She was all nerves against his steel, his reserve, his callous, unfeeling shell – and beneath it, he understood the way her words shook and rattled, why they pulsed along the blistering depths of his mind, because they’d been lodged in his skull too. It’d always been monstrous – to not be enough when his shoulders ached and his sides hurt, when his skin had been torn, flayed open, when his sides were stitched together by Menders’ shifts in time or herbs, when his Machiavellian persistence was always occupied with the next threat, the next warning, the next brutal, bitter omen to set himself upon. Sometimes he’d stared upon the mass, gathered at his beck and call despite their longing to be anywhere else, and wondered why they even came to him, why they even listened to the brief words he had to say. Because he was Lord, or for some other reason: terror, apprehension, fright? Did he inspire anyone or anything to stand along the threshold of the cold, harsh winters, beside him, as he plunged his hellish roots into their frozen soil? Did he instigate pride in their mountainous castles? Did he inspire and incense duty, honor, and responsibility? Or did they merely preside along the grounds because they presumed he’d catch and annihilate them if they failed to uphold their place? Would there be a day when he failed them so utterly, so wickedly, that they’d battle against death, strip him of his life, listen to his last, withering breath, and laugh when he wasted away, become a skeleton, a pile of bones, on the outstretched, desolate shrine of glaciers and treachery? The King’s eyes shrouded, narrowed, looked beyond the fields to where the summits peeked over the horizon, tall and formidable, brazen and glorious, everything they should’ve been, and he sensed the rancor claw at him again – ever the failure. “I frequently feel the same,” he said into the wind, answering her in kind, presuming one figure, out of all of them, should know and understand that sometimes, no matter who they were, no matter what place they held, they felt just as inadequate. One day he was a force, a menace, a beast striking against the heavens, and the next, he could stumble, weak and weary, and fall upon the ice – be nothing and no one, naught but a secondhand story spun by ancient, demonic tongues.
 
Everyone else was quite incredible, in their own ways. He could admit that, alone, by himself, tossed together with the bits of ash and soot rumbling and simmering where his heart used to be. He admired Johnny, the whimsical Weaver, who could spout joy and nonsense into every moment, even though the winter King always shied away from it, incapable of extending it any further. He respected all the healers, who managed to tend to every nick and scrape, the soldiers (fiends after his own decrepit, nefarious soul), the spies with their cloaks and daggers, even Albrecht, who usually only managed to disrupt everything he worked upon, had some value to their cause (somewhere, he was certain). He wasn’t incredible though – just another demon slithering his way from oblivion, striving to protect, to condemn, and to destroy. The only thing that altered him from others was the deadly art of demise poised between his blood, swimming through his veins, ensuring he’d always be kept away, far, far away, wrapped up in isolation and detachment. But his brow arched, curious, by her admittance, by the way she strived to make something of herself (and it was to be commended, for how many had bothered, for many had wanted to even be anything for their world?). The beast had seen many capable, hardy workers, and he’d seen lazy, inept, entitled fools, but he wouldn’t place her in the latter. His head tilted, proffering a quiet, studied perusal, presuming she wouldn’t be among the warriors, yearning to cut away flesh and bone from her enemies. She might have been summoned into furtive wares, perceived her gentleness as a strong suit, as a means to dive into specious worlds. But he asked instead, a hushed reverence of talents and abilities – they were to be honored, treasured, utilized for the growth of the realm. “What skills do you possess?”