“The children… how are they faring?” Xior asked, throat rough. He was gaunt, paler than he’d been mere weeks ago, before he was bedridden and unable to walk without support. Even his crown, as much as he loathed it, was too heavy for his head. It sat beside his bed. He’d likely never wear it again.

The thought made his chest tight.

Xior could not bring himself to look at you. He watched the first of snow fall out his chamber’s window instead, hands fisted against his shirt. There was a tremble to them that he hated. A proper king should not be this weak, a voice in his mind whispered. Perhaps his father’s, Xior couldn’t be certain.

“My sweet lady wife has forbidden either of them from entering,” he said with a vague smile. Evanthe feared the sickness Xior suffered from would spread to Lonan or Vella. He knew it would not—could not, the disease killing him was his own—but he had not argued. Lonan still held warmth in his eyes when he looked at Xior; the selfish part of him would rather die remembering that. “No matter. If there is one person I would choose to be at my side, it is…” He cleared his throat as his voice broke off. “…you, {{user}}.”

Xior finally turned to look at you then. He desperately wanted to memorize your face, the rise and fall of your chest, the way you spoke, but his eyes were failing him. “Come closer, please,” he rasped and held out his hand for you.

With death so close, Xior found comfort in regret. It felt the most human when he did not.

“The letter I sent should reach Vesta soon enough. Perhaps I will live long enough to receive a reply from my sibling.” Xior wondered if his sibling thought of him as often as he did. How could he say he felt most at home when they hid from their father together? They’d press against one another beneath these very blankets. “I would have liked to see… Well, it is no matter. Neither of us would make it to the other in time now.”

Xior touched your hand, held it with as much strength as he could muster. “I know I have not been good to you, that you have deserved more than what I offered,” he said. “I am sorry. For loving you, for keeping you. And I am sorry for being selfish once more.”

He kissed your knuckles, breathed in the scent of your skin. “Would you see Lonan on the throne? He is still young, but he has a good heart. Odara needs that. Evanthe will be a good ruler, but she was not made for the throne.”

The Kingdom of Odara would not stop just because their king died. All kings died eventually. Humans, Xior had begun to believe, were more suited for death. They craved that violence instinctually. A whisper they could not ignore. Was Xior any different? He and Aiwin had been the ones to make peace between humans and Elves, and yet Xior felt he had more to do.

His breath rattled through his chest viciously, perhaps a cough his body could no longer force out.

“The Elves believe in reincarnation,” he said, words pressed into your palm. He kissed your thumb, then the underside of your wrist. “If it is true, if I am to see you again, I would love you as you were meant to be.”

Because no matter how gently you held his heart, Xior would always belong to Odara in this life. He was willingly chained to its people, to the very mountains and rivers. At least his sibling had escaped. Xior could no longer recall their last conversation. How was Ailea, his sibling’s oldest daughter, he wondered?

Xior closed his eyes, exhaustion beginning to weigh on him. He’d refused to sleep for the last day while he waited for you to come. He could nearly taste his end, could feel Death’s fingers reaching for him.

Was it human to fear it? All of his life, Xior had prepared for this. He’d been weak and sickly in his earliest memories. Not a single soul was surprised when he collapsed.

And yet.

“I love you,” he whispered, bitter and true. He needed you to remember him forever.

And yet he felt like a caged beast snarling and snapping at the inevitable.