Nobody's Son, Nobody's Daughter

Two

At the pained sounds Edmund was making Althea felt his heart break. If he could he would gently pick up Edmund and press him against himself. Gently press his face into the crook of his neck and pet his hair until his breathing evened out and he would sleep calmly in Althea's arms.

The following morning Edmund stood before his troops, no one dared to point out the dark circles underneath his eyes. Especially not Edmund himself. He mounted his trusted horse and led his men into the direction of the old castle where his siblings' dead bodies had been found.
The bodies had of course been removed but Edmund refused to clean up the place. He knew what kind of hygienic risk this would pose but it felt wrong to clean it up immediately. It felt to him like wiping the injustice under which his siblings had passed, it made him feel like he was forcing them into forgottenness.

The sun had barely reached the halfway point when Edmund arrived. Althea was riding next to him. He decided to leave his horse outside and investigate the place. He doubted that the attackers would be hiding there but he was hoping to find clues of who they were and where they went. The scene had been messy and chaotic, he imagined his siblings had fought back. They weren't the kind of people to back down even in the face of danger. He had been informed that his brother's body was found atop of his sisters. His heart clenched at the thought that his brother's last action had been to protect their sisters, it hurt even more to wonder if his older brother died thinking he saved them.

It was difficult to tell how many people had attacked them. Their wounds were no indication of anything. The wounds could have been from many people hitting them or an intense one on one fight, no one was to tell.

When Edmund entered the castle however, he was taken aback by what he saw.
The big ballroom where his siblings had been found was filled with men. Dead men. The only living thing apart from themselves in there was a small bird that flew out of the now opened door.

They appeared to have been part of the same organisation as they were all wearing the same uniform and carried similar weapons.
Edmund stumbled through the dead bodies quickly inspecting them. Some were still warm, perhaps there was still one alive hanging on by a thread who would be able to tell him who they were and what had happened. He looked at each of them but not a single man was still breathing. All of them had a pierced heart or a slit throat; they all shared a collective look of utter horror on their face.
Whoever had gotten to them had surprised and overwhelmed them.

Suddenly Edmund began shaking with rage, all of his troops but Althea retreated back into the entrance hall, not daring to be near the High King when he was so enraged.
"Who did this?" he spat at Althea not turning away from one of the bodies who was limply laying on one of the shallow steps leading to the throne.

"I- I don't know your Majesty, their emblems don't resemble any of ours, nor the ones of the neighbouring kingdoms or any I know of even."

"Did they have something to do with their murder?"

"I'm not quite sure your highness, I'll go get the physicians to see if their wounds matched up with the weapons of these men" Althea suggested and rushed out to look for the doctors they had brought with them. Despite Althea's relationship with Edmund going way back he did not understand Edmund's anger.
Even after the physicians confirmed that the numbers of men, their weapons and their estimated strengths matched up with the crime scene they had found mere days ago. Edmund was fuming.

He felt humiliated and embarrassed. He had wanted to avenge his siblings, not some blood hungry maniac with surprisingly good knife skills.
He felt wronged, like he had been robbed of the opportunity to prove that he was willing to take revenge and set an example for his kingdom. This invalidated not just his feelings and desires of redemption but also the integrity of his promises as a king.