Chapter 54 - A room for a princess
I stood in the middle of the room with a folded piece of clothing in my hand and stared at a cradle carved so small it offended me.
The palace had many quiet rooms, of course.
Council chambers after executions. Corridors after midnight.
The throne room before judgment. I knew silence well enough to recognize its different shapes, but this silence was unfamiliar.
It was not the silence of fear or discipline or death.
It was softer than that. Expectant. Waiting.
As if the walls themselves knew something was supposed to arrive here and had decided to hold their breath until it did.
I hated that.
I hated how fragile everything looked.
The room had been prepared in pale colors because Ophelia once mentioned, in passing, that children should wake beneath sunlight instead of shadows, and because I had developed the deeply unfortunate habit of remembering everything my wife said as though it were a royal decree.
The curtains were sheer enough to let in morning light but thick enough to soften it.
The walls had been painted with delicate vines, small birds, and little golden stars scattered between painted clouds.
Someone had placed a round rug in the center of the floor so soft that I had nearly dismissed it as unnecessary until I imagined a child learning to walk, falling, and cracking their head open against stone, at which point the rug became acceptable.
Several shelves had been mounted low enough for small hands, then mounted again after I decided the first attempt looked unstable.
The cradle had been moved away from the window, then closer, then away again, because drafts existed, assassins existed, and sunlight existed, and apparently, children required all three before they could sleep in peace.
It was excessive.
It was still not enough.
Veronica stood near one of the shelves, holding a stuffed animal in her hand.
It was a small rabbit, white, soft, absurd, and wearing a blue ribbon around its neck.
She turned it slowly, examining it with the expression of a woman deciding whether it would survive interrogation.
Then she lifted it toward me and asked, "Do you not think this is a little much? "
I looked at the rabbit, then at the room, then back at the folded garment in my hand. "No."
Veronica's brow rose.
I placed the garment into the drawer with more care than I had used handling state treaties. "It is a nursery."
"It looks more like a shrine," she corrected, still holding the rabbit.
"It does not."
She looked around slowly. Her gaze passed over the carved cradle, the embroidered blankets, the shelves of toys, the painted ceiling, the tiny wardrobe, the music box, the baskets organized by size, color, texture, and whatever other nonsense the servants had insisted mattered.
Then her eyes returned to me. "Achille."
I ignored her.
That was usually the safest course when Veronica spoke in that tone.
It was the tone she used when she believed someone was behaving foolishly, and unfortunately, she was correct often enough to become intolerable.
I opened another box and found more folded clothing inside.
The pieces were so small that for several seconds I simply stared at them.
A sleeve rested between my fingers, delicate and narrow, made of soft fabric trimmed with pale stitching.
It looked less like clothing and more like something intended for a doll.
I frowned down at it because the existence of something this small felt like a personal insult.
From the window ledge, Nathaniel sat quietly with one knee raised, his hands clasped loosely over it.
He had not spoken much since entering, which was typical.
Nathaniel had the irritating ability to be present without occupying a room.
He watched more than he spoke, listened more than he offered, and when he finally did speak, everyone had the misfortune of realizing he had been paying attention the entire time.
His gaze moved over the nursery, not with mockery, but with something thoughtful and careful.
"As sweet as this is," he said at last, voice quiet, "this nursery is going to cause an uproar. "
I closed the drawer.
Slowly.
"Let it."
Nathaniel's eyes moved to me. "You know what I mean."
"I do," I said. "And I do not care"
Levi, who had been standing near the doorway with the expression of a man forced to attend his own punishment, let out a small laugh beneath his breath.
He leaned against the wall with one arm folded, the other lazily adjusting the cuff at his wrist, as though the entire room was an inconvenience he had graciously decided to tolerate.
"You know this is not normal," he said. "i understand you usually go against the rule, but this may be a little far l. "
I turned my head just enough to look at him.
Levi smiled faintly, though there was nothing warm in it. "There is a whole wing designated for the royal heir ." His gaze drifted around the room, lingering on the cradle with mild distaste. "Why not use it?"
