Chapter Fifteen
It was almost amusing to watch Jaki hold Jacqueline. He was interested in her tiny ears and seemed rather amazed by her overall. Everything about her was so small. After a few minutes, he started looking uncomfortable.
“Do you not like holding her?” asked Lumi.
“I feel like I should be doing more.”
Lumi guessed it came a bit easier to him since he’d birthed her. Jaki hadn’t even known about her until after she was born.
“She likes to be held. There are no fancy requirements.” Lumi tilted his head. “I think you’re making it hard on your head.”
Jaki had said he’d stay, but he'd rejected sex. Lumi barely knew what to do with that. Nobody had ever refused him when their hard cock was pressing against him. Of course, he’d never dared to refuse anyone.
Jaki was there, not that he had anywhere to go right then, and he was making an effort to hold Jacqueline. Tivar had treated her like a pest to foist on someone else.
“I have a feeling you’re not the type to have a wet nurse or a nanny,” said Jaki.
“No,” Lumi said hastily. “I want to care for her myself. Mother never had one either. She fed us herself. I don't want strangers handling her.”
“All right,” Jaki said in a gentle tone. “You know, when you come home, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want. You can care for Jacqueline, rest in your rooms, eat and sleep when you want…whatever. There are no rules.”
No rules sounded like a fantasy world and something Lumi had wanted. Total freedom. Except fantasies weren’t supposed to come true. What did one do with total freedom?
“What?” asked Jaki.
Lumi realized he’d been staring at the Prince, and he turned his head away. “What am I supposed to do?”
“Whatever you want.”
He’d been the perfect entertainer and pleasure slave who pretended so he could keep his sanity. He’d focused on surviving. He didn’t know what else to do besides take care of Jacqueline now.
“You’re a Prince,” added Jaki.
Lumi hadn’t been a Prince in a long time. That boy was long dead in his mind.
“I guess you don’t know how to do that,” Jaki said slowly. “You haven’t had the freedom to make choices, and everybody else has always decided things for you, but I think you can learn. You clearly have some self-direction already.”
“What do you mean?”
“Tivar didn’t care who got you pregnant, and since you never had a baby with him, there must be something wrong with his seed.”
“He’d never do the test to check.”
“Of course not, but he’s not the point. You likely would have ended up pregnant within months at court. You went and bought herbs pretty quickly to prevent it. Tivar would have been angry if he’d known.”
Lumi's fear of having a random baby or his Uncle’s kid was worse. It was easier to return and allow Tivar to continue calling him useless for being unable to conceive.
“I got lucky,” said Lumi. “Elswere was getting over a cold when I came, remember?” Jaki nodded. “I went into the city and found a herb woman before anyone fucked me. When I needed more, I used my wages and made sure I never ran out.”
“You’re not entirely helpless at doing things you want. Maybe you think you are because Tivar controlled you so much, but you can obviously think for yourself. Now, you don’t have to simply survive.”
How could life be more?
As the river swiftly carried them along, Lumi started feeling better since he didn’t have to sit on the back of a horse.
The motion of the boat was more soothing, and Jaki told him to get as much sleep as he could.
He said that while he didn’t know a lot about childbirth, it was obvious the process was exhausting, and it didn’t grow easier right away since Jacqueline needed feeding every few hours.
He also helped Lumi to put on the balm for his bruises which were fading. When they were nearly in East Iceland, Jaki asked him something.
“Do you think women are less than men?”
Lumi, lying on the bed with Jacqueline, lifted his head slightly. “No. What kind of question is that?”
“Our Goddess was a woman.”
Where was this coming from? That was obvious since she was called a Goddess and not a God.
“Elira ruled us all in the beginning, and she still does, even though she’s technically not around in the physical,” continued Jaki.
“She clearly had no trouble with women doing the ruling back then. The fact that our first ruler here was a man was more of a coincidence. Now, in all other Kingdoms, some have always had a male to carry the line, but not all. If the first child is a woman, she can be the Queen when she grows up. Why not here?”
Lumi shrugged. “Why are only male names passed down? Why does the woman typically take the male’s surname?”
“Not all do. The bloodline through a male is thought to be purer by some.”
“There you go. Our bloodline was needed to keep the land going. We received a special Crown, and it came with a rule.”
