Archive of Our Own

Galerius has maintained her home well, if not her kingdom. The castle of Gran Corrine stands as fine and proud as the day she saw it last. The greenery still tended, the stone swept, the marble gleaming—the first time she wakes, she assumes it had taken her some time to. Time enough for the Liberation to revive a long-dead domain.

“No,” says Josef. “It’s been only one day since we arrived, my lady.”

He pauses. She can feel his eyes on her as she stares out from the corridor into the gardens, over Gran Corrine by dead of night.

“Please rest.”

She sighs, defeated. As soon as she’d opened her eyes she’d been keen to stand, but just the walk from her chambers has made it clear that the residue of possession is still in her bones. Half her weight on Josef’s armored arm, she lets him lead her back to bed.

The next time she wakes, he’s there still. She tries to banish him from her bedside, just as she’d once banished him from her city. Send him to watch over her son when she cannot.

He shakes his head. “Your son specifically bade me watch over you, my lady.”

An undignified assignment for a Holy Knight, but she supposes she’d been the first to make Ser Josef a caretaker. “I see.”

“Shall I send for him?” he asks. “I’m to tell him the moment you’re ready to take visitors.”

Ilenia swallows.

Eleven years, it’s been. Eleven years since she’d failed to protect her people, since she’d facilitated their subjugation. Eleven years since she’d left too much weight upon her child’s fragile shoulders. She does not know how much of her life she can return to. Whether or not the world wants her back. She’s been turning the shock over in her dreams.

“There’s no need for that yet,” she says. “Not right now.” It’s midday, after all, immediately after a coup victorious, and Alain—gentle, little Alain—is king apparent. This is selflessness. “He’s got a great deal to be doing, I expect.”

“…He has, yes,” Josef replies. “But with all due respect, my lady, I believe having spoken with you would lift a great weight from his mind as he does.”

He knows better than she would, she supposes. He has known Alain as a man—has made him the man that he is. Her son is grown now, and she has been absent for the growing.

Josef pauses.

“I assure you that the control that was taken of you could not have been prevented by will alone,” he says. “You’ve done nothing wrong in Alain’s eyes, or in—anyone’s.”

Ser Josef could always read her mind better than anyone. A vital skill, when serving those to whom hiding their inner thoughts was taught from the cradle. She’d never been good at it—none of them had ever been. But the philosophy was still part of her despite it.

“I beg you, my lady, to feel no shame.”

Ilenia looks up into his weary face. When she saw Josef for the first time, she’d thought twice as many years had gone by.

“Please,” he says. “See your son.”

“Very well."

Josef rises, and he lowers his head in a sharp bow, and he leaves her alone.

The anticipation is such that Alain’s entrance would have startled her even if she were staring at the doorway. She can still see her son so clearly in her mind’s eye. Sweet and bright and seven years old, which had felt so much older then—she’d finally been starting to understand how quickly time could pass. And then she’d lost a decade in an instant.

The door opens and she jumps, looking up with a sharp intake of breath.

He’s a man. A grown man, handsome, armored. If the face in her mind weren’t a child’s, his expression would have made him look far less grown than he is. He breathes in deeply.

“Mother…”

In her mind he’d called her that just days ago. His child’s voice—always small, soft. Had she been there to see him grow, she’d have heard no difference in his man’s voice, but the depth of it now is disconcerting.

“…Alain,” she murmurs.

Does he still recognize her voice? Does he know her either?

This was never the mother she wanted to be. Her one resolution upon becoming a mother: she would know her child. She would be a part of his life, as neither of her own parents were able to be of hers and as neither of her grandparents chose to be. And…here she is now, afraid of him. She looks up into his dazed, troubled face as he steps closer, further into the room.

There’s an odd comfort in the way that Alain looks just as afraid of her.

She stares. Josef had given them privacy, but Ilenia can’t help wishing he’d stayed. As clear as the passage of time is in his face, the constancy is also clear. His is a face she can recognize. Alain’s…

Well—isn’t it?

Eighteen-year-old Alain is her father’s spitting image.

She’s never seen this expression on her father’s face. She’s never seen any expression on her father’s face at all—she knows his face through portraiture alone. And however lurid the whispers were, Gerard of Cornia’s face had always been preserved with kingly dispassion.

She meets the look of stunned wonderment in her son’s eyes, and she realizes for the first time that Alain has had no royal portraits. He’s had nothing but an insufficient childhood’s worth of memories. Had her face survived those years?

Ilenia has no doubt that Josef had told him stories. He’d have tried his hardest to preserve her, to preserve their country, to hold up her glimmering memory before him to fight for. She’s less sure that he’d have spoken of her as a woman, and even if he’d tried, she’s not sure Josef’s picture of her is any less glimmering. Alain knows her more as a legend now than as a mother.

(She knows the feeling of it. She knows that in his place she’d have sunk to her knees at her father’s bedside in the same way that Alain does now: as a visitor, a subject. A disciple.)

“I…” He opens his mouth, and then closes it, and then just stares at her for several seconds. “…Are you well?”

There is no other answer she knows how to give, so she supposes she is. “Yes.”

“Thank goodness,” he says. “Were I to have lost you once more, so soon after learning I never truly had…”

The tears have been gathering behind her eyes from the moment she saw him, but at this she needs to wrench her eyelids shut to keep them there. She’d been so focused on her son forgetting her that she hadn’t thought about how much more painful remembering would have been. She’d given him a decade of grief.

“Alain…” she says. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“No.” He reaches out for her hand, and he takes it in both his armored gloves. “No—I’ve seen enough of this now to know that apologies are unnecessary.”

There’s a great deal that has not yet been explained to her, but what had been happening to her for all these years had been the first thing. That first horror for her to build upon.

(“Ser Valmore the first among them, of course. And then yourself, Ser Hodrick and Ser Renault upon your defeat.”)

(“What of the others?”)

(She’d always known how many of her nobles muttered about her. She’d always known Alcina never cared for her, known the way in which Gailey had. She couldn’t say she was surprised to hear what had become of them. But it sickened her anyways.)

“None of us would be here without your efforts,” she says. She wraps her hand around his glove. “Thank you, Alain.”

“You’re the one who gave me that power,” replies Alain, the tears in his own voice just barely suppressed. “You protected me until I could use it. Thank you, Mother.”

She opens her eyes again. As she looks down into his face for a long time, he looks back up into hers, and he gives her a small, boyish, hopeful smile. It’s an expression she recognizes.

And then Alain drops her hand. She watches him remove one gauntlet, and twist the Ring of the Unicorn off of his finger. The stone glints in the lamplight.

Her smile slips. “What are you doing?”

“It belongs to you,” he says.

“Alain…”

He holds it out to her, between thumb and forefinger. “Josef and I carried it for you in your absence, but you remain the Queen of Cornia. The ring is yours by right.”

She’d worn that ring for years. She’d always known it as hers, by right. And she’d given it up, as she prepared to face her death. She still feels more like a dead woman revived than a living one—like everything she’d passed on before dying should remain passed on, even in the freak event of her prolonged life.

“No,” she says.

He sighs. “Mother…”

“I entrusted it to you,” she says, firmly. “I entrusted my kingdom to you, Alain, and you’ve proven yourself more than worthy of it.”

(Far worthier than I ever did.)

She smiles. “I’m so proud of you.”

He’s too heavily armored now to throw himself into her arms the way he might have done as a child. But Alain clasps her hand again, lurches closer and lowers his head to it. It has the feeling of a prayer.

She can feel the ring between her son’s bare palm and the back of her hand. She reaches out with the other to stroke his hair. To cradle his trembling shoulders.

(Hers by right. Had she been looking all her life for an excuse to give it up?)

On Alain’s arm this time, she takes a slow walk around the terrace.

Her body is still unfamiliar to her, but as she looks over at her son, he seems to be just as disoriented. This place is unfamiliar to him. It’s been so many years since he ran over these floors in his princely little boots, since he climbed up to sit on that railing. She has no idea where he’s been these last few days. Is he sleeping in his old chambers? Are they still furnished for a child? Has he even slept at all—

Ilenia stops. Her ghost is in the garden.

Her ghost doesn’t see her. As Ilenia looks down over the fountain, watching her sit on its edge, Alain stumbles back on her arm.

“Oh,” he says, looking over alongside her. “Virginia.”

“…Oh,” she repeats. “Virginia.”

He glances back. “Have you seen her yet?”

“No.”

He presses his lips together, a familiar pensive expression that looks different on a man’s face. “I suppose she doesn’t want to overwhelm you,” he says. “We all understand how disorienting this must be.”

“…Yes. I suppose.”

They keep looking down. Alain smiles.

“She told me she missed the garden,” he says. “Drakenhold is beautiful in its own way, of course, but there’s nothing like this there.”

Ilenia had asked after Virginia almost immediately. Josef had told her of the sacrifice of the Knights of the Rose. Of the hospitality of the Drakenhold royal family, even after tragedy had followed her. Josef had assured her that Virginia was well. She hopes he’s right.

