A painting layered with dust; a lovingly hand-carved statue buried in the ash of a cold fireplace. That is this boy, who still, despite the Kingbreaker’s thoughtful display of his mass and his muscle, grits his teeth and stares up at him. He meets the Kingbreaker’s eyes with a fierce earnestness that is equal parts defiant and dear, and the monster returns his stare patiently, inviting.

“I wish to be something,” he says, all smothered fire superheating the borrowed iron he holds in his mouth; in his mind. The Kingbreaker smiles again, a flicker of ivory teeth in the vast and unforgiving silhouette of his brutal body. The look his dear young friend casts up at him then is half a challenge, and the stormy monster’s head tilts, curious. Does the boy know what he’s inviting? What is underneath that velvety ash of his slender body?

“And what about you? Are you among your own kind?”

“My darling,” he says, not ungently, leaning close, though his voice does not lower- no secrets being shared between them, no hushed tenderness, just the beast’s massive shadow sinking over our intrepid young would-be hero’s soft-silver body, too close, voice too deep, eyes too intent- “my kind does not exist.” His misting exhale rushes over the crown of his friend’s elegant skull, rippling his tousle of ashen curls together like a restless tide, and despite his own wonderings, the boy’s dusty dove grey doesn’t flutter away under his breath. Ah, well. His inner workings could be found out the hard way.

“But you are something to me. Not meat, dear one-” the first flicker of some emotion slides across his face, colouring the crinkles around his rich eyes with a shade that might be amusement but seems a little grim for it- “more than marrow. I know better destructions than they would concoct for you.” This hangs briefly in the space between his blue-black lips and the young hero’s brave, untarnished brow, dangling placid as a fine chain from languorous fingers, before the Kingbreaker continues without accusation.

“What something do you seek to be, dear heart, that you come here? I think, my love, that it was not a friend you came for.”