It was the day of Brendan's and Natalie's wedding and the castle was empty. The only person left inside was Ben, pacing in his room. Repeatedly he walked to the door, opened it, and then closed it again, only to return to his pacing. He finally made up his mind. He grabbed Sciros from the bed and buckled it around his waist. Then he left his room and made his way to the stables, where he saddled Gariah and pointed her head toward the forest, to the place where the wedding was going to happen.
A man stood near the outskirts of the clearing. He wore dark clothing and carried a large double edged battle sword on his hip. Ben made to call out a greeting to the man, but something about the way the man stood stopped him. As Ben watched, the man pulled up a loaded longbow from where it had been hidden from Ben's view and aimed it carefully into the clearing.
Ben realized suddenly what was happening. "Watch out!" he called into the clearing.
The man drew back the string and let the arrow fly. Then he turned and ran, disappearing quickly from view.
A man screamed as Ben vaulted from his mare's back and ran forward. The crowd was on its' feet as Ben tried to see what had happened. He heard Kotaku yell for his guards to find who was responsible. Within seconds they surrounded Brian and had him pinned to the ground.
"Your Majesty, we have him!" one soldier called to the king. Ben looked next to him and saw the bow lying on the ground beside him. It would appear to an onlooker as though he had been the one to fire it. He began to struggle frantically in the guards' grip.
Ben heard the king gasp and felt himself being lifted to his feet, his arms held tightly behind his back.
"No," Ben heard Gabriel cry out. "No, it can't be. Kotaku, you know he couldn't have!"
Ben cried desperately, "It wasn't me! I didn't do it!" He looked around frantically. It was then that he saw Natalie. She was kneeling on the ground, Brendan's head in her lap. She was sobbing, stroking her fiancé's hair as he took his last breaths. Brendan reached to Natalie's face and stroked her cheek, trying to tell her that it was going to be alright. All that came to his lips was crimson blood. There was a large pool of blood on the ground where it had gathered from the arrow protruding from the prince's chest.
Ben sagged in the guards' grip, all his strength suddenly gone. Brendan was going to die, and all evidence pointed to Ben as his killer.
Ben was only vaguely aware of his arms being bound and of being dragged roughly onto a horse. His mind was on rerun. He kept seeing the same images being repeated in the black space behind his eyes. Natalie, her beautiful white dress soaked with her fiancé's blood; Brendan, looking into the face of the woman he loved for the last time and trying to bestow comfort upon her even as he lay dying; Gabriel and Tara, staring in shock, horror and, in Gabriel's case, disbelief as to the identity of the murderer.
Brn was taken back to the castle where he was dragged back off of the horse and down into the dungeons, his captors treating him more roughly than was strictly necessary. It was dark here. The only light came from torches perched in brackets along the walls. A cell door was opened and he was shoved inside, hitting the cold stone floor roughly. The door was shut and locked behind him.
Brendan's body was prepared by Gabriel and the king. At sundown a ceremony would be held for the fallen prince and his body would be burned.
Natalie seemed to be in a state of shock. She had gone straight to her rooms after the ruined wedding. Tara went in after her. They were not sure that Natalie could be trusted to be alone right now. It was a wise concern, for as soon as Tara entered the room, she rushed to Natalie's side and wrestled the knife that Natalie held from her hand.
"What are you thinking?" Tara exclaimed.
"I can't do it, Tara. I'm not strong enough. I just can't live without him." Natalie looked out into the distance through the window. The sun was approaching noon high. Life outside her window continued as normal. And yet, Natalie was sure that nothing would ever be normal again; wasn't even sure that normal existed anymore.
"He wouldn't have wanted you to hurt yourself, Natalie. He would have wanted you to be happy without him. I know it will be hard, it'll be hard for all of us, but please try. For him, Natalie."
Natalie had agreed to try, but only because it was what he would have wanted. That was when the crying started. The pain came in overwhelming waves that threatened to overcome her. Natalie did not try to resist, only lay down and let the pain swallow her whole. Tara left her to herself soon after, in too much pain herself to try to offer words of comfort.
Natalie did not emerge from her room again until she was summoned for the ceremony. She still wore her ruined wedding dress as she walked to the pyre that had been constructed in the main courtyard outside the palace. She walked boldly to the body that lay on top and stared at the face of the man that lay there, memorizing every contour and detail so that she would have it forever.
Forever. That was what he had promised her. Natalie clutched the necklace that she always wore. The promise had been ripped from them both, and she would see to it that justice was satisfied.
Brendan's expression was peaceful, as though he were only sleeping, as though if she were to reach out and touch him he would wake and everything would be okay again. Natalie reached out to him and stroked his face. The cold of his skin disturbed her, that was not how she wanted to remember him, and so she moved on, running her fingers through his hair lovingly.
Gabriel found her like this and he placed a hand on her shoulder. She turned. He tried to give her a comforting smile, but she did not return it. Gabriel reached out and pulled her to him, holding her tightly. She sobbed into his shirt, trying to be quiet about it, but not quite succeeding.
They stood like this for a long time. The sun was fading away beyond the horizon when Natalie pulled away from him. Through her tears she apologized. "I'm sorry for ruining your shirt."
"Hey, that's okay. I'll just get a new one." He put an arm around her shoulders. "Come on; let's move a little farther away for a while." As soon as they were out of the way, the fire was lit and Natalie watched as it consumed the body of her fiancé. She heard none of the words that were spoken about the kingdom's beloved prince.
She was the only one still watching as the last ember glowed one last time then went out. Only then was Natalie made aware of how long exactly she had been standing there. The sun was starting to show up above the trees and birds were beginning their morning chorus when she headed off to make a visit to the dungeons.
