Archive of Our Own ^beta

Eugenides had his back to Irene, staring at the black ink as it slowly trickled down the wall. Irene supposed this meant he believed that she wouldn’t throw another at the back of his head. He sighed. “It was ugly wallpaper, anyway.”

Irene did not scoff, but it was a close thing. Her face still felt hot. “Don’t make this any worse than it already is, my King.”

At that, his shoulders slumped and he gripped the back of one of her chairs in a white-knuckled grip. There was a small part of Irene, a cruel, bitter part of her, that thought he was a fool. A fool to take this awful, thankless job that he didn’t want; a fool to do it for her hand. Despite it all - despite his confession of love, despite her returning it - her heart had been ice for so long that she worried it would never thaw completely. Perhaps tomorrow he would wake to find her frozen solid, cold and impersonal under his warm hand. What a fool he was, for marrying such an impossible woman. For loving one.

The other part of her remembered her old nursemaid turning her away, and how her chest had burned the whole journey home. That part of her contemplated how Eugenides had gently squeezed her hand as their marriage was officiated, and how she was equal parts relieved and deeply ashamed.

Eventually, she spoke. “You may half my Guard.” Eugenides turned to face her as she threw her own gauntlet down. “With Teleus’ permission.”

The bitterest part of her crowed with delight at the expression on his face. He hid so much of what he felt, and concealed the rest with a masquerade of dramatics, but now his face laid his feelings bare. His lips pressed into a thin line; the colour drained from his cheeks. He had been in the process of taking off his wedding regalia, and now took the crown off of his head and threw it to the ground.

“Don’t be childish,” Irene cooley said.

“I can do whatever I want,” Eugenides retorted.

“Because you are king?” Irene raised a single eyebrow. “In that case, yes, I suppose you can.”

Eugenides cast her a dark look, but said nothing. He knelt to awkwardly unlace his shoes. They were not the soft leather he usually wore, but stiff, and embroidered, and finished with a loud, wooden sole. Irene knew how much he despised them for what they represented. He could never be the Thief, ever again.

His fingers fumbled with the tight laces, and he cursed colourfully as he almost stumbled over. Irene had watched him down several goblets of strong wine throughout the evening, and had also watched the Court observing them both with bated breath. When the King did not keel over dead, there was a collective release of breath. Irene was not yet sure whether it was in relief or disappointment - she feared it was the latter.

“For goodness sake,” she sighed, crossing the room to her husband, and paused when he startled violently. She stared at the top of his head, and he stared at the ground. Both did not speak for a long, agonising moment.

“My King,” Irene said, not able to speak above a whisper. She didn’t know what was supposed to follow that, ‘I’m sorry for cutting your hand off’? A whole lot of good her sorries would do, now. She could say nothing but sorry for the rest of her life and it would not be enough. She picked at her skirt, contemptibly. If Eugenides was uncertain of how to be a king, then Irene was unsure of how to be his wife.

Eventually, Eugenides sat himself down in the chair he had been gripping. “Thank you, my dear, I would appreciate your help.” And so, with as much dignity as they could both muster after her own husband had recoiled from her, she knelt at his feet and carefully removed his shoes. She held his ankle for a moment.

“Do you trust me, my King?” She asked of him, and finally looked up. His face was as vulnerable as an open wound. It was as if she had slapped him instead of merely asking him a question.

“Would I have married you if I did not trust you?”

“I have loved without trust,” Irene was not a woman who shrugged, but it was there in the plaintive tone of her voice. She thought of Relius - the closest thing she had to a friend, a mentor, a true father - and how she had been taught by his own instruction to never let that bleed into trusting him.

“Do you trust me?” Eugenides asked. Irene did not lie to him.

“I am trying to learn to, my King.”

He made an anguished noise. “Please, don’t call me that,” he begged.

“You cannot ignore your duty forever, my King.”

“I can understand that you must call me that in Court,” he said petulantly. “But please - when we are alone, when we are nothing but a husband and wife, please call me Eugenides. Please, Irene.”

Irene had never been anything but the Queen since her coronation. She tried to think of who ‘Just Irene’ was, and her vision of that woman was as intangible as the whispers of a forgotten dream, slipping from the mind’s grasp upon waking.

“It is not easy for me,” she managed to grit out, defensively. “I need you to be patient with me.” She finally released his foot, and her hands fell limply into her lap.

Eugenides sank from his seat to kneel before her. He touched her face. “Of course, my dear - oh, Irene.”

In her frustration at herself, her eyes had welled with tears, and they fell silently down her cheeks.

“Oh, Irene,” he said again, and his hand rubbed his own chest, as if he were in some great pain. He left her, but returned moments later with a handkerchief, which he used to gently wipe the tears and makeup tracks from her face. He took to undressing her of her hair pins and makeup with all the reverence of a man making an offering to his god. Irene’s face was aflame with humiliation - she imagined what would be said if anyone found out that the Queen of Attolia had cried in front of her husband on her wedding night. It was not until he heard his shaking intake of breath that she met his gaze and saw that he, too, was crying.

