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It was late when he returned to the castle, the hallways already cleaned, the servants long since asleep, only the evening guard pacing the rooftops in the chill– and even they most likely were too preoccupied with keeping warm to be entirely focused on their duty. That was an issue Roald knew he’d need to rectify, perhaps some improvements to the winter gear issued now that the winters seemed to get colder with every passing year. Or was he just getting old? His father had complained of the winter so hatefully, more hatefully with every year closer to his end…
“You made it back before sunrise, your Highness. I’m a bit surprised.”
She was glaring at him with a fierce expression, yet not that fierceness that came so naturally to her– not the look of confidence in her strength, but a look of utter disappointment. Roald felt his stomach sink. He knew how this looked. He knew that eventually, what stayed silent would be spoken in some other way, with words he did not intend. But in the past, this would have been a brief argument, a brief resolution, a long making-up; now, after how long he’d been forcing himself away from her side, he’d left her with no other conclusions but the most logical one.
“Ella? It’s… It’s not what you think, I assure you–”
She cut him off with a quiet, unrisen anger. If she’d exploded into shouting, into throwing things and calling him every insult in every tongue she’d learned since becoming queen, it would have been easier to bear. But for Ellamaria to be this quiet was more devastating than any curse could be.
“I know enough. Did you think I’ve grown as dull as I have to pretend to be?”
“What’s that meant to mean?”
Her head shook at him, still reserved, not even giving him her rage. He didn’t deserve even that much, not now.
“You think I can’t connect the dots, is that it? Why you wanted to spend your evening with some woman a kingdom over, whose dreary job you’ve saved me from so that I could sit and do bloody embroidery while you reminisce on who you’d hoped I’d somehow stay?”
A part of him wanted to know how she found out, when he’d gone to the pains of keeping that from her, for fear of her misunderstanding. He… he really had gotten to the point of underestimating her wit, the sharp weapon she kept concealed since their marriage, buried in heavy and cumbersome robes so he could maintain the image expected of him. She only ever pretended not to know more for his sake. Could he himself have forgotten that? How could he have ever for a moment fallen for a disguise he’d played the greatest part in putting on her?
“That isn’t it at all, Ellie! I realise… I should have let you know that…”
Already, she was receding into the darkness of she corridor, uninterested in his excuses. Now was past the time for being honest, if he even had the strength left to be honest at all.
“Save it.” One more look, just to see if he’d let it go. He wouldn’t. Not now. He couldn’t. “Go clean yourself up before morning, will you? You look… unpresentable.”
The melting snow on his commoner’s cloak had seeped into the velvet robes beneath, made them cling to his body in a way that reminded him of all the strengths that he didn’t possess. Was a king not meant to possess greater physical strength than this? In spite of how futile he knew his protests to be, he couldn’t stop himself, trudging forward like a wet hound, feeling as limp and miserable as though the soaked fabric was all of his body there was, and the man beneath it was only a pale, pathetic shadow.
“Ella, please, don’t be angry. All I did was talk, I only wanted to have a simple conversation with my Christmas drink, is that so wrong?”
Ellamaria kept walking, though she slowed enough to give him some hope of catching up to her. He didn’t really feel that she wanted him to, but as of late it had become so hard for him to tell what she really wanted. When had he forgotten, what once had been so instinctual?
“She reminds you of someone, doesn’t she? Someone I’m not allowed to be any longer.”
Roald tried to keep his voice down, the last thing either of them needed being witnesses to their argument. Surely, at some other point, he’d know how to find the words to explain himself.
“She was just someone I wanted to chat with! You know I’ve always wanted to learn more about common people… would you still be so angry if she hadn’t been a peasant?”
Ellamaria scoffed, but her voice trembled a bit when she responded. It was torture. He’d made the space between them too vast to communicate, step by step, too preoccupied with all he ought to be to remember who he was, who he’d promised her. Now he couldn’t see more than a dark outline of her, could only hear a faint echo that still carried the pain he’d caused.
“Would I still be angry if she hadn’t been a barmaid? Don’t talk to me like I’m a fool, Roald. Don’t talk to me like you think I’m a fool. You know I’m not.”
Coward, coward, coward. He could have just been honest. He could have made it so that there was nothing to be dishonest about in the first place. But it was too late for that now.
“Ellie…”
“I’ve said my piece. Put on some dry clothes before you come to bed, I don’t want to catch a cold on account of your idiocy, and besides that, you look disgraceful. Appearances are our duty, after all, are they not?”
He watched her ascend the staircase with heavy steps, the solid soles of her shoes that clanked more like a knight’s livery than a lady’s boots, echoing through the otherwise empty stairwell. To someone less perceptive, the swishing of her mink-trimmed overcoat might have disguised the firmness of her pace, the outer petals of the rose in all their colour and fragrance belying the thorny stem that upheld them. But Roald knew Ellamaria well, well enough that even if she hadn’t been waiting there to confront him, he may as well have had the very same exchange of words with the image of her he kept in his heart at all times. He knew he should have explained himself properly, and this never would have been an issue to begin with; but he’d been unwilling, perhaps even unable, to explain his intentions to her. He had been a coward. But at least not so much of a coward as his father had been.
Was that a difficult bar to clear? Was that truly the standard he wished to set himself by? Not quite as much of a bastard as his father?
She knew him better than anyone, too. She knew this was not some mere moral weakness. She knew, as he knew, that there was no other woman he wanted. So what did he want?
Never mind what the crown desired. What did Roald want?
And how well did he truly know what Ellamaria wanted? Was it something he could provide?
He knew there wouldn’t be anyone else like her, the moment she charged towards him with that unlowered gaze, how deftly she shoved aside the door guard like she’d had a lifetime of experience in punching above her weight. Dressed in common linen, cut to the court fashion, but fitting in only from a distance she was not content to stay at. He could see the raw hems of her bodice, something glimmering sharp in the folds of her trestle. That audacity, the utter lack of fear in her voice when she berated him, awakened someone he’d been raised to keep buried at all costs.
His father would never have approved, had he lived to see it. He’d have sent him out the gates without a name or crest, had he lived to see it. But he hadn’t, and he wouldn’t. It was no small blessing that he’d died before solidifying a politically advantageous marriage for him. Sometimes Roald wondered about the woman he’d have married if his father had lived to have his way, whether he’d ever have had the chance to notice what was missing.
It was hard enough to solidify a position of respect for her in the court as it was. But Ellamaria was just as clever as he’d imagined, quick to learn the intricacies of courtly etiquette, a natural actress. The only thing that she could not– or perhaps, would not– give up was the fierce look in her eyes. How strong he felt, knowing that whatever he surveyed, she’d fix her sight upon alongside him, the blood-rush of a different sort of power. He felt understood next to her, and felt that she understood as well as he did what their duties were.
There was an immediate mutual understanding of what would go unsaid; he knew well enough of what she’d lost, she knew well enough of what he’d lost. There was no sense in talking about it. Perhaps they should have forced the truth from one another before the courtship took its rapid flight, but the intoxication of a love this real, this mutual, this forbidden still materialising… Roald had no desire to take risks with winning her over. And she never was one to volunteer information about herself without prompting. They said enough to one another without words, to need to pick at old wounds, or so he’d thought.
Maybe he felt guilty. Ellamaria made it impossible to fool himself, in spite of the arts of self-deception that had gotten him through the galestorm of his childhood. He had been able to deceive himself that his father truly loved him, that his mother was happy with his father, that there was nothing he looked forward to more than the day the crown would weigh heavy on his head. But Ella made it clear, impossibly clear, that she was not covetous of a noblewoman’s role. It’s you I put up with this for, she’d whispered in his ear, the only sound worth listening to amidst the din and clamouring of an assembly of prostrating nobility and prescribed ovations. It’s only you that I want.
