Chapter 13 - The Things a Man Finally Fears
The soft crackle of the fire dying low in the hearth.
The faint rustle of folded fabric as Veronica moves through the room, gathering what she says we will need when we return to the palace.
The creak of floorboards under Elias's weight as he lifts trunks and mutters to himself in that low, dramatic way of his whenever he believes no one is listening.
The slow, steady rhythm of Ophelia's breathing from the bed, fragile enough to make every other sound feel like an intrusion.
I sit in the chair nearest her side and do not move.
I have not moved for so long my back aches from it, one arm draped over the edge of the chair, my hand hanging uselessly toward the floor as if I had meant to reach for something and forgotten what.
My eyes stay on her. They keep returning to her even when I force them elsewhere.
To the pale curve of her face against the pillow.
To the strands of hair scattered loosely over linen.
To the rise and fall of her chest beneath the blanket.
The word that left Veronica's mouth still feels unreal.
It does not sit naturally in my mind. It catches there, too large for the shape of my thoughts, too bright and terrible and beautiful all at once.
My wife carries my child. Mine. Ours. Something living, already growing somewhere inside the woman I love while I sit here staring at her like a man who has been handed a miracle and told it may break if he breathes too hard.
She fainted when Elias mentioned quadruplets.
Elias had leaned against the doorframe with all the grace of a drunk prophet and announced, with the casual stupidity only he can summon in a room already full of panic, that his grandmother once gave birth to quadruplets and that Ophelia would likely be perfectly fine so long as she did not carry that particular family curse.
Veronica struck him so hard on the back of the head that the sound echoed, and Ophelia, already pale and overwhelmed, simply swayed and dropped.
He had the decency to look horrified afterward.
For approximately six seconds.
Now he is quieter.
Not quiet, because Elias has never been capable of that, but quieter.
He lifts a folded blanket, glances toward the bed, and lowers it into the trunk with a care that would embarrass him if I acknowledged it.
Veronica says nothing while she packs. She works with the efficiency of a field surgeon and the patience of an executioner, sorting through gowns, books, medicine, linens, and all the practical things women think of before men ever realize they are needed.
I should speak.
I should say something useful.
Instead I keep watching Ophelia sleep and feel something clawing inside my ribs that I do not have the strength to name.
Veronica is the one who breaks the silence.
"Are you ready for this?"
Her voice is not soft. It never is. But there is something in it meant only for me, something lower, closer, quieter than what she offers the rest of the world. My gaze stays on the bed, on my wife, because I do not want to answer and I know if I turn, Veronica will see that before I speak.
Elias, for once, has the sense to say nothing.
I drag a hand through my hair and lean back in the chair, though not far enough to stop watching Ophelia. "No."
The honesty of it sits badly in my mouth.
Veronica does not seem surprised.
I let out a slow breath, but it does not ease anything. "I never planned to make it this far."
My voice sounds strange to my own ears too rough, too thin at the edges, like something is wearing through it.
That makes Veronica stop.
The pause in her movements. The faint sound of folded cloth set aside. The shift of her shoes over the floorboards.
I keep speaking anyway because if I stop now, I will not start again.
"I never thought about it," I say. "Not really." My fingers tighten against the arm of the chair. "I never planed for a future after i killed Jenifer."
The memory enters the room with me the moment I say her name.
My second wife.
The first woman and the woman i learned to hate.
The woman I would have broken kingdoms for before I learned she would rather crawl into bed with my brother than remain beside the ruined version of me.
I found them together.
That memory has never faded. It has only changed shape. Some pains become dull over time. The room. The sheets. The smell of sweat and perfume and betrayal. My brother's face, first startled, then calculating. Jenifer's, red lip full of excuses I would never let her finish.
There are nights I still see my own hands. Red. Wet. Shaking so violently I thought the bones would crack beneath the force of it. Her blood drying over my skin while I stood in the aftermath of love rotting in front of me.
I had protected Veronica not long before that.
I still remember the way her husband's men moved through the courtyard, the sound of steel against stone, the way her old life had reached for her with the kind of violence only cowards use when they realize control is slipping.
I stepped between them and her because there had never been another choice.
The blow of the heated steel that should have taken her life that i took without a second thought.
The scar it left has never faded. It stings from cheek to temple, a permanent mark of a moment I have never regretted and yet cannot think about without remembering everything that followed.
Jenifer saw me after.
The scar. The blood. What protecting someone had made me look like. And perhaps that was the day something in her began to wander. Or perhaps it had been wandering all along and I had simply been foolish enough not to notice.
It was easier after I killed them not to think beyond the next hour.
The next day.
The next battle.
The next duty.
It was easier to stop caring what came after because the only future I had ever imagined for myself had been ripped open and left bleeding at my feet.
So I made myself smaller in the ways that mattered and larger in the ways the world feared.
