but to prince hans, the youngest son of the king of the southern isles, the castle was ugly. ugly and awful. he hated it as much as he hated every inch of every island. (..) to him, the southern isles — and its castle — were a prison, and his father the jailer.
**
the king did not waste words. “to the point, hans. always just get to the point,” he would say whenever he deemed hans had stayed too long in his presence.
**
i’ll just go in, say hello to father, give my love to mother, again, and then i’ll be on my way, hans thought. five minutes, no more. how bad can five minutes be?
**
“it is not me you should be apologizing to,” the king said. “you should apologize to your mother. she is, after all, the only one who would have even noticed you were missing.”
**
a spare. he wasn’t even a spare at this point. he was a throwaway.
**
that could have gone a lot worse, he thought. at least they had thrown bread, not glassware, this time.