The Year One,
When they arrived at Coral Wing the two young unicorns were crowned King and Queen of the open sea. The very next day they led an expedition of soldiers to the western reaches of their realm to see what could be set right. The coast had always been a place that fish feared to go—the tower of the magician had long cast a dark shadow over the shoals. The only inhabitants among the shipwrecks that lined the rocky seafloor were criminals and outcasts, fish who had nowhere else to go and nothing to lose.
The outcasts fled or hid from the unicorns, for a guilty heart cannot abide true beauty. One haggard creature alone remained to see the King and Queen, his eyes bloodshot, his face hollow and emaciated. The soldiers offered him an apple but the outcast withdrew from the gift as though it was a poisonous serpent.
The creature ranted incoherently about visions of winged carnivores dragging him from the water to tear his body limb from limb, and of the magician and his endless apple orchards, and of two children in a boat. In one breath he accused the King and Queen themselves of dooming him to his madness; in the next breath he begged that they put him out of his misery.
The creature was escorted back to Coral Wing. The King and Queen ordered that he be sequestered in a secure room—he was too deranged to set free, yet too sick of mind to mercilessly confine to a prison cell. He was given all the apples a fish could have hoped for, but he never ate a single one. Day and night the creature lay awake, wide-eyed, and cried to those outside his locked door that flying demons had broken into his room and were devouring him even as he spoke.
When the King and Queen entered his room for the last time they found the outcast starved to death, skinny as a strand of seaweed. He had an apple clutched in his lifeless hand, but had been too afraid to take a bite, even to his last breath.