“My - Eugenides… I’m so sorry,” she choked out. “I’m so sorry.” Her shame doubled down, and so did a fresh wave of tears. There on the floor, they clung to each other like they were afraid they would shake apart into a thousand pieces. Irene felt his tears against her neck like perfume.

Without her attendants present (they had been dismissed shortly and snippily by Irene as soon as the doors to the final anteroom had closed behind them all) she was left to the mercy of Eugenides to continue wiping away her makeup. Yes, she could do it herself, but still found herself offering her damp cheeks up to him to wipe clean. Her dark eye makeup proved harder to remove, even with the tears, and she watched as his tongue darted out to wet the handkerchief.

“That’s disgusting,” she muttered as he raised it to her face.

“Your mother never did this to you?” And, as if to demonstrate, he licked his thumb and smeared it across her cheek. She coughed out what could almost be considered a laugh.

“Your mother did that?”

“Oh, that was the least of it. She threw me from the roof to prove that I was to be the next Thief,” he told her conspiratorially. She closed her eyes so he could wipe her lids clean. “My father was not pleased, to say the least.”

He smiled at her when she managed a real, small laugh. Then, he yawned. “It’s getting late, and I would very much like to go to bed.”

“Your nightshirt is in your chambers.” In the moment, she could think of nothing else to say. She did not want him to leave, even if thinking of what occurred on wedding nights made her stomach clench with something she couldn’t identify. How embarrassing love was, she thought sardonically.

“I’m sure you can bear to lend me one of yours,” Eugenides winked at her. “Come, let me help you.”

And so she let him. She undid all of the laces on her dress, but let him reach down to grab the hem and slowly pull it up and over her head. In return, he allowed her to slip the heavily embroidered jacket off of his shoulders, and pop each button of his shirt open, one by one, starting at his neck and working downwards. He watched her fingers as they worked.

“My beautiful wife,” he whispered reverently. It made her nervous and giddy and fond, all at once.

“My beautiful husband,” she replied. He was beautiful: black eyes framed by long, dark lashes. His curved mouth. The scar on his cheek, a crescent moon. She shivered when his hand touched her bare shoulder.

“I’ll wash the gold from your hair,” she said.

“No one would notice,” Eugenides pointed out, glancing over at the golden fabric of the bedsheets.

“I would.”

There was a small pitcher of water - one that could have very easily been used instead of spit to wipe away her makeup - and she used it to clean the gold powder from his hair. When wet, the dark strands curled even more than usual. He stood still as she worked; the closest to obedience he was capable of giving, Irene suspected.

They finished undressing, and Irene did give Eugenides one of her embroidered nightshirts to wear. From her dais bed, she watched the fabric where it hung around his brown thighs.

“It would look better on you, I’m sure,” Eugenides said as he got into bed with her. He was still wearing his wooden hand (he had forgone the hook for the wedding day) and he sat carefully apart from her. Feeling scorned, Irene turned from him. She was dangerously close to crying, again.

She had no right to feel so hurt, she told herself scornfully. Of course he wouldn’t want to be close with her like this. Not even he could override his fear of her to hold her in bed.

Eugenides said nothing. Irene listened to his breathing for a few minutes, and then heard the sound of the leather straps of his prosthetic coming undone. Unable to resist, she turned back to him.

She was equal parts anticipation and dread as he removed the hand. It was the one thing she didn’t help him on - she didn’t want to push her luck. However, once it was removed, Eugenides handed the prosthetic to her.

“Put that on your bedside table, please?”

Lit only by the final candles in the room, Eugenides was all shadows and soft planes of golden light. His mouth, slightly open, was a dark, alluring smear; there were tracks of his own kohl eyeliner still on his cheeks and around his eyes. He looked majestic and rumpled in equal parts, and Irene's chest was tight with adoration, heavy and overwhelming. She took the wooden hand and placed it aside.

"Irene…" said Eugenides, suddenly sounding very shy and unsure of himself, and once again his majesty was tucked away and all that was left was a young man - one whose crown still laid discarded on the ground. "May I lay with you?"

The sweetness of it made something in her crack open (an amphora of oil spilling on the floor, she thought), and she nodded. In the next breath, they were twined against each other - Irene with her head laid on his chest, and she could feel his heart hammering beneath her.

"I don't know what I'm doing," she admitted.

His arms around her squeezed. "Neither do I."

And with that, she kissed him. She realised that he had been waiting for her to make the first move when he melted with relief back into the golden sheets. Irene's black hair formed a canopy around them both, and she could just make out the whites of her husband's eyes in the dark, shining at her like two pearls. She kissed him again, warming up to the feeling as his hand cupped the nape of her neck.

