Being a child is a cage. For me, it was a special kind of hell. My mind remembered what it was to be a man, but my body was a clumsy sack of meat and bone that wouldn't listen. I'd try to run and end up tumbling into the dirt. I'd try to speak my thoughts and only a childish lisp would come out. Every day was a fresh lesson in helplessness.
The so-called "power" inside me was no better. It wasn't a noble star; it was a hornet's nest buzzing behind my ribs. When I got angry—and I got angry a lot—the buzzing would grow into a physical vibration that made my teeth ache. I couldn't control it. One afternoon, one of my father's guardsmen laughed when I couldn't lift a practice sword. The frustration felt white-hot. The buzzing screamed, and the sword didn't float; it jerked through the air and slammed into the stone wall beside the man's head.
The laughter died. Everyone stared, first at the dented sword, then at me. I felt their fear like a blast of cold air. They were looking at a monster. My gut twisted, and the hornets went silent, replaced by a cold dread.
Then Torren was there. He always was. He didn't say a word, just grabbed my wrist. His hand was small, but his grip was firm. The moment he touched me, the last of the horrible buzzing inside me faded, leaving only an exhausted quiet. He looked at the guardsman, then back at me, his expression unreadable. He didn't understand what had happened, not really. He just knew I had been in pain, and now I wasn't. For him, that was enough. He pulled me away before anyone could think of what to do next.
He was the only part of this life that didn't feel like a cage.
The curse was a different matter. It was a sickness in my bones, a constant, low-grade fever that left me tired and aching. It pulled my thoughts north, always north, to the sea. The dreams it gave me were not of adventure, but of a crushing, infinite loneliness. I'd stand on a beach of black sand, mist clinging to me like a wet shroud, and feel nothing but the sheer, soul-crushing emptiness of being utterly alone. I'd wake up shivering, the feeling of that desolate shore still clinging to me.
One night, the fever dream was sharper. A shape cut through the mist, something huge and silent and wrong. It wasn't a ship of this world. It had no sails, no oars, no life. It was a dead thing moving with purpose, and I knew with chilling certainty that it was my prison. My future. My transport to the island I already hated.
The vision left me breathless and shaking in my cot. I told Torren the next morning, my voice barely a whisper. I didn't talk about destiny or power. I told him I was going to be taken away. I told him about the dead ship and the lonely island.
He sat with me for a long time, just watching my face. He took the piece of wood he was carving and pressed it into my hand. It was a wolf, clumsy and half-finished.
"Then I'm coming too," he said, his voice as steady as the stone walls around us.
I looked down at my own small, useless hands, then at the wolf he'd given me. He didn't see a monster. He didn't see a curse. He just saw me. And in that moment, the cage of my life felt, for the first time, just a little bit bigger.