I will be executed in a week's time in my born form, stripped of my name. This is considered a blessing, as I will simply be executed as a traitor-guest, not as the son of a king to whom I feel no affection. No one will know who is being killed on the chopping block next week. No one will jeer the fallen prince, only the blue demon they see stripped and whipped before them. The audience will, no doubt, be cruel. They always are.
Dearest Sigyn, I hope you do not see. And I hope the children do not see- they do not need to learn the same terrible stories that I did. They do not need to know I am the monster that hides in the woods to eat the poor, defenseless Aesir children who stray from the straight path. And they most certainly do not need to learn that we must cheer for the death of those monsters as though they love no one and are not loved by anyone at all- that they are simply animals without feeling for one another in the least.
How would my childhood have changed had I never heard those stories as well?
Sigyn, had circumstances been different, I would teach your children differently. I would teach them to fear no monsters, to fear only the hatred that can be found in the hearts of those who see monsters everywhere.
This must seem odd, given my life, but when one has only time to sit and await death, one thinks, and one thinks deeply. One mulls on pain and picks at it and drains the wound, watching all the horrible infection that has grown up around it run off as it is rinsed clean for the first time.
I see things so much more clearly. The unwanted child, the child brought as a trophy. A mother that learns quickly to love a child not Hers. A brother just young enough to never really know the difference or to understand that Mother never bore the younger. And a father who is more king than parent, unable even now to see the younger as anything but a monster. Perhaps it is my actions that changed his view of me, but perhaps also it never really changed from when he first saw me, naked and blue, wriggling and crying for parents who would never come on that rock in Jotunheim.
And this pain was far more than I could bear. Instead of doing what I had always done- trusted my secrets to you, my darling Sigyn, I attempted to best him. To become what he had never been- the one to finally kill the monsters, to show him that I could destroy them and thusly destroy in me what it was we both hated so much. To be the demon-slaying king. The self loathing grew far faster than it ought to have. And when he said no...even if it was a quiet pleading for me to stop, all I could see was cold blue eyes and one more rejection of what I am.
The thing under the Void fed this, as dirt feeds infection, and, my love, you know the rest. Power, arrogance. Revenge. A throne. And, finally, a return to you.
I should have done so when I first discovered what I am, but I was far too afraid. I did not believe anyone could keep me, even you, with your boundless patience and gentle kindness. If my own parents could not love me, why should I have expected you to?
Because you have never shown me anything but, that is why. And yet I failed.
Please, again, my love. Forgive me.