He continued to let her take the lead - she suspected it was as much for his own sake as hers, both of them fumbling and unsure as their lips parted and revealed pink tongues. Under her hand, Eugenides continued to tremble slightly, but the sureness in his hand’s grip on her reassured her that it was out of anticipation, not fear. Irene felt it herself: the muscles of her stomach were taught as Eugenides rolled them both onto their sides and rested his head on her arm.

“What you asked earlier,” he breathed. “Of course. Of course I trust you. I know you, Irene.”

“You don’t. You don’t know me - “ her throat felt thick and her voice caught like a bug in a spider’s web. “I don’t know who I am, Eugenides. I haven’t known for years. I’m - I’m so lonely, even in my own company. I’m a stranger even to myself.”

She wiped angrily at her eyes. “Do you think that because you spied on me a few times as a boy, you somehow understand what I am? Don’t be foolish, your majesty.” With that, she pulled away from him, and turned her back.

She expected Eugenides to sulk silently, or to leave, or to argue with her, or anything equally as stubborn. The only outcome she hadn’t anticipated - the one she got - was Eugenides pressing himself along her back, breathing against the knob of the top of her spine.

“Then we’ll find her,” he whispered fiercely, and Irene suddenly remembered that he, himself, was a man suffocated in his many layers of personas. “She’s not as far away as you think she is. Here, here’s something I know about Irene,” she felt his smile against her skin. “I know that my wife hates it when I pace.”

“It’s bothersome.”

“And I know that my wife, Irene, loves to hunt whenever she gets the chance. I know she finds my jokes funny but refuses to admit it; she listens to me read poetry out loud, even though she doesn’t care for it. I know that, instead, she likes to read histories, and she likes it when I ask her about them. I know she likes to do needlepoint, and ride horses, and I know that I’m lucky, because I know she loves me very much, despite everything.”

“There is a chance,” Irene said, fighting a smile. “That you are correct. She knows that her husband hates horses, and loves to read, and dress like a canary.” She felt him huff a laugh against her skin. After a moment, she added, “And her husband should know that he is never difficult to love. Loving him is one of the easiest things she has ever done.”

Eugenides went very still, and the arm around her tightened. Her words had knocked the air from him, or had maybe sent him hurtling back into his own body, here, in her bed, under the golden sheets, on the dais, in the castle. Facing him again, she watched him stare contemptibly at the gold carpet and bed sheets; the ornate wallpaper, stained black in one spot.

“A gilded cage,” he sighed. He looked wounded as he settled back in her arms, like all of the fight went out of him at once. It frightened her, coming from him, who was usually so unwilling to go anywhere quietly. “This place is killing you, Irene. It will kill both of us - we should just go.”

“We can’t, you know that.” She gave him a warning look, but he just sighed again, his eyes watering.

She held him in her arms as he began to cry again, his chest heaving and hands clutching at her nightshirt, repeating oh gods, oh gods, what am I doing? What have I done?

“If I could,” he finally said, still sniffling. “I would take you far from this place. So far we would never cross another Attolian. We can make a quiet life, and I would cut myself free of - “

He didn’t finish his sentence. Irene remembered the smashed windows following his commune with one of his gods, and didn’t push him to speak any more. He was in something far bigger than she dared to even consider, and if all she could do was hold him close, settle his trembling body down and try to convince him that he hadn’t made an awful mistake, then she would do it. If she could, she would fight the worst of the gods’ wrath off herself - though she kept that thought tight to her chest like a playing card.

“If we could leave,” she said, stroking his hair. “I would take you somewhere where you could read all the silly poetry you could find. And once you read all of that, I would buy you more. I would lie in with you in the mornings, and help you when you get sick. There would be enough rich fools to steal from that you would never be bored.

“But we can’t leave, and so I guess I must simply buy you poetry books here, and wake up with you here, and hold back your hair when you are sick in my bed -” Eugenides made a noise of protest at that. “And pretend that I don’t know what happened to my barons jewellery when they insist that it has been stolen.”

“You are too good to me, my beautiful wife.”

“Hardly,” she said. It was true - she was so sharp and cruel that she could not avoid hurting anything that came too close. She had already hurt Eugenides so much, and she knew he didn’t want her to keep apologising, but she also knew, then, that she would spend every day trying to show her apologies in unspoken ways, even if they were always painfully inadequate. Irene, not the Queen of Attolia, would watch over him as he thrashed with bad dreams. She would dry his every silent tear. She would try to string together sweet sentences on sheets of vellum for him, and she would not throw them out, no matter how much they embarrassed her. She would try, despite her dangerous nature, to be gentle to him. To make him not regret her.

With Eugenides at her side, his hand slowly sliding down her stomach, she glanced around the room once more before blowing out the last of the candles. On her desk, neatly centered, was Eugenides’ crown. It winked at her in the low light until she snuffed the final candle, and then there was nothing but darkness, a wife, and her husband.