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The day Monica died was the day Orson’s heart died. She’d been ill, but she’d been, the healers had thought she was recuperating. It was a little unexpected, but they said sometimes that being with child meant getting sick more often. And then she...and then she was gone, taking his heart with her. He had his days of leave, to go home to Renais and to...to do right by Monica, and then he was back at Ephraim’s side.
It was lucky that they didn’t do much more than go back and forth from Renais to Grado (or Renais to Frelia, once), given that Orson was capable of very little more than going through the motions. Young Kyle and Forde and the other knights involved in the journey, they were more than enough to keep eyes on the roads for bandits, and Orson could still swing his sword at whatever menace thought to try a prince’s retainer. Orson rode, and ate at mealtimes, and smiled when addressed. He doesn’t much remember those days.
What he does remember, is sitting in the dark quiet of the Dark Stone’s temple and missing Monica so much the pain of her absence was a physical ache in his side, when Prince Lyon approached him. “Sir Orson,” Lyon had said, quiet in the way only the Grado heir could be, “you seem distraught.” There was a grace to Lyon, that Orson can’t recall ever being there before.
He would wonder what that’s about, but he can’t muster up the energy. Lyon’s prodding is gentle, and he sounds so sincere, so caring - in a way Prince Ephraim is...possibly incapable of, that Orson spills his guts without even a hint of a thought to the impropriety of the interaction. “Orson,” Lyon says, and his smile is gentle, “I’m sorry for your loss.” And that’s it, the first time.
Lyon shows again, the next few times. When Orson is shaking over Monica’s hymnal, when he is staring blankly at the icon of Latona on the wall, when he sobs into the echoing emptiness of the chapel, trying and trying to find just, a little solace for himself so he can at least sleep through one night. Prince Lyon sits, and asks about Monica, and listens. And offers a little advice on sleeping, just as he leaves.
Orson tries it, red eyed and empty, and finds for the first time in the weeks since Monica had passed that he can sleep. Just a little, but it is more than nothing and he feels a little more human when he wakes.
During the day Ephraim visits Duessel and the the knights and spends a little time with his fellow prince, and at night Prince Lyon listens, and says calming things, and Orson feels a little bit more like himself every night. A little less broken irreparably and a little more...trusted paladin of Renais. A man who had lost, but who still had things worth protecting. He owed Prince Lyon that.
At the end of the last visit, before Lyon starts to rebuff any further trips to the capitol, Orson owes Lyon much more than just his dignity and his capability. Orson holds in his heart a dark knowledge, a truth Lyon had shyly showed him in the nights when Monica’s ghost hovered too loudly in his mind for Lyon’s sleeping trick to hold.
The Dark Stone has power enough to perform miracles .
He’d seen it himself, sandwiched between two heavily robed mages as Prince Lyon wrapped himself in the heady power even a magic-null like himself could feel. He’d seen a resurrection for himself, thought it had just been an animal Lyon had used as an example. Just an animal, but it had been truly dead and then, miraculously, it hadn’t been.
And Lyon had, after escorting him back to the chapel, pressed a paper bearing a name into Orson’s hand and said, softly, “I think I can help you, Sir Orson. Would you let me help you?” And Orson, looking at the spymaster’s name on the paper and weighing exactly what Monica’s continued existence is worth selling to this gentle-spoken prince, barely hesitates.
“What would you have me do, Prince Lyon?”
And Lyon’s smile is a little too wide, but Orson can only think that Monica will be back with him soon enough. It will all be worth it, once Monica is in his arms again.
The betrayal comes as a surprise to Ephraim, that much is clear. Prince Lyon is not exactly pleased, but he admits that Orson performed to the very letter of what was asked of him. So he leads Orson to a room in Castle Renais, after, where Orson knows Monica is waiting. The smell of the room is sickly sweet, strong incense burning in many, many places. All over the room, scented candles and incense. The smell is strong enough Orson sneezes.
“Monica, my darling, oh Monica.” Orson weeps, falling to his knees in front of the too-still form perched on the loveseat. “I missed you so much,” he cries, the months of grief and sleeplessness seem like nothing. “My guiding light, my wife…”
He presses his face to the cold, stiff, dry skin of her palm, and the fingers twitch against his cheek randomly at the contact. “Dar...ling.” She says, and Orson dries his joyous tears. His effusive thanks, even as he threads his fingers with Monica’s stiff ones, must make Prince Lyon uncomfortable. The Prince is pale, and his face is contorted and he flinches, when Orson presses his lips to the back of Monica’s hand.
“Thank you, sir.” Orson says, and Lyon exits. Alone with his wife, Orson settles in between her knees. “Monica,” he says breathlessly, pressing kisses to one of her knees through her dress. “Oh, Monica!” He slides his hands underneath to push the cloth above her knees. “Let me show you how much I’ve missed you,” he says, as he presses kisses to the colorless skin of her inner thigh. His voice trembles. “My heart, my Monica.”
“........Darling.”