I became efficient. Cruel. Useful. Hard to kill.
Harder to love. I built what needed to be built because it was there and because I was strong enough to do it, not because I cared whether I lived long enough to see it finished.
Duty is a convenient substitute for purpose when a man is too empty to admit he has none.
"I stopped caring," I say at last.
The words are so simple they almost insult the truth of them.
"I stopped caring whether I lived," I continue, my voice lower now.
"Whether anything happened after me. I built because it was required.
Ruled because someone had to. Fought because there was always another war, another threat, another body that needed to fall before mine could.
" I let out a humorless breath. "It was easy, then. I had nothing to lose that mattered."
That is no longer true.
Now there is too much.
My wife.
My child.
The kingdom I once wore like armor and now suddenly fear leaving exposed.
The life I never planned for and now cannot bear the thought of missing.
"I don't know how to do this," I admit.
This time my voice breaks.
Quietly.
But enough.
Veronica crosses the room before I can stop her. I finally look up when she reaches me, and for a moment I see exactly what she was to me long before Ophelia ever knew her as anything at all. Not captain. Not weapon. Not my most terrifying ally.
Something built the day she found me drowning in Jenifer's blood and did not tell me to stop grieving like a child.
She did not tell me to be a king. She did not remind me of men watching.
She took one look at me at the blood on my face, my hands, my chest, the raw, stupid agony of loving someone too much and finding out too late that love does not protect a man from humiliation and she pulled me into her arms while I shook apart like something still half-made.
I cried for hours that night.
For Jenifer.
For my brother.
For myself.
For the life I had thought belonged to me.
Veronica held me through all of it. gently softly steadily. Like she knew breaking does not make a man weak. It makes him honest.
She stands in front of me now and says nothing at first. Then she places a hand behind my head and draws me forward until my forehead rests against her stomach.
For one heartbeat I resist.
Out of habit. Out of pride. Out of the old instinct to remain upright no matter what is tearing through me.
Then I stop resisting.
Because I am tired.
Because I am terrified.
Because there are some griefs and fears that do not care what a man has built around himself to contain them.
And because every child, no matter how old, no matter how feared, eventually returns to the arms that once taught them what surviving a grief looks like.
My hands tighten against the fabric of her dress and the first sob tears out of me so roughly it feels like something ripping loose.
I hate the sound of it.
I cannot stop the next one.
Or the next.
The chair creaks beneath me as my body folds inward, shoulders shaking with a force I cannot control, my face buried against her as if hiding it would somehow make this less real.
I have not cried like this in years. Not since the last time she held me together with her hands and sheer, furious patience.
I feel every humiliating second of it. The wetness on my face.
The rawness in my throat. The way my chest heaves like I am trying to breathe through drowning.
She does not tell me to stop.
She does not say my name.
One hand remains at the back of my head. The other smooths once over my shoulder, then stays there, firm and warm and maddeningly steady.
Behind us, the room goes silent.
Elias does not joke.
For the first time since I have known him, he does not say a single useless thing.
I cannot look at him. I cannot look at anyone. I sit there and let the fear take shape because it already exists whether I acknowledge it or not.
"I have to live now," I hear myself say, the words fractured by breath and grief and shame. "Do you understand?"
It is not really a question.
Veronica answers anyway.
"Yes."
"I didn't before." My voice shakes harder. "I didn't care before. I woke up every day and if death came, it came. If it didn't, then I worked." Another broken breath. "It didn't matter. None of it mattered enough."
But now it does.
Now I want things I never let myself want before because wanting is dangerous and having is worse.
I want to see my child's face.
I want to hear their first word.
I want to watch them stumble through their first steps and fall and rise and do it again because they are mine and stubborn and alive.
I want to argue with Ophelia over foolish things and make up before sunset.
I want to grow old enough for my hands to ache when it rains.
I want mornings. Years of them. Quiet ones. Loud ones. Useless ones. I want every day I once dismissed as interchangeable and beneath notice.
I want to live.
The truth of it shames me almost as much as it breaks me open, because I never wanted it before. Not really. Not in the way decent men are meant to want life. I endured it. Used it. Spent it. But I did not crave it until she gave me something inside it worth protecting beyond duty.
And now that I do, I am terrified of how easily it can all be taken.
"My wife," I manage, and even saying the word makes something in my chest twist. "My child. The kingdom. Everything." My hands shake against Veronica's dress. "There is too much now. Too many places for the knife to go in."
I stay where I am for another few breaths, letting the worst of it move through me. My sobs ease into rougher breaths. The shaking slows. Shame arrives in the space grief leaves behind, but Veronica does not leg go.
Eventually I do pull away.
Slowly.
My face is wet. My chest aches. I feel hollowed out and overfull at once.
I wipe at my face with the heel of my hand and look anywhere but the bed.
Veronica crouches slightly so she can see me properly.