Gabriel put a hand over his heart in faux pain. "I must admit, I'm rather hurt that you hadn't come to visit me sooner."
Avarice gazed at him with an empty expression. "I've come with an offer."
"Oh?" Gabriel lounged back in his cell, brow raising at Avarice's words. "And what might that be?"
"...After much deliberating, we've come to the decision that you've spent a sufficient amount of years in prison to qualify for a deal. One of our court physicians, Yukimi is conducting a study on the effects of corrupted shi but few have become acquainted with it and lived to tell the tale. With you being one of the lucky few, we thought we might give you a chance to participate in this study."
Gabriel listened quietly, staring up at Avarice with an unreadable look in his eyes. A beat of silence passed between them before Gabriel took in a breath. "Let me get this straight. I was locked up for over a decade just for you to come in here and tell me you want to use me in an experiment?"
"You don't have to do it if you don't want. If you chose to participate, you'll get time reduced from your sentence. If you chose not to, we can forget this discussion ever happened."
"You're baiting me with a pardon?"
"No," Avarice stated bluntly. "Don't get the wrong idea. Your crimes are too great to be forgiven," he said with a scowl.
Gabriel stifled a bitter laugh upon seeing his expression. "Are they now? I'd beg to differ. What did I do that was so bad huh? I don't expect you to understand your highness," he said coldly. "When I gave you my justification do you remember what you all did?"
Avarice averted his gaze, thinking back to when Gabriel was first imprisoned. He showed next to no remorse. In fact, he seemed quite pleased with himself. Almost as if a weight had been lifted off his shoulders. He did it for revenge. At least that's what he said. Avarice would be lying if he said he didn't feel anything when Gabriel gave his account of what Tah Min's father had done to his mother, but the casualties and the impact of the Scarlet Night were far too great for them to ignore.
"I'm just the messenger. Take it or leave it," shrugged Avarice.
Gabriel sighed, realizing that his provocation wasn't getting through to Avarice."....Fine, but I have one condition."
•~•~•~•~•~•~•
Kairo sat across from Sirius and Faustus. It was another typical day of tutoring the princes. They would do everything in their power to talk themselves out of their lesson and he would have none of it. As they were headed to their study session, he happened to pass by his father in the hall. Nikiro smiled warmly at them only to be met with a grimace from Kairo. Kairo's relationship with his father wasn't always this strained but if he was honest, it was hard to remember a time when they weren't at odds with one another.
If he had to pinpoint at what point things started going downhill, he would say it was probably when he was around 5 years old. Nikiro had decided to divorce Kashino and at the time, Kairo was far too young to truly understand the situation. The divorce was amicable but Nikiro had grown significantly distant over the years. When Kairo was finally old enough to start connecting the dots, he happened to stumble upon the ring that was a pair to the one Nikiro had gifted Sin for his wedding.
Kairo kissed his teeth. He could feel himself getting heated just remembering the argument they had afterwards. While Nikiro always tried to be there for him as much as Kashino did despite their divorce, it hurt to realize that Nikiro seemed much more content not being part of their family.
It wasn't until Kairo's abilities began to manifest that he would start to hear his father's thoughts. In hearing about how trapped he felt and seeing his behaviour around Sin and the others, Kairo felt like everything finally began falling into place. However, he wasn't quite able to make sense of certain things.
Was he the reason Nikiro felt trapped in their family?
Did Nikiro not love them?
Did Nikiro want to abandon them?
Why was he so unhappy?
While he struggled to make sense of it all, he was certain that it had something to do with Sin and his family and so when the time came to choose a tutor for the princes, Kairo was quick to volunteer his services. He wanted to see just what was so good about the Emperor to make his father want to leave them. Unfortunately, the more time he spent with them, the more his plan seemed to backfire.
It looked to him like whatever had happened between Nikiro and Sin, was something they had already worked out and as annoying as they could be at times, he knew the princes weren't to blame for his situation and yet still, he couldn't quite let go of his resentment. By the time he was well into his teenage years, he thought maybe he was the only one still caught up in the past, a past he wasn't even around to witness for most of it.
"What are we doing today?" Came a soft voice from his side. He looked down to see Sirius, the younger of the princes, holding his fingers and peering up at him.
"LET'S GO OUTSIDE!" wailed Faustus, the older of the two.
Kairo sighed. "We can go outside after you finish your lessons."
He lead the boys into a room, briefly glancing over his shoulder at his father's back before he was brought back out of his thoughts by Faustus' grumbling.77Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡay9hzVd5eH
