Palpable

A Born King

A Born King 
Challenge: Torment 
» Draco had been born to be a king. Maybe he could have been a good king, or maybe he would have turned out to be worse than his father. But that was then and he was a different person now.

TORMENT

You were born to be a king.

Over the years, that phrase had been spoken to Draco so many times that he had stopped trying to keep count. When he had been a cruel, ignorant child, it had been parroted to him day in and day out by the servants out of fear, and the nobility, out of respect. After his father had thrown him to the Pit and allowed the wolves to prey on him out of his twisted sense of mercy, he had heard it less and less until he had nearly forgotten who he was until Athena saved him. Even after he had been roped into joining the Brigade, the only times he had heard them bring up his heritage was out of mockery. They had treated him with suspicion and he had held all but a few of them at arm's length.

Until recently.

He wasn't stupid. He had the eyes to see how they looked at him whenever they thought he wasn't watching; he could hear them whisper to each other about how he might be different from his father. As their ragtag team had grown from three to four to five to eight and ten and more people, they had automatically turned to him for leadership. At first, he hadn't even realized what they were doing. It had been so effortless for him to slip into that role again, invisible weight pressing down on his chest once more.

It was terrifying.

Terrifying because he wanted to lead them again. Terrifying because it was so easy for him to take charge. Terrifying because he was too much like his father in so many ways; after all, the Fuhrer hadn't started out on the path of darkness by murdering his people as a child. Madness had crept in on him like a thief in the night. He had loved his mother once, had wanted Dracónia to be a better country after The War with Pallas. He had been charismatic, ambitious, clever...

In the beginning, the people had adored him.

But his father's determination had turned to ruthlessness, and his pride had made him stop listening to reason. Power corrupted even the best of men, and his father had never been a good man.

And neither was Draco. He had hurt his people by his ignorance and his cruelty and his blind faith in his father. There had been a reason they had humiliated him. They had feared him, and when they realized there would be no retribution from his father...

He heard someone step on a branch, and he twitched. But it was just Amelia, brushing up against him as she moved to lean against the fencepost. She pinched a cigarette between her long, slender fingers and lit it. With a gusty exhale, she brought it up to her lips and tilted her head back to look at the stars too.

"You look like you need a smoke," she said conversationally, holding her pack out to him as an offering. Draco raised an eyebrow.

"You are being generous."

She shrugged and pulled her pack away, slipping it into her satchel. For a moment, he wished he hadn't said anything and grabbed one—He'd heard they were excellent for destressing people. After a while, he released a huff.

"I've seen the way they look at me. Like I give them hope." She made a noncommittal noise, and he rested his head on his arms. "But didn't my father give them hope too...?"

"Yes, he did." Another drag. Draco watched the smoke billow from her nose and mouth, creating a cloud in the sky. He moved an inch away from her when the smell started to get to him. "But to give somebody hope isn't a bad thing."

"It shouldn't be me..."

"Then you should have been more like Cassandra or Astra." She stubbed her cancer-stick against the heel of her boot. "They see something in you that they like, though I personally don't see it." She winked at him, teasing a smile out of him. "Face it. You're stuck with the adoration of your people now, and the only way to change that is to start killin' them left and right like Ambrose."

He could never do that. "They're my people. I won't let anyone harm them."

She studied him for a long moment, until his face began to feel slightly warm from the intensity of her gaze. But he didn't look away. She snorted. "You're far too much of a martyr to end up like Ambrose."

He blinked, unsure of what that meant. A familiar grouping of stars caught his attention, and he frowned, trying to remember the name of the constellation, but it eluded him.

He didn't know what he was supposed to do.

"Draco." Amelia said softly, and he tilted his head, listening to her. "The reason why people look at you like the way to do is because you're a born king."

He opened his mouth to furiously deny what she had just told him, but she was running through the fields toward the low glow of the campfire they had set up earlier this evening. He scowled instead, and kicked dry dirt into the air.

Infuriating woman.

Why did none of them realize he didn't want to be a king?