He ignored his another lie. “We are merely playing, are we not? It doesn’t matter who is who in real life.” He laced his fingers with his elbows resting on the armrests. “With that settled, I, your king, will select who will be the nobles, the peasants, and the guards. Line up there. Near those flower beds. Excellent.”

  The children gave him inquisitive gazes. Having never seen him before, they wondered who was this person who could argue with Orion. One of the vampire children was holding a small bottle.

  He spun around. A small figure, he did not recognize, was holding a bottle.

  "Big–big brother, you alright?" The figure peered up at him.

  The words were gibberish to him. All he could see was the blue vein, in contrast to the pale neck of it. He licked his parched lips, hearing the gurgling blood in that vein.

  It contained blood for snacking.

  What surrounded Orion reminded him of the details he had forgotten. He remembered his purpose but not those memories that propelled it. He drew his focus back on the present.

  “You be the criminal, the peasant.” He eyed him before shifting his attention to the human children. “You and you are guards. The rest are nobles. The guards will punish the peasant who has committed a crime.”

  “No! You can’t punish me!” the boy growled. “I’m the crown prince. You are supposed to listen to what I say.”

  “Guards,” He addressed the human children, letting that growl continue. “What are you doing? Make him lay down on the gras—no, the floor of the throne room, indeed. Wait, you can’t drag him. You lot are injured. That slipped from my mind. So, the nobles, help them.”

  He had begun to feel ridiculous, after one minute of commanding children and watching them pushing each other. At last, two vampire children overpowered the boy. As he lay on the grass on his stomach, he muttered,

  “You all are making a mistake. When I become the king one day, I will cut your limbs one by one before I execute all of you. Including you, Uncle.”

  “I’m very scared, Orion,” he responded dismissively before addressing the wounded human girl. “You. Give him the spanking he deserves. He is a criminal, a sinner.” He waved his finger theatrically. “This is the king’s order, my order. No. Not with the branch. Your bare hand would suffice. I’m against violence among childre—sorry, my apology, the king has a preference in forms of punishments.”

  When he glanced back from the girl to his nephew, he was no longer lying among the flower beds surrounded by his playmates.

  He was kneeling and… covered in blood. His flesh was peeled off and…disfigured. The punishment had been far from a weak human girl’s spanking. He should find it revolting and horrifying, but he could feel the familiarity that soaked him from head to toe. He stared at the sight, trying to understand as though this was the first time. “Nightmare”, he had read the word in books, in a similar context.

  He did not have nightmares. He was a vampire; he rarely ever slept and he never dreamed. Or maybe his dreams were nothing but an endless black.

  ‘No’, he thought, and his nephew transformed back to his normal self, intact and lying on the ground. No blood. He had experienced this similar distorting of reality when this child was three.

  The girl stepped forward but stood timidly by his nephew. She lifted her arm and winced. Her shoulder blade had a laceration. The girl crouched down and slapped Orion’s butt once, timidly.

  The footsteps thundered way out of the queen’s inner chambers.

  Ignoring that, he said, “Harder.”

  The girl raised her hand.

  “Oh my goodness! What are you doing, Theon?!” demanded his sister-in-law.

  “Your Majesty!” the children cried simultaneously, getting to their knees.

  He kept his eyes on her son instead, who burst out crying right at that moment. His bawling would spread to every vampire’s ears on the palace grounds no doubt.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  “You told me you wished I’d spend time with your son, being his guardian.” He straightened up, getting to his feet. This throne was so uncomfortable. “I’m here spending time with him, “away from my past”, just like you and your husband suggested.”

  “Mommy! He tortured me! I’m hurt!” Orion ran up to his mother before hugging her waist tightly.

  The queen, who had been by his brother’s side throughout all the centuries, had never been panicked. That was what Magnus had praised about her to him. How his wife was so brave, so strong, and calm. How special she was. That boy was quite fond of his wife, so different from him who could not form any similar emotion to any living being, including Ophelia.

  She was presently panicked, glancing between him and her son, as he noticed from the corner of his eyes.

  “Th-Theon,” Her fingers fumbled across Orion’s body, searching for wounds. “This is not you, brother-in-law. This is not who you are! You have a heart! I know you!”

  Orion sobbed.