It was no fairytale for her to find her self-sewn linens replaced with rich silks and furs, and no great prize to have her rubbled, blackened hearth replaced with a dozen servants keeping her warm across every winter night. The only royal cloth that she was interested in touching was his skin, the only warmth she wanted was from his body. She could fool anyone else, the crowds being hardly observant of more than her posturing and dress, how naturally she embodied her regalia so that none who hadn’t known her before could have guessed that she wasn’t of blue blooded origins. But it was, as Roald knew himself, a simple matter of training, of practice. There was nothing in his blood that made him the man he was, only decades of dedication, of hollowing out that which was common and human and soft and replacing it with the stoic, dependable iconograph of power. His strength was Varrock’s strength, was Misthalin’s strength, and the reign of its last regent had illustrated all too clearly why one could not simply be a man and expect to reign successfully. No, he could not afford to be just a man, and Ellamaria could not go on being just a woman. They had duties beyond their desires, thousands of souls dependent upon the image they maintained.
And image was far more than a matter of ego for them. It was hardly enough to have enemies on the outside; those who bowed the deepest, whose tongues dripped with the most effluous praise, were as much of a hazard as any ancient necromancer or Vampyre horde, perhaps more so for how they could not be dealt with as cleanly. There were careful balances and unspoken contracts in the world of the court, and it could never entirely be known which allies would grasp at a thread of weakness should it emerge. Roald was certain that he would never make his father’s mistakes. The world would remember what he’d created, not who he’d been. But even if there were no others who could understand him, who he could even allow a glimpse of himself to, there would always be her; Ellamaria, who’d strode up to him and in a single glare exposed the man beneath the edifice to no other but himself. She was his greatest strength, and made him only stronger for the weaknesses he could not hide from her.
So why had he gone to Falador alone that night? Ellamaria hadn’t wanted to go out. Oddly enough, she seemed to have developed a genuine resentment for the class she’d come from, without ever losing her disdain for the one she married into. Look at how they lap up what you say, she’d muttered to him after his memorial speech, one in which he’d had to uphold the lie of a great king preceding him. Plenty of them are old enough to remember your father’s rule, what a disaster it was for them. How can they be so eager to hear you speak his praise?
Roald wished that he knew.
Kaylee had been kept so busy on her holiday shifts that allowing her face to relax, her smile to loosen, had begun to feel unnatural. It wasn’t as though she didn’t feel any cheer, not when the sky was so beautifully clear, the city decorated with garlands for the season, twinkling tinsel and glittering baubles that made every painfully mundane pavestone to and from work feel a bit, just a bit, like she was a child being allowed to walk over to the park on her own for the first time. She was tired, of course, but she’d not allow that to show, not a bit. The extra shifts this time of year were an unpleasant blessing, and at least the Rising Sun was a step up from the endless red-raw hands and stinging eyes of her former post as a laundress. She could even afford to pretty herself up a bit now, a gesture that paid for itself in tips, a language she was quick to become fluent in as charm became as invaluable a skill as the balancing of a dozen pints on the trays she walked up and down the stairs day by night. One of the more familiar patrons, an older fellow, who she’d figured out by now had in his previous life been a Temple Knight (he wasn’t quite the agent of secrecy he supposed himself, after a round of Asgarnian ales) had complimented the sky-blue bit of ribbon she’d indulged in to fix up her hair, had noted its reminiscence to something some woman he’d known in his youth had worn, and so it became a fixture in her working costume. Those small details, the bits of nostalgia and familiarity that were all as essential to the soul of a tavern as the drink itself, meant an extra tip here and there, or if not, some rumour that could be laundered when the opportunity arrived. Kaylee understood her profession well, and it paid its dividends.
So it was not quite the surprise it perhaps ought to have been when she’d been asked to entertain the visiting King of Misthalin over drinks, though still an unprecedented success. He certainly looked well for his age– the comforts of royal life clearly won out against the premature stressors of the crown– and he definitely knew how to tip. Such a shame he was already taken.
Predictably, King Roald Remanis the Third had no wish to speak of his court, or any affairs back home. He glanced around with an anxiousness, only barely perceptible, but with her years of experience Kaylee could tell well enough that his whereabouts had gone undeclared back in Varrock. Hadn’t Queen Ellamaria been a barkeep at one point? It wasn’t general knowledge, certainly not something anyone with wits about them would discuss aloud, but Kaylee did have her ears open at those very moments where lips were loosest. She could imagine why he’d come alone, why it would take the comfortable isolation of a private event like one of Party Pete’s to bring him over. You certainly wouldn’t see a monarch at the Rising Sun, that much she was sure of.
But whatever else she’d been able to anticipate, it was still a bit of a surprise to her what his Highness wanted to converse about. One might’ve guessed that the opportunity was taken to visit for something other than drinks, but he had the unusual characteristic of really meaning what he said when he asked for a conversational companion. He asked her about what life was like in Falador, her work, her family, banal things that could only have been interesting to someone who knew nothing of common life. She found a strangely sympathetic ear in him, when she finally allowed herself to act just a bit less, to drop the pitch of her voice from the high and bright tone she maintained at work, to confess to the challenges of caring for her bedridden mother with such long hours. She let herself show a sliver of truth and stopped smiling for a moment, recounting the morning she woke up first among her sisters to find her father’s boots gone from the threshold and her mother’s face ashen-white as she wordlessly ladled out their porridge, just one bowl less. And oddly enough, he was eager to listen.
If he hadn’t been from a foreign kingdom, Kaylee certainly would have kept up her costuming more; if King Vallance had somehow deigned to make his return to public life for a Christmas drink, she’d not have breathed a word of discontent for her life in his presence. Even with Sir Amik Varze a few tables across, it was hard to admit to her true feelings on her life, for her greatest treasure was her ability to weave happy, placeless memories for patrons with something to forget. It was, to say the least, unusual that anyone would urge for her to recollect that which lived outside of the golden, bubbling prism of warm candlelight and echoing, forgetful laughter. She even told him about her cat, the stray she’d picked up one night walking home, who’d ended up saving her mother’s life when he’d yowled to high Saradomin’s light to get her attention after that fall down the steps… after that heroic act, she’d decided to take to calling her previously nameless companion Arrav, and something twinkled in the King’s eye like a tear that wouldn’t dare to fall.
It had been a good conversation. Good enough, even if he hadn’t given her such a generous tip, even if he hadn’t been so easy on the eyes, even if it hadn’t flattered her more than she’d ever care to admit that he’d wished to chat with her. It was a curious thing for a man to surprise her at this point; those who appoint themselves as gentlemen rarely remained so given a dark room and a chance. So, there were still some gentlemen on Gielinor, after all. But the last thing he spoke to her about was the most surprising.
“I’m sure you already know this, but my wife Ellamaria used to work at a public house not unlike yours, in the South of Varrock.”
She hadn’t been sure if it was a trick, if he was assaying her disposition to rumour-spreading, if it would jeopardize the tip she was counting on now, already thinking of the new mattress and what good it’d do for her mother’s back to have it. But even if she’d long since mastered the art of keeping her drink from loosening her tongue, the King’s earnestness proved more disarming.
“I’ve… overheard it, but I wouldn’t make assumptions based on hearsay. It really isn’t any of my business.”
“Ah, you’re good. Ella always did say that a barmaid’s greatest asset was to choose every word, every expression, to suit the ego of the patron. But to me, it’s never been a matter that ought to need hiding– what would Gielinor be without its taverns? She was excellent at her job, you know. An excellent actress, so good that she slipped into her new role scarcely anyone batting an eye– she knew how to become unrecognisable, how to reserve her true self from the public eye. If it were really up to me, the way the world thinks such things are up to a king, it would be no secret, but…” He sighed, the first time his demeanor showed the years his duty had prematurely piled upon him in the lines of his face shifting. “I’ll admit to you, Miss Kaylee, I’ve really got no holiday spirit tonight, and I came more for the sake of… research, than anything else. I apologise to have been using you like this, but there are things that Ella won’t tell me… or rather, things I simply do not know how to speak of with her. But thanks to your candidness, I can at least know slightly more of just how much I do not know. If you’d be kind enough to answer one last question… and before that, this you’ve earned, regardless of whether or not you wish to answer…”
A small leather pouch slid noiselessly across the table; its weight in Kaylee’s hand turned to lightness, a lightness in her heart knowing that her mother would sleep easier tomorrow night, that Arrav would have a bowl of cream and not just water for Christmas Eve. But even without that, she knew what her answer would be, seeing now for the first time the distant image of the Queen of Varrock in a linen apron, scrubbing glasses and smiling amiably until her face forgot the peace of honesty, wondering whether her face was allowed to be honest with itself even now.
