We sat down at a long wooden table right in the kitchen.

  I plunged my spoon into the stew feeling like I was performing a sacred rite. Thick gravy, tender meat, hot steam...

  Ryan, on the other hand, picked at his plate looking like he'd been offered a piece of a shoe sole.

  "If I wasn't so hungry, I would never eat this," he muttered, disgustedly pushing aside a cube of potato.

  "And why is that?" I asked, not looking up from the process.

  "Because this is food for stable boys. For laborers. I am a Prince. I am above this."

  I froze with a full mouth. Slowly chewed, swallowed, and looked at the squirt.

  "And what exactly is your problem with stable boys?"

  Ryan shrugged.

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  "What difference does it make? Stable boys, peasants... they're just a gray mass. I stand above them by right of birth. They are nobodies."

  I felt something prick me unpleasantly inside. Some cold, sharp shard of an old memory.

  "Do you even realize, Ryan," I said quietly, "that today you were given lessons by a poor, lowborn teenager in a dusty jacket? By your logic, I am also part of that 'gray mass'."

  Ryan looked up at me. There was no malice in his eyes, only a terrifying, childish certainty that he was absolutely right.

  "You are an exception, Greg. You are strong. Probably smart. Very talented. You have power that cannot be ignored. But the others... they have nothing. What is there to value them for? They are just useless tools. Props in the background of my life."

  He said it so simply, as if stating that the sky is blue.

  I looked at my fork. Steel, sharp.

  A picture flashed in my head: how easily this fork could slide right into his little, aristocratic throat. Right now. One quick motion.

  Why did I want to do that so badly?

  I often thought of people as tools myself. But hearing it from a seven-year-old child who couldn't even hold a sword straight yet... It was repulsive.

  He was being taught to be a god among ants. And I remembered all too well the cycles where "gods" like that turned the world to ash simply because they were bored.

  I gripped the fork so hard the metal whined pitifully.

  "Tools, huh?" I muttered, staring at my plate.

  My appetite vanished. The taste of the stew turned to ashes in my mouth.