I rolled my eyes and reached for another folded garment. "God forbid I do not want my child sleeping in a separate wing from me while being raised by strangers."
Levi's expression shifted into something that might have passed for amusement if there had been any humanity behind it.
"They are not strangers. They are staff.
Carefully selected. Trained. Paid. Replaceable, if they prove incompetent.
That is the beauty of nobility. You have children, secure heirs, and then hand them to nannies, maids, wet nurses, and tutors so you may avoid the unpleasant details.
Crying. Feeding. Soiling themselves. Illness.
Teething. Whatever else small children do before becoming tolerable. "
The room went very still.
Veronica lowered the rabbit.
Nathaniel's gaze sharpened, though he remained seated.
I did not move immediately because certain forms of stupidity deserved a moment of silence before punishment.
Levi did not seem to notice. Or perhaps he noticed and lacked the wisdom to stop.
That was possible. Levi had always possessed the remarkable talent of making survival look accidental.
He shrugged. "Having a child may be pleasant in theory, but refusing help is foolish. You are an emperor. Not a village blacksmith hovering over a cradle because his wife cannot afford assistance."
Veronica's mouth tilted slightly, but not with humor. "I think it is rather noble."
Levi looked at her as though she had suggested he eat from the floor. "It is stupid."
Her smile deepened.
He continued, apparently determined to test the patience of every dangerous person in the room. "Why would he raise a child like a peasant if he is not one?"
Nathaniel finally spoke again. "Do you even know your children's ages?"
Levi blinked, then glanced toward him, mildly annoyed by the interruption.
"Why do i need to?" Nathaniel stared at him in shock.
Levi waved a hand. "I will meet them properly when they are old enough to be introduced into court society and have a conversation worth having.
Until then, there is no need for me to have a conversation with the little creature. "
For a moment, I thought Veronica might actually laugh.
Not because it was funny.
Because sometimes cruelty said plainly was so grotesque that laughter became the body's only reasonable response.
Nathaniel did not laugh. His face remained calm, but something in his eyes changed.
It was not rage. Rage would have been easier.
This was disappointment wrapped around a sharper, quieter grief.
Nathaniel had always understood absence better than most men.
He knew what it meant when children learned early that love arrived only after they became useful.
"You are the last person in this room who should offer any advice on so please do us all a favor and shut up, " Nathaniel said.
Levi groaned and tilted his head back against the wall. "Can we let it go? I made a mistake. Why do you people never let me forget anything?"
I opened another drawer. "Because we cannot properly punish you."
His head lowered.
I folded the tiny garment once more, though it did not need folding. My hands moved with deliberate calm because if I moved any faster, I might reach for a blade instead. "Your former wife begged us to leave you alive and mostly intact."
Levi's smile disappeared.
I placed the garment in the drawer. "If it were up to me, I would have already shoved a sword down your throat and used your estate taxes to fund something useful."
Veronica hummed. "Another nursery, perhaps."
"Several nurseries," I said.
Nathaniel sighed quietly, though not in disapproval. It sounded more like exhaustion. he stayed quiet, which was wise of him. Wisdom rarely visited him, but even a dying candle occasionally produced light.
I reached into the box again and pulled out another piece of clothing.
This one was smaller than the last; each box was for a different stage of a child's life, and the smaller the numbers were, the smaller the clothing became.
I stared at it. My fingers tightened before I forced them to loosen because the fabric looked as though pressure alone might destroy it.
A strange feeling moved through my chest, sharp and unwelcome.
I had held swords heavier than this. I had carried armor slick with blood.
I had lifted dying men from mud and hauled bodies from battlefield smoke.
I had broken necks with less thought than I now gave this tiny strip of cloth.
Are babies usually this small when they are born?
Levi finally made a sound of irritation. "Can we at least call a maid to do this?"
I looked at him.
He gestured vaguely toward the drawers, boxes, blankets, and clothing as though they were beneath the dignity of everyone present. "This is what servants are for. You are an emperor. You do not need to personally arrange socks the size of your thumb."