She watches her adult niece shift her shields to dip her hand in the water.

At the time, it was a desperate decision. Betrothing Virginia to Prince Ludwig had always been on the table, of course: both nations were weary of war, and there were children to spare. But until the invasion, Ilenia had been reluctant to use her niece as a bargaining chip. She couldn’t place her in a marriage as a hostage. She wouldn’t shape Virginia’s image of her womanhood around her political use—she knew what it was to be raised that way.

It was worth it to save her life. Ilenia would make that call a thousand times. Worth it for her life—but what had that life been? How had Virginia fared, coming of age among enemies?

“Would you like to go down and speak with her?” asks Alain.

Upon waking Ilenia had felt the urge to throw herself out of bed, to rejoin the world with force. But the urge to remain in hiding has grown stronger and stronger since. The more she learns about what her choices had wrought, the more terrified she becomes to face them.

She’ll find the strength to face them soon. Not yet. Perhaps once she finds the strength to stand. “Best not to interrupt,” she says. “She’ll visit when she’s able.”

Alain nods.

They leave Virginia be in the garden.

Her father was dead before she knew him. Her mother was just as dead, but lingered. For years she remained in the shadows of her daughters' lives, despondent, subdued by shame. The death that took her came too soon—and yet—not soon enough. Her funeral came with relief as much as guilt.

Ilenia thinks before she falls asleep: she will not be that mother. The memory chills her more than ever now.

The third time she wakes, there’s no one at her bedside.

There is someone on the other side of the room, but it isn’t Josef. A young woman in a fur-lined gown is hanging up clothing in the wardrobe. As Ilenia sits up, she turns and smiles.

“Good evening, my lady.”

She’s been told that a handful of the Liberation’s healers have been looking in on her, though this is the first she’s seen. Ilenia looks up toward the dark window. “Good evening.”

The girl nods and returns her attention to the wardrobe.

Ilenia shifts her legs off the side of the bed. Some exhaustion remains, but her feet feel more solid beneath her now. She wanders across the floor. Pauses in the door to the adjoining washroom.

“Is there anything you need?” asks the girl from behind her.

Ilenia doesn’t lift her eyes from the tub.

“I think I’d like a bath.”

“Very well.”

The girl extends her hand. An able sorceress, it seems: the water begins to rise in the tub, steaming hot.

Ilenia slips out of her chemise as she waits. She’s been in the same one for days as she lay in bed, and it’s beginning to feel like a prison. She shakes out her hair over her bare shoulders and combs her fingers through, straightens out her back.

The mirror catches her attention. She steps closer, suddenly mesmerized. For the first time since waking she looks at herself closely. For several seconds she leans in to stare into her own eyes.

The girl looks up from the bath. “You haven’t aged a day, my lady.”

An odd thing to say, and not really what she’s concerned about, but kind. Ilenia’s not really sure what she’s concerned about anyway. “Thank you.”

She steps back, turns to look over her shoulder. Galerius has maintained her body well. The blood of the maiden tends toward youth, of course—so many of her ancestors' portraits on the palace walls had looked like schoolchildren—but her blood isn’t enough to negate any disrepair. At first this is a strange thought. After considering, however, it makes a little sense. She supposes it’s no surprise that so long without it would attune a man to the preciousness of flesh.

Ilenia stretches out her arms. So long without the control of her body is making her feel the same.

Her bath is full now. She lowers herself in, sighing at the warm heat. Even before her possession she hadn’t often bathed so luxuriously. In this perfect moment she has no idea why.

“Are you getting used to things, my lady?”

Ilenia sinks deeper into the water, folding her knees until it comes up past her chin. “Slowly, but I believe so.”

The girl lays a towel for her beside the bath and picks up her discarded chemise.

“Have you seen Alain yet?” she asks.

Ilenia nods.

“That’s good. I know he’s been preoccupied with your welfare.”

She looks up. “You were with him on his march?”

“Yes, ever since he plucked me out of the southern swamps. The people of the area owe him a great debt.”

“I see.”

She has to admit she’s interested in the perspective of strangers. Her own image of her grown son is still so colored by the child she’d known. Who would he be to someone who’d never known that child?

“He’s become a fine commander,” says the girl, and she gives a mischievous little smile. “And something of a heartbreaker, if you don’t mind me saying so.”

Ilenia cringes. “Dear lord, really?”

“Though not with any intention, of course. He’s only earnest and handsome.” She chuckles. “He reminds me a great deal of his father.”

As a child, Ilenia had had this thought about Alain. Now, however, having been through what he has… She hadn’t been sure if the gentleness had left him. That blithe, beautiful manner of a man without the burdens of monarchy on his back. Has Alain truly remained as he was?

The girl smiles more earnestly. “I do wish Robert could see him now.”

“As do I,” Ilenia murmurs, thoughtful. For those few weeks when his death had become inevitable, she’d grieved for the future he would never see as much as she’d grieved for her husband. Grief on top of grief before he was even gone. She’d always hated herself for allowing the little time he had left to become so infected by it.

Abruptly, she sits straight up in the bath. Robert has only been dead a scarce few years to her, but it would have been nearly half this girl’s life. How could she have known them so closely?

“Have we met?”

The girl looks back to her and grins. “You wouldn’t forget old Yahna. Would you, Lennie?”

Ilenia gapes. Yahna—the elderly court sorceress who’d been at the palace her entire life. The young princesses had grown up with her, been very fond of her. Robert had been her student before he was Cornia’s prince consort.

The magick is certainly possible. Alcina, for instance, had been far older than her disciple, and Ilenia had never known her to age at all. But it’s still disorienting. While everyone she knows had gained eleven years in her absence, Yahna had lost fifty. “You look…”

“My girls are very talented.” Amused, Yahna turns to show off. “It was a good disguise.”

“I imagine so.”

“Though—" She smiles. “Hardly as good as your own.”

This is a hell of a way to put it. It’s so startling to hear it put this way that Ilenia knows for certain that there can’t be anyone else before her. Yahna was always an audacious sort of woman. Ilenia had respected that about her—admired it. So few of the older women she knew as a child had been that way.

Yahna bends closer and reaches out, cradling Ilenia’s head in one hand. “I’m glad you’re alive, my lady,” she says, voice deep and serious.

Ilenia bows her head in gratitude.

And then she looks up again, into Yahna’s youthful face. It’s truly remarkable. The more she looks, the more she can see the old woman she once knew. The landmarks of her features, distorted.  She’s studied the others’ faces this same way, if in reverse.

“You’ve been having a lot of fun with this trick, haven’t you?” she asks with a soft snort.

“Some.” Yahna winks. “Though I find it’s much more fun with the boys, of course.”

Ilenia chuckles. She can’t help but imagine poor Josef’s face.

Yahna gives her cheek a pat and pulls away. “Is there anything else you need?”

“No, thank you. I think I’ve recovered enough to wash without assistance.”

“Very good,” she replies. “I’ll look forward to seeing you up and about soon.” She nods toward the bathtub. “Until then, enjoy your rest.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

With a last little laugh, Yahna leaves her. Ilenia watches the door after her for a couple seconds.

She sinks back into the bath and closes her eyes, curled up there until it cools, and then she drags herself back beneath her warm covers.

When she wakes again near dawn, she’s alone. Light is just beginning to creep under the drapes. Ilenia rises and sweeps them open, and she watches the sun rise in the window for as long as it takes to clear the distant hills.

She thinks she ought to rejoin the living.

They’ve cleaned her clothing while she slept: Galerius certainly hadn’t worn it, and seemed to have no need to sell it either. Her cosmetics, years-unused, have been dutifully replaced. Her crown, newly polished, shines on its stand upon the dressing table. Her mantle, brushed until gleaming and draped over the chair.

And as Ilenia looks over them, the thought of making herself presentable begins to seem overwhelming. The layers of clothing and combing and plaiting and painting that she’d put on nearly every day of her life feel so heavy now that she’s gone a little while without them. The feeling reminds her of being ill as a child: those few feverish days of freedom from responsibility.

She’ll recover soon. Not yet.

Today she leaves it all but the mantle, which she wraps around her before she pokes her head out into the corridor. There’s no one there. For a little while she wanders along the outer hall. It takes her until the landing to see anyone else: a small knot of knights with their heads together converse quietly at the top of the staircase.

“Ser Josef?”

“My lady!” Josef starts, wheeling around. “I apologize—I didn’t think you’d be awake so early.”

Behind him one knight drops to his armored knee, then the other. After a moment Josef follows suit.

Ilenia looks down at them. They’re a sight, her remaining men: Hodrick’s face lined, Renault’s hair graying, Josef’s both and worse than either. All three of them look up at her like a miracle. Like a glowing saint in an altar window.

