Chapter 30 - The Tyrant Reads a Love Story
Achilles
She stares at me like I've forgotten to finish a sentence.
The fire in the hearth burns low, throwing unsteady orange light across the chamber walls.
Shadows move slowly over the carved bedposts, across the rugs, over the dark wood of the furniture.
The room smells of wine, wax, and the faint sharp trace of the herbs.
Outside the tall windows, the night has gone quiet and heavy, the castle settling into its darker, more honest self.
She is still sitting in the chair where I left her, her bandaged wrist cradled awkwardly against her chest, the bottle of wine empty on the table beside her.
Her eyes are glassy now, her cheeks flushed softly from the drink, and there is a looseness to her posture that was not there an hour ago.
Fear still lives in her body of course it does but the wine has dulled its edge enough that she is not holding herself together by force anymore.
She looks at me for a long moment and then asks, in a voice so cautious it nearly makes me laugh,
"...You're not going to kill me?"
The question hangs in the room between us.
I lift one eyebrow slowly.
"Do you want me to?"
Her reaction is immediate. She shakes her head so fast she nearly loses balance in the chair.
"No."
Good.
At least one instinct in her remains functional.
I stand, and the movement alone makes her tense. Her shoulders pull tight, her eyes flick toward my hands, then to the sword resting near the floor, then back to my face. She is trying very hard not to look like she is bracing for violence.
It would almost be insulting if it weren't so expected.
She pushes herself up too, perhaps because she thinks standing is required, perhaps because she has not yet realized how thoroughly the wine has claimed her.
She lasts less than a second.
Her feet betray her immediately. Her knees soften, her body pitches forward, and for one brief, ridiculous moment it appears my queen is about to fall face-first onto the rug and die not by court intrigue or noble betrayal, but by tripping over her own drunkenness.
I catch her before the floor does.
One hand closes around her upper arm. The other steadies her at the waist.
She blinks up at me in slow confusion.
"I'm fine," she says.
"No."
"I am."
"No."
She tries to straighten. Her legs protest. I tighten my hold before she folds in half again.
"You are drunk."
She frowns as if I have insulted her lineage.
"You told me to drink it."
"That does not make this less true."
She looks down at the floor.
"I think the floor moved."
"The floor remained exactly where it was. You, however, developed opinions about gravity."
That almost earns a laugh from her, but she is too busy trying to prove she can stand. She cannot.
I guide her toward the bed.
The mattress dips when she climbs onto it, all awkward knees and heavy skirts and stubborn dignity. She manages to settle against the pillows with some effort, still cradling the bandaged wrist as if she expects it to betray her again.
"Stay there," I tell her.
She tilts her head.
"Why?"
"So you do not break something else."
I go back to the desk.
There is work waiting for me. There is always work waiting for me. Reports from the western province. Supply counts. Letters that should have been answered three days ago. A king is never without paperwork, only briefly distracted from it by bloodshed or marriage.
I sit and pick up the nearest document. The quill scratches softly across parchment.
For several moments the room remains quiet.
Then she groans.
Loudly.
Not the sort of noise a queen should make in any respectable chamber.
I stop writing and look over my shoulder.
She is sprawled across the bed now, staring at the ceiling with all the suffering of a condemned saint.
"I'm bored."
Of course she is.
"Sleep."
"I'm not tired."
"You are horizontal and drunk."
"That is not the same thing."
"It is close enough."
She huffs.
The sound is absurdly indignant.
"Read."
Her head turns toward the nightstand. She grabs the nearest book with her good hand, opens it, stares at the page for perhaps five seconds, and then drops it onto the floor with a dull thud.
"The words keep running away."
I stare at her.
"The words," I repeat, "are running away."
"Yes."
"From the page."
"Yes."
I consider several responses and reject all but the simplest.
"You drank too much."
"You told me to."
This conversation is beginning to circle.
I pinch the bridge of my nose briefly. "Do you want me to read it to you?"
Her expression brightens instantly.
It is a dangerous thing, that brightness.
Too soft. Too sudden. Too honest.
"Yes."
I regret asking the moment she answers.
Still, I stand and retrieve the fallen book.
The cover alone tells me everything I need to know: some miserable noble idiot in an open shirt, standing in a storm, looking like he's just discovered feelings and found them deeply inconvenient.
A romance.
Of course it is a romance.
I intended to sit in the chair beside the bed. But when I turn back with the book in hand, I find she has shifted across the mattress, leaving an obvious space beside her.
I look at her.
She looks back with wine-soft sincerity.
"You moved."
"I made room."
"For me."
"Yes."
I should refuse.
Instead I sit.
The bed dips beneath my weight, and I lean back against the headboard, stretching one leg across the coverlet. She settles against the pillows beside me, far too pleased with this arrangement for my comfort.
I open the book and begin.
Within three pages I already hate everyone in it.
"This man is an idiot."
She turns her head toward me lazily. "What?"
"He has loved her for ten years."
"Yes."
"And in ten years he has apparently never considered using words."
"That's the point."
"The point is that he is incompetent."
She rolls her eyes at me, though the motion is slower now.
"Just keep reading."
I do.
