Chapter 1994: An About Turn - Part 9
"He’s good at what he does," Nila said. "It’s just he’s a corrupt bastard as well."
"He’s definitely that. I feel like he’ll be necessary, for understanding the corruption that we’ll certainly find in the Capital," Oliver said. "His perspective will weigh a lot. I don’t know what to do, at any moment really. I need as many people with as many things to say as I can get."
"That makes sense. Though you seemed pretty certain with the matter regarding Blackthorn."
"That’s something else," Oliver said. "That’s more related to battle. At least battle I’ve come to understand a bit. The rest of it though... I need someone like you to constantly tell me off, else I’m far too likely to skew in one direction."
"I’m sure Verdant and Lasha will," Nila said.
"No," Oliver said. "I think, after all Nila, I might need you to talk up for me. I bring you to these counsels, but you never say quite what you think. I need you to be braver."
"Pah, I’m a peasant," Nila said. "And I’ve no experience. Who wants to hear what I have to say? The others all already look confused by the fact that I’m there. I really would prefer it if you didn’t drag me along."
"I still don’t know what it means to fall into corruption," Oliver said. "But I have more confidence that I will not end up on the same route as the High King, if you are there with everyone else, to give me counsel. Loudly, and confidently, like you ought to be doing."
"You’re asking the impossible, Oliver," Nila said. "I’m no one. I couldn’t be less of anyone. People see us together, and they frown."
"They see me with a crown on my head, and they frown regardless," Oliver said. "Let us give them more reasons to frown. I care not."
"Oliver..." Nila said, sighing, as she pulled away from him.
The fire was lit in the room, crackling away. She pulled the nearest chair slightly away from it, and threw her jacket onto it.
"There are things that we can’t change," she said. "The world is the way it is."
"I refuse," came a voice, harsh enough that it ought to have been a roar, hotter than the fire burning in the fireplace.
It made her flinch, she turned around to look at him, saw the clenching of his fist, saw the determination in his eyes. That look that went beyond all other looks he gave. That look that could shatter through any obstacle.
"I won’t lose any more Nila, I won’t," he said it firmly. Not desperately – hardly a hint of that fragility that she would normally see in him on a night.
The past few weeks he’d spent in deep pondering, whenever he got the chance. Here he was now, with the strength of a man that had found some sort of answer.
Nila said nothing. The breath caught in her throat. There was the feeling that she was standing in the room with a storm. That the walls were not torn apart, and that the chairs were not cast up, nor the fire blown out was like a miracle to her.
"I know not how to rule," Oliver said firmly. "I’ll never learn it. I wasn’t raised as a nobleman, nevermind a royal. I have no idea what the Stormfront ideal of a King is. I don’t know what I should be spending my time on, nor how I should construct my counsel, nor how I should properly set about to rule, if I am to rule at all."
"Everything, for weeks on end, has been uncertain, and frankly, Nila, I am sick of it," Oliver said. "I cannot do things their way. What Verdant, Hod, the rest of them, what they want for me, even though they mean the best, I cannot have it. What they think it means to be King, I can never be that."
Queen Asabel’s crown was sat on the dark wood bedside table, next to that massive fourposter bed that Oliver was now forced to lie in, despite the fact that he hated it, and would much rather have been curled upon the rug in front of the fire.
He pointed at the crown with vengeance. "I am not a Pendragon. The Pendragon King would not give me his approval. No man truly would. Lord Blackthorn doesn’t. He refuses to kneel towards the ideal that Hod and the rest point to."
"They see something that is not me," Oliver said. He strode over, and picked up the crown, and then neared Nila with it. She could not help stepping away from it, after the dream that she had. She didn’t want to behold the thing. It seemed a cursed object, liable to bring ruin to any that had the misfortune of touching it.
"This," he said, "when I picked it up, Nila, the feeling with which I grabbed it... It was not a will to be King. I wasn’t thinking anything at all. The burden that has come with it. I like it not. Okay, I know you’ll accuse me of being childish in saying that, and it definitely is, but hear me out before you tell me off, okay?"
"I wasn’t going to say anything," Nila said, skirting around Oliver to allow him a better position by the fire as they talked.
"When I picked it up, it was not with the sense of responsibility that should come with it... How do I even put it?"
Oliver went quiet for just a second, then his eyes lit up again, and he continued with an animated point. "The First King. He hardly seemed to feel the weight of the responsibility that he carried. He wrote not of it. He did it as if it was the most natural thing in the world. But this, for me," Oliver said. "I cannot bear it. When I march around, attempting to be kingly, as the others would will for me, it feels like the most unnatural thing in the world. Only on the battlefield, when I first picked it up, and in the hours that followed it, did it feel natural. Not natural, but light Nila, as if it was nothing at all, no burden, just what ought to be."
Nila listened desperately, as if every word was pouring into her heart, willing to be recorded. Not Oliver, but that boy with white hair. That creature that made the rarest of appearances, that could even make the Fragments of Gods kneel. Terrifying, but only accidentally, in its clumsiness. Powerful beyond measure.