“I don’t mind at all, your Highness.”
King Roald finished the last of the last of his drinks, and made to stand, gesturing for his plain overcoat to be fetched so that he might exit without too much fanfare.
“Well, then. What I’d like to know is… what I cannot learn from any amount of study, or surveys, or reports… how do you know for yourself, whether your smile is sincere, when it so rarely has the opportunity to be? Can one become so skilled at acting that the actor disappears?”
Yet again, a surprise. Kaylee thought for a moment, then a moment more, swirling around the last drops of ale in her glass as though there might be something in her reflection that would help her to answer. And perhaps Saradomin was answering her silent prayer for a moment of wisdom, as she saw her face warp and dance in the bottom of the cup, seeing herself as she hadn’t been able to in years.
“I… I don’t think that you ever really lose yourself, you just become more… distant. The longer you keep up the role, the more difficult it becomes to disentangle yourself from it, but it never becomes you, no more than a mask can become your skin. It gets harder to be honest, the longer you live like this, but never impossible.” She looked up, still a bit shocked that the king of all Misthalin was listening to her with all the focus of a trusted advisor. “This question… it’s not only about Queen Ellamaria, is it?”
“No, I suppose it isn’t.” As he made to leave, he gestured for her hand, and kissed her worn, rough-skinned knuckles just as if she’d been a noblewoman in silk gloves. Entirely unsalacious, entirely pure in the gratitude he offered. “You’ve done me a great service, Miss Kaylee. I hope that you have a lovely holiday. Send my best to your mother… and to Arrav, of course.”
“And safe travels to you, your Highness.” Kaylee’s legs trembled a little when she curtsied, her muscles disobedient to her commands, even after the royal entourage had departed back into the winter darkness. As her racing thoughts finally ran out of breath, she forgot her place as a guest, and began to clear out the tables despite Pete’s protests.
“Come on now, Kaylee. You’re not working tonight.”
“Given how odd tonight has been, I could use a little familiarity. If you’re done entertaining, you could always help me out…”
“Right, right. I’ll just make sure our last guests depart safely and I’ll meet you at the sinks.”
Familiarity. It was not always a pleasant thing, but still, a comforting phenomenon. But the smile on her lips, the shine of her eyes that she caught in the platter of glasses she collected, was true. Kaylee was still herself, she felt sure of that. She decided then and there that she wouldn’t smile unless she meant it.
How old had he been the first time he’d been taken out to hunt? How young had he been?
There at the border of where Forinthry had once stood were now only brambles and thickets, the ancient cobblestones of what had existed before pushed up and aside by jutting roots, nature demonstrating with neither kindness nor cruelty that it had no special care for honouring the histories of men. There in the dark grove, beneath the boughs of twisting yews, something moved in the grass. The guardsmen pulled up their crossbows, only for the King to abruptly gesture them down, sticking a knee in his pointer hound to keep it in place. This challenge was meant for his son, who was to prove his manhood to him at the point of the bolt in his weapon, a weapon that he could scarcely hold properly in his small hands.
It would not have been a difficult shot. He’d spent enough hours being trained, berated, belittled at the targets on the castle rooftop that the slow amble of the boar in the hoary, frost-kissed grass. He made an aim squarely for the centre of its head, prepared for the moment it turned to the sound of danger, any moment now. Then he saw a rippling in the grass behind it; three small, striped creatures, trusting in their mother’s instinct, secure under her watch.
His fingers clasped the trigger so tightly that the cold metal burned his skin. He had to do it, he had to. He had to…
Mama, is there something you’re sad about? Is it something Father said…?
Don’t you worry about it, Rollie. You’re here with me now… I’m as happy as can be.
“The boar was right in front of you, pathetic whelp. Are you my son or a daughter?”
He couldn’t do it. He’d wanted the beast to get away, to go back to the safety of the forest, and so for the first time in what life he could remember, he lied to his father.
“I… I’m sorry, Father, my hands are numb from the cold, and I could not–”
The sting of a gloved hand across his face broke the serenity of the evening, some animals crying in alarm, in warning. The head guard turned for orders, holding his hounds in wait for the next word from their Lord, but received only a scowl and string of curses.
“The hunt is off.”
“Your Highness…? But–”
“The. Hunt. Is. Off. Are you an imbecile? The boy clearly wants to go hungry, so he will. The rest of you can return to the barracks, and we’ll head out without this dead weight on the next clear night.” Roald’s face was still frozen with fear, with guilt, but not with regret as his father pulled him roughly up by the collar. “Soft-hearted waste of my blood. You can go to bed hungry for your efforts– see what your weakness wins you. Get up and walk back, my carriage has no room for cowards.”
It was frightening, the prospect of walking back alone. Roald wondered sometimes if his father would be glad to see him perish, to have the excuse to find and adopt a heir who suited his desires better, who didn’t seem to illustrate the failure of the Remanis dynasty with every breath. There was definitely a precedent for political adoptions, when the heir apparent became too much of a liability; he’d read of such cases with his Governess, read of what was done with the ones who those acquisitions replaced. At best case, he’d be sent to some corner of the Kingdom of little strategic value, to spend his life guarding what nobody of value would have chosen to rule. At worst…
In that moment, it didn’t seem so bad, the prospect of being left to fend for himself. Perhaps he’d find a way to scavenge and survive, like those early settlers of Avarrocka did, in that favourite of his history books. Life before nobility, before courts and castles, brutal and short but undeniably alive. People proved themselves with deeds, not lineages. They fought for survival, not subjugation. It was only a naive dream, he knew that much, but still…
“Come on, lad. It’s alright.”
Roald jolted at the voice from the rapidly growing darkness, before turning towards the dim lantern-light at his side. One of the older guards, one of those who remembered his grandfather, who had an unspoken lack of respect for that man’s successor, had remained behind, keeping his lantern under his cloak until the rest of the party was far enough along to have forgotten him. “I’ll get you something to eat before we enter the gates. Packed some dried fish and barley-cakes, if that’s alright with you. It’s hardly roast boar, but… something tells me you wouldn’t want that, anyhow.”
“I don’t deserve to eat,” Roald muttered, his face finally thawing as the cold presence of his father was at last withdrawn, sensation returning enough to feel his tears spilling from both his eyes and nose, and something else unpleasantly, familiarly warm along his cheek. The rings his father had worn, worn over his gloves even on the hunt, worn on the very surface always so that his proof of status was always the first thing seen when he made a fist. The proof of what he was, of what Roald was not, had left a gash along his cheek and over his nose. “I’m a failure. I know that. What’s the point in feeding me?”
The old guard’s face seemed to take on a decade more when he said those words, his aged but still yew-bough strong sinewed hand gently wiping away tears and blood with the corner of his cloak. “I pray he hasn’t put his roots into your heart deep enough for you to believe what you’re saying, boy. Your father may be shamed of what you did, sparing the little ones when you spared their mama, but for what all my years have taught me… Saradomin smiles upon you, lad. Don’t forget that.”
He wanted to believe him. Roald wanted more than anything to believe him. Already, some part of his mind he kept pushed down the very best he could, the part his governess and tutors called excessively imaginative began to weave a fable of a life where this man was his father, and not the one who had long since disappeared into the twilight mist and clouds of trampled soil. But he was not, and Roald knew that destiny was not his to pick and shape. So all that he could do was nod, and hold onto the edge of that ragged wool cloak as they walked back towards the city gates, towards destiny and all he knew that he owed it.
