Behind His Eyes

Chapter 19: And So It Begins

I do not own Tangled the Series, the characters, or the cover. I own Apollo. Thank you.

Sorry this took longer than usual. I wasn't pleased with the chapter, so I rewrote it. 

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Apollo had covered the boy's face. No one dared go near the corpse in a foolish fear that it would come back to life. The guards were ordered to take the body away, so they watched somberly as the old physician sadly bundled up the tiny frame. The physician felt like he failed, but he still wasn't sure what caused the young alchemist's untimely death. There weren't any toxins in the medicine. Apollo blamed himself, but didn't admit it to anyone else. 

Before he finished wrapping up the body, he looked at the pendent he left on the table. For an unknown reason, the man pinned it to the boy's shirt. He wasn't sure why he felt compelled to do this, but it eased his guilty conscious as he gently covered the rest of the child-like body. He was so young. Too young. Being an experienced physician, Apollo had seen many things. He had seen people die, but he had never seen this. For absolutely no reason, the boy stopped breathing, and he had no pulse. It didn't make sense! 

The elderly physician feared this would haunt him for the rest of his days. 

It was time. 

The guards advanced toward the body and carefully lifted it onto a stretcher. Apollo followed the men as they walked and made their to the morgue. Whether the boy would receive a proper burial or not was up to the king, who was still too shocked to make a decision. More than likely there would not be a funeral, so the body didn't need to be well kept. It seemed barbaric to the physician that such a young boy - who was practically a child - would simply be cast aside until they decided where to put him in the ground. There was always the chance that his body would be burnt and that there wouldn't even be a tombstone made for him. Apollo promised himself that he would fight for the right to give the child a decent burial. It was the least he could do. 

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Hector was fuming. He wanted to kill Nigel. He wanted to make him suffer. He wanted to make him bleed and scream. What kind of man tortures a child to death? 

Both Adira and Hector pinned Varain's unexpected death on the adviser. They suspected foul play, despite the fact that the cause of death was never uncovered. When Hector had proposed his suspicions of mistreatment, Adira had went to check on the boy. She was horrified to find it true, but would have never guessed in a million years that it would go down like this. Expertly pushing her emotions away, Adira tried to calm Hector. "I want that adviser to pay just as much as you do; however, if we both rush in there, swords flailing an all, we won't accomplish anything."

"So what's the plan?" She could hear his anger radiating with a powerful passion. 

"We show them the body. The physician might help us too, or at least he'll be another person to support our claim." They continued walking side-by-side as they neared the throne room. "I will convince the king to come with me while you keep an eye on the sleazy adviser. Got it?"

He nodded in agreement as they pushed open the doors to see the king holding his upset wife. Maybe they weren't as alone in this as they first thought. 

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Old Corona was so beautiful during the fall. There was the most gorgeous colors within the trees that the wondrous capital didn't share. Living on the countryside did have it's perks, and this was one of them. Varian knew that his father was especially laid back this time of year because he would spend most of his days outside helping him instead of inside experimenting unsupervised. On that particular day, Quirin had just finished a full day of work and was on his way home. It wasn't until he noticed that his son was nowhere to be found that he started getting nervous. He hurried home.