The Will [on hold]

4000s - Episode 3

4978

“Eat.”

“I am not hungry.”

Xor looked across the table at his beautiful betrothed. “You will eat,” he ordered her. “If not because you are hungry, then because I am hungry. For a plump and pretty queen.”

Vana toyed her fork against a slice of jellied peach upon her plate. It was rigid in its syrupy, mawkish preserve. The fruits of Zoll Zora were few and unripe, and these confections were a sad attempt to sweeten and to hide that sorry fact.

She speared the thick slice with the tines of her fork, then raised her dark eyes toward her king. Her voice was dim and lowered, hardly glad with the glad tidings that it bore. “Or for a plump and pretty prince?”

The king’s own dark eyes fixed on her, his full mouth paused mid-chew. He swallowed the half-processed lump of tough meat on his tongue. “You are with child?”

Vana smiled, weakly, almost imperceptibly, in loath assent.

“And even before we are wed!” Xor remarked, his own smile wide and gladsome, then darkening into a bit of a smirk. “You are more of a whore than I thought.”

She was, she silently agreed. But she was not ashamed of it.

“In any event, my sweet, sweet queen-to-be,” the king continued, rising from his seat and crossing over to the other end of the table, where his future bride sat wordless and demure, “I do believe that that deserves a kiss.”

He took her face in both his hands and stared her down a moment. He then lowered his hands to her waist and bent to lay his cheek against her belly. She leant back slightly to accommodate his head between her midriff and the table, out of habit of obedience, and for fear for what he might do to her newly gravid body if she failed now to obey.

“Let us hope,” Xor uttered as he caressed the unborn child through its mother’s silken dress, “that this queenly womb carries a prince.”

Vana lowered her eyes to the unsightly sight, of the king whose face, whose hopes, she wanted nowhere near her child. “Let us hope,” she softly echoed.

Xor pressed his lips against her belly in a cold and bloodless kiss. When he raised his head and stood straight up again, his would-be fatherly smile had transformed into a grimace.

“You smell of my brother,” he complained.

“Xor!” she half-laughed in a trembling voice. “You know that Borghos is away, fighting one of your many wars for you. He’s been away for moons now.”

“All the same,” he persisted as he moved to return to his side of the table, “you smell of him.”

Ere he had retaken his seat, a firm knock rapped against the oaken door.

The king turned his head toward the familiar sound. “Yes, Olbe?”

Olbe opened the door, just enough to lean his head into the room. These were private chambers he’d been urged not to disturb. “Apologies, my king, for the disturbance,” he spoke, “but your men have sighted something most… intriguing.”

Xor looked at his high palace lord expectantly.

“You had best come and see,” Olbe exhorted him.

The king furrowed his brow, then reached for his wineglass to take a last swig. “And do you know, Olbe,” he added as he set the goblet down and gestured toward his queen-to-be across the table, “that my Vana is with child?”