“Mama?”
Her head was bowed in prayer, not quite the way she prayed in the chapel, with her shoulders aligned and posture perfectly fixed, but with the exhaustion that she only revealed in solitude bending her forward, uneven and shaky, her hair loosened from its intricate plaits and trembling as her body did, seeking the Light of Lord Saradomin in the stars woven into the fine blue carpet. Finding Him as she never could sitting aside her husband in the pew. Roald moved closer to her on the edge of the bed, followed her motions, tilting his head down and studying the silver threads in the fine blue wool, imagining what He was like, what He would guide him to do if only His voice could be heard above the shouting, the screaming, and the worse-still silence of dreadful anticipation that had filled his head far too much to leave room for light. So long as his father was near, his prayers went unanswered. Was that Saradomin’s will? Did he deserve this?
Lord Saradomin, please answer me. Am I a wicked child? Is there hope for me?
If there was any response, he could not hear it. Whatever prayer he offered, only his father’s voice returned to him. It was louder in his mind than his own thoughts, loudest in the silence.
“Little Roald,” His mother broke the prayer, pulling him in close to her side, so close that he trembled just as she did. “Can you ever forgive me?”
Roald was confused, a little frightened by the desolation in his mother’s voice, the fading of that only warmth he knew that he could trust in. “But you haven’t done anything wrong, Mama. Not ever.”
She turned to face him and smiled, soft and serene as Roald imagined one of the Icyene saints would have been, holding him close against her chest like she had when he was small. “Nobody is perfect, Rollie. You should know that. I’ve made mistakes… I gave you a father like that… and I was selfish. Have you ever wondered why you don’t have any siblings?”
He hadn’t. But now, thinking about it, he was the only child he knew from all the courts who paid visit and who were visited by them, to not have any brothers or sisters. Had that not just been Saradomin’s will?
“I think you’re old enough for me to tell you things, now. Things I’d like to keep to myself, for my own selfish heart, so you don’t ever think ill of me… but you deserve the truth from your Mama, my dearest Rollie.” The sadness in her eyes was so soft, so gentle, like the first snowfall lining the windowsill, melting away just as quickly; Mama didn’t like to dwell on sad things, she’d told him. But Roald was beginning to understand that even if the snow was swept off of the windowsill, the winter was still there, whether or not he looked at it. Mama’s sadness was the same. “I thought that maybe, once there was an heir, he’d… your father might become nicer. Other ladies told me that was the best thing I could do. And I was selfish… I didn’t want to be alone any longer.”
“How is that selfish?” Roald demanded, surprised and revulsed at the sudden surge of anger in his chest. How could his mother dare to call herself selfish? How could she say something like that? “Queens and kings are supposed to have heirs, Mama. That’s not selfish at all.”
“Isn’t it?” She brushed her hand through his hair, and the anger left him like a flock of birds scattering into the wind. “After you were born, after I saw that he wouldn’t change, that he’d never change, I… I went to see a witch, you know. I wanted to make sure I wouldn’t have any more children, that he wouldn’t get any more children. Not with how he’s treated you. One was already too much…”
Roald felt the ball of fury return, but only to collapse into itself so soon as it formed, into a shell of sadness, the shadow that always came with anger, at least for him. Sadness never seemed to follow his father’s anger. “Do you… Mama, do you regret me being born?”
“Never.” Her voice was still quiet, but louder than it usually was. Firm and certain of itself, so different from who she was outside of their room. “I will never regret you, Rollie, you can be sure of that. But I would not blame you if you grow up to regret being born to me.”
“Never,” Roald echoed his mother’s word, clutching onto her tighter. “I love you, Mama. That won’t ever change, never ever.”
Her smile, feather-soft, was not a happy one, was not one of satisfaction. But she smiled anyways, for his sake. Roald was beginning to understand how many of her smiles only existed for his sake. “And I love you, forever and ever and ever. No matter what he– no matter what your father says, just remember that you’re not him. You don’t need to be. You never should be. Can you promise me that?”
It was a difficult thing to respond to. Wasn’t that his purpose, as the heir apparent to Misthalin? Was he not meant to emulate his father? It wasn’t as though he wanted to, not in the slightest, but still… was that not his destiny?
“I can tell what you’re thinking, Rollie. But your father is not the sort of king you’ll be. You’re nothing like him, and that’s by Lord Saradomin’s will, I thank Him every day that you’re not. You’ll shine bright in whatever darkness he leaves you in. I know you will. Just promise me that you won’t try to change, no matter what anyone tells you.”
Without another word, she slid a ring off her finger– the smallest of the lot, but the one he knew meant the most to her. A simple silver ring with a simple opal, something even a commoner might be able to come upon when the market was in Misthalin’s favour. His father despised that she held onto it after their marriage and her ascension from minor to major nobility, and so it became a secret treasure, all the more precious for how it only appeared in his absence. She pressed it into his palm and clasped his fingers around it, and Roald could still feel her warmth in the metal, until it became his warmth.
He understood. Listening to the beating of his mother’s heart, the beating of the wind against the window, the snow against the rooftop, he understood. “I promise.”
Ellamaria was old enough to understand irony, when it happened. Hadn’t they all been cursing the cold, all winter long? Hadn’t they asked for the hearth to offer up just a bit more warmth? Hadn’t they tempted fate?
Careful how you pray, her mother had always told her. You can’t take back what you ask for, once the Lord’s heard it. She wondered if she’d asked something terrible and forgotten it, if she’d been possessed, if it was something she’d done– it was almost easier, if she could tell herself that it was her fault, that it was her fault, that it was her fault–
Whose fault was this?
Her uncle was perturbed by her quietness, the lack of visible grief. For a moment, she thought he might’ve considered whether she started the fire herself. But when they sat town together at his rough, splintery table for their first breakfast together, the morning afterwards, when she still smelled like smoke and death and left its traces in the smudges of soot that refused to wash out of her hands, he looked at her with a certain understanding.
“You don’t like to say how you feel, do you, Ellie?” He looked at her with restrained pity, restrained grief, the expression of a man who wished he still had it in him to be surprised by things like this. But these things happen, and they happened all the time, to people like them. “Your dad was like that, too. But it isn’t healthy.”
“So what?” She almost bristled at the sound of her own voice, still hoarse from the fumes of the blaze, her throat still raw and painful. “What good does it do if I cry some more? They won’t come back.”
“You’re too young to be talking like that,” He whispered, leaning forward to brush some remnants of dirt off her face. “But I can’t pretend that I don’t understand.” Her nails were torn up, what was left of them filled up with dirt and cut up by shattered glass as she’d fought to get inside, to escape the arms holding her back, shouting at her that there’s no sense in you joining them, there’s nothing left to save in there, please, Ellie, please stop…
When her uncle stood up to fetch a washcloth, evidently eager to find something he could do for her, anything he could do to forget that his family was gone, too, save for her– Ellamaria’s ears could only recognise his footsteps as echos of burning, collapsing beams of wood, sputtering and clattering to the ground, the hiss of the kettle becoming the shrieking of flames sucking the moisture from each old husk of half-rotten planks until they curled in onto themselves into black, then white, then nothing, nothing at all…
“Stay here by the hearth so you don’t catch cold. That’s all we need right now…” His voice was familiar in its lack of polish, far more comforting than the well-trained accent of the city guard who had offered her condolences as the wreck was accounted for, condolences and not a penny more. Uncle had waited until they rounded the block before he began to curse them out, giving Ellamaria the comfort of at least having slightly more vocabulary by which to define her situation. They’re as bad as the nobles, they think they’re above us, they do. Forget where they came from the moment they get something shiny to wear. Would rather send us to the gallows for stealing a loaf of bread than protect us. Bastards, the lot of them…
She turned her chair around the face the fire, to remind herself that here and now it was under control, and it could take nothing more from her. But the warmth felt like insects crawling on her skin, and the golden light cast on the dingy walls looked like the fingers of the underworld, reaching up to take back what they’d forgotten that night. She wouldn’t cry, though. She’d cried enough. All it had done was burn up her throat and make her throw up black spittle. Useless.
