Work Text:
No one had to tell her that her father was dead. She knew the very instant it happened, because that was the instant she became Eddis.
She had been thirsty before, considering a drink. The moment after, the thought seemed ridiculous; the snow was melting from her mountain peaks and flooding her rivers. There was water and to spare. How could she be thirsty?
She was a bit hungry though because most of her people were at least a little bit hungry.
(And because she was Eddis now, and nations, no matter how stable, are always at least a little bit hungry for more.)
She could count every tree in her forests now, feel every person moving upon the mountains, could -
She forced herself to stop. To stand.
She had never learned how to be Eddis. No one had ever thought she would need to know.
But she had overheard a little, and she knew that was an easy way to go mad.
(It was so, so tempting, though.)
Xanthe burst into the room and curtsied. “Your Majesty, you are Eddia,” she said, and her nurse’s voice shook from grief.
“Xanthe,” she said, testing the name.
Born in a little cabin by a spring, but you wanted more, so you set out for the city, and you found work in the palace where you fell and cut your knees on the rough stones by the kitchen, and your blood spilled into my stone, mine, mine, mine -
“Xanthe,” she repeated, “I am Eddis.”
And she knew the truth of it was within her eyes.
Her uncle found her on the roof.
Properly, it was Gen’s place, not hers, but she had wanted to climb to the highest point she could to see her city, and she didn’t think her attendants would be as amused to have their queen running off to the hills as they had been when their princess did it.
She felt him coming far before she heard his footsteps, and she knew -
Brother sliding a knife into the ribs of brother for the crown six generations ago, thief pushing queen off the roof four generations ago, six men have pledged to follow Prince Hector in the past three days, one in the library, one in the corridor, two in the Council room, and the rest -
But she also knew her uncle, and so she stayed, looking up at the stars.
He did not push her off the ledge. He bowed and said, “Eddis,” and waited to sit until she waved at the patch of roof beside her. Then he sat, gingerly, and looked unfavorably on the cobblestones below.
“You are Eddis,” he said, and his voice was almost gentle, which was strange, from her uncle, “and I will kill anyone who says otherwise. But you do not have to be if you do not want to.”
“I know,” she said to the stars. “Six men have sworn their oaths to you and more want to. Would you like to know how many?”
“No,” he said instantly, harshly. He scrubbed a hand over his face. “But I didn’t lose my brother last week. I lost him ten years ago when my father died, and he was crowned.”
She thought of this for a moment.
If she reached for it, she could catch an echo of her uncle on this roof, younger, trying to tease his brother, and his brother looking back, uncomprehending.
It would only get worse once she was crowned.
“I am Eddis,” she told him.
The last Eddis, she thought but did not say.
He bowed his head in acknowledgement.
“But I am Helen too,” she added as an afterthought, and she was determined, absolutely determined, to make sure that stayed true.
It was hard to tell when she needed things now. She knew what her country needed, but no matter how much wine she drank, the fields would remain a shade too dry, and no matter how many cakes her attendants pressed upon her, she would still feel the echoes from the storerooms from all the winters they were empty, empty, empty.
Her attendants made her eat and drink in the same way they made her dress in clothes they thought would help her look like a proper queen despite her youth.
Her Thief did not.
Her Thief stole her earrings and dragged her to the roof to dance and called her Helen when they were alone.
There was an edge of something in his eyes sometimes. An echo of a face she saw once - twice - a thousand times in her thieves, in her temples, in her centuries.
She thought he might understand, just a little. Not the full weight, not yet, but the shadow of it, of the terrible burden of something pressing in.
She thought that when she was with him she might almost remember what it meant to be just Helen.
Hamiathes’ Gift was supposed to make her immortal. It would, she knew. She could feel the truth of it in the cold stone.
But that wasn’t why she held onto it until her knuckles went white.
All the whispers in her mind went silent when she held it. She was just Helen and Helen alone unless she thought a question - What were the grain yields this fall? - and then she knew that and only that and all was silent in her head once more.
“I should get rid of it,” she told Gen reluctantly. “You told me what it was like when it worked. It’s dangerous.”
Gen looked at her, eyes blazing. “I can do whatever I want,” he quoted, “and so can you.”
She looked down at it. “Maybe. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to keep it just for a while. To help me learn control.”
When it comes to war, she could not afford to wear it. She needed to feel every soldier who thought they could sneak through her forests, whether she thought to ask about them or not.
When he said he wanted to marry Attolia, she nearly threw the Gift at his head.
“Can you marry Attolia? Can you carry the country in her stead?”
“She’s trapped by it,” he said quietly. “I want to help.”
“But can you?” she repeated insistently and looked to his shadow.
No one else ever seemed to notice that it wasn’t really his shadow at all.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “Let’s find out.”
He could not, as it turned out.
He could, however, apparently become the entire peninsula, because Gen was annux now, and he had never been one to plot small.
It was a little easier once Gen was their countries united. She was still Eddis, but she could feel him there, lean on him if she had to.
She made a point not to lean, but it was good to reach out and touch.
It made her feel a little more like Helen and a little less alone.
Eddis’s mountains were emptying, and this was what she wanted, what she planned, what she actively encouraged, but it didn’t stop the pain of feeling bits of herself slowly drift away. It didn’t stop the hollow ache filling her stomach.
She would be the last Eddis, no matter how many children she had because soon her sacred mountain would be gone, and already her people were starting to forget bits of themselves.
The son of a veteran who walked away from his Sounisian wife decides not to get his tattoos, not to go to the new lodge the other veterans are building. He wants nothing to do with Eddis, and she feels less from him every day.
The daughter of one of her barons has never seen the mountains, will never see the mountains, and she will marry an Attolian who will have little patience for the myths she starts to tell their children, and it will not matter much to her, so she will stop.
They have a festival for the first day the snows melt enough to risk venturing outside again, but there is no need for that, not here, and some of the children think it is all just a story anyway.
It hurt, drifting away.
She was a little more Helen now, she thought, but she was Helen wracked by pain.
Sounis wrapped his arms around her and said, “Some of my young men have started getting tattoos.”
“Oh?”
“They go to your lodges because they want to learn how to fight like real Eddisian soldiers. And they listen to Eddisian stories because everyone knows that Eddis has the best playwrights, and if they cannot go see the plays at the festivals, they at least want to get a taste.” Sounis looked thoughtful, and she was fairly certain that she was actually seeing Sophos just now. “I am not the last Sounis,” he said, “but I think our son might be. Or his son. I think we are all slowly becoming the Peninsula.”
“We need a better name,” she said and kissed him.
He laughed. “That sounds like a job for an Eddisian poet.”
“Not me then,” she said dryly and kissed him again, just for a moment driving Sounis back enough to let Sophos fill his eyes.