  Since he found no point in responding to her affirmations as usual, he faced the rest of the children. “You lot go back to your home, to your parents. Show them your wounds. And, tell them the crown prince did them to you. Don’t come back here playing with him ever again. Understand?”

  He finally turned around. She looked tense and apologetic since she had found no wound on her son’s body. Still, vampires could heal quickly unlike physically weaker races.

  “I’m sorry, Theo—” she began.

  “He is the one who hurt my friends, Momma!” He released her mother and spun around to glower at him. “He made them hit each other!”

  Their voices drifted away as he left the mother and the son. Still, they were sharp and clear enough. He looked up at the sycamore trees lining up beyond the flower beds bordering the courtyard.

  The dawn was hours away.

  He saw the barren grounds, in the absence of the trees, as the present merged into the past. Magnus was enduring the torment of the sun underneath his cloak that day. He had led him into the palace as the ground broke beneath his feet. Screams had pierced into the sunlit sky, a similar hue as Orion’s eyes. Before red droplets splattered up to those blues and fell back down into the dry cracks.

  He had enjoyed the wet, warm touch when they hit his face, and the taste.

  Distrust usually ended up in death both in and out of the palace. That was how he would handle if he chose to be a king if he suspected someone had attempted to destroy something he valued.

  Magnus and Campana were not like him. They had not come knocking on his door after that night.

  Neither had they sent sentinels to try to arrest him and execute him as impossible as a feat that would be. They never tried, he knew that because he could read their minds.

  It was the absence of noise. The silence without knocks. Days turned to weeks. Then to years.

  “Something is bothering you.” Ophelia licked his throat. “I can feel it, even though you never told me anything!” She nibbled between his collarbones, her fingers spreading over his chest.

  “Why…” He gathered her up before rolling her down to the bed, reversing their positions. “…do you need to know anything?” He merged their bodies, gazing down at her. “You claimed you only wanted to be with me.” He moved. “That I am all you ever wanted.”

  When he looked into those hazel eyes, the gold and green specks, he found something more than a clingy, needy vampire girl—woman she was now—who had trailed after him and had declared her love to him since she was seventeen. She was in her late twenties on her first time with him. He could see the mist behind those speckles, which he had never tried to decipher.

  “I have scary thoughts, Your Highness,” she had pleaded. “I don’t want you to read my mind. That would be too much for me. You…you know about my birth parents. I could not let go of how they died.”

  “You found a sorcerer. I am not able to read your mind.” He had pondered before warning. They had been together quite a while, “You know that you must be loyal to me, in any definition, don’t you, love? You can leave any time you want from my side, but I need your loyalty.”

  She had promised fervently, but a mist had clouded those golds and greens.

  The stone bed slammed against the floor. He could hear whispered gossips among servants in the garden. They believed he couldn’t hear them, not this far. Every member of Ophelia’s household knew him as an insignificant baron, a rank lower than their mistress. The baron who would visit their countess mostly when the street was empty. Though he would call her “love”, he did not understand the meaning behind it. He, however, knew loyalty and the pleasure they could offer to each other.

  “I am going to let Magnus declare the birth of the second prince,” he complied a while later as he sat against the headboard. “Two decades from now, I will meet the public.”

  “That was what bothered you.” Ophelia laughed into his ear, playing with his hair. “And you are the only person on earth who could claim he let the king do something.”

  When he went silent, she whined, “Tell me more, please? You must have a big reason if you want the kingdom to know you.”

  He tilted his head to take her in. “I found it tiresome to erase people’s memories. No particular reason.”

  That was true but not entirely. Recently, a part of him had wondered if he was turning into someone he was not. During these five decades, Magnus had stayed the same, the respectful younger who paid attention too much to what was not his business, but he did one thing he had never done before, hiding his son away from him. Even after Orion entered adulthood.

  “Be respectful to your uncle. He did not mean to frighten you when you were a child. Don’t hold it against you. His past was haunting him.”

  “Yes, he saved your father’s life. He has a good heart, way deep down, I’m sure of that. Still, it’s better if you two aren’t in the same room at the same time.”

  "I understand, mother and father. He scared my friends away, but it was only a decade. I personally went to their homes and begged them to spend time with me.”