"You do not have to be here," I said. "None of you do."
Veronica lifted one finger. "Incorrect. I want to be here."
I gave her a flat look.
She smiled and placed the rabbit on the shelf. "I miss decorating things. Also, watching you struggle with simple domestic tasks brings me a rare and profound joy."
I raised my hand and showed her my middle finger.
Levi looked deeply offended by the gesture, as if he had not spent the last several minutes advocating emotional abandonment as a family tradition. "This is absurd."
"No," Nathaniel said quietly. "This is unusual."
Levi turned toward him. "That is the same thing."
"It is not." Nathaniel's gaze moved around the room again, slower this time.
"He is right that people will talk. Nobles do not raise their children this way.
Royalty especially does not. Children are usually born into wings, routines, caretakers, feeding schedules, and appearances.
Their parents visit when expected. Smile when needed.
Present them during festivals. Display them during ceremonies.
Love them in portraits and letters and political speeches.
" He paused. "But not usually in the middle of the night when they are crying. "
The words settled differently because Nathaniel had not said them with judgment. He sounded as if he were naming a fact he disliked but understood too well. His eyes turned to the cradle. "If you intend to be present, it will unsettle people."
"Good," I said.
He looked at me.
I closed the drawer and leaned one hand against the edge of it. "Let them be unsettled."
Veronica's expression softened slightly, though with her, that only meant she looked less likely to poison someone in the next breath. "And I do not believe Ophelia will allow some strange woman to raise her child while she watches from across the room."
"And I would never force her to," I said.
The word came out too quickly.
Too certain.
Because I knew my wife. I knew the way she touched her stomach when the child moved, as if answering a secret knock.
I knew the way her voice changed when she spoke of our child.
I knew the terror she tried to hide beneath calm orders and gentle smiles.
Ophelia could forgive much. More than she should.
But she would not hand away the small, intimate pieces of motherhood simply because tradition demanded distance.
She would not let another woman become the one who knew our child's cries, hunger, sleep, fears, scent, and moods while she stood nearby dressed beautifully and hollowed by obedience.
I would not ask it of her.
I would not ask it of myself.
"Nannies may assist," I said. "Maids may help. Tutors will teach when the time comes. Guards will protect. Physicians will hover until they make themselves so irritating that they are threatened. But this child will know will fall asleep in their mother's arms, not a wet nurse."
Levi looked as though I had announced my intention to sleep in a stable. "You say that now."
I turned my head.
He continued, quieter but no less certain.
"You are speaking from emotion. Fear, perhaps.
The queen's illness has made you sentimental.
Once the child is here, you will understand why our families have done things this way for generations.
Infants are loud. Demanding. Constant. They do not care for rank.
They do not respect sleep, work, councils, court, war, or law.
They make women weaker and men distracted.
That is why systems exist. That is why staff exist. You think presence is love because absence hurt you.
That does not mean you must overcorrect by turning yourself into a nursemaid. "
I stared at him for a long moment.
Levi did not believe himself cruel. Men like him rarely did.
Cruelty was what other people did with knives, fists, poison, and chains.
What he practiced, he called order. Tradition.
Nobility. Proper structure. He had learned to wrap neglect in silk and call it refinement.
He had learned to speak of children as burdens before they became heirs, wives as conveniences before they became scandals, and duty as something other people performed so men like him could remain untouched by the mess of being human.
"You are very fortunate," I said calmly.
His brows drew together. "For what?"
"That i am in a decent mood."
Veronica laughed softly.
Levi's mouth tightened. "I am trying to help you avoid embarrassment."
"You are trying to teach me how to become the sort of father children stop waiting for." My voice remained even, but the room seemed to sharpen around it. "I already had one of those and im choosing to be the father that i wish i had for my children."
I looked back at the small clothing in my hand, and for one brief, terrible second, the room shifted beneath memory.
I saw a corridor from my childhood. Long.
Cold. A door that never opened. A boy standing too still because boys raised in palaces learned early that crying was ineffective if no one answered it.
I remembered waiting for footsteps that passed by.