She presses her lips together. In her youth, this sort of adoration had grated on her—that unearned, subservient devotion. It always made her feel inhuman. Less like a living woman, and more like a cause made flesh. But... Now she’s risen from the dead. She is a miracle, for all intents and purposes. She won’t begrudge them a moment of worship.

“There was an urgent matter to discuss,” says Josef. “I’ll return to your quarters when I’ve finished advising.”

Ilenia shakes her head. “I’m sure you’re very busy, Ser Josef. There’s a new regime beginning, after all. You’re free to focus your attention elsewhere.”

Josef’s jaw tightens. “It was Alain’s order, my lady.”

She watches him for a second, curious. The moment he’d taken his eyes off of her, all those years ago, the worst had come to pass. Even though they’d both known before he left at all how likely it was… Has he been feeling, all this time, as if he could have done something to prevent it? Has he been feeling, since she was returned to him, as if he’d been given a second chance to never let her out of his sight?

“Then perhaps Alain ought to use his most experienced knights for more crucial tasks,” she replies. “There’s no need to watch over me so closely. I feel as if I’m seventeen years old and I’ve been too disagreeable.”

“You’ve never once been disagreeable, my lady,” he replies at once.

Amused, she raises her eyebrows. “And you’ve never once been dishonest?”

Josef lifts his chin, deadpan facetious. “I have not.”

She laughs. For the first time in years, she laughs. Her muscles aren’t used to it. He doesn’t laugh with her, but he closes his eyes with an exasperated affection that she recognizes well. It’s close enough.

Renault remains as serious as he’s always been. Behind Josef and his shield, however, Hodrick cracks a smile. Ilenia fondly meets his eye.

“It’s such a pleasure to see you all,” she says, deeply sincere. “I’m overjoyed that you’ve returned to Gran Corrine in good health.”

Hodrick grins in earnest. “It’s a privilege, my lady.”

“A privilege of which we are certainly undeserving." Renault lowers his head. “I never thought I should see a miracle such as this.”

She’s so overwhelmed with affection that she won’t even tell him to lighten up. He’d never liked it when she did. “I’m so grateful for what the Liberation has done,” she says instead. “For restoring our country. Our city.”

For restoring our crown. They bow anew.

“Thank you, Josef,” she says.

Ever modest, Josef shakes his head. "It’s my men who deserve your praise. They gave a decade of their lives for Cornia.”

As you gave your own, she wants to say. Ser Josef was never meant to linger in the back line, hiding while others fought. But she knows he’d never consider what he’d done a sacrifice.

“And you returned them,” she says.

He looks back up to her. “Your son returned them.”

Alain returns to her quarters that morning, dressed down. He sits on her bed and they share breakfast.

“We did this when I was young, didn’t we?” he asks between bites of egg and toast.

She nods. Often. They’d done it even before he was born, she and Robert and Virginia. As much as she could, Ilenia had wanted the little princess and prince to feel they had a family. Growing up herself, she and her sister had nothing but colleagues.

“I think I’d like to continue,” he says.

She smiles. “I always thought you’d grow out of this sort of thing by now.”

“I never thought I would have the chance again,” he replies. “I find I’m reluctant to give it up.”

I never thought I would have the chance again. She’s been hearing that often, lately. She’s been thinking it herself often, lately. Presumed death had made them all much more appreciative of the past. Protective of it.

“Are you sure you have the time?” she asks. “Surely you’re busy.”

“I have to eat sometime,” says Alain, shrugging. “It may as well be here.”

As she takes a bite of sausage, she wonders where he’d be eating otherwise. The entire Liberation is still camped out in Gran Corrine, to her understanding, and despite their grand surroundings they’ve got little more than war rations.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen this many guests in the palace,” she says. “Does everyone have a place to stay? They’re all being taken care of?” There are only so many rooms befitting heads of state, and, for that matter, far too little staff to host them even if there were. Her grandmother is surely rolling in her grave as kings and princes sleep in common quarters above her.

“We’ve all spent a long time together with the Liberation,” says Alain. “Any room is an improvement from a war tent. I don’t think anyone minds.”

They’d spent a full year on campaign, as Josef tells it. To picture her son living that way for so long makes her heart ache. “Ah,” she says. “Of course.”

“It won’t be for much longer, anyways. I expect most of them will return home after the coronation.”

The plans are in motion. The formalities in process, the regalia ready. Her son will be king of Cornia in a matter of days.

(She’d been around his age when she took the throne herself. He doubtlessly has much more political experience than she had then, and much more goodwill. But…from her perspective now… It’s a heavy task for one so young.)

He twists the ring on his finger.

“I apologize for trying to return this,” he says.

“You have nothing to apologize for,” she replies, firm. “I understand why you would believe you should.”

He grimaces awkwardly. “Frankly I don’t know if I could return it to you, after the rite,” he says. “I was warned very sternly that the covenant, once made, must not be broken.”

“Covenant?” Ilenia’s mouth drops open. “…You don’t mean you’ve gone to see the Turenós?”

It had been a romantic tale of her childhood. The twin rings, bound by love and trust, separated by distance. Robert had spoken of it teasingly on occasion. Don’t you think I’d make a fine maiden, Lennie?

“Yes,” says Alain. “We traveled to Elheim to collect the Ring of the Maiden. Without it, I don’t believe we’d have been able to retake Cornia.”

Her experience with the leadership of Elheim had been under very different circumstances, but Ilenia had always known the elves to be distrustful at the very least. “Was it difficult to convince them?”

“Lady Eltolinde was enslaved much the way that you were.” Alain opens his mouth as if to say more, but he simply closes it again and lowers his head. “We only needed to restore her. She could see the danger that Zenoira posed, and the necessity to empower our Liberation.”

“…I’m grateful to her,” says Ilenia. “I know the Ring of the Maiden is no less important to her people than that ring is to us.”

Alain thumbs the ring, twisting the stone around his finger.

“Did you ever learn much about it?” he asks.

“About what?”

“The power that the Ring of the Unicorn held.” He shrugs awkwardly. “Josef never believed it was anything more than an heirloom, but I wasn’t sure whether, in more normal circumstances, anything might have been passed down through our family line.”

Ilenia shakes her head. “Perhaps something was, long ago, but such things often fade with time. It was little more than an heirloom to me as well.”

“I see.”

Alain lifts his hand to his chin, thoughtful.

“I still understand so little about this ring,” he admits. “I’ve traveled to all of the sanctuaries, spoken with all of the sages…and yet everything I’ve done with it has felt so out of my own control.” He sighs. “I couldn’t have achieved anything without it. It feels disingenuous to claim its power to be my own.”

Silent and sorrowful, Ilenia rests a hand on his knee. It’s all she can do. He closes his eyes at the feel of it.

“Mother…” he asks after a moment. “That night, did you ever consider keeping the ring?”

The memory is still fresh. “No,” she says. “I didn’t.”

Alain takes a deep breath. “If you were victorious… There would have been no need. Had you…?” He looks up at her, unwilling to ask. Had you chosen to die?

“I hadn’t resigned myself to death,” she says. “But I knew it was a possibility. Had I survived, I’d have been able to reclaim the ring.” She smiles a little. “As well as you.”

“I suppose.”

He’s silent for several moments before he speaks again.

“I do wonder, if you’d kept the ring with you as you faced Valmore…whether it could have saved you.”

The thought takes her aback. Ilenia glances at the ring on her son’s hand. “You think it possible?”

“I was able to dispel the possession magick before I ever knew what it was,” he says. “Hodrick was the first that I met, and I barely understood what had come over him. All I did was extend my hand.” He shakes his head. “Galerius himself was much more difficult to subdue, but perhaps, so long ago, the magick may have been weaker…”

He trails off, and the both of them sit back, lost in thought.

Would it have even mattered, if she were saved? What could she have done? She can’t help but doubt she would have the strength to contain Zenoira’s ambitions, even had she contained Galerius. Her country had already been damaged beyond repair, her nobles mutinous, her knights decimated. The nations surrounding had no intention of aid—more likely they would have welcomed Cornia’s fall. There had been no plan the night that Galerius marched on Gran Corrine other than to survive. She had never needed to cross the next bridge. She had never come to it.

Alain laughs weakly, helplessly.

“I apologize,” he says. “I know I shouldn’t dwell on the past this way, but… It’s difficult, isn’t it? Not to doubt one’s decisions, when their impacts are so large?”

“…I know,” says Ilenia, slowly. “I know.”

Sweet Holy Mother, does she know.

That afternoon, Ilenia finally dresses. One of the young clerics who’s been overseeing her recovery helps her lace her corset and her gown. Her hair is brushed and braided, her crown placed carefully atop. Her mantle secured properly over her shoulders.

Josef, bless his heart, has heeded her. There’s no knight outside as she leaves her chambers.

She wanders the upper terrace, nodding to anyone she passes. One strange girl, wandering as well, clearly has no idea who she is. One young knight, whose eyes widen twice their size, clearly recognizes her by sight. Both make her smile. She knows that a great many people from all walks of life are here, freedom fighters Alain had picked up anywhere he could find them, but she hasn’t yet had the chance to walk among them.

