one would appear. Or, Close the shutters; the light is too bright, and the sun would be hidden. Or, The noise from the street is too loud, and the people and horses would forthwith be dispersed. A man stood beside him to fan away flies. Another refilled his chalice whenever he drained it. A third brought him whatever he wished for whenever he wished for it… honey-dipped dormice or fig-sweetened seedcake or custard-drenched quinces. Yes, his face would hover, nearly softening, nearly smiling, over the dormice or the cake or the quinces, yes.

He could not name it—could not name exactly what it was he felt. Relief, yes, comfort, yes, but something more. The fanning of flies and filling of chalice and fulfilling of appetites, the scurrying of the servants around him—it was a fullness. Almost a fullness. He had not known he had felt empty… but now… yes. He felt that emptiness almost unemptied.

Ssaaaaa. He sighed again in relief and almost-fullness.

Of course, this was so only in the beginning.

Later, when the boy-king had grown used to silk cushions and sheets, or when he’d finished licking the last drops of honey from his fingers, it grew more difficult to ignore the small hiccups of hesitation, the little burps of discomfort, the tiny bit of himself that was not quite full.

The oracle’s words did not come back… not exactly. No stones whispered, No one will mourn. No footfalls thudded, The sibling will bring your own fall. No applause, as often as it greeted him, clapped politely, Unloved and abhorred.

No words of complaint from his mother, who swept through the halls, as quiet and cool as the silks—the finest silks!—that enwrapped her. No words at all from her, really.

Still, he found himself wondering.

I… I did not harm the babes, he would repeat, rubbing his brow.

And they were twins besides.

Small. Unlikely to live. Even if wind or cold or scavenging animal had not taken them.

I was wise to thwart fate.