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If there was only one reason at all the Montellis allowed their Executioner to stay the night beyond their quarters, it was possibly only because Carlotta had recently gotten married. The uptight elders within their family had been both pissed off by her marriage and yet adamant that she fulfil her due responsibility to look after “all that were her family”, which was begrudging enough to say they acknowledged her atrocities that were the repercussions of some poorly thought actions. But in hindsight, they'd not had much say in it at all, truly, no matter how they pretended that it was really their concession that allowed it, when she'd eventually packed up the greater proportion of all her little belongings, and shifted her formal place of residence over to the furthest possible destination from Ragunna City, all the way in its outskirts.
Now, was that their main concern though? No, not at all. In fact, the elders wouldn't have given two Credits if she had declared she was shifting to sleep in the lounge of Averado Vault — instead they would have lauded her admirable enthusiasm for serving the family in true loyalty, not minding that the idea in and of itself sounded absolutely bizarre to begin with. It's not been any secret that some of the older Montellis still didn't entirely trust her, for all the irony in which they still mock the Fisalias for “being stuck in their old ways”, but that same kind of situational irony isn't lost on her, not at all.
After all, she knows fully well why they can't complain and are complaining have both arisen solely from the undeniable fact that by now has proliferated every street and alleyway of Ragunna City—
—That the Second Daughter of the Montellis had gotten the Matriarch of the Fisalias pregnant out of wedlock, directly after the Battle for Dawn. And for some dastardly reason it'd become apparent to every common soul as well, that it had all been the outcome of the two of them getting indecent right after defeating their False Divinity.
So much for their reputations; since the past few weeks ago, after their wedding, Cantarella's been quietly retired under the rightful reason of needing more rest. Naturally, thus, the scrutiny's been turned to her, wherever she goes, whenever she stops to breathe, and the nearby uncles just seem burning to ask her if it's really true that she'd gone and impregnated the Head of the Montellis' former largest opponent.
But really, it's not her business to care. There's far too much on her plate lately and if nosy Ragunnesi want to know their worth about the latest rumour, she's sure Zani can easily stir up some misdirection on her behalf, when thieves are apparently still thriving even after Leviathan's defeat. Another reminder that they can blame the Divinities all they want for their transgressions, but sometimes the true sin comes ultimately from the one who commits the act, and Carlotta's not about to pretend that she didn't err on her part, either.
At least, that thought hasn't crossed her head since she found out that their misdeeds bore fruition; fruition that is now cradled carefully in Cantarella's arms, as though she's forgotten their child is only but an appendage to her still, at least for the next few months before birth, and Carlotta has to remind herself to breathe. Be it from having brisk walked the whole way here, or be it from witnessing that same unique glow that had seduced her after a fight against Leviathan's ugly assimilation, she's not about to get philosophical when she drops her belongings off on the side of the couch, and instead reaches to guide Cantarella to the next nearest available chair.
“I have been resting all day, my dear,” Cantarella cuts her off before she can even speak, but sits anyway, failing to resist her strongly indicative gestures. “If I sit any longer, I fear our daughter might just yet throw another fit at my recent indolence.”
“Our daughter knows no better that she's been wearing her mother out for entire days and months, now, nor that her mother's back is duly sore from carrying her so carefully.”
“Well, our daughter sensed your worrisome frown coming from when you barely crossed the moat. And, if you're not about to murder someone in the waning daylight, Carlotta, please keep away that pistol of yours before the servants begin to fear you may have the keen interest of taking my eye out today.”
“No wonder they've all been so tense,” Carlotta mutters, noting the firearm she'd forgotten to put away earlier by the couch, sliding it into its polished holster obediently anyway. “Ran into some pesky TDs on my way here, more than I thought to expect. I'll have Zani come by for another clean-up on her break tomorrow; wouldn't want them coming to find trouble on our doorstep now, would we?”
“As if you would not simply take care of them all.” Cantarella laughs, still wrapping a careful hand beneath her swollen abdomen. It's beyond Carlotta how Cantarella manages it, the ease of what can only be addressed as an utter burden, but it's the softness in her that makes the thought of raising a child together less daunting to Carlotta at all, for one who'd never committed to the thought of motherhood. Her ideals for her future had been more politically driven — exterminating rats of the family, or taking over The Padrino's steady hand in their family's authority and guiding the Montellis to their bright future. Motherhood had initially not been allotted even a single space within her priorities for the future, but Leviathan left them a final wild card anyway.
Still, surprisingly, they're all managing it in their own ways, suffice to say. “Not even Rosemary's meticulous prescriptions can hold a candle to your plenteous affection, my love, but I fear if you don't catch some rest yourself, there'll be much greater problems in store for us both.”
“Nonsense.” As if she would allow herself to fail, or fall, in a matter so simple as making sure her lover — no, wife, it's a thought that still takes accustoming to — is well taken care of, and that their child is nurtured safe and well. “If even a Threnodian cannot see to my downfall, I am certain nothing else may so readily fell me even if I were overwhelmed — though if anything should happen to…”
“Don't overthink it.” Cantarella lays a hand over hers, and lets it rest against the curve of their child. Their child and all its odd quirks, squirming lively despite the random hours, neither afternoon nor evening, yet somehow livelier than even in the nights and the mornings. “Instead, let us guess what the kitchens will make for dinner. Have you any guesses?”