She looks over the railing. Once more, her ghost lingers in the garden.

Virginia isn’t alone this time. She’s speaking with someone Ilenia doesn’t recognize, words she cannot hear. Ilenia watches. It seems to be a somber conversation, but a familiar one. Virginia seems more subdued than she’d known her, but Ilenia supposes she’s a grown woman now. She’d been no less boisterous herself, at that age. She certainly no longer is.

In the recent past, her sister’s only child had been bright and clever. An energetic young girl, tomboyish, her hair cropped fluffy around her cheeks. Ilenia had always known Virginia took after her, but the sight of her grown up is something she hadn’t been prepared for.

(It’s comedic, almost: Alain appears to her in her father’s image—and Virginia appears in her own.)

Within a few minutes—or perhaps a few hours, or a few days—the other girl leaves. Virginia remains. For a little while longer, Ilenia continues to watch.

And then, today, she calls down into the garden.

“Virginia.”

Her ghost looks up at her. Ilenia raises a hand, a calm wave.

Virginia stares for a long second, and then she bows.

Ilenia takes the steps quickly, dashes down into her beloved palace garden for the first time since her death. It occurs to her that she hasn’t moved so fast yet. She hadn’t thought to worry, and she still doesn’t—it’s a curiosity, not a concern.

She meets Virginia’s eyes as she reaches the foot of the stone stairs. They look at each other for a long, long time before they can speak.

“Aunt Ilenia,” says Virginia, with a small, hard smile. “I’m glad to see you awake.”

Ilenia gives her a similar smile, stares back into her face. Unlike Alain, Virginia had been old enough at the time that so much of what she can remember from a week ago hasn’t changed. But that makes the smaller changes even sharper, somehow. Harder to define, and therefore, more unsettling.

She holds out a hand. Virginia takes it, squeezes.

“I’m glad to see you alive,” says Ilenia.

Virginia laughs wetly. “That too.”

Clasping her hands, Ilenia sighs. “Yes, I… I imagine it was something of a shock.”

“To put it mildly.”

Virginia’s lips twist.

“I visited in your sleep,” she admits.

“Did you?”

“More than once.” She speaks with a tone that might have accompanied a lowered gaze, but she can’t keep from staring. “I know I should have returned when you awoke, but… Cowardice overtook me.”

Ilenia cannot blame her. She had never known Virginia to be so much as acquainted with the word, but she’d never considered herself a coward either.

(Now… The fall of Cornia had changed everything. Each day Ilenia is learning more about the lives that have been shaped around her death, the movement that’s been built around it. On an institutional and personal scale, she’d inspired so much with her absence.)

(It tinges her presence with guilt.)

“I’m sorry,” says Virginia, still staring. She’s not sorry enough to look away. “It’s been so long since I saw your face…” She pauses. “I really do look a great deal like you, don’t I?”

“…I suppose so.”

“There are no paintings of you in Drakenhold, of course. In time I began to forget.” She gives a tight, ironic smile. “I suppose I always pictured you with my own face.”

She resembles her mother much more, actually. If Virginia were softer she’d be Princess Annelle’s double, but she’d grown up with a sterner model to look toward. Every day of her childhood Ilenia used to wonder what kind of girl Virginia would have been if her parents had lived to raise her.

“I hear it from everyone,” Virginia says.

Ilenia can’t help but cringe. “Do you really?”

“Ser Josef even called me by your name once.”

Her heart skips a beat. Oh, that bastard. She’ll kill him.

“Don’t be angry with him.” Virginia laughs. "At the time it was painful, yes, but in an odd way…it was validating.”

Ilenia knits her brow.

“I’d spent so many years wishing I could live up to your strength. Your poise. It felt good to learn how well I’d achieved it.”

Anguished, she looks away. This is too much.

(If she’d been victorious, Virginia could have become her own woman. If she’d been slain, Virginia could have shouldered her legacy with honor. But this… She swallows, throat burning. How could she have done this to her?)

Virginia glances up toward her, a small smile twitching at the corners of her lips. “But now, I suppose it’s just amusing.”

Ilenia’s voice is still hoarse. “Amusing?”

“He’s very fond of you, you know.”

Ah. She snorts softly. “That’s his profession.”

“In that case, he couldn’t have chosen a more fitting one.”

“A model, then, to keep in mind as you appoint your own knights,” she replies. “I imagine you have no guard yet, in Cornia.”

She’d meant it half-teasingly, just meeting her niece’s amusement—but Virginia’s face shifts more serious. She shakes her head.

“I’m sorry, Aunt Ilenia. After the coronation, I’m going to return to Drakenhold.”

Ilenia blinks. It’s the last thing she’d have expected Virginia to say. “You know there’s no longer a need,” she says, soothingly. “You’re welcome here.”

“I know,” says Virginia. “And I’m grateful to be here now. I used to dream about returning home.” She glances around at the trees, smiling. “But now that Cornia is restored, that my family is well and I can visit whenever I like… I find I don’t yearn so fiercely.”

For a long moment, Ilenia looks back at her.

“…You’re happy there?” she asks. It’s all that matters.

“I am,” Virginia replies. “I’ve lived there for nearly as much of my life as I lived here, and frankly it feels far longer. I have good friends, and a position in which I feel I can do good.”

She smiles wryly.

“And—forgive me, but they like me rather more than they like you. I believe that could only help the both of us.”

Ilenia is certain that’s true. During her own reign, she hadn’t been given the privilege of a common enemy. She can’t blame the people of Drakenhold for distrusting her when she’d done nothing but antagonize them. The border conflict was an endless cycle of self-defense: there was no giving in when either side knew what would happen if they were the first to show willingness to. She had inherited that war. She’d expected to pass it on.

“It was indescribably valuable to me,” says Virginia. “To experience such a conflict from both sides. To learn how each considers their own position. I know now that none of us are cruel—all we hope for are peace and prosperity, and all of us are willing to do what we think will achieve it.”

She laughs lightly, bitterly.

“King Hugo was hoping to annex Cornia upon your defeat. Did you know?”

Ilenia had had an idea. It hadn’t been a personal distrust. She had grown up aware that the land on which her country lay was the jewel of Fevrith, that every nation surrounding was desperate enough to take any chance they could get to seize it. She’d always known never to show weakness. Never to invite the hounds snapping at her heels.

Thoughtfully, Ilenia bites her tongue.

Isn’t that what she would have done, if Drakenhold had fallen first? Wouldn’t it have been the cleanest solution? Wouldn’t she have felt less conflicted taking control of a nation weakened by a hand other than hers? Wouldn’t uniting against a common foe beneath one banner have been more prudent than scattered, unincorporated rebellion? Knowing what she knows now, she knows it wouldn’t have helped. But…at the time… It would have been so easy to justify.

(Hugo hadn’t been violated the way that she was, hadn’t been given the opportunity that she had. He’d been killed outright. She wonders why.)

(…Had Galerius killed him with her own hand?)

(Until now, she had thought about her possession in terms of broad horror. Legislative evil, distant tyranny. But—had her body ridden to battle? Slain friends? Slain enemies?)

(She swallows bile in her throat.)

“If we had to endure it, I pray that this ordeal has at least strengthened our bonds as a continent,” she says. “I hope we no longer feel the urge to turn on each other so easily.”

“I’m sure we won’t,” says Virginia. “I believe we’ve all had enough of warfare. I can’t wait to argue about trade agreements instead.”

Proud of her, heartwrenchingly proud, Ilenia forces herself to smile.

Virginia grins in return. “However, it’s a shame you’ll be stepping down from court affairs. I’d have liked to negotiate with you.”

“…Is that so?”

“Alain is far kinder. I’m afraid it won’t be quite as fun.”

Ilenia can see them now, as they’d been. She tries to picture how they are. She supposes she’ll see.

“I don’t know,” she replies. “I remember the way you used to play, as children. As I recall, he was well on his way to giving as good as he got.”

“Hm.” Cheerfully, Virginia laughs. “Perhaps I bring that out in him.”

Perhaps she does. Siblings do.

Ilenia’s life begins to grow beyond her bedroom, then her terrace, then her castle wing. Josef translates. The shifts, vast and subtle. The presences, the absences.

The young, scattered remains of the Cornian nobility. The Knights of the Rose (the surviving squires, now grown). The Knights of the Ashen Blue (similar). Lady Zechshelm, now gruffly bearing her mother’s title; King Hugo’s second son whose name escapes her, now bearing his father’s. The Lion King of Bastorias, whom she does not recognize. The Turenós Eltolinde, who looks just the same. Angels, bestrals, bandits, teenagers.

She prefers the strangers. They don’t disorient her.

Alain is most often in the company of strangers. Though he speaks with everyone, he seems to have a core group of youths around him, none of whom she knows. From a distance away, as they watch them chatter, Josef nods toward the girl in red.