Waiting for a voice that never called. Waiting until expectation became humiliation and humiliation hardened into contempt.
I remembered deciding I did not need anyone. I remembered being praised for it.
Strong boy.
Disciplined boy.
Future king.
Abandoned boy.
I inhaled slowly.
My child would not learn love by its absence.
Not if I could help it.
Not while there was breath in me.
Veronica moved closer to the wardrobe and began arranging the stuffed animals with surprising care. "For what it is worth," she said, "it would be fun to watch you fail at simple things."
Nathaniel coughed into his hand.
I looked at her.
She continued, "You will hold the child incorrectly at least once.
You will panic over every sound. You will threaten physicians hourly.
You will insist the cradle is unsafe, no matter how many craftsmen swear otherwise.
You will discover that infants do not negotiate and suffer personally from that realization. "
Nathaniel's mouth twitched again.
"But it will be worth it in the end, you will look back at those memories fondly."
I looked down at the clothing again.
"Children are small and fragile," she said, "Terrifyingly so.
Especially at first. You will think everything can hurt them because, frankly, almost everything can.
Their necks are useless. Their heads are too heavy.
Their fingers are impossibly tiny. They cannot tell you what is wrong, and somehow they expect you to know anyway. "
"That is a design flaw," I muttered.
"It is," she agreed.
Despite myself, I looked at her. "Are babies usually this small?"
Her eyes lowered to the garment in my hand, and for once, there was no mockery in her face. "Sometimes smaller."
My throat tightened before I could stop it.
Smaller.
The word lodged itself somewhere behind my ribs.
"How the hell do you not kill it by accident?"
Veronica's expression changed. "By being careful as hell."
That was not comforting.
I stared at her.
She shrugged. "You learn. It comes naturally after the terror stops trying to eat you alive."
"The terror stops?"
"No." Veronica smiled faintly. "But your hands learn what to do even when your mind is screaming."
I looked at my hands.
They did not look like hands meant for children.
That thought had haunted me more than I cared to admit.
My hands were made for war. Scars across the knuckles.
Callused from blades, reins, training, and violence.
They had signed executions, held throats closed, opened wounds, gripped swords until my palms bled.
Men had died because of these hands. Kingdoms had bent because of these hands.
Enemies saw them and understood danger. Servants watched them and lowered their eyes.
And one day, if Ophelia survived, if the gods were not as cruel as experience suggested, someone impossibly small would wrap their entire hand around one of my fingers and trust me not to destroy them.
I did not know what to do with that. I did not know how to become soft enough for something so breakable without becoming weak.
Then Ophelia's voice moved through memory, gentle and firm as rain against glass.
You do not need to become someone else. I closed my fist around the tiny garment, then loosened it immediately.
"You look pale," Nathaniel said quietly.
"I am always pale."
"You look worse."
"I am moved by your concern."
"He is afraid," Veronica said, arranging another toy. "Let him suffer. It builds character."
"I have enough character," I said.
"No," she replied. "You have trauma. People confuse the two."
Nathaniel made a small sound that might have been agreement.
I glared at both of them. "I invited none of you."
"Wherever the king is, I am invited," Veronica said.
"You cannot rule an empire while exhausted because you stayed up all night due to its constant cries," Levi says, concern written across his face, mixed with confusion
"I rule an empire with assassins, ministers, famine reports, traitors, border disputes, and nobles who believe bloodline excuses stupidity. I can manage a child's temper tantrums."
Levi pushed away from the wall. " You are not listening.
You are making decisions from emotion. Everyone knows the queen has changed things.
That was tolerable when it improved household management or softened minor policies.
But this?" He gestured to the room. "This is different.
This says the emperor intends to put fatherhood before image. "
I turned fully toward him.
"I do."
Levi's expression faltered.
I slowly move close to him, getting frustrated by this absurd conversation. "My image has survived war, executions, rebellions, scars, rumors, and decades of people calling me a monster. It will survive me choosing not to be an absent father."
Veronica became very still beside the shelves.