Her uncle had never been known to be a gentle sort, precisely the sort of product of South Varrock the North would sneer at, or better yet send reports to the guard for loitering should they be caught committing the crime of picking their trash for those still-good cuts of meat and crusts of bread. They’d consider her uncle a dangerous person, and yet they both know those in the beautiful houses to the North were more dangerous without the need to ever raise a single fist. But right now, he showed unpracticed but earnest gentleness, combing out her hair, wiping soot from her ears, cleaning what was left of her fingernails as best he could. “It won’t surprise you to know I’ve got no ladies’ dress for you to wear, so I’m afraid you’ll need to keep that garb a bit longer. I’m sure I’ll find something soon enough…”
“I can find something for myself,” Ellamaria responded tonelessly, statue-still, watching the hearth flicker and eat away at another chunk of salvaged firewood. “I won’t stay here long.”
He chuckled nervously, and it became clear just how little he knew how to deal with children. It was better that way, Ellamaria thought. The last thing she needed right now was someone who’d coddle her, who’d try and pretend they could fill the void of her mother and father. Besides, she didn’t feel like a child anymore. Not now. “I know you’re a brave girl, but you’re too young to go at it yourself. Come on, now. You’re still sick from the smoke…”
“I want revenge.” Those words felt more firm, more real than anything else in the world. They were a prayer she knew that she’d never take back.
Uncle had nothing to respond to that. He wasn’t the sort who’d tell a comforting lie just to smooth over the roughness of life, not even to his own niece. But there was a certain agitation as he scrubbed her face, blackening the square of cloth with all that remained of their family. He fetched a shawl, worn and faded but still warm, and the weight of her own vow hit her for the first time in many. The firelight began to blur, until she could see nothing, nothing but red.
“Why do we let them let this happen to us?” She choked, failing to keep her tears in, as the shawl was wrapped more tightly around her. In spite of his lack of practice in dealing with children, with affection at all, her uncle pulled her into a hug that guided the trampled-down sobs up into her throat, rendering it raw and painful again, but at least it felt like something. “Why do we just live with it?”
“Many before you have asked that question,” he whispered, carrying her to the straw mattress that was all they had for beds. “Many died to try and answer it. Some things just are the way they are, Ellie. Don’t let the anger eat your heart.”
She shook her head violently, the anger all the evidence she had that she was truly still alive, not still in that dreamworld of death, her rage more solid than the ground beneath her. “Why did Saradomin let it happen?”
Uncle chuckled grimly. “Who knows what the Gods think of us? They’ve their own plans, with nothing to do with whether we live or die. Best not to waste your time on them.”
That was a frightening idea, letting go of the Gods, of Saradomin’s teaching, of the promises of Light. But Ellamaria had no energy left for fear. Fear had left her along with her parents, along with her former self.
“Fine.” She curled up under the thin burlap and covered her head, and Uncle understood that she was done with talking. Over time, she’d come to trust him, but she was determined not to rely on him. Not to rely on anyone, mortal or god, anyone but herself, ever again.
Common accident, the report had said. You know how those slum-dwellers are, they’d said. Probably didn’t tend the fire, got distracted over drinks, over fights, tried to burn something they stole and it went off… they said, they said, they said. But they did nothing.
The new King never even showed his face on their side of the city. Ellamaria had only seen it by luck, climbing up onto the general store rooftop to watch the disgraceful parade, the opulent clothing, the masses of guards who were nowhere to be seen when she’d been shouting for someone, anyone to help. The man they guarded looked young, impressionable, foolish. A bit frightened, even. But he hid it well enough, for others’ eyes. Ellamaria knew better. There was weakness in there. There was her chance for revenge. Now it was just a matter of waiting for the moment.
“I hear that they’re hiring at the Blue Moon, you know.”
“Hmmph.”
“I’m just saying… a barmaid makes a better living than a trash-picker. I certainly don’t have the looks for it, nor the charisma, but you could get yourself ahead in life…”
“What, can you really imagine me, smiling and serving with little curtsies?”
“I can imagine you putting on any disguise that suits you. You’re clever, you’re fierce, and… you can act the part, that much I’m sure of. You can hide your true thoughts and feelings so well it even frightens me a bit, sometimes.”
“What does that have to do with serving ale?”
“More than you’d think. People go to the pub to forget themselves and their troubles a while… if you can help provide that atmosphere, to make them forget, to make them spend just a bit longer with the drink, perhaps until they’re not so good at counting their coin any longer…”
“Alright, I’ll see if they’ll have me. But don’t get your hopes up.”
“Hey, I won’t ask for any of your earnings. I’ve one foot in the grave already, you know. Only want to make sure you can support yourself before I pull in the other one.”
“Shut up, Uncle. That’s not funny.”
“And I’m not joking, Ellie. I just… well, when I took you in, and you were talking about revenge, so serious for a child… I worry you’ll throw your life away fighting a battle you can’t win.”
“Not a battle I can’t win, I won’t.”
He sighed, a long and tired sigh, like some of his spirit went with his breath. He truly had gotten old far faster than Ellamaria could have guessed. They way he lived, he said, no sense in dragging it along. He was ready to meet his maker and say his piece to Him.
“Just… give your old uncle a little bit of hope, girl. I won’t make you promise me to stop fighting, I know that’s beyond me, and as much as I wish I could say otherwise, that fighting spirit is a part of you that can’t be washed away. It was there even before…” He coughed, and Ellamaria poured another cup of nettle tea for him, adjusted his blanket and poked the hearth so his legs would stay warm. “...Well, you know. Before all that. Just don’t forget you’ve still got a heart beating in you. You deserve to let yourself be happy. Promise me you won’t forget, love’s a fiercer force than hate is.”
“You really are dying, if you’re saying rubbish like that.”
Uncle was silent, and the draft through the eaves became knife-sharp. This was all the family she had left. After he was gone…
“Alright, alright, I promise. I promise to remember love and all that other nonsense, if that helps you go to sleep at night.”
“Hmm.” He studied her eyes, and his thin, chapped lips found the force of spirit to smile, a rare sort of smile that somehow hurt Ellamaria to see more than comforted her. It wasn’t familiar, hearing things like this from him. She knew why he was finally opening up to her, and it placed a knot of dread into her chest. “I think you’ll be alright, Ellie. As a matter of fact… I know you will.”
“Whatever. I’ll go see whether the Blue Moon is desperate enough to hire me, I suppose. Don’t stay up too late waiting for me.”
Don’t go just yet, she wanted to ask, wanted to beg. But the words couldn’t force their way out from her heart. And besides, Uncle was still a stubborn man in his old age. He’d go when he felt good and ready.
Perhaps that was why she felt more anxiety than happiness when she got the offer. It didn’t show, and never would, the gentle smile of a grateful girl eager to prove herself at work all that she offered for the proprietor to see. She didn’t run out, but walked with confidence, with the resolve of someone sure of their station moving upwards, didn’t take a step or make an expression out of place until she walked back through that alleyway door and found him.
“I got the job,” She whispered to ears that would never hear her. “But you already knew that, didn’t you, Uncle?”
“You can release her.”
“But, your Highness, she brought a knife–”
“And you’ve taken it. Let me have a proper discussion with the lady who went to such lengths to speak with me.”
If she was perturbed by the gauntlet-clad hand on her throat, it did not show in the slightest, her dark hair wild and mangled from the scuffle– yet somehow, this woman had managed to stand her own against the best of the Varrock Guard, with nothing but a scrap-metal shiv, and for whatever cuts and bruises were marring her skin, she’d left far worse in a full entourage of armoured men. Roald felt somewhat lightheaded, somewhat bewildered, somewhat frightened, somewhat… something else. But of all these uncertain feelings, he was certain that he wanted to speak to this woman, even if she managed to kill him unarmed; he wouldn’t put it past her.