“I believe you may know of Scarlett, my lady. The heir to the Albionese Pontificate.”

“Arant’s daughter?”

“Yes. Raised in hiding on Palevia, not unlike Alain.” He inclines his head toward the girl in blue. “Chloe is the eldest daughter of Ser Edmund, whom I’ve trained at his request. She lived with us for years before the Liberation began their march.”

“And the boy?”

“A local boy from the island, my lady. I’ve trained him alongside Alain for many years. They’re close friends.”

Ilenia smiles. “I see.”

It heartens her to hear that Alain had had the chance to make friends his own age. Children were always rare, at the palace. The staff only had them when they were lucky enough to meet and marry in service. Her own closest friend as a young child was her sister. Before the fall, Alain had had only Virginia.

Josef pauses.

“Lex bears the Ring of the Maiden.”

“Really?”

Ilenia watches the little group talk across the courtyard. She’s been ravenously curious who had been appointed as Alain’s maiden. Frankly, she’d expected him to tell her. But it hadn’t yet come up, and she hadn’t pressed it.

To hear that he’d chosen this boy surprises her, at first. The implications, as she’d always heard them, were madly romantic. But—as a teenager, romance is so mercurial a thing, isn’t it? As quickly as she’d fallen for Robert, it had taken her time to see a future with him. Alain had known how dire the consequences would be if he were to choose wrong. Who would she have chosen, she wonders, at his age? Annie? Perhaps Josef, even? An enduring, trusting friendship over a new and tentative romance would certainly seem wiser.

It had certainly worked.

“I suppose I owe him a debt,” she says.

Josef chuckles. “I’d like to see the look on his face, were you to tell him so.”

The redheaded boy says something funny on the other side of the courtyard, and all of them collapse into laughter. Ilenia can hear her son’s laugh from here. She hasn’t heard it yet so deep and hearty.

When she thinks of Alain’s childhood she thinks mainly of the childhood she’d seen, and after that of little more than a void he’d emerged from fully grown. Will she ever be able to understand who he’d become, in those years that are lost to her? There’s a lifetime in them. She doesn’t know where to begin asking.

That evening she attends her first meal. Everyone eats together in the grandest dining hall: the feeling of a feast with the food of a war camp.

Ilenia had needed to gather nerve for this more than strength. Close friends and retainers are one thing, or the occasional chance meeting on the stairs, but she hasn’t presented herself to the public before now. She’s not sure what the others have heard about her, these last days since her restoration. She’s not sure what they’ve heard about her since her disappearance.

As a young queen, there had been a public image of her for her entire life. Often complimentary, sometimes unfair. She was a household name. She existed in other’s lives in a way that made them feel that they existed in hers, that they had ownership of her name and visage and voice. She’d grown used to it. She had to.

The public does not know what was beneath Galerius’s armor. They never will. If asked, she was held captive. If asked further, she will not elaborate.

She thinks it unlikely that anyone will ask. Few people had ever been concerned with her personal account of anything. More likely they’ll whisper among themselves. Spread rumors. Rumors aren’t nothing—if anyone knows that, she does. But when they revolve around a strange and arcane magick of which few are familiar, they’re easy to dismiss as fantasy.

It doesn’t matter. She’s fascinating; she knows that.

She eats beside her son at the royal table, from which she has a view of everyone. The Liberation is just as fascinating to her. Some of them look at her as well, curious. She catches a couple averting their gaze. One unfamiliar man actually meets her eyes for several long, confounding seconds. Long enough to unsettle her.

Alain is seated on her left side, but, instinctively, she murmurs to her right. “Who is that?”

“His name is Bruno, my lady,” says Hodrick, his voice a low rumble in her ear. “A young mercenary.” He pauses, but he knows what she’s asking. “He was once taken with Baltro’s possession magick, just as you or I.”

This was a wider affliction than royal halls, she knew that to begin with, but her stomach flips to hear it.

“How many were there?” she asks. “Do you know?”

He sweeps narrowed eyes over the hall, counting.

“…I’m not certain,” he says. “At least a half dozen, aside from Renault and I. And I think it’s likely there were still others whose paths we did not cross.” He pauses. “Perhaps some who did not survive to be freed.”

He's thought about this a great deal. She can hear it in his voice.

She had heard that Renault took his liberation poorly, to the point of a nervous breakdown. She’s not surprised. Despite his cold affect, he’d always been the more hysterical of the two. Meanwhile—Hodrick tended to ruminate beneath a calm veneer, to keep his worries there. A manner not unlike his skill with the greatshield.

He closes his eyes.

“It’s been helpful to see how many of us there were,” he says. “To share our experience. We all took things very differently, of course, but magick such as this is very difficult to explain to anyone else.”

Theoretically, it should be simple. It’s the theoretical simplicity that makes this difficult to grasp, when others can only think of it in theory.

Everyone around them has changed so greatly. Gradually, to them, with each year upon year—and she’s woken to an instant seismic shift. That discrepancy itself is what’s changed them. They’re men and women out of time, shaped by the experience of being out of time.

The logic is easy to grasp, but not the feeling. She’s been so remorsefully grateful not to have been the only one.

She was woken after years and years, lost to her as an instant. That’s how she describes it, and it’s true. But there are some times, often dreaming, when she thinks she recalls the feeling of suppression in her own body. The vague, muddy stress of someone else in control. She has no idea how real that sense is. It could be nightmare alone, but it could be memory.

She wants to ask.

It thrills her that she can.

Josef ushers Ilenia to her chambers on his arm. It’s no Galerius-induced frailty that impairs her tonight. She’s had too much to drink. Perhaps it’s been years since she has.

“What an odd evening,” she says. “Were this the sort of feast I were used to, I might have expected Ser Josef to be in a far worse state than I.”

Josef carefully sits her down on her bed. “I’ve been trying to drink with more moderation than I did in my youth, my lady.”

“Oh, goodness,” she teases. “Have you grown too old and feeble to stomach it?”

He shakes his head. “It’s been some years, since the island. In time I worried I set a poor example for Alain.”

Dear, dear Josef. The man had always put so much thought into his faults. She should have known parenting would make a wreck of him. "Don’t be silly,” she says. “He’s a sensible boy.”

“He’s a melancholy boy,” Josef replies. “And much moreso as a child. At the time, it was too much of a risk.”

There’s a thick silence. She furrows her brow, as concerned as she is curious. He looks away.

“I once found him in the cellar, so drunk he couldn’t stand. He was ten.”

“…Oh, Josef…” Ilenia sighs. “Children do these things as they’re finding their way around the world. They test their limits. They’re hardier than we give them credit for.”

“Even so, I thought it best I not show him that path.” He clenches his jaw. “I was drinking a great deal myself then, as if it might soothe my pain. No one could blame a boy of that age for thinking it might soothe his own.”

She’d been so curious how they’d fared on the island. Alain had so many happy memories—so many that often she wonders if he now feels more at home out there than the palace. He’d grown, he’d made friends. The weight upon him was there from the beginning, of course, but surely he’d had a happy childhood despite it?

Would she have been happier to imagine it that way?

“…I’m sorry,” she says softly. “I never dreamed looking after him would be such trouble.”

“The trouble was beyond both of our control,” says Josef. “No child could be expected to bear a loss of that magnitude. His mother, his country, everything he had ever known…”

Ilenia reaches for his hand. It hangs awkwardly between them from where he stands, but she holds it anyways.

“No man could be expected to either,” she says.

For a second he just looks at her, and then he takes a step closer. Her mattress dips as he sits beside her, gripping her hand in his armored glove.

They just sit there for a while. She leans against his hard shoulder.

“Alain was a profoundly sad child,” he says, eventually. “I did what I could, but a profoundly sad old man was hardly what he needed then. And so I made an effort to cure my own dysfunction, so that I might provide a better example for him to look toward.”

“You’ve succeeded,” Ilenia says. “Alain thinks the world of you. I know you’re irreplaceable at his side.”

Just as irreplaceable as you were at my own.

Josef sighs, looking down at their hands.

“He asked my counsel,” he admits. “When choosing his partner for the rite.”

She’s not surprised. This was a decision with heavy, heavy consequences. Josef is the foremost authority Alain has ever known, and Ilenia knows well the urge to defer. The desperation to be led.

Josef snorts softly. “He tried to give the ring to me, and I declined.”

“Why on earth would you?” she asks at once, perplexed.

She knows without thinking who she’d have chosen, if it were her. Who she did choose. In whose hands she’d put everything that mattered. He’d taken it from her as an honor. Why not from Alain?

“Surely you didn’t consider your bond insufficient?”

“…Not insufficient,” he says. “Inappropriate, perhaps. The Ring of the Maiden is meant for a life partner, with whom one stands on equal ground. One’s proverbial other half. I care for Alain, and I have no doubt he cares for me, but the fact remains that I am not his equal. A...” He pauses. “A guardian never can be.”

Ilenia snorts. It's nonsense. Ser Josef’s brand of cowardice has always been articulate and well-reasoned. He could justify himself out of any praise.