The heroine enters a ballroom. The hero glowers from across the room. Someone's aunt disapproves. There are gloves involved.
By the next chapter I stop again.
"No."
"What now?"
"He kidnapped her."
She blinks.
"Yes."
"And now she is describing him as misunderstood."
"Yes."
"That is not romance."
"It can be."
"It is Stockholm syndrome."
She groans softly and waves her hand at me.
"You are ruining it."
"The author ruined it first."
I turn another page.
The heroine's husband has died.
Three paragraphs later she is describing the hero's mouth in devotional detail.
I lower the book and stare at it in disgust.
"This woman's husband died yesterday. How is She proceedng widowhood this swiftly ."
She makes an impatient sound.
"Keep reading."
"No. Explain this to me. Is grief in these books meant to last ten years or ten minutes? Because the lovers here are apparently operating on separate calendars. He has been brooding over a glove she dropped at seventeen, but she loses a husband and moves on before the chapter break."
She snorts unexpectedly.
The sound catches me off guard.
I continue before she can answer.
"And this man keeps standing in storms."
"He's dramatic."
"He's wet."
She laughs again, covering her mouth with her good hand.
"He is tortured."
"He is allergic to clear communication."
I flip another page.
"The heroine has now walked into the woods alone at midnight."
"That's normal."
"That is how people get murdered."
"It's romantic."
"It's idiotic."
She waves me off. "Keep reading. The good part is coming."
"That is what you said twenty pages ago."
"Because it is."
I keep reading, because apparently I have become this sort of husband now one who sits in bed with a drunken wife and critiques fictional nobility.
The absurdity is not lost on me.
The story worsens.
The hero misinterprets a letter.
The heroine cries in a chapel.
A secondary character dies with suspicious convenience.
I continue my complaints with increasing precision.
"This entire plot exists because two people refuse to ask one direct question."
"That's romance."
"That's administrative failure."
"He is brooding again."
"He has reasons."
"No one has this many reasons."
"She's in danger."
"She walked into danger carrying a candle and poor judgment."
"She loves him."
"She has known him for six weeks."
"People fall in love fast."
"People fall off horses fast. That does not make it wise."
By now she is openly smiling every time I stop to criticize something. Her fear has not vanished I can still see it flicker back whenever my voice drops too low or my expression goes still for too long but the wine has loosened her enough that comfort steals moments from caution.
And in those moments, she forgets.
She forgets I am supposed to be frightening.
She forgets she ought to weigh every word.
She laughs. Rolls her eyes. Tells me to continue because "the good part" is finally here this time, truly, she means it.
It is dangerous how much I like hearing her laugh.
Dangerous because I know exactly what it means.
It means that for a moment she has stopped being afraid.
And if I am being honest with myselfsomething I dislike doing I have begun arranging entire evenings around that possibility.
At first I told myself I only helped her escape those noble gatherings because it amused me. Which was true. Watching the court scramble when the queen vanished from the center of a heavily guarded garden was deeply satisfying.
But that was not the entire truth.
The entire truth is less flattering.
The entire truth is that the first time she smiled at me without fear, something shifted. Not in the room. In me.
Now I find myself doing things simply to see it again.
Scheduling one more reception than necessary.
Walking one more secret passage.
Lingering one moment too long when I know she is about to give me that look of desperate relief from behind a hedge.
I know what this is beginning to resemble.
I choose not to name it.
I keep reading.
Eventually her interruptions stop.
At first I do not notice. I am too occupied explaining why the hero's declaration of love would not, in fact, absolve him of kidnapping, emotional manipulation, and two separate duels.
Then I realize the room has gone quiet.
Too quiet.
I glance down.
At some point while I was speaking, she moved closer.
Very close.
Her head now rests lightly against my lap. Dark curls spill over me in soft disorder. Her breathing is slow and even.
She is asleep.
The book remains open in my hand.
I do not move for several seconds.
Then, without thinking, I let my fingers drift into her hair.
It is softer than I expected. Warmer too.
The touch is absent-minded at first, the kind of motion one makes while still half occupied with other thoughts. Then I realize what I am doing and almost stop.
Almost.
Instead my hand keeps moving.
Slowly.
Through the dark silk of her hair.
She makes a soft sound in her sleep and turns her face slightly toward me, closer rather than farther.
The fire has burned low. The candles have shortened. My wife is asleep on my lap, and somewhere near my elbow lies a terrible romance novel in which no one deserves happiness and yet everyone will certainly get it.
I should move her.
I should leave.
I should restore some sense to this arrangement before morning arrives and I have to remember what it is to be king instead of whatever this is.
I shift slightly.
Immediately she groans in protest and her hand closes loosely around the fabric of my coat.
"Don't."
The word is slurred with sleep.
Small.
Unthinking.
I go still.
For a moment I consider ignoring her and standing anyway.
Instead I sigh and lean back against the headboard again.
Very well.
Just for a little while.
I can be a pillow for one night.
My hand drifts back into her hair. Outside the windows the castle settles deeper into sleep.
And though I would sooner break my own jaw than say it aloud, there is one dangerous truth I can no longer quite deny:
I am beginning to look forward to the moments when she forgets to fear me.