(no subject)
The metal slid through his skin, biting into muscle, scrapping past bone, through nerve. Kelson’s hand never faltered as he pushed the pin into his flesh. The need for courage, Morgan had said, and Kelson knew this was nothing near the brutality he’d seen in squires fighting their way to knighthood. He’d seen more than one young man walk stiffly for days, muscles blue and black from the lance, the blunted sword, a hundred different falls. Pain was what happened before a boy became a man.
He’d always known that, as a prince could never be only a boy, messy and scrapping with other pages, so a king could never be a man. Close, but never quite. He’d never been beaten as a prince, when he pretended to be a page but was never allowed the same freedom as the others- but nor was he as troubled as his agemates. So it would be his own hand that harmed him. Who else would dare?
Clarissa.
He closed his eyes and for a moment, felt nothing but pain. Then the power snapped through him. Kelson thought he screamed, but it was nothing to heat of the metal in him, the fire of the power through him, and the warm knowledge that he may never get to be a man, but now, he was a king.