He lifts his chin, averting his eyes. “A great deal depended upon this covenant. Everything we’d been working towards. And I felt, in the circumstances… That the ring should go to someone more fitting.”

“That boy?”

“That boy brought him back to life far longer ago than this.”

She looks up at him. Josef closes his eyes, reminiscent.

“I allowed Lex to train at first only to inspire Alain,” he says. “He was struggling, then. Motivated, but…distantly. It was all so tied to his grief, in a way that made it difficult for him to focus.” He shrugs a little. “And when I learned combat myself, of course, it was among other boys. The competition and camaraderie helped us improve as much as the instruction. I thought a partner his own age might be good for him. On the island, there was only one.”

“I see.”

“They became friends. And in time, with a light in his life besides the flame of war, Alain began to brighten again. I no longer needed to fear for him as I had.”

Ilenia squeezes his hand.

“It’s because of his friends that Alain is the man you know now. I don’t believe I could have done that for him alone.” Josef shakes his head. “I don’t know whether I could have done what they did, with the rings. It’s possible. But I was certain that they could, and that was all that mattered.”

All that mattered. “Ah,” she says. “Your country before all, is that right?” Before self, before love, before honor. Typical Josef, and he knows it.

“Yes,” he says, gravely. “My country, and my queen.”

It takes her a moment.

“…Your queen?”

Josef sighs.

“I must admit I suspected,” he mutters. “From the moment we returned Hodrick to his own mind, I found myself hoping that you lay at the end of it all.”

“Really?”

“I spoke to him, and later to Renault, and neither of them could recall witnessing your fate. I couldn’t help but…”

(And I felt, in the circumstances…)

(…He hadn’t trusted himself with her life.)

He shakes his head.

“They hid it from me for years,” he says. “Travis, and Ser Clive. They were on the ground during the occupation; they knew that my most loyal men had switched allegiance. They were afraid that if I were to discover, it would enrage me enough to endanger the Liberation.”

“Would it have?”

“At the time… If I’d known enough to hope, it might have.” He snorts. “That knowledge tempered me throughout the campaign. I couldn’t storm the castle gates unprepared, no matter how desperately I wanted to know what lay within them. I couldn’t prove my men right.”

Ilenia looks down, nestling her cheek against his pauldron.

“Did Alain ever hope?” she asks.

“I don’t know,”  says Josef. “I don’t know if he dared.” He snorts weakly. “I was too afraid to put the idea in his head to find out whether it was already there.”

Sorrowfully, fondly, she sighs.

“I’m grateful to hear how deeply you cared for his well-being,” she says. “In every way.”

“Of course, my lady.”

“I never once doubted that you were the man to trust, but it means so much to know for certain that my trust was not misplaced.”

Josef breathes in deeply, and then, after a moment, he stands. She looks up as he drops her hand, kneels before her bed

“It never shall be,” he says, eyes lowered.

She’s not in the frame of mind to stand it. Ilenia reaches out to lift his chin.

“Perhaps Alain needed his friends,” she says. “But, in a different way, Josef, I assure you that he needed you.”

Overcome, Josef looks up into her eyes.

(She can understand, all of a sudden, why he does this so rarely.)

“Thank you, my lady.”

“You’re most welcome.”

Her hand falls as he rises. He bows slowly, deeply, and turns to go. And as he does, one more question flutters across her mind.

“Josef?”

“Yes, my lady?”

“The Ring of the Unicorn,” she says. “You carried it for far longer than Alain, did you not?”

He bows his head. “It never left my person. I swear to you.”

“Did you ever put it on?”

She can’t suppress her amusement as Josef looks up to her sharply, wide-eyed.

“Never, my lady!”

“Not even just for a moment?”

“Whyever would I?”

Grief. Reminiscence. All that remained of the land he loved, so small, in the palm of his hand. Indulgence of memory. Marvel, longing, desperation, adoration.

“Hm.”

She smiles.

“I suppose I admire your self-control.”

The chapel at Gran Corrine isn’t a place Ilenia spent much of her time, before the fall. She was religious only in the way that a queen must be. Perhaps if she’d understood the power that she’d held on her hand, she might have been more pious—but as it was, they were stories, little more.

Ser Renault looks up from the altar as she enters.

He, on the other hand, had lurked here often. Religion had always been a far larger part of his life than her own. Now that he and his country have been granted a second life by the Unicorn’s grace… She imagines the stories have been on his mind a great deal.

“I suppose I ought to have expected to find you here,” she says.

“Your presence is more of a surprise, my lady.”

“As I was passing through the garden, I saw the spire, and I thought perhaps that a moment of prayer wouldn’t hurt.” She sighs, kneeling beside him. “Considering what it’s done for me.”

“Certainly.”

She glances over. “Have you been spending much time here?”

He nods. “It’s comforting to return to this chapel. It’s been a very long time.”

A very long time, not even counting the years he spent as another man. She keeps forgetting that the rest of them had been awoken to a world at war, to grapple for months with the fact that they’d failed. She’d been lucky enough to wake up just as her son had succeeded.

“I’m pleased it was preserved,” she says. “Though I’m afraid I don’t remember so keenly how it was before the fall.” She gives him a smile. “Perhaps you’d like to act as its steward, going forward. I could think of no one better.”

Renault shakes his head. “That duty will have to fall to someone else,” he says. “I’m afraid I won’t remain in Gran Corrine.”

“Oh?”

“I intend to return to Eucuit.”

She had handed him that title herself. Twenty or so years ago; among her first acts as queen. The lord of the border province had been double-crossing both Cornia and Drakenhold, his own people’s welfare the greatest casualty. Ilenia had removed the title from Eucuit’s born lord, and from his sons, to bestow it upon his younger brother who’d played a part in bringing evidence to light.

Young Ser Renault, then a prodigious new knight, had neither expected nor wanted to inherit. He’d betrayed his brother not to unseat him, but to free his people. That was the kind of man she needed in her nobility. At the time, he had been a welcome change—a lord the people could trust.

After a decade under Zenoiran control, he is that no longer. She can see what awaits him there.

“I wish you the greatest of luck, then,” she says.

“I’m pleased to hear that, my lady.” He bows his head, curling his lips. “The others disapprove.”

“Do they?”

“Ser Clive has expressed the opinion that I’m punishing myself.”

Ilenia snorts, amused. “Wherever would he get the idea that a man of your character might punish himself?”

She’s pleased to find that Renault has been humbled enough to laugh.

She doesn’t envy him. Nothing her body had done had been done with her face, nor her name. Another privilege that only she, among them, was granted.

“You certainly are,” she says. “But I believe it’s brave to.”

“Truly, my lady?”

“Yes.” She turns her face up to the altar. “If I were braver, perhaps I would return to the throne.”

All this guilt she’s felt for leaving this burden to Alain… She could take it all from him if she chose. He’d tried to give it back to her, and she’d refused. Who was she to refuse what was hers? Who was she to give it up when she remained to carry it?

“…Your people will follow Alain,” says Renault, slowly. “The people of other nations will respect him. He’s shown all of Fevrith that he’s a good man, worthy of their trust. Cornia will fare better than it ever has under his banner.”

“You believe that?”

“I’m certain.”

Throat swollen with emotion, Ilenia smiles.

“You know what you need to do, then,” she says. “So that your people will follow you once more.”

Renault bends nearly double in a grateful, reverent bow.

When she stands to leave, voices outside the chapel window give her pause. She waits, stock still, listening.

“I visited with Sharon on the first day, but only briefly.”

“Of course. You’ve been so busy.”

Ilenia can recognize Alain’s voice now, but the girl is less familiar. She creeps to the altar window that overlooks the cemetery, stands on tiptoe to peer through. Arant’s daughter—Scarlett.

They wander between the stones. Ilenia takes a step aside, so as not to be visible through the colored glass.

“This is my grandfather,” says Alain. “King Gerard.”

“The one we met?”

“Yes.”

(Ilenia raises her eyebrows, baffled.)

“It’s very grand,” says Scarlett.

“It is.” Alain chuckles. “When I would come here as a child, my foremost thought was that this is how my own grave will look, someday.”

(Ilenia exhales quietly. Perhaps it was no fault of either hers of Josef’s—perhaps Alain had always been a melancholy child.)

Their footsteps rustle in the grass as they move on.

“My aunt,” says Alain, so quietly she can barely hear. “Virginia’s mother, Princess Annelle.”

Ilenia had been the elder: eleven months that put her on the throne and her sister beside it, that hung over the both of them as long as they lived. Alain had known her only as a gravestone. She closes her eyes.

“Her father.”

Prince Florent. A political marriage of noble stock. A fine man, a skilled soldier, a friend. Dead at the Drakenhold border before his daughter was ever born.

Scarlett sighs mournfully. “They were so young…”

Little more than Alain’s age, both of them. The last time he was here, they must have seemed so much older.