“Stay by the door, if you insist, but I want to be able to speak with her.” He rose from his seat to help her up, and received a cold, vicious stare in response. She was beautiful in a way he’d never known before. And what was more, she had no interest in whether or not he found her beautiful. There was something about that which left Roald feeling almost drunken, yet more clearheaded than he’d ever been.
“I presume you know my name, but a formal introduction is still in order,” He offered, noting how the woman’s eyes pierced through the veneer of confidence, seemed to follow the suppressed tremble of his voice like a wolf following prey moving through the grass by the slightest ripple. He could not deceive her, and honestly, he did not want to. “King Roald… Remanis… the Third. And who might you be?”
“Just some peasant woman to you.”
“You’re hardly ‘just’ anything, you’ve proven that much. Your name, please.”
“Ellamaria.”
“Ellamaria…?”
“Just Ellamaria. Nothing else. No family left, so no sense in a family name, is there?”
“Very well, just Ellamaria it is. I’m hoping you can help me understand what’s brought you to try and take my life… words are usually more effective than weapons, in that regard.”
“And if I just used my words and asked nicely for an audience from the king, do you think I’d get it? Your guard understands force and power. I can speak their language. That’s the only reason I’ve gotten this far, and you know it.”
“I’ll concede to you on that. I certainly would like to speak more with civilians, to gain some perspective…”
“Would you, now? Do you think we’d be so eager to flatter your ego when the best you’ve done for us is let us rot in squalor while your court gets to live off our backs? Do you expect you’ll be getting bowing and scraping from us?”
“Those aren’t things I want.” Roald turned to his guard captain. “Ellamaria, as much as I’d like to speak with you privately, I don’t think that’s much of an option so long as your hands are free. If you’d allow…”
“Go on ahead, cuff me. I know how this goes.”
She didn’t resist the metal encasements around her wrists; three sets, at that. It probably would have been excessive for a hill giant, but that was just how strong of an impression Ellamaria had made. Roald nodded to the captain. “You should go oversee your men, make sure their wounds are tended.”
“Do you seriously mean to be left alone with this hellcat, your Highness?”
“If I must make an order of it, I will. She will not pose any threat to me, and I can call upon you if there’s any trouble. Now, go.”
Captain Rovin bowed begrudgingly, yet in spite of his blackened eye, there was a hint of respect in his eye as he stared down Ellamaria on his way out. He always had been complaining that the guard didn’t get enough serious challenges to prepare them for the worst case scenarios. Ellamaria had provided a training regimen even he could not have dreamed of. With the door shut behind him, Roald approached Ellamaria cautiously, less so for fear of his safety than awareness of how being alone with him now, unable to fight back, might disturb her. With a careful weaving of a silver pin into the mechanisms of her imprisonment, he slid off the series of cuffs with ease.
“Lockpicking has been a bit of a hobby for me,” he said gently, keeping a certain amount of space between himself and Ellamaria, allowing her to test the freedom of movement she’d just been granted, to assay it for any trace of a trap. “I highly doubt there’s anything new I could teach you about it, though. I’d bet that with fifteen minutes, you’d have gotten yourself out.”
“Do you expect me to fall to me knees in gratitude, just because you haven’t killed me yet?”
“Not in the slightest. Truthfully… yes, I was afraid, and more truthfully, I still am somewhat frightened by you, Ellamaria. But I can’t say it’s not perfectly understandable for you to despise me. After all, my father left quite the legacy… I will not pretend for a moment that it’s a good or even decent one, even if I cannot say as much in public.”
“Hah! You don’t know the half of it.”
“I know I don’t. So I’m hoping that you’ll tell me. Tell me the truth, like nobody else has the courage to. I want to hear it.”
As he stood before her, wondering if these would be his last minutes, wondering if he’d be too bothered if they were, Ellamaria’s shoulders slackened, her posture no longer entirely wrought with righteous fury. Still, her eyes blazed, brighter than any he’d ever seen before. It wouldn’t be such a terrible thing, to die with those eyes looking at him…
“You… you’re being honest, aren’t you?”
“I understand it’s difficult to believe, but I am.”
She smiled, ever slightly, and the tugging within his chest turned into a war between waning survival instincts and waxing attraction. Either way, if Ellamaria left now, some part of him would die, he was sure of it.
“...Alright. How much time do we have?”
The rest of my life, something inside of Roald whispered. He cleared his throat, suddenly aware of his reddening face. “As long as you need. Tell me your troubles, and I’ll tell you why I’m no greater a fan of this court than you are.”
“Hmm… I really did think I was beyond surprises, at this point in my life.” Roald wondered if it was an illusion of the candlelight, or wishful thinking, or whether he saw Ellamaria’s cheeks flushing as well. “But you’re not what I thought you were, your Highness.”
“Just Roald is fine from you, Madam Just-Ellamaria.” They sat down next to one another on the steps, coming closer without thinking about it, talking and talking until at last Captain Rovin knocked for some signal that his liege hadn’t been slain.
“I realise that this is a lot to ask from one I’ve just met, but…” Roald coughed, all at once realising he’d lost a fight and couldn’t be more glad for it. “Would you be willing to stay a bit longer? There’s far more I’d like to learn from you, your perspective, your…”
“I agree,” Ellamaria said softly, softer than she’d ever sounded before and yet still so strong. “I’d like to speak more with you… Roald.”
There was a lightness in his step as he rose to open the door, to reassure his Captain that he was perfectly fine, and as a matter of fact, his new order was to ensure that none intruded on these chambers for… the foreseeable future. Too shocked to protest, Captain Rovin nodded numbly, and as the doors shut behind him Roald could catch only the fragment of a mutter, …Woman like that, should’ve known, ‘course that’d be the type…
Ellamaria stood up, approached him from behind, and placed a hand upon his where he still held onto the brass handle, lost in thought. Her touch was enough to make him, for a moment, forget himself, who he was, who his father had been. She was everything he hadn’t known to search for, through such strange fortune, someone he was never meant to meet, let alone touch, let alone feel so much for so quickly, and yet–
“No more interruptions, then?” Her smile, glorious and feral and bright, seemed to make the room spin as he turned to meet her gaze. Her hand was on his chest, and Roald didn’t doubt that if she wished to, she’d find a way to kill him with just that hand, but he felt no more fear, only excitement. No shadow of death on his mind, only the sensation of being gloriously, unprecedentedly alive. “Your guard is certainly worked up over a single common woman.”
“Hardly a common woman,” he responded breathlessly, and before their conversation could finish…
“I think we’ve been talking a bit too much… shall we take a reprieve?”
With all he could muster being the slightest nod, he knew that she understood. They knew each other, somehow, better than if they’d known each other all their lives. And when their lips met, it was as though a long-forgotten prayer was at last being answered.
It was barely any time at all, before they decided on one another. The part that took time was determining how to make it go over as smoothly as possible with the court.
Reldo, one of the few people Roald had grown up with a sense of trust in– who’d snuck him books to read long after he’d been demoted as his tutor on account of overstimulating his imagination– had managed to dig up some evidence of nobility in Ellamaria’s bloodline, though some minor adjustments were required to strengthen the claim. It was fortune in disguise that Ellamaria’s more recent genealogy had been lowly enough to not even have been counted in recent censuses, and with the papers in as much order as they’d ever be, none could publicly oppose the marriage.
Neither of them had desire for a ceremony, and thankfully the tradition of large, public weddings had fallen from favour in Misthalin society, perhaps partly in thanks due to a certain duke who managed to go through husbands and wives at a frankly disturbing pace. In any case, there were enough challenges in the court without making any unnecessary spectacle of the union. The King had simply chosen differently to expectation, and that was that.
So why did it seem like the scrutiny was neverending, even in their own home? Ellamaria certainly played her part well, disguising the sharp and wild demeanour she possessed under a perennially unimpressed glower, her muscles not quite so obvious in finely-crafted gowns, her words at once mincing and ladylike. It was evident that she had no ambitions of finery in her heart, but so much she’d put up with for the sake of maintaining Roald’s image in the den of wolves that was the social circuit of nobility. At least they had some hours of the day alone together, most days. At least things were peaceful, for now.
