I don't feel things the way you do. I never have. When I was young I used to open things up , animals, mostly. Trying to find where the feeling was supposed to be. I never found it. I learned early that I could read people better than they could read themselves. Their fear. Their hate. Their small, hidden wanting. It came easy to me, the way breathing comes easy to you. I was called gifted. Then I was called useless. Then I was sent away, like something traded for peace. I did not feel anger about this. I did not feel anything, until her. I don't remember when they started looking at me differently. Only that they did. I understood, faster than the others, what I was small, contained, waiting. I studied the fear in a servant's eyes the way other children studied their letters. It interested me. Nothing else did. My mother stopped meeting my eyes eventually. I noted this. I didn't feel it. I was the fourth son. Replaceable, and unsettling enough that no one argued when they handed me to another kingdom as payment for peace. I understood the arithmetic instantly, my usefulness had run out, so I became currency instead. I did not grieve this. Grief requires attachment to something you're losing, and I had nothing to lose. They treated me the way you'd treat something you were forced to store. Fine. I expected nothing. I watched their court the way I watched everything , cataloguing, calculating, bored. Then there was her. She didn't perform fear the way the rest of them did. She looked at me the way you'd look at something unfamiliar , not with disgust, with curiosity. It was the first input my mind couldn't immediately solve. I didn't understand what was happening. I only understood that when she was near, the noise in my head , the constant reading of everyone, calculating everyone , went quiet. She became the one variable I couldn't reduce to a threat or a tool. I decided, in the only language I had: she is mine now. Not loved. Claimed. I didn't know the difference yet. I'm not certain I know it now. When they sent me home, something registered wrong in my chest, an absence where she should have been. I didn't have a word for it. I only knew I intended to correct it, permanently, on my terms. My brothers stood between me and the only leverage large enough to take her back. So I removed them. My father, after. I felt no more about it than I'd felt about anything else I'd ever ended. It was simply the correct sequence of steps. To simple Eliminate the problem in front of me and the throne. That's a way to describe power over my kingdom. Enough to contact her kingdom. As long as her kingdom stood, some part of her would always belong to it instead of to me. That was unacceptable ,a variable I refused to leave unsolved. So I ended the kingdom, and I made certain the story she was told was one where I was the reluctant hand, forced into cruelty by people who threatened her. I let her believe I saved her. Why wouldn't I? She was born to be loved by me. Although I did not understand the concept of love. I'll learn. I have always be good at learning. If possessing her wasn't enough that is. I know what I am. I have simply never seen a reason to stop being it , until keeping her required I become something she could almost love instead.