There was so much I could find in my confined space. I could read, I could write, I could do anything.

Yet what I had most preferred was staring out the window, watching the activity of me soon-to-be kingdom, fantasizing about how it would someday be mine.

I could never look too long, nor allow myself to get too joyous, for one thing always held me back from my imagined fantasy. I would look down after my hands seemed to briefly fall asleep and find the windowsill covered in a thin sheet of ice.

Ice of my own doing.

That was the main reason I found myself locked in here, confined within the space of my room in the castle. Nobody knew about this other than me or my parents, the King and Queen.

I had specified times in which I could go out, but that was only after dark, where I would wander around the empty halls, lost in my thoughts.

Well, I'd say empty, but there were guards, who weren't allowed to interact with me, a rule implemented by my father out of fear, dear that my secret power would be revealed to those undeserving of its knowledge.

I dearly wished I could talk to them, but I couldn't, and they couldn't talk to me, so all I could do was talk to myself.

I knew they'd find it weird, but, other than my parents, "he" was the only other one I could talk to, another I would agree with and have conversations with. He was quite nice in my head, but he was just a figment of my imagination, something to cope in my loneliness.

I would often find myself talking to him during the day as well, when I was locked in the confines of my room, but these conversations would not last as long as I would have liked them to, for there was always a precise time that I would hear a knock upon my bedroom door. I know who it was. I could remember, and his presence would always full me with such bittersweet memories.

“Rilon, are you in there?” The voice was my brother's. It had always been and always will be my brother's.

Of course, I would never reply to his question, but he would knock again, on and off, until he either grew bored or one of the palace inhabitants came to stop him.

Perhaps he was the only one I truly had left. Eventually, even my parents had failed in their pursuit to control me. Repression didn't help my magic — it only grew stronger, overtaking and possessing me like a demon. Only gloves that my father had given me could help me stop it, or at the very least shied my mind away from thoughts of magic.

I grew scared. I grew terrified. I knew my parents attempted to help me then, at my weakest, but I shied away from them under the pretense of fear, knowing that they had to keep their heir viable for the throne. Too much guilt, and they feared that I would refuse the crown when it came time for me.

I never liked this confinement. I thought it had been good as a child, but I knew that it was only because a stupid, imaginary voice in my head kept me company.

It was where I often retreated in my days of distress. I would talk to him then, and sometimes I thought he even replied back, though I knew in the deepest parts of my mind that it could not be true, that I was a delusional idiot speaking to a voice in my head.

Still came knocking at my door, but this time, a fateful time, I knew that it was not my brother. I knew it was the last knock I would ever hear from them for an eternity.