Levi looked at me as if he could not decide whether I was mad or merely inconvenient. "The court will mock you."
"And I will kill them."
He frowned.
I held his gaze. "i do not care what every noble does or how every king before me chose to raise their child. This is my child, my heir, my flesh and blood, and i will raise them how i wish "
Veronica "he is right, Levi, we can't force him."
Nathaniel exhaled through his nose and looked toward the window. "Everyone has different ways of parenting; you can't force someone to do it your way just because it worked for you."
Levi scoffed, but there was less confidence in it now.
I turned back to the wardrobe because if I looked at him much longer, I would remember too many reasons to regret my wife's kindness toward useless men.
The drawer remained open. Inside were rows of tiny clothing arranged in an order that should have satisfied me but instead left me feeling dangerously unprepared.
Dresses. Gowns. Soft stockings. Caps. Mittens so small they looked ridiculous.
Everything belonged to someone who did not exist in the room yet and already occupied more space in my mind than entire provinces.
My daughter had managed to occupy so much witout even taking her first breath.
i just pray she did not have my temper because this empire might be doomed.
A princess. Small. Fragile. Possibly loud.
Possibly stubborn. Possibly soft like her mother, though, knowing my bloodline, that hope seemed optimistic.
hope. Hope was too fragile a thing to place in rooms like this.
I was speaking in command. To the room. To the walls.
To the gods if they had the poor judgment to listen.
Ophelia would come back. She would walk into this nursery.
She would hold our child here. She would argue with me over blankets and windows and whether infants needed fewer guards than visiting kings.
She would sit by the window in the sunlight and recover.
She would laugh again in this palace. She would make it feel inhabited instead of merely occupied.
She would live.
My child would live.
Anything else would require the world to become something I could not permit.
For a little while, the room settled into a strange rhythm.
Veronica arranged toys and insulted my organizational choices.
Nathaniel occasionally offered quiet observations that were more useful than I wanted to admit.
Levi remained near the door, increasingly irrelevant and visibly resentful of it.
I continued unpacking boxes, folding and refolding impossibly small clothing while trying not to think too deeply about what each piece meant.
Outside, the palace moved around us. Somewhere below, servants prepared meals.
Guards changed posts. Ministers waited outside my office with problems they believed urgent.
The poisoner, whoever they were, breathed the same air as my people and thought themselves clever.
And here I stood.
In a nursery.
Holding a pair of infant socks.
War had never looked so absurd.
"Those go in the top drawer," Veronica said.
I looked at the socks, then the drawer. "Why?"
"So you can find them."
"I can find things in any drawer."
"You once lost a dagger on your own person."
"That was different."
Nathaniel looked at me. "How?"
"There were circumstances."
Veronica's eyes brightened. "The circumstance was that Ophelia distracted him by smiling."
I pointed at one sock. "Careful."
"She did not even speak," Veronica told Nathaniel, delighted. "She entered the room, smiled at him, and he forgot where he put his weapon."
I placed the socks in the top drawer with exaggerated calm. "I hate you."
"No," Veronica said easily. "You do not."
I had spent so much of my life believing family was a graveyard you inherited while still breathing.
My mother is dead. My brother is buried.
My father was unreachable even before death took him.
Elias was family in the way old wounds became part of the body.
Veronica had forced herself into that category through sheer persistence and a concerning lack of fear.
Ophelia had made family something warmer and more dangerous than blood.
And now there was a child coming, small enough to fit into clothing I was afraid to hold too tightly, powerful enough to make an empire rearrange itself around their absence before they even arrived.
That's why i refuse to force my wife to watch motherhood happen from a distance because dead people had once decided nobility required coldness.
I would not become my father because tradition found grief more elegant when it was silent.
Let the court whisper. Let the nobles call me strange.
Let them clutch pearls over the emperor learning how to hold his own child.
I had been called tyrant, monster, butcher, conqueror, scarred beast, and worse by men who still bowed when I entered.
A few whispers about a cradle near my chambers would not wound me.
Besides, if anyone mocked my daughter's nursery, I could always kill them.