Rory's First Kill

The first casualty of war is innocence.
Those were the words Rory's father had told her when she asked him what 'casualty' meant in war, when his wounded cousin arrived at our castle. The cure he needed, mom told me, was going to take a while to arrive. And that was with dad's insisting demands. Poor Aiden had been working on a peace treaty between orcs and ogres, when one of them- she wasn't told which- cursed him with a slow and painful death. He'd been at the castle three days now, and after attending a lecture on vampire discourse (per Thatta's insistence), she had free time to kill and decided to visit Aiden.
His room smelled of sleeping potion, and the sound of his raspy coughs were hardly loud enough for her to hear. A lavish room with a comfortable bed and a carpet she knew to be soft despite my boots, it was probably the most ideal place a sick person could stay in. But when she walked in, the last thing she was expecting her dad's lifelong friend to be doing was holding an athame to his own throat. The oak door shut behind her with a thud loud enough to let him know she was here, and yet he didn't drop the blade.
"Rory, thank God!"
"Aiden, what're you doing?" He didn't drop the knife, so she rushed towards him and snatched it away before he could cause any harm to himself. "Why would you- whatever it is you were going to do?"
"It had nothing to do with orcs or ogres." He admitted immediately. "I was trying to steal a Sphinx's jewelry, and she was the one who put the curse on me. I couldn't lie to your dad."
"Why would you try to steal? What were you doing with that knife?"
"The pain was too strong and it hurts too much, I wanted to end it." He coughed, and the silk handkerchief came out red. He started to jabber: "my shoddy attempt at gold robbery wasn't for money, it was for a ritual. I needed water and blood, which is simple enough- and I was going to ask your dad for some restoration sap, but I was saving that till later, and I also need everlasting fire-"
"But not even dragons can produce that! You'd need- you'd need to go up to the human's world!" I sat down in awe. It would take real courage to go there.
"I know. So I tried the jewelry first, and look where it got me."
"Why do you need all these things?" These items were too random for her to make sense of the whole matter. "What ritual needs blood? If you're dabbling in dark magic-"
"It's less down and more up." He states, which confused me even more. "Look, don't-" more coughing. " I know suicide is... and I can only imagine how hurt your father would be..." he clenched his already-pale fists against the satin sheets. "What if you did it?" she didn't (or couldn't?) reply. He went on, "listen, I know myself well, and I know I can't handle this kind of pain until a cure arrives for me. For three days all I've been feeling is aching nausea and, no matter how much I sleep, deep-set exhaustion. It literally feels like the veins in my heart are strangling themselves. I want to end it." I didn't understand and doubted I could help, but someone else could.
“I'll get dad, he'll talk to you, he can-"
"No." And his voice promised he meant it. "I know the rules, but please."
She couldn't help but feel a little anger rising up. "Forget the rules! imagine how dad would feel, how your wife would feel-"
"Amanda died."
"I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to-” she sighs. “Forgive me, but how?"
"One of the Sphinx's guards. It was my idea, but it was her who ended up dying for it." His neck was pale, but his face was growing to a splotchy red. "Please, kill me. Let me rejoin her." she set down the knife she’d taken from him.
"She wouldn't want this." She somehow managed to resist the urge to scream that to him, to guarantee he should keep living.
She thinks he meant to scoff, but it came out as a bloody cough. "Did you not know her? Huge romantic, she and I both believe in the afterlife, and we both believed nothing could tear us apart, including death."
"You could revive her," she offers quickly, "go with that, it'll be better for everyone."
"No, no, she doesn't like the resurrection thing. It's not real enough for her. If I died, though..."
"Why do you romanticize death so much?"
"Nice guy." He was on the edge of being delirious.
“I'd love to ease your pain and I don't know how, but..”
“I’d like to talk to him again. Help me.”
“It’s not right.” She stood up. “I'll ask a servant to get you something to eat: food always cheers me up.” That was the best solution she could come up with. “ I think the curse is getting to you. Here-” he took her hand, with such strength she was afraid it would bruise.
“Do it, or I will. And I've never gone back on my word, that's not about to change.”
“Why me?” “your father loves me too much, Lyn would lecture me, Thatta would deem it too stupid a deed-”
“And I'd agree.” She didn’t mean to be rude, especially to someone older than her “sorry, but I mean it.”
“You don't have to dot it then. It’s just that... it's easier than doing it myself.” He moved to pick up the knife, but she took it away and gripped it the hand he wasn't holding. “Wouldn't it be the right thing to do?” she nodded slowly. He was in pain, and suffering- Wouldn't it be a good deed to put hi out of his misery? Otherwise he’d just live without his wife and probably keep going on with this quest and deal with an even worse death. Why deal with all that when he could have quick death by someone he knows, in a comfortable bed with his own free will? Her mom always read stories to her and her sisters, stories with a hero taking action to help people. Wouldn't this be her chance? A lot of these stories start out with the character being 12, so wouldn't this be the perfect time? As princess, it was her job to help people. “I'll do it.”