Working IT OUT

It has been a week since I had my little secret chat with my otherwise silent bodyguard.

Seven whole days and yet I have still been unable to come up with a feasible plan that will allow the human girl to get to know me at least before anything else.

Every time I thought I had a good plan, something along the lines of cool and casual, I never get the chance to test it out.

I have not even had the time long enough to even go on my regular nightly strolls among the humans.

If I didn’t know any better I would say the mere mention of my secret indulgence within these palace walls had managed to necessitate the need for an even more busy schedule for the crowned Prince.

I could say that someone heard me talk about what I did with my free time and decided that I had too much time on my hands and that it was a problem that required urgent fixing before the situation escalates and Trouble becomes a word that would be needed for effective daily conversations.

This is of course what I would think is happening if I didn’t know any better than is.

Right now, these days I have been rather occupied by other pressing issues so I knew for a fact that there was no one trying to take away my free time.

No one had the authority to do so except the king and he was the reason I have been rather occupied lately. And his state was too serious for him to plan something petty.

The king had somehow crossed paths or most likely gotten into something that was more than a squabble with a werewolf Alpha. He was bitten pretty badly, hence I have had to step in to ensure that the affairs of the kingdom are run smoothly for one,  and also to ensure that angry, blood-tasty vengeful vampires do not start a war that no one planned for or asked for.

Our kingdom and that of the werewolves have been fighting some sort of cold war since long before I was born. Apparently t, there had been some sort of peace treaty that had been signed those years ago to ensure there wouldn’t be a full-blown war between them again after the loss both sides incurred in the last war.

So instead of opting to openly fight out their differences, they have chosen to sneak attacks on each other like cowards.

I am pretty sure that an attack on the king was a violation of the treaty that they hold so dear but I had to be diplomatic in my approach, at the same time I also had to show strength and wisdom in these times.

Father is recovering slowly, but yesterday he talked about retiring. He has ruled for over a thousand years and admittedly that is a long time even for a vampire, but I do not know if I am ready for the weight of such responsibility just yet.

When I made this above point out to father in a bid to get him to reconsider, he responded by basically saying that no one was ever ready to be king.

“Son, you need to know how to get things done. No matter what silly emotion you might be feeling at any moment, you have to be able and willing to push them all away and focus on the most important things. Things that would benefit your people even if it might not look that way at the moment you are making the decision.”

He then proceeded to explain to me afterward why he feels it was time for him to step down.

“I have seen more than a millennium years worth of sunset and sunrise as a king. I have seen wars and bloodshed during these times and I have done what I felt was right at every moment. Some of these decisions turned out to be disasters, but at least I took a stand when one was required of me. So now I have decided to make another tough decision, one that requires me to be as humble as can be. Our people need a fresh voice, a breath of fresh air, and not the air that they have been breathing for the past thousand years. I need them to see the world through that adventurous eyes of yours that are always open to possibilities. Maybe one could say I want them to see the world more humanly.”

The last part of that sentence came with a bit of a shock. After I left his chamber, I had to check in with his physician just to make sure he was not saying all these because he was high from some sort of vampire painkiller portion or he was just delirious from the pain he was currently in.

I know from experience that a werewolf bite is pretty nasty to deal with, even for the king.

Dr . Tobi confirmed that father was indeed in his right senses, yet I couldn’t quite wrap my brain around what he meant in his last sentence.

For a very long time,e before I became an actual vampire, I was picked on for being human. I wasn’t the first of my kind to happen of course but that didn’t change anything, before me there was another Prince,  Julian and before him a long time there was a princess, Anastasia.

No one knew why we happen, but apparently, my kind could only happen in a royal bloodline. So it most likely happened because the other two and the ones before them were my ancestors.

Prince Julian had been born way before my time and also way before my father's. History had it that Prince Julian who went on to become King Julian became the greatest vampire and King that ever walked the surface of the earth.

Well, that was until he went into a rage and burnt his entire empire to the ground.

There was no record of why he did what he did or anything else except for the details of how he had been born human just like me. A piece of the puzzle that seemed to be his greatest strength and at the same time it was insinuated on more than one account that it was also the huge variable that led to his demise.

His remaining streaks of humanity had fueled his rage one of the history account scrolls wrote. That was enough information to make the entire kingdom weary when I came along.

The little human prince was born into vampire royalty again after many many centuries.

Father loved me no doubt, but growing up he was more determined to get me to lose my streak in any way possible.

To him and to everyone else that mattered in the kingdom, my humanity was a weakness, a loophole from which enemies could get to the royal family or cripple the kingdom and as an icing to the cake, legend had it that my humanity could lead to everyone’s demise just like it had done in King Julian’s story.

Well, not everyone died in his story, at least he had the decency to save his son and a substantial part of his kingdom. The only ones that didn’t make it were the ones that were hell-bent on staying beside the good king during his time of distress. Turns out that a lot of the subjects were painfully loyal to their king and decided to stay back after they found out he was trying to send them away to safety when he realized he couldn’t contain his rage anymore.

Now after more than two hundred years of my existence, father has finally decided that my last streaks of humanity was the one thing that our kingdom needed.

I didn’t even know he knew about the streaks of humanity that remained after everything else in me turned into a cold-blooded vampire.

I had taken extra special care to make sure that that part of me never surfaced in the public eye, I would think I had done a damn good job so far.

Maybe the streak was the reason why I wanted the attention of a mere mortal. Or maybe not.

Maybe my father knew more about the story of King Julian than the history books were letting on after all.

Every book said he was the most powerful, the greatest, the most compassionate; compassion was not something that could be seen among the vampires, but they seemed to appreciate the fact that that was one of his traits, one that made him great too.

No one mentioned why he went crazy though or why he lost his cool, all they did was ha int at the fact that it was his mortality that was the major problem. Not cool if you ask me, but then no one did.

Anyways, even though father has given me a lot to ponder about and a fresh batch of responsibilities to worry about, I can’t help but think about Rose.

The radiance of her brown skin tha only be topped by the radiance of her smile and her free spirit.

She somehow strikes me as someone that could give the perfect advice without even thinking too hard.  Nothing but wisdom could pour forth from those lips of hers and I know that for a fact because I have listened to her make decisions on more than one occasion.

It might be unwise to think in the direction that I am currently towing, but I miss shadowing her. I have been away from her for way too long and I have to fix that.

Without thinking much about my next line of action, I don my coat and slip out the palace gates like the wind.

Every problem has a solution they say, and today the answer to my restless mind is to serenade myself with her voice and just watch her.