Peaceful. That was the best thing he could do; maintain the peace. A good king focused on the needs of the many, and not the few. There were always sacrifices that needed to be made for the greater good, sacrifices his father had lacked the conviction to commit to, and strangest of all– even as he failed his kingdom, he’d failed his family just as much. What had his father been committed to, besides money, power, a false veneer of glory that chipped away at the slightest touch? Roald would not repeat his mistakes. And even if living up to the responsibility of his crown meant neglecting his personal life and those within it, at least he could ensure that Ellamaria never saw an ugly, flawed part of him. So long as he remained focused, so long as he kept his fears and insecurities to himself, there was no chance, no chance at all of becoming him.
He hadn’t meant to put distance between them, not at all. Distance from Ellamaria was the last thing he wanted. But it wasn’t only exposing too much of himself to her that he feared. Having to watch her conceal her true thoughts and feelings, to intentionally dull the sharpness of her intellect and feign frailty in a body he knew to be far stronger than his, it became… crushing.
That day they’d met, when she’d come close to killing him, when every word he’d been trained upon would have necessitated him killing her; there were times as though Roald felt as though he did kill her, or rather was doing so slowly, pulling the light from her eyes with the farce she had to live for his sake. Now, even when they were alone together, an obscuring mist seemed to separate them, a chill that took away the warmth from their blood and left them as only marble sculptures of a King and Queen in the shape dictated of them, perfect and immaculate, yet entirely incapable of reaching out to touch the one next to them.
So he’d begun to tell her less of the truth, and she began to pretend to accept it. They were together at the throne, yet somehow more lonesome than ever. The struggles of these last few years, all the disasters always just barely averted, all the crises that could only ever be managed just for now at best– all the work that had to be done, without showing a sign of weakness, of exhaustion, of feeble humanity. On both their parts, duty demanded greater and greater portions of their lives, until it felt as though they were only here to try and keep the image of their house bright as their persons grew dim. How long could it have been before those polished images had nothing left to do but shatter?
“Ella.”
Roald could not explain the grief that was rising in his voice, not even to himself.
“Don’t.” With a sharp turn away from him, Ellamaria moved from her embroidery hoop to fervently shining her dress-boots, with enough force that her knuckles reddened. But her expression was more one of sadness than anger– if only it had been anger, it would have hurt him less to see. “Roald… please, don’t. I don’t have the energy to lie, not today.”
“I don’t want you to lie to me.” Even with their borders secured, tenuous as always but as stable as he could hope to keep them, his kingdom may as well have been crumbling into dust to see Ellamaria like this. To know if he hadn’t been so foolish, it might not have gotten to this point. “You’re all that I know is true in this world, Ellamaria, you’re all I’m certain of. You always have been.”
The polishing cloth in Ellamaria’s hand tore against the strain she’d placed it under, and frustratedly she only threw it down to pick up another. Perhaps this was the only use of her strength he’d left her, in the narrow cage of queendom. Her voice was soft and bitter, but worse still, it resounded with hurt. An accusation in the air between them, heavy as lead.
“You miss how it was.”
Yes, he missed how it was– how could he express the ways in which he missed that very moment they first met, when she’d had nothing to hide from him, nothing to keep her from overflowing with unbridled anger, no reason in the world to bother putting on airs? In that moment where one or the other might have died, they’d found something of being alive, only to be forced to bury it in gilded shrouds and pretend that it did not still live in the bottom of their hearts. For all these years, they’d built overtop of that still-beating heart they shared, pretending not to hear it echo, pretending not to notice the distance growing between them. All for the sake of duty, abandoning themselves with every glance away from the truth.
“That’s true. I miss when you had nothing to hide. But all you’ve been forced to hide has been for my own sake, for the sake of the kingdom, for the sake of the memory of a man that I… that I… I used to…”
She lost focus on polishing her shoes. She was listening, truly listening, had hope of hearing something she didn’t already know. And he wanted to hear her again, hear her scold him, call him whatever name she believed he deserved. But she didn’t. The loathed vestments of her royalty were pushed aside, and she moved ever-slightly aside, offering a place to sit.
“There’s so much we’ve talked about, Ellamaria. But there’s so much we haven’t been saying. And the fault is mine for that.”
“I made space for you so that you could tell me something I don’t already know, Roald. Don’t waste my time, nor your own.”
Pulling his hands together, there was no need to hide his anxiety here, no purpose in concealing the habits of fear that even the years of cruel words and canes couldn’t erase from his nature. He counted the constellation of gemstones that decorated his fingers, searching for an answer in them, an explanation for what his having of all these treasures was meant to have made him. Was the costume of a king enough to fool himself, as it fooled others? Could he ever really believe that his was a destiny he had any ability to shape for himself, or were these rigid encirclements of luxury the only representation of what he could do– to try and keep stable a system he never even felt he was strong enough to follow, let alone break and reform?
“You know full well the legacy my father left behind. You lived in its consequences as even I never had. For all the messes I’ve cleaned up after him, never for a day did I go hungry, did I shiver in the night, did I mourn a loved one lost because of him. You know better than I why this so-called noble blood of mine haunts me.”
“On two counts, you’re right. But can you really tell me you’ve never lost someone you loved because of him?”
Her hand, so deceptively delicate and soft, unwound his own and traced his fingers until they landed on a particular ring, the least ostentatious of them, the most precious. A silver band, conspicuously unwrought with the symbology of his title, grasping a single opal that shone as faint and ephemeral as the moonlight through the curtains.
“You blame him for your mother.”
“I do.” Roald twisted the ring until it caught a sliver of the silvery glow through the window, imagined his mother wearing it once, when she was young, when she had no idea what her betrothal would cost her. He wondered of all the other lives she might have lived, happier lives, longer ones, without him. “And if you blame me for yours, I understand.”
The illusion of a tender, never-callused noblewoman’s hand broke at once, her fingernails digging into his palm, not hard enough to draw blood but more than enough to command attention. “No distractions, Roald. We’re not talking about me right now.”
The moon outside was bright, full, rimmed with a misty haze that bloomed into a muted rainbow, barely noticeable unless you gave it your full attention. The stars were crisp and clear against the stillness of the winter sky.
“Do you… would you like to go talk in the garden? It’s lovely out tonight.”
“The garden? I thought you hated it.”
She looked at him carefully, uncertain of if this was his way of weaseling out of a difficult conversation, but she ultimately accepted his sincerity with only a slight bit of annoyance. He grasped at the straw of amnesty like a drowning man.
“There’s no pollen in winter. And moreover, the view of the sky ought to be perfect from it. Sheltered from the wind… a good place for privacy.”
“Hmm.” She evaluated the offer, standing up and stretching, her silhouette in the moonlight a perfect image of quiet strength. “Have you dried off enough to go back out…?”
She touched his head, and he leaned in instinctively, something familiar emerging from their marble prisons at last. “With a hat, I suppose you’ll be fine. I’ll fetch us some clothes.”
Outside, all was silent, as Varrock so rarely was. The holidays were far from a reprieve from their duties, but they had at least this much; the snow, the sky, the stars, and one another, two silvery figures in the moonlight, nothing visible that would expose their names, let alone their titles. They were as light and unburdened as the drifts of snow, if only for a moment.
“Are you too cold?”
“You know I’m not. As for you–”
“I can scarcely feel cold next to you, Ella.”
“Enough of that.” Her voice was laced with irritation and fondness, a familiar combination, one that still somehow made Roald shiver just to know that her attention was his. “You were saying…”
“...Yes. My mother… even though she grew up in nobility, even though she was accustomed to it, it never suited her for a moment. That would have been the case, even if not for my father.”
Ellamaria nestled her head in the fur trim of his collar, extending an arm around his waist, squeezing his hand to urge him onwards, as though he were a frightened child.