He wasn't sure how much time it was exactly – there was nothing here to measure time by – but Brian was fairly certain that it was morning again when the cell door opened again. Natalie walked in with a guard. She instructed the guard to wait outside the door. Then she approached Brian.
He refused to look at her as she came nearer.
She stopped when she was a few feet from him. "Brendan is dead," she told him, her voice cold and hard. "You got what you wanted. Brendan and I will never be together now."
"Natalie, you have to believe me," he said, looking her in the eye. "I had nothing to do with his death. I did not kill him." He was pleading with her. begging her to believe him. "Please believe me. You know me. You know I could never do anything like that."
"Do I?" Natalie asked him. "The Ben I knew never could have. But then, the Ben I knew also had a brother. A savage brother who revealed in the pain of others. Maybe Ben became his brother."
"No!" he cried out. "No! I could never be like Bryan! It was not me! I swear to you that I did not kill Brendan! Please, you have to believe me!"
"I'm sorry, but I'm afraid that I can't do that," Natalie told him impassively. She turned and walked out of the prison cell.
Ben wanted to scream. Instead, he picked up an empty bowl and hurled it at the wall. The bowl shattered into a million pieces, showering the floor with pieces of clay.
Natalie made it almost to the top of the stairs connecting the dungeon to the main building before her defenses crumbled. She fell to the floor where she stood and curled into a ball, sobbing and shaking.
It wasn't long before a guard found her there and carried her to her room. He placed her gently on the bed, then backed out of the room, leaving her alone with her pain.
It was another day or so before Ben saw anything more of a human being than the dirty hand that shoved Ben's meals through the small flap at the bottom of the door. If you can call a single moldy lump of bread a meal.
Ben was sleeping fitfully when the door opened. He woke to a guard shaking him roughly. As soon as he sat up, the man backed off. Ben waited for his eyes to adjust to the darkness before he looked around. It was the king. Kotaku instructed the guard to wait outside the cell.
"Kotaku, I," Brian said before the king interrupted him.
"It's Your Majesty to you. Only friends may call me by my name. You are not counted as such. You, who murdered my son." The disgust and anger in his voice were so strong that Ben began to be afraid of the man. Ben did not think that the guards would dare to stop the king if he decided to take a swing a Ben, even if they did feel the desire to, which Ben strongly suspected that they would not. Simone had loved its prince.
As little as it seemed it would do him, Ben tried to convince the king of his innocence. "Your Majesty, I'm sorry for your loss. Brendan was my friend." The king scowled and started forward, drawing his fist back for a punch. Ben put up his hands defensively and continued quickly, "I did not kill your son. Please just listen. I was on my way to the wedding when I saw a man outside the clearing. At first I didn't know what he was doing. When I realized that he had a loaded bow in his hands, I tried to stop him. I was too late. Please believe me."
The king did not appear to have been swayed. "I'm not sure if I believe that story. Why would you have been going to my son's wedding? The whole castle heard what happened between the two of you. You wanted to be sure that he never got the girl he loved. That's what you were doing there." The older man's voice was deathly calm, daring Brian to argue.
"Your Majesty, I know things ended badly between your son and I, but still, he was my friend! How could I murder my friend? I was going to the wedding to support Natalie, and," Ben did not have time to dodge before the king's fist connected with his stomach. All the air in his body ejected with a whooshing sound.
"You can not claim to be friends with one you murdered. Why would you wish to support Natalie in her marriage to another?"
Ben did not answer. He was still trying to regain his wind.
Kohaku continued. "You would not."
As Ben straightened up and took some deep breaths, he noted the stiffness in the king's shoulders and the dead, set look in his eyes and decided not to waste any more of his breath arguing this.
"You seem to have made up your mind about what to believe, so I think I'll just stop trying to convince you otherwise." Ben's voice was just as calm as Kotaku's. Ben knew what it meant not to argue. The penalty for murder was death. He didn't care anymore. Natalie did not believe him. She was convinced that he had killed Brendan. His life was over without Natalie anyway. Why prolong the pain?
"So you admit you murdered my son?"
"No."
"But you do not deny it."
Ben hesitated, then said, "No. I do not deny it."
The king looked satisfied when he strode from the cell.
Ben lay back down on the grimy, smelly pile of blankets that he supposed was intended to serve as a bed. Tomorrow, he was certain, would be his last day of life.
Not fifteen minutes after the king had left, the door of the cell burst open once more. Ben shot up off the ground, startled.
"Come on," gasped Gabriel. Ben just stared at him. "I'm getting you out of here! Come on, before the guards come!"
Ben sat back down. Gabriel's mouth dropped open.
"What are you doing? Didn't you hear me? I'm getting you out of here! I believe you! I know you could never have done anything as awful as that!"
"Yeah, I heard you," Ben said, "but I'm not going. I'd rather stay here."
"I don't think you understand," Gabriel told him. They're going to kill you! They think you murdered Brendan! The penalty is death!"
Ben nodded grimly. "I know. I've accepted that already."
"What?" Gabriel asked, glancing out the door. "I don't understand. You're not going to fight back? You're just going to let them kill you?"
"Natalie didn't believe me. My life has no meaning without her. I may as well just get it over with. It's easier this way."
Gabriel began to get angry. "You're going to throw your life away for her! She isn't worth it!"
Ben shook his head. "She is, though. I love her. I would rather not live at all then live without her. If you can't accept that, I'm sorry. I thought you of all people would understand. I thought you truly loved Mara. But please, just leave me. I'm not going anywhere."
Gabriel's shoulders sagged. "You can't be persuaded, can you?"
Ben shook his head.
Gabriel continued, "This isn't the end of this, though. I'll not stand by and watch my best friend be murdered. That's what this is, you know. Murder."
With that, he left, shutting the door behind him. Ben was alone again, thoughts of his imminent death swirling around and around in his head. He hoped it would be quick.