The masked dancers moved across a marble floor, and darkness was in their eyes. It was the darkness that comes when the moon refuses to shine, when the candles are blown out and nothing else remains. Blue and white lights sparkled above, but their light could not penetrate beneath the masks. The holes remained, sightless, endless. Black.

Rhoden turned away from the dancers, away from the music and the movement. He could not dance tonight. At the edge of the marble floor, he took a path that led through a garden of dark trees, twinkling with secret lights. He wandered aimlessly, not seeing the shrubs at his feet, not seeing the dark shapes of the buildings beyond.

A voice stopped him. Familiar. Comforting.

“You have suffered a terrible loss,” said the king. “I do not wonder that you have found your way here to my garden.”

Rhoden looked up to see the king standing before him, his robes full of silver light.

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“Have you lost anyone?” Rhoden asked. “People dear to you?”

“More than you can count in a lifetime.”

“Then—how do you go on?” Rhoden whispered. “How do you have strength when everything that made you strong is gone?”

The king stepped forward, placed a hand on Rhoden’s shoulder. Rhoden looked into his eyes and saw hope there.

“You find a new strength,” said the king.

Rhoden drew from the solidity of the king’s hand, his firm grip on his shoulder. A new strength. Yes, he could do that.

But, here in his dreams he did not need strength. Here, he was not, and never would be, king.

“I barely knew him,” Rhoden whispered, anguish overtaking him in a rush. “I barely knew my father, and now he’s gone.”

“Then you must learn to grieve.”

Stepping forward, the king of the dancers drew Rhoden into a tight embrace. And Rhoden felt the bands that had drawn around his chest break as though they were make of thin glass. He bent his head into the king’s shoulder and wept.