"Wait!" I yelled after him, my voice cracking, so I was almost glad that he didn't hear me, and kept going, going, away.

No. 

I didn't mean it like that. I didn't know. I was wrong. 

I'm sorry.

But he's already gone, gone, and I'm all alone with my stupid, stupid brain and my heart and myself. I didn't know he had a brother. I didn't know he was the caretaker of his family. I didn't know he was struggling with money. 

I didn't know.

And now I'm stupid, so stupid because all I wanted was.... what did I want? I don't know what I want. I don't know anything. All I know is that I want Kibum to stop running away and let me fix this and let me apologize to me, the first time in my life that I've wanted to say sorry to someone, but that someone is running away, escaping from the role of king. 

I wish I could run away as easily as him. Disappear, fold into the world without another thought. But I'm the only one they have. I don't want this. I don't want this. I don't want to be king. I don't want to be a royal. I don't want to have this weight and have no way to get rid of it, to slip out, because I know the kingdom will crumble, with no ruler and none in sight. 

And that was when, standing alone in my empty, soaring rooms, I realized two things. One: if Onew was still alive, I wouldn't be in this situation.

And two: Kibum's movements, quick and graceful and purposeful, looked a lot like the man in black's had. 

And I reached back, against my will, back, for the first time in three years to that day, that horrible night.

​Three Years Ago

The summer breeze was little, but enough to cool the sweat prickling up to my skin as I dashed across the gardens, the blackened dirt cold against my bare feet. My breath was raspy, but still I ran, determination pushing past my short breaths. The castle wall stretched ahead of me, towering and tall and built with the thick stone of the mines, but I was used to this, the overshadowing of anything but the castle. I had grown up with it, after all.

The side of the castle stretched, wide and long, in front of me but I still ran, my feet pounding against the earth, eating up the distance until I was finally, finally at the corner. I bent down the catch my breath, feeling like my throat was stripped raw, but I had caught enough of a glance to know he had beaten me. 

"Hyung!" I whined as soon as I could rasp out a word, and I heard a light chuckle come from above me. I tilted my head up to catch the fading light, and my older brother's hair fell down, enough that not of his face was shadowed. But I could still see the easy curve of his lips, the lightness to his eyes that was known throughout the kingdom.

"Jjong, I told you I was faster than you," he told me, his voice like his smile: light, airy, gentle. 

"At least you could've let me win," I said when I could form a sentence, and unfolded myself from the ground, shooting Onew a look to which he only grinned. 

"Then it's not really a win. You gotta win, fair, for it to count."

"But I wouldn't have known..." I trail off and Onew just shakes his head, still smiling. Then he glanced around, quickly enough that I didn't think of it but slow enough that I noticed it, the stray of his eyes before they landed back on me.

"C'mon, let's get inside. It's getting dark and we don't want to miss dinner," he said, and I nodded in agreement, following my older brother faithfully. We crossed the courtyard, the grounds empty as we headed towards the door.

As we got there, the summer air still thick and heavy, even in the early night, Onew paused just outside the doorway and glanced back behind him, again, and when he turned back I saw a flicker of something I couldn't place in his dark brown eyes, before he blinked, and I convinced myself I was imagining it. 

"Jjong, you go inside. I forgot something, I'll be right there," hyung told me, and since I had no reason to doubt him, I nodded and stepped into the castle, closing the door on Onew's already turned back.

~~~

I had washed up and changed for dinner in twenty minutes, but Onew stll hadn't resurfaced form the courtyard where I had left him. A ball of worry started to form. Our father doesn't like us to be late to dinner, so I decided to go fetch him before going to the private dining chambers of my father.

Stepping outside the same door I had came in, I looked around, of a second remembering the look in my older brothers eyes: the worry, the panic, the look of a hunted deer. I had never seen Onew with that look before. He was always the confident one, the kind and honest one, out of the two of us. Adored by the people, and by the king. But I didn't mind. I adored him as much, or more than all the rest. 

When Onew was nowhere in sight, I crossed the gardens, seeing the ground in front of me only because of the flickering lanterns adorning each path. He wasn't here, anywhere, and I started to worry. Where was he? 

But when I breached another corner of the palace, and peered into the darkness of the far corner of the gardens, I saw a flash of color, and a moving shadow. That was enough for me, so I set off, my pace quickening as the gut instinct that something wasn't right grew, until I was running, just like before, but panic was in my blood and my breathing and I was running. 

I reached the corner, and saw nothing, heard nothing. When I had stood there for a minute, listening, I gave up and turned away, relief overflowing my senses. 

"Jonghyun!" A voice hissed, and a hand wrapped around my arm, holding me still. I whirled around, nerves jumping, but it was just Onew, and I sagged in relief. But something was wrong. His eyes were too wide, his jaw too tight, his soft eyes too sharp.

"You have to go," he said, his voice too low and urgent and not my brother's. When I didn't move, he pushed me, his eyes blackened by the shadows, and at that moment I was scared, so scared of my brother in front of me. "Go!" 

Panic clouded my mind and my throat was too tight, and I turned, but I didn't run, because I wouldn't leave my brother behind. I pushed down the panic. I had to help my hyung. I turned to face him again, but when I did, he wasn't alone. 

A figure, dressed all in black, a mask pulled up to his nose, was facing him. In his hand, gleaming dully in the moonlight, was a knife, hooked and deadly. The man's hair was short, auburn, and his eyes looked as if they should be young, gentle, but they were sharpened to points, to lasers that were drilling into me, into Onew, my brother. 

"You shouldn't trust so easily," the figure spoke, and his voice wasn't fitting; it was light, higher than most. But it was sharp as steel, as the hooked knife he palmed with ease. Onew pushed me with one hand as he turned, but I didn't move, I couldn't move.

"Go," Onew spat, and it wasn't at me.

"I don't think so," the guy leaned back, dangerous in his movements, controlled, and I was struck at how much my brother's stance matched his. They were both loose, their muscles relaxed, but at the same time coiled, tight as a string, ready to jump.

Onew snarled then, animal-like and low, a sound that I have never heard before, and I felt a rock in my stomach, my throat, and all I could do was watch. "I said go." 

"You don't own me anymore, Prince," he said, his tone mocking, and he tossed the knife, high, so it spun, glittering sliver, and plunged into the dirt, hook buried.

"Go," Onew just said. 

"See, I don't think so. I've been given orders, after all," the guy said, and too quick for my eyes to follow, he reached forward, snatched the knife from the dirt, and held it, his eyes calm and glittering, at my brothers exposed throat. But I couldn't move. I can't do anything. 

The fight was horrible. It lasted less than a minute, but it was fast and bloody and calm and graceful, it was like watching dancers instead killers, and as I watched, detached, removed from my panic, I wondered who my brother was. Because surely a prince wouldn't know how to snap a finger like that, or block a blow as fierce and swift as that.

I don't remember much, truthfully. But I remember the fatal blow, a small knife to the heart, and I remember watched, frozen, as my only brother, the brother I loved so much, knelt to the ground, and fell to the ground, and grew as red as the sunset. Ad I remember what the man said next. He pointed his hook, now bloody, at me, and said this: 

"You be good, King," he said, and then he was gone. 

When they found me, an hour later, I was kneeling in a puddle of blood, red and rusty, of my dead brothers, my face still, my cheeks dry, but streaked with marks of salt.