Chapter 71- Every Fairy Tale Buries Someone Outside Its Pages #2
Achille became still.
Levi looked toward the broken table and then toward me.
Elias looked only at Nathaniel.
I rose.
My knees ached from the floor.
I took one slow breath, then another.
No one spoke.
I crossed the office toward them.
When I reached Elias, I stopped.
"Bury him beside Alexis." Elias's expression changed. Only slightly. Enough to tell me the name meant far more to him than it did to me. "That is what he asked for," I said.
Then I walked past them.
Achille caught my hand.
His fingers closed around mine, not tightly, but with enough certainty to stop me.
I looked at him.
Concern moved across his face, followed by questions he had not yet decided how to ask.
I smiled.
"I would like to check on our children before I sleep."
His brow tightened.
"Ophelia."
"Excuse me, Your Majesty."
The title made him look at me more carefully.
I rarely addressed him that way in private.
I bowed.
Not deeply.
Enough.
Then I pulled my hand gently from his and continued down the corridor.
No one followed immediately.
I was grateful for that.
I did not want explanations.
Not yet.
I wanted warmth.
Something living.
Something that needed nothing from me except to be held.
When I entered our chambers, the nursery door stood open. Low lamplight spilled across the carpet. One of the maids sat near the cradle with Elowen in her arms, rocking slowly while the baby cried against her shoulder.
The sound reached directly into me.
The maid looked up.
"Your Majesty."
"I have her."
She rose and transferred Elowen carefully into my arms.
The moment my daughter touched me, her crying changed.
Not stopped.
Softened.
Her small body pressed against mine, warm and heavy with sleep. One fist remained curled near her face. Her cheeks were damp. Her breath came in little uneven bursts as she tried to decide whether the world remained terrible.
"I know," I whispered.
Lysandra slept in the other cradle, one hand resting above her head, her face arranged into the same faintly serious expression she wore even in sleep.
I lowered myself to the floor.
The cradle's carved side pressed against my shoulder.
Elowen settled across my chest.
I rocked her.
Slowly.
Back and forth.
Her cries faded into small complaints, then sighs, then quiet.
I should have felt something.
Triumph, perhaps.
Fear.
Regret.
Sadness for the man who died.
Anger for the children he tried to kill.
Instead, I felt nothing clear enough to name.
I barely knew Alexis.
I remembered only that I disliked the way she looked at Achille. There had been longing in it. Possession. A familiarity I resented immediately.
I did not want her dead.
But I had wanted her gone.
Was there truly so much difference between those things when someone else acted upon the resentment I refused to admit?
Yes.
There had to be.
Wanting distance was not murder.
Jealousy was not poison.
Still, I could not pretend I had ever wished Alexis happiness.
Not near my husband.
Perhaps somewhere else.
With someone else.
Far enough away that I never had to see longing enter her face when Achille walked into a room.
That was the ugliest truth.
I could pity her now because she was dead.
Would I have pitied her while she lived?
Or would every sign of pain in her have felt like a threat to the life I had finally claimed?
Elowen stirred.
I moved one hand slowly along her back.
What if I had been the other woman?
In Isaac's story.
I entered a future he believed belonged to him. I stood beside the man he had imagined possessing. I became the obstacle in someone else's love, though the love itself had never been returned.
My story should have ended like Alexis's.
The unwanted woman.
The one left outside the marriage.
The forgotten name.
But I had survived it.
I had stepped away.
I had found happiness elsewhere.
Why had Alexis not?
Perhaps because she could not imagine another life after Achille.
Perhaps because every return to his bed convinced her she still had a chance.
Perhaps he had been cruel without understanding it.
Perhaps she had accepted scraps because scraps from the person she loved felt more valuable than a whole life with someone else.
I looked down at my daughter.
Her tiny mouth had fallen open in sleep.
I would never accept that.
Not a second choice.
Not a substitute.
Not the woman someone returned to because the person they truly wanted was gone.
I loved Achille fiercely.
Possessively.
Perhaps more possessively than a i cared to admit.
He was my husband.
My home.
The father of my daughters. I would not share him. Not with a living woman. Not with the dead. Not with someone waiting quietly in the past for our marriage to weaken. That did not make me cruel.
At least, I wanted to believe it did not.
It made me honest.
Nathaniel had looked at my life and seen theft. He believed I sat inside another woman's future. But Achille had never belonged to Alexis. Love did not create ownership simply because it suffered long enough.
I looked toward Lysandra's cradle.
Then down at Elowen.
My daughters existed because Achille chose me. Because I chose him. Again and again, even when choosing him hurt. That was our fairy tale.
Not innocent.
Not clean.
Not free from blood.
Still ours.
I rested my head against the cradle.
Elowen's warmth spread through my gown.
My eyes began closing.
I should have returned to bed.
Should have called the maid.
Should have waited for Achille so we could speak about the body in my office and the woman buried at Elias's manor.
Instead, I remained on the floor.
Holding my daughter.
Guarding the quiet.
Protecting the life Nathaniel believed had been stolen.
Perhaps every fairy tale buried someone outside its pages.
A woman forgotten.
A man consumed by grief.
A life that might have existed if another choice had been made. I did not know whether that made the happiness less real.
I only knew I would protect mine.
Because I had waited too long to be chosen. Because I had survived too much to become temporary. Because I would never permit myself to become another woman's replacement.
It would be me.
Or no one.
Perhaps that was selfish. Perhaps love had made something ugly inside me too.
Elowen shifted closer.
I held her tighter.
Then, with my back against the cradle and my daughter breathing softly against my heart, I finally allowed my eyes to close.
The last thought that followed me into sleep was not of Nathaniel.
Not of Alexis.
Not even of the body cooling inside my office.
It was of Achille.
And the quiet, shameful certainty that I would do almost anything to protect the fairy tale we had built together.