He takes another step.

“Prince Robert,” he says. “He was my father.”

Ilenia swallows. All of them, too young.

“Do you remember him?” she hears Scarlett ask.

“Not well,” says Alain. “I remember his death more than his life.”

There’s a short silence. Ilenia can’t see the look on Scarlett’s face, but she can tell enough to wince.

“I—I was very young,” Alain continues quickly. “I remember that I loved him, of course, but I… I remember so little from that age at all.”

“I suppose I had more time to know my own father,” says Scarlett softly. “I’m grateful for that, of course, but I’ve… I’ve already forgotten so much.”

Alain murmurs something she can’t hear. Scarlett sniffs thickly.

“For so long, I believed I would return home someday,” she says. “I never realized I’d need to remember until I’d forgotten.”

Ilenia’s heart clenches. She’s been given a short synopsis of the scandal surrounding Arant’s death. To find out, so recently, that one’s father had been dead for so long…

There’s a rustle of clothing and a creaking of armor. Alain has put his arm around her.

Ilenia slips away from the window.

Once the voices stop, she pushes open the chapel door. But on her way back around, she stops. Scarlett hadn’t left at all. Her skirts are spread out at the base of a flowering shrub against the chapel wall.

She looks up, surprised, at Ilenia’s footsteps. “My lady! I’m sorry, you startled me.”

“I do apologize.”

“It’s quite alright. I was only admiring the greenery.”

“You’re welcome to admire anything you like.” Ilenia nods. “I won’t interrupt.”

Scarlett hesitates, but as Ilenia turns, she calls out.

“Wait—may I ask… These flowers. Do you know the name?”

Ilenia takes a step closer and reaches out for a sprig, turning the tiny blossoms to face her. She’d looked it up, as a child. “This is pink olive. You’re lucky to see it flower.”

“…They’re from Albion, aren’t they?”

“I believe so.” She glances over the chapel garden. “My father was a traveler, and a bit of an amateur botanist. I hear these returned with him from a trip once.”

As did much of the foliage surrounding. She’d grown up without him, but she’d grown up knowing that her father grew here. She won’t say so to a priestess, but it had always meant more to her than the chapel itself.

“King Gerard?” Scarlett asks. “A traveler?”

“…To the extent that he could be.” Ilenia doesn’t imagine she’s heard any rumors, and she won’t do her father the discourtesy of passing them on. “He was something of an unorthodox king.”

What a strange thought: Alain will be the most orthodox ruler Cornia has had in decades.

Scarlett follows her gaze over the garden. “I admire that,” she says.

Ilenia smiles. So had she.

“You’re Arant’s daughter, isn’t that so?” she asks after a moment. She imagines unorthodoxy is somewhat novel to someone raised in the bowers of Bisfaine.

“I am.” Scarlett blinks at the informal address. “Did you know him?”

Ilenia shakes her head. Only in the way that two monarchs know each other: not at all, but completely.

“We met on occasion,” she says. “The Orthodoxy is a significant presence in the lives of my people, spiritually and politically. Diplomacy has always been crucial.”

“Hm.” Scarlett smiles tightly down at the flower between her fingers. “I suppose I’ll have reason to visit Gran Corrine again in the future, then.”

“Don’t be silly,” says Ilenia at once. “Your friendship is reason enough, dear.”

The look on Scarlett’s face has become very strange, and for a moment Ilenia worries she’s somehow misspoken. But as she’d let Alain misspeak without comment, Scarlett calmly continues.

“Yes, however—I’m not sure I’ll have the time, otherwise,” she says. “When I return home, I’ll properly ascend as Pontifex. The people can’t be left much longer without one.”

“…Ah,” says Ilenia. “I see.”

They look down at the flowers in silence for a moment. Scarlett cradles another blossom in her gentle fingertips.

“I always admired the way Alain took to his birthright,” she says, very softly. “Unwaveringly. With passion.” She smiles, strained. “Our positions were never very different, but I… Even before everything, even as a child… I always dreaded the thought.”

Ilenia looks down at her, sentimental. “That’s natural.”

“I suppose.” Scarlett sighs. “But I can’t hide from it any longer. I could flee, but… Now that I’ve been home again, I miss it there all the more. I want to return.” She removes her hand and gets to her feet, brushing out her skirt. To Ilenia’s astonishment, when she looks up, it’s with a bright little smile. “I suppose growing up is the price I must pay, isn’t it?”

Lungs tight, Ilenia breathes in.

She’d never truly understood what had been done to her, as a child, until she’d had a child of her own. She hadn’t understood how cruel it was to raise a child for public office. To mold them into a politician before they had the chance to be a person—to give them no other path. She’d always felt guilt for what she’d done to Alain, by being the one to give birth to him.

Monarchy is a blood curse. She’s too late to undo it herself—but couldn’t it be undone?

“The church is in your hands now,” she says. “And that means it’s your decision whether or not to remain shackled to it by your blood.”

Scarlett laughs.

Ilenia doesn’t. “I’m quite serious,”

“Surely not, my lady.”

“Whyever not?”

“Fevrith needs stability,” says Scarlett. “Now more than ever. No matter if I can—I—I shouldn’t.”

“You would deny Fevrith the stability of a Pontifex who wishes to be such?”

Scarlett stares at her, mouth open. It’s not horror, not offense, just plain shock. And as she looks back into her wide eyes, Ilenia is suddenly certain that she has a name in mind. Has had one for some time, even, but no one had ever told her there might be a reason to keep it.

No one had ever told her that. Ilenia knows it would take more than the word of a stranger, even a queen, to convince her of it. But she hopes the thought might take root, now that someone’s given it permission to.

No one had ever done that for her

“…I apologize,” she says, stepping back. “I spoke out of turn.”

“No, my lady.” Scarlett laughs weakly. “Never being spoken to out of turn has been one of my oldest fears.”

After Scarlett has gone, Ilenia visits her husband’s grave. It’s more worn than she saw it last, but still fine and stately. She sits down and draws her knees to her chest like a little girl on the grass before him.

A loss she’d already begun to grieve is almost refreshing.

It’s been a long time. I’m sorry.

Robert was a scholar of the court. A kind, charismatic young man with a talent for party tricks, studying under the most accomplished magickal minds in Cornia. She’d been a short-sighted, impractical teenager—intent upon marrying for love. He wasn’t any good at royal niceties. It swept her off her feet.

Her sister wasn’t the rebel that she was. Annie had loved Cornia more than she loved any man, and she’d married properly. She bore a child properly. It killed her.

Her death had been a protracted affair—days of pain and bleeding and spells of hopeful half-recovery. It left her heartbroken sister with a primal terror of motherhood and an infant niece to raise in grief. Ilenia had no intention to become a mother herself. After Virginia’s birth, not even her duty remained to compel her: there was an heir to the throne already, after all. The pregnancy before Alain she ended without a second thought.

As Virginia grew, however, Ilenia’s thoughts grew with her. As she watched Robert dote upon her poor sister’s little girl, the more real the child inside her felt this time. It took her husband’s love and certainty, his unwavering support, to see it through.

Bearing their son was the best decision she had ever made.

Robert’s death took far longer than Annie’s, but unlike hers it felt too quick to process. His illness was internal. It came from nowhere, and he’d been so healthy and hardy that it hadn’t affected him until it was too late to intervene. It destroyed her differently. It destroyed Alain, in a way he was too young to comprehend. It’s difficult to tell what he feels about it now.

Being taken from her child young, as her sister, as her husband… It had been her greatest fear.

You would be so proud to see him, she thinks. He takes after you, you know.

For so long she worried there was some poison in his blood that would come for Alain in the same way someday. If there is, it hasn’t yet. Her own blood, however—it’s hers that she should have been worried about. Hers is the blood that’s condemned him.

She smiles, thinly, at her husband’s grave.

I suppose I take after my own father.

She hasn’t been touched in fifteen years.

Or, Ilenia wonders that night, with a flip of her stomach—has she? She’ll never know.

It’s not worth unsettling herself about.

She touches herself.

She hasn’t touched a sword since she’s been awake.

Her old sword was found in the castle armory. It hadn’t been used, of course. Too Cornian to be of use in the Zenoiran army, too fair to melt down. Josef had brought it to her, once the castle had been explored enough to unearth it, but in the couple of days since it’s only stood propped against a chair. What use did she have for such a sword, as a retired queen?

This morning, she lifts it. Hefts it in one hand, then both; swings it and just barely misses the bedpost. She’d spent so long at war that she’d forgotten she found swordplay fun.

She dresses more practically today, and heaves her sword down to the grass below the castle where she used to train. It’s a fine walk at dawn. She watches the sun rise from the outer staircase, marvels at the dew as it brushes her armored ankles.

She’d expected to be alone this early, but there’s someone there already. He’s deep in his set of practice swings. She can see his hair flutter back with each. It’s the redheaded boy—the maiden.

“Hello, Lex.”

