My Beloved Queen

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

xxxii. the queen and the faithful

storyteller
// she knows the man that reaches now for the sky, that glares up at the heavens with hatred as thick as mud. she knows him well indeed, and yet she thinks still to see the boy he once was.

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There was another weight stretched out across the bed—another body, pressing its chest against your back. Arms that were not yours had wrapped themselves about your abdomen, and a hand you could not direct was rubbing the curve of your shoulder. The body was warm, and its touch calloused but gentle, but ice followed its fingers, and the chill nipped like a hungry wolf at the flesh of your heart.

Why was he still in bed? He never remained long, and he shouldn't. He had fulfilled his duty to you, and you'd taken what he'd given with all the grace it deserved. Who would expect a monster to recall his oaths—to make good on them as well as a man? It made him worse: he had reason enough to know decency and all the capacities to provide it, and yet, when it suited his fancy, he divested himself of any inkling of honor and went about his awful way with all the savagery of a beast.

King Orelus of Ceorid was a blight. A horrific, awful lout, but you had known that, hadn't you? He'd sought violence when afforded a chance for peace. He'd slaughtered men by the thousands—strangers and countrymen alike. He was no saint, and when you'd learned that even augurs had not been spared the cold steel of his blade, you should have nodded your head and thought to yourself, "Yes, indeed. Though I would not have thought it so, of course, he would."

It should not have been a surprise. It was not, but neither had it ever been a worry. The murder of augurs was a nonsense consideration—a thought too insidious and savage to ever ponder, even if for a moment—yet in Ceorid, it existed both in concept and practice, and its pioneer lay just beside you, his breast against your back, and his arms around your stomach, and his hand—his calloused, blood-stained hand, so careful in its touch—was now wandering from your shoulder and moving to settle upon the slope of your hip.

Why wouldn't he leave?

Pins pressed at the flesh of your leg, and when you shifted to dislodge them, Orelus's wandering hand abruptly stilled. You caught the gasp that had tried to snatch the breath from your lungs, and then, slowly, and with all the even apathy of sleep, you exhaled.

Orelus sighed. It was a light sound, startlingly so, in having fallen from the mouth of so harsh a monster, and silver with relief. You felt him lean forward, and your muscles pulled themselves painfully tight, but the king only pressed a soft kiss to your bare shoulder, and then, in another breath, he was pulling away entirely. The bed grew light, and a sudden chill rushed to replace the heat of his company, but the cold was not unpleasant.

Your eyes were still closed, and in the dark, you waited and pretended and listened. He dressed, and he moved, and then a servant greeted him. He was quiet and slow, painfully, frustratingly slow—a snail in speed with a heart made of slugs—but you waited. Perhaps you were too still; you feigned sleep, not death, but maybe Orelus could not decipher a difference between, for you did not hear him approach. He remained away, off somewhere in the room, somewhere behind the dark devouring your vision, and after several long, painstaking minutes, he was gone.

The pressure that had sought to crush the chamber retreated, and your lungs spasmed and shook in joy of their abrupt freedom. Your eyes fell open, but your limbs remained still, and for a moment, you laid there, alone, staring at the wrinkles that had formed in the linen. Some were ridges and hills, but the line nearest your hand was a mountain range—the spine of the slumbering Ither, sloping up from the earth, rising with breaths so shallow and slow it seemed not to move at all.