Exhaustion pulled at all his edges, all his corners, all his etched, sketched lines of muscle and discord, layer by layer, lacquer by lacquer, until his mind was naught but an eternal emptiness, overwrought, overwhelmed, spared by nothing. There’d been too many revelations for him to cower away from, so he just stood there, a crumbling tower on the windswept sands, trying not to lower his head from fatigue, struggling to remain upright, mobile, more than a piece of the fracturing palisade, each breath a phantom, molten flame, each motion a flicker of pain. His eyes were scattered shields and swords, crossed but not lifted, voice muted by the arches of anguish swimming behind his lids, down into the marrow of his soul, and a part of him wondered if she’d mind him faltering right then and there, laying upon the brooding dunes and becoming a part of the sea air and foam. But he was the General, supposed master and commander of the northern army, so the multitudes, the barrages, the assaults mauled and molded to his frame chiseled a stark courtship of blemishes and wounds, ones he could label as Wessex with pride and forbearance, with a grin, with a sensation of malice and menace torn across his exterior – worn there as a sign of his triumph and misery all sewn together, tightly laced with arrows, with daggers, with knives and camaraderie. He wondered what she saw now, when she looked at his pathetic features and his desolate outlook, when she’d been administered the weight of his nefarious soul, when his enchantments had ghosted and paraded and mutilated (but barely; hardly a scratch it seemed, just a simmer below the surface, a strike against the canvas of her hardened walls). The beast had attempted to strike a cool blow, a malicious scheme, and while it hadn’t bellowed, hadn’t seethed, hadn’t wrenched apart her insides or left her begging for absolution, the fact that he’d done it at all was another cruel juncture he’d have to swallow (he’d only yearned, in those quiet, hushed moments between cuts and brutality, to show someone that he was mighty, that he was strong, that he was more than smiles and pleasantries; that lurking beneath his charismatic calamity was a sharpened cutlass, begging to be unleashed).
 
So her words pierced through his ears, and he turned, shifted his stare from the surf and shoal, until his gaze settled entirely on her – the assaults he’d managed to land, the damage he’d wrought, the fortitude and strength pervading from both of their shackled forms. The prince nearly laughed - was that you? - almost pretending like he wasn’t capable of such mischief and soullessness, when truthfully it was so tightly coiled and wrapped around his heart, his lungs, his ribs, his entity, that the shadows, that the darkness, would have to come pry it out of his soul when death came knocking. “Yes,” he answered, the granules of truth not sticking to his tongue or snaring his throat, almost dangerous, clinging to a sensation of viciousness that pulsed through him even now, when he should’ve been folded against the rocks and shells, overcome. The General tilted his head thereafter, intrigued, invested, in what was to come next – if she was more than just brutality and strength, might and potency, if she was too honorable and intended to bellow, holler, scream at him for the savagery and sinister nature tethered to him, if she was going to ask about all the other wounds festering within him, or if she’d leave everything alone, not care, indifferent, nonchalant, always expecting him to be less than the greater good. “You pack quite a punch,” the youth administered with the slyest of smiles, tired and forged with iron, tucked along his lips with a hearty, exhausted laugh, pondering which was the biggest fool.