“Ma’am—!” He starts, snaps into a forceful bow. “—Your Majesty.”

She smiles. “I’m no longer Your Majesty.”

“You are until tomorrow,” he replies, stubborn. She chuckles. Fair enough.

“Tomorrow’s a big day for all of us,” she says. “And, theoretically, it will not require combat. Haven’t you got better things to be doing at this hour?”

“Not at all, my lady.” Lex grins, resting his sword on his shoulder. “I can’t let myself slip just because we’ve won.”

Ilenia smiles in return. She can see what Josef meant, now—why he might have been inspiring to train alongside. “You’re very dedicated.”

“I have to be.” Proudly, he straightens his back. “I hope to be worthy of Alain’s guard after the coronation, and I know how high a standard that is.” He catches himself. “I’m sorry—His Majesty—"

The lapse makes her chest clench.

“That’s your goal?”

Still flustered, he bows his head. “I’ve wanted it all my life, my lady.”

Ilenia doesn’t know how long Lex has known her son’s identity. Had they become close as one common boy to another? The kingly implication is clearly there now, but was it always? Had their childhood outside of the royal sphere blurred it in a way she had never been able to experience herself?

She doesn’t want to see that rift be solidified between them. For Alain’s closest friend—a miracle already—to kneel at his feet. The one good thing to come of Cornia’s fall had been her son’s impossible chance to be a human boy. Ilenia cannot bear to see it taken from him as a man.

“Don’t,” she says.

Lex is so startled that for the first time, he looks into her face. “Pardon?”

She swallows.

“Don’t swear yourself to his service,” she says, as evenly as she can. “What Alain needs of you is to be a friend. An equal, not a retainer.”

Still stunned, Lex stares back at her. It takes him a moment to speak.

“I mean… I’m not his equal.”

The more she hears this, the more it aches.

“He considers you such.” She gestures at his gloved hand, meets his skeptical eyes. “If it weren’t so, I’m not sure any of us would be here today.”

Slowly, he clenches his fingers. Ilenia gives him a small, hopeful smile.

“I believe your friendship has been good for him,” she says. “Will remain good for him, as he begins to rule in true.” Will remind him who he is, when the world endeavors to make him forget it. She shakes her head. “To distort that friendship with status and obligation… I fear it would make the both of you unhappy.”

Lex lowers his gaze to his hand.

“If I don’t take a position,” he asks, “then… What excuse do I have to stay?”

“You need no excuse to stay,” Ilenia replies, though she knows now that it’s useless to. Lex comes from working men. He feels the urge to earn his keep.

Squeezing his fist, he looks back up at her.

“I don’t want to be a—” He can’t find the proper word, starts again. “I want to be useful to him. I mean—useful to Cornia.”

She exhales slowly. Palevia, though culturally distinct, is an Albionese territory. Lex is no man of Cornia at all. His allegiance is to no kingdom, but to her son alone.

Her son is Cornia.

Her heart sinks. She understands now: she hadn’t given Alain a chance at humanity. She’d given him a chance to pretend for a while, to live a false life he could never keep. And always, always, had the threat of his birthright hung over him. Both Alain and Lex knew it as certainly as she had known it growing up herself. All that living away from the palace had done for her son was to make that threat easier to push aside, easier to ignore. Harder to face, when the time came.

In her heavy silence, Lex lowers his sword and squares his shoulders. He looks directly into her eyes. “I’m sorry, my lady. But I don’t agree.”

Alain wouldn’t agree either. She knows he wouldn’t. She wouldn’t even have agreed at his age—she’d have wanted nothing but her friends close. She couldn’t have understood, then, the distance between them that service would put there. Thin, so thin. Uncrossable.

At that age, even knowing… She can’t say she wouldn’t have done the same.

She looks back into Lex’s face, set in a determined frown.

“Do as you will,” she says softly.

He’s brave, at least. It will make him a fine guardsman. She’s always respected a man who does as he will.

Her son is Cornia.

Ilenia has been Cornia for so many years, for good or for ill. Now, for the first time in her life, she is a woman.

(She hopes that, someday, Alain will have a child. That he’ll live long enough to see them grown. That, someday, he’ll understand what it is to feel as free as she feels now, even beneath the guilt of passing that burden on.)

Alain is coronated at sunrise. Ilenia’s last act as queen is the easiest of them all—little more is required of her than to feel the pride and hope she feels already. The party lasts all day. It spills out into the barren city streets, growing more raucous as the sun begins to sink.

She can walk perfectly well tonight. Josef accompanies her back to her chambers even so.

As the door shuts behind them, she breathes. She removes her crown from her hair, setting it delicately upon its stand. And then she looks back, craning her neck.

“Would you help me?”

“Of course, my lady.”

Josef sweeps aside her hair, dutifully unclasping her necklace with gloved fingers.

She places it carefully beside her crown. “And the laces?”

He hesitates, but unknots the lacing at the top of her gown.

She can handle the rest herself. Ilenia steps away to unpin the mantle from her shoulders, drapes it over the bed. Unhooks her belt. She says nothing.

Josef takes a guess at her nerves. He knows her well enough to know there are some. “He’ll be a fine king.”

But it’s not those nerves.  “Yes,” she replies. “I’m sure.”

She loosens the laces of her gown. Josef politely looks away as she slips out of her sleeves.

“He’s a fine man, after all,” she says. “Our son.”

“Our son?”

“Is he not?” She lays her gown beside the mantle. “You’ve raised him just as much as I have. I daresay rather more.”

“Care is not what makes a father, my lady.”

“I disagree.”

She unties her farthingale and steps out of it. Josef glances up at the rustle.

“Would—you like me to go?”

“No.”

She pulls at the laces of her stays until she can slide them off. He pinkens. It’s always a pleasure to see him embarrassed. And he knows what pleasure she finds in it—he always has.

“My lady, please—"

She’d been no more dressed than this when she’d spent all that time in bed, but the act of undressing before him is what makes it indecent. The act of looking up into his face as she does is what makes it obscene.

She refuses to let him look away. “I am your liege no longer, Josef.”

“My lady—”

“Call me by my name—”

“Ilenia!”

She’d asked for it, but she hadn’t been prepared for the flame that licks through her. Her thighs clench.

“Again.”

Josef glowers, lifting his chin. “If you’re so keen to be treated as an equal, then I won’t be ordered about.”

She clenches her fists in her chemise and pulls it over her head.

Bare before him, she’s reflected in his armor. The images shift in each plate as he slowly breathes out. Ilenia lifts her eyes back to his stricken face.

“Love me as an equal, Josef.”

He stares back at her, frozen.

“I grieved for you,” he says softly.

“I see.” She arches her brow. “I’m still an angel, in your mind?”

“Oh, my lady… You were always.”

She was always. Always, always. Her childhood, her adolescence, her marriage, her death.

“I never liked it,” she says.

“I know.”

He knows. She’d screamed that at him once, a disagreeable teenager lashing out at her royal leash. Ser Josef had looked back at her with the same stoic gaze he gives her now.

“I know,” he says. “And yet, your disapproval is the burden I must bear. I fear there’s nothing I can do to change it.”

Her heart aches for him. “Have you tried?”

He’s silent. Without looking away, she reaches for his hand, lifts it between them. She slowly removes his gauntlet.

“You need bear no more burdens, Josef.”

He looks down at his bare hand, and beyond it, to her. He takes a step closer.

For long, slow seconds his careful fingertips trace the curve of her breast. Skim over her side, down the dip of her waist. Nervously marveling at the lightest brush of skin, at the shivers that spread from his touch.

(Ilenia thinks she may understand, for the first time, why Josef looks at her like something miraculous.)

She’s so overcome that he catches her by surprise. She gasps as he drags her into a burning kiss.

Ilenia can’t remember the last time she saw Ser Josef without armor. His chest, his arms, always sharp and metallic. He had held her before, but it was always against his outer shell. That distance, so thin, uncrossable.

She’s never seen him sleep. Sometimes she’d doubted he ever did sleep. He’d probably see it as an inconvenience, to dare be at anything less than his best for a moment, no matter how much he needed it.

But she likes him best as a human man. She flicks a lock of his hair over his forehead, and she smiles to herself.

She can’t sleep herself, though. She’d tried, but the giddy dizziness is still too distracting to rest. She wraps her mantle around her and pushes open the door, steps outside, looks out over the railing in the darkness.

The castle of Gran Corrine is as beautiful as the day she left it, but the city is cold and still. The casualties of her people—Alain’s people—had been overwhelming. The lively spirit of the Liberation is about to disperse, each to return to their own ravaged lands. Only the bleak work of rebuilding will be left behind them.

But she’s heard about the smaller towns they’d passed. Stocked and restored with hard work and charity, thriving now as they hadn’t for years. Her son had revived Fevrith. He will revive his home.

She nestles her chin in her mantle’s fur, and she looks out to the dark shapes of the distant mountains. Cornia will be beautiful again, she's sure. They’ll make it so.