The air in Benin hung heavy with grief. Smoke from funeral pyres drifted into the dusk, curling like ghostly fingers toward the heavens. The scent of ash clung to the city, and the wails of mourning women slipped through the alleys — a chorus of sorrow that seemed to seep into the stones themselves.
From where I stood, the palace was no longer the heart of a kingdom — but a carcass picked clean by vultures. Its marble halls felt colder, emptier, as if the ghosts of the dead had taken up residence. I often wondered if Prince Akenzua could feel them too — the weight of his brothers' absence pressing on him with every step, colder than the stone beneath his feet.
Behind a locked door, King Akhigbe — once a lion on the battlefield — sat hunched by a dying hearth. His robes were frayed, his crown abandoned on a table like an afterthought. Platters of food lay untouched, and the servants moved past in silence, speaking in whispers meant for the ears of the dead.
It was in this silence that Akenzua accepted the crown. But he wore it differently than his father ever had — not as a conqueror, but as a healer.
I watched him walk the markets with open hands, speak in the courtyards with a voice meant to soothe, sit across from wary chieftains, offering silks and salt in exchange for uneasy peace. Slowly, Benin began to stitch its wounds. Yet I have lived long enough to know that scars buried deep do not vanish — they wait, quiet and patient, for the day they burn again.
In the dim corners of the palace, Nehikhare sat at his grandfather's feet. His hands, still small but calloused from practice swords, traced shapes in the dust while Akhigbe's voice rasped through the stale air.
"They slaughtered my sons," the old king whispered, eyes like dying coals. "Your uncles — butchered like cattle — and still they walk free." His hand clamped onto the boy's wrist, bones pressing into young flesh. "You are my legacy now. One day, you will make them pay."
I remember the boy's eyes that day — shadowed beneath the birthmark curling down his face, carrying something I had only seen in hardened men. His mother, Adesuwa, called him Nehizena with pride. But in the court, we all called him Nehikhare — a name that clung to him like a prophecy.
Akenzua, blind to the seed taking root, saw only the heir who would inherit his vision of peace. He brought the boy into council meetings, the ceremonial staff too heavy for his hands. He taught him patience, diplomacy, trust.
But I have learned that shadows do not die in the light of good intentions. They wait in silence, sharpening their edges, until the day they rise.