Jaki shifted by Lumi’s feet. “No other Kingdom has the rule that a woman can’t take over if she’s the first child.
Elira never gave such a command to them as if men were the only worthy ones to take the throne.
Why not simply make it so that the Crown would live along with the lands as long as an heir was born and later coronated? ”
Lumi struggled to remember his history lessons from childhood.
It was true that a few lines kept birthing males as the first children, like Soleil and Nova.
East Forest always had a male child as the oldest too, and currently, the heir was Kalen, the son of Reesing's killers, although Lumi barely ever thought about him.
Others like Illusa and Foamlen had started out with female Queens, and their firstborns had been women who later took the throne.
Rowland, far in the south, had been ruled by a man and a woman who had already been married when they first arrived, and the woman was usually mentioned more as the first Queen over her husband in stories.
“Well…it’s not just males here,” said Lumi. “They have to be born of the Father. Bastards from the Queen by another male don’t count here. It’s…something about our blood.”
“I think Elira might have done that to help prevent cheating in a way. She didn’t like a fairy who would make a vow and sleep with another behind their spouse’s back. It's not the same as people agreeing to a poly relationship or an open relationship.”
“Father cheated on Mother, and the Crown would work for you,” argued Lumi. “You’re an heir.”
“Yes, but I came from Father,” said Jaki.
“What’s the difference? Cheating is cheating. Elira never said it’s only wrong for a wife to cheat.”
“But I came from the actual King,” said Jaki.
“It’s possible bastard children like Elswere aren’t meant to rule because of this: the Queen can’t fall in love with another man, plot treason with him, overthrow her husband along with any children they had, and allow a new man to take the throne with their child as the new heir.
Your Mother wasn’t born a Cleel, so imagine if she had never had children with Reesing, she cheated on him, and they overthrew him.
At that point, the Cleel bloodline would be entirely erased. ”
“I can see that. The woman who marries the heir is only a Cleel in name, and if Elira did that to prevent treason…bastards from the King can rule. But what’s the point?
If you want to be really technical, bastards from the King are acceptable everywhere because if the King marries a man and neither are abundant males, he’ll need a consort to create a child.
Oftentimes, the consort isn’t married unless they’re agreeable to a poly relationship.
That rarely happens. The King only fucks her until she conceives, and you could easily say that the resulting heir is a bastard. ”
“True, but I don’t think Elira planned for girl children to be nearly useless in terms of ruling here .
Why give such a rule to Iceland? Elira wasn’t like that.
” Jaki leaned forward to grab the pack that contained the Crown.
“Every time a ruler has died, a High Mage takes the Crown until the heir is coronated which is usually within days. No daughter has ever tried to touch it beforehand as far as I know. We have a little girl right here, and no one is technically crowned…”
Lumi hadn’t even thought to try such a thing. Everyone knew how the Crown worked.
What if everyone had been wrong and missed one detail?
It wasn’t like they could go back in time and ask the first King or Elira.
Jaki took the Crown and leaned over to tug Jacqueline’s blankets down a little.
She had been quiet, and she waved a fist at the disruption of her swaddling.
Jaki gently laid the Crown over her body so part of it touched her bare skin.
It had a slight sheen since Jaki had been holding it, and when he let go of it, it remained. She must have felt the warmth and thrum of it since she made a pleased sound and grabbed at a shiny ruby.
Lumi couldn’t think of a single thing to say as he stared.
“Our daughter can be the Queen when she’s older,” said Jaki.
“Is it working because we’re both heirs, and she came from us?” Lumi knew not a single Cleel ruler had created an heir with a sibling, half or not.
Jaki paused before he spoke. “I don’t think so. I think any daughter could have been Queen, but none have touched the Crown after the King’s death and before the son was crowned. By chance, there has always been a male to take over. Elira wouldn’t make women here unworthy of ruling.”
She wasn’t that sort of Goddess, and Lumi had never really questioned why she had supposedly created a strict rule for their Kingdom alone.
“When people hear the same thing generation after generation, and the centuries go by, they may not question a thing,” said Jaki.
“An assumption becomes fact in their minds. To question it becomes folly, like asking if the sun will rise tomorrow. Since we’ve always had a male to take over, it wasn’t like anybody had to worry either. The lands have never died until now.”
“She can’t rule unless we’re united,” said Lumi. “There won’t be anything left to rule when she grows up.”