“And sometimes I’ve wondered if… if the burden I placed on you was a worse prison than any other he’d constructed. If in my own quiet, cowardly way…”
“Roald,” Ellamaria interrupted sharply, her grip on his hand tightening. “You are not a coward.”
“Fine, then. In my own… reticent way, I’ve deprived you of yourself. And selfish as it is, I miss having you as yourself, too. I remembered how we met, when you’d been a barmaid at the Blue Moon, and I wondered how much I still failed to understand of where you came from, what you’d gone through. I wanted to know about that chapter of your life, but I was afraid to ask you. So when I had the opportunity to speak with someone in that position…”
“Really.” Her tone was incredulous, transforming into a huff of exasperation when she met his eyes, searched them, and found him honest. “So that’s why you wanted to… why on Gielinor didn’t you just say as much to me?”
“Talking to you became difficult for me, all the more so for how much what you think of me matters. I know you don’t want me to call myself a coward, but what else can it really be called?” Roald shook his head, somehow feeling heavy even as his crown remained at his bedside, the weight of a thousand unspoken thoughts and feelings surging up from where he’d kept them pressed firmly down. “I know that it’s my fault, Ella. I’d put up barriers between us for fear of disappointing you, because I’ve been afraid that I’ve hurt you in a way I didn’t even consider as a possibility. To make you my queen, and to pretend as though you’re not the stronger one between us, all for the sake of this damned performance for an audience we both loathe… you must admit I am a coward for that.”
Ellamaria stood almost statue-still, surveying him, absorbing each word in silent contemplation; even here in her delicately embroidered fur robe, in her silk gloves, the gaze of the she-wolf that had always enchanted him was still there.
“No. Not a coward. Simply… foolish, Rollie. You can be such a fool sometimes.”
“Only sometimes?”
“Only sometimes. You’ve done better than anyone else could in your position, with what you’ve inherited, with all the daggers at your back from those who owe their fortunes to you. And you do so with a graciousness I never could, let’s agree on that. I’d never want to be in your place for a moment.”
“And the place you’re in now… it isn’t what you want. We both know that.”
“Even if I hate it, that doesn’t matter. I can handle it. So long as I have you… so long as you don’t shut me out.”
“Am I really worth it, Ella?”
“What a stupid question.” Her arms were around his shoulders, and she pulled him in close, until the snow on their noses melted together in the heat of their shared breath. “Of course you are. If you weren’t, you could hardly keep me captive, could you?”
Roald smiled, a bit of something stiff that had kept him trapped within himself giving way against the warmth, her warmth, the warmest and brightest part of his life. Something, someone he still struggled to believe that he deserved. “Yes, that’s certainly true.”
They traced the snow-buried paving stones in that embrace, a slow waltz for no spectator. Her head resting against his shoulder, her fingers entwining with his, their hearts beating together in tandem.
“But there’s something I’ve been thinking of, Ella. Something I should have found the nerve to bring up with you a long time ago…”
They stopped their dance, snow settling back across the footsteps they’d left, erasing the pathway that anyone could find them by, as though nature itself was conspiring with their secrecy. “So you should have. The next best thing is to tell me now.”
“I know you want adventure,” Roald began, finding the words again becoming thick and obtrusive in his throat, as he considered the implications of what he was about to offer. “I know you need… time away, from this court. Even from me. Time enough to be yourself, and wear the expression that you choose, to say the words that you choose… you need room, Ella. I want you to have your own destiny.”
“And it isn’t possible for me to have both at the same time,” Ellamaria sighed. “Not even nobility can have everything they want, not least in times like these.”
“Well… what I’m thinking of is… a compromise, of sorts.” Roald pulled away, clasping both his hands, feeling anxious and elated as though their hands were meeting for the first time again. “I’ve long thought that the last thing in the world that I wanted was to be apart from you, Ella. But that’s the second-last thing, it turns out. The last thing I want is for you to lose yourself for my sake. So if you need to go…”
“That wouldn’t help your image, to have me gallavanting around,” Ellamaria muttered. “It’s a lovely idea, Rollie, but I know I can’t have both. And if I must choose, I’ll choose you.”
“But there’s another way. With a full suit of armour, and the right enchantments, so that even your voice isn’t recognisable… it can be done, I’ve read of such things even when I was a boy.”
“Were those not just fairy tales?”
“So many things we’ve long allowed ourselves to believe were mere fantasy have proven themselves true. We can speak to Reldo about it… we can trust him on a matter like this. You’d be free to go on whatever quests you desire, to fight as I know you love to, to say whatever you like to whomever you like, and… and even if you must still wear a mask, it will be one of your own choosing.” Roald swallowed, something else still refusing to escape his throat, something he should have known that Ellamaria wouldn’t let drop so easily. “What do you think?”
“Before I tell you that… spit the rest out.” When had she managed to push him up against the garden wall? Even after all this time, she could outmaneuvre him with ease, and Roald wouldn’t have it any other way. “I know you’re holding something back. Don’t tell me you haven’t learnt your lesson from all this secrecy.”
“Alright, I confess.” Roald felt his shoulders slump slightly, allowing Ellamaria to support him, to slide into her grasp and concede. “I love you more than life itself, Ellie. I worry that you’ll never wish to come back to me. I worry that you’ll cross the horizon and never look my way again. And I worry that I deserve it.”
Ellamaria looked at him without a single note of disguise. Sad and joyful, angry and excited, annoyed and adoring. “That’s really what worries you so much. I… can’t pretend that I don’t understand. It’s all the more difficult because I do. But you need to know that… if we go through with this… whatever I do, wherever I go… I’ll always want to come back to you.” She removed her glove and stroked his cheek, her hands so deceptively elegant, but Roald could feel where there ought to be calluses from gripping a sword, that it was only natural for her to use those hands for more than embroidery and pointing out orders. “There are things I fear too, Roald, my Rollie. I’ve never been a natural at talking about my feelings, but… I should have told you, instead of standing silent, when I saw you struggle and knew why. I’ll always come back to you, Rollie, because you’re you, not him. You’re not him. and I love you. I love you.”
He hadn’t realised just how badly he needed to hear her say that. For all this conviction that these things just went unspoken between them, he had, he had needed to hear them. Three words, I love you; another three, you’re not him. Thank Saradomin there wasn’t another soul within sight or sound, just the only soul he was certain he could cry in front of, could cry with. Until there was nothing left to cry about. Until the silent stars and colours laced around the moon absolved them of every secret, everything that had taken too long to say, everything that had finally been said.
They wiped one another’s faces dry, feeling raw and red and exposed, but only to one another, as they truly knew they could be. It took as long for them to feel the cold beginning to bite at them, with their gloves and hats shoved into pockets, their skin beginning to chafe even in the wind-guarded shelter of the garden.
“So…” Roald cleared his throat, feeling as though he were speaking clearly for the first time in a very, very long time. “What do you think of the compromise I suggested…?”
“I think you know what I think,” Ellamaria murmured in his ear, the pure contentment in her voice entering his veins like fine brandy, providing a warmth all the winter’s fiercest storms could not have chilled. “We can sort it out tomorrow, set up a schedule of sorts, so that I’m around whenever you’ve got to hold your court… a list of suitable alibis for my absence… how to keep contact inconspicuously…”
Roald laughed, starting to feel dangerously giddy, her words weaving into his imagination, that imagination his father hadn’t quite managed to crush, after all. “It sounds like you’ve been thinking about this for a while.”
“Not at all, I’m simply fast on my feet with planning.” taking his hands, Ellamaria pulled him back up off the wall to stand for one final moment in the skeletal framing of the empty trellis, keeping him upright even as his knees went weak for her. “It’s a natural element of being a fighter. So, with that out of the way…”
“...Yes?”
She stroked his beard contemplatively for a moment, then flicked his nose, eyes glittering with an almost childish mischief.
“There’s not much planning we can do if we catch a cold. Can you think of any way we might warm ourselves up more quickly…?”
That was enough reason, beautiful as the winter night was, to take leave of the garden.