I didn't shy away from the contact, but neither did I encourage it. I am no longer that boy who could not abide being touched by most people, but I still have my limits, and just then, I could not reach out, not yet.

"I did not always know I am a prince," I began. "For the first ten years of my life, I thought myself an orphan, and lived as a goatherd in the Sanctuary of Elua. I was happy there, cared for by the priests of Elua, playing with the other orphans of the sanctuary. But when I was ten, I was kidnapped by Carthaginian slave traders and sold to one who could only be described as a madman."