Glory in Our Defiance • Zarry

28. - The Unknown

"Surely," Harry tries to smile. "You're dismissed."

The maids and servants bow, scurrying out of the room with the swiftness of castle personnel.

Harry drops down at one of the chairs, staring numbly somewhere in the distance. It's impossible not to think about the loss of his own child. It has been just a few months since he had to wash off his and his son's blood off of himself and face the man that killed his unborn child. And now he's slapped in the face with the happiness of other royals, cheering for the birth of their firstborn son. Celebrating what a wonderful baby he is and what a good King he will be one day. And Harry will have to sit by and watch and smile at them like his heart isn't heavy with grief because while they have a party, he has a tiny grave he hasn't had the guts to visit yet.

It's been too little time since he had Helen crying in his chambers, cursing herself for not doing something about Warwick and his Mother too, blaming herself for all of it. Now Harry curses himself for not paying attention to these kinds of news. He faintly remembers hearing about the French Queen being with a child, back when he was too but he cared more about whether the French fleet was building more ships a year than the English one. Since then, he assumes no one told him about the news because it would've hurt him and they were right.

"Haz?"

Harry shakes his head a little, slapping on a fake smile for his husband. "Finally. We've got food."

"Are you alright?" Zayn asks as he takes a seat opposite Harry. "You looked quite... flabberghasted."

"Oh, it's nothing," Harry tries to dismiss it. "The Queen had a son early in the morning. I was just surprised."

"Love," Zayn says and Harry feels his hand on top of his. Harry's forced to look up from his plate, seeing the worrying look on Zayn's face he both loves and hates. "You don't need to pretend like everything is fine. I can see you're troubled."

"It's alright, really," Harry says resolutely, sliding his hand from bellow Zayn's and starting to pile food on his plate. "Things happen for a reason. Grief lingers for a long time but we have moved on, haven't we? There is time to fix things, to do it right another time. We have an opportunity to strengthen our alliances right now. If Warwick didn't almost kill me, we would have been sitting on our arses in Windsor albeit with a baby kicking in my belly but we would've been more miserable than we are now. I know that I would've been a proper pain in the arse because our son's death made me feel completely different about him and that wouldn't have happened just like that out of nowhere. I made some mistakes, I grieve my son but we can't change the past. Now, let's eat before we have to fulfil the things on our schedule."

Harry leaves Zayn stunned because this is the most he's said about the whole ordeal since the day of Warwick's execution. They both know the loss of their child was painful but in the long run, it wasn't a bad thing. For their reign, for their relationship, for the child too because he would not have been as loved as he could've been. If he was born, there was a chance they would not have any more children beside him and that is never a good thing for a King.

With breakfast in front of them, Harry acts like nothing happened. Nothing at all.

xxx

They see the King the following day, which is rather disrespectful, a child being born or not. Still, Harry tries not to be rude when the King greets them at a tennis court in the gardens, along with his mistress. When Harry sees the scene, he's certain the previous day, which he spent an exhausting amount of time chitchatting with French nobility and then getting drunk at a court party until he almost sat on Zayn's lap like a common whore, was miles better than this one.