“Not fish.” She answers plainly. “Certainly not if it still stirs your nausea, but I think I heard Sebastian earlier; there might be some broth, which will do you much better…”
And sometimes, just like this, it's easy to forget her elders and their noisy badmouthing habits, whenever she heads back to the Quarters to hear them bickering about how many adopted Montellis are going to eventually inherit the family's internal mantle of leadership, pretending it doesn't sting to know that they haven't given up on rallying against their daughter's legitimacy status.
But sometimes the thoughts get too much to ignore, when she's tossing in her bed and sleepless, wondering why she'd had to think about it at all, wondering why she'd even bothered to stop in the corridor to overhear their gossip, the echoing crude remarks of more than three utterances of bastard within a conversation, not quite discriminate between her and their daughter either.
Sometimes the thoughts get too much to ignore, when they mix with her heartbeat in her temple, and the quiet sounds of Cantarella's breaths, shallow and soft, while the matriarch remains deep in her exhausted slumber. Sometimes the thoughts sound about as intrusive as a cannon-shot, reverberating in the depths of her eardrums, when she gazes at her wife sleeping away peacefully, and craves to touch but fears to disturb, and so instead she settles for laying by the curvature of Cantarella's belly, watching the sleepy littlest movements from beneath a silken nightgown growing more fitted by the day.
And sometimes all that can still her thoughts a little more is to keep herself busy, and so Carlotta Montelli is no stranger to overtime work either, when she creeps out of bed into the empty halls of Porto Veno Castle. A quiet, vast stronghold is nothing new to her, between Averado Vault or the Depository hidden underground, but Porto Veno Castle still feels slightly colder to her, when she roams the halls and wonder how places like these are ever fit to witness the tender raising of children at all to begin with.
So new thoughts come into her head, new priorities that wash away her own ennui and exhaustion, replacing it with some sort of mission or so, the ambition to see to accomplishment of something part of a grander ideal — repurposing another room into something that would truly be fit for a child to grow up away from the gloom and troubles of the world, protected and guarded by the light of hope in a new dawn.
A playroom, perhaps. Entirely different from the nursery that she knows Cantarella has been preparing, the nursery she's occasionally visited in passing once or twice when she comes back early enough to see Cantarella still in there, tidying the unused cupboards of the largest guest room nearest to their rooms, making the dreary drapes of the room a little friendlier to a child new to this world. That nursery holds all the maternal love they can offer their child, the tender affection theirs to give, but it would be nice, Carlotta thinks, for the child to have a playroom of its own, where it can nurture its own nature, and grow into its own light.
Thus, a new project is upon her hands to begin, and it's been a while after all to start a manual task from scratch with her own hands, but it's a task that can take her thoughts off the crude of the world for a moment, to instead imagine what a playroom would be like, a room that could accommodate a child to live free in and of their own right to exist.
Carlotta Montelli was, by no means, a careless woman. Not at all was she the type that would enter a room without first reading the tension in the air, the atmosphere over the buffet servings. Carlotta Montelli would not miss even the displeasure of a waiter that might have only recently had their toe stubbed by some ill-mannered attendee who decided the best way to flaunt their polished shoes was to act like an idiot bereft of any courtesy nor humility at all. In fact, Carlotta was so determinedly a meticulous person that often enough in their past as rivals, Cantarella had found it hard to find any flaw that could so be used to magnify the weaknesses of the Montellis' proudest Second Daughter.
And yet either love truly softens a person, or that their allegiance has taught Carlotta to set her guards down, or that as Cantarella predicted, some part of that adrenaline is finally starting to wear out, but Carlotta's attention to detail has begun to be sorely lacking, per se, in certain circumstances.
Namely, their present nighttime circumstances, and the very miserable state at which Cantarella finds herself, woken up from her sleep by a casual tumble occurring within her abdomen. So utterly and strangely misplacing that it takes two hands on the curve of her occupied womb that it finally registers with her that their child is now perhaps capable of a height of gymnastics which it had not had the courtesy to inform her of in the day, and instead deigned to perform it to her in the absolute middle of the night.
“How lively,” she praises, with not at all the heart for giving compliments to her daughter waking her up in the smack middle of three in the morning. Their daughter remains persistently rolling low in the base of her stomach now, playing a terribly consistent game of dodge with her fingers clumsily attempting to trace where those pesky legs are swinging to. “A performance, for your other mother whom you have so missed, perhaps, from her busy days slogged at work with her overworked employees, and from her current inability to stay in bed?”
Or so she'd thought she'd been the only one unable to fall asleep, or so she'd thought she'd been the only one counting imaginary numbers in her head until they'd gotten to comically large numbers, and then numbers that began to look terribly akin to the ledgers she'd been sorting in the day, medical expenditure and debt incurred by all the different branches that had offered free medical support following the battle. Or so she'd thought she'd been too over-sensitive and overthinking it, when she'd felt the bed quite obviously dip over to the other side, for however light she remembers Carlotta as from when the Montelli had straddled her hips months and months ago.
Surely, she'd thought to herself, Carlotta would not bail in the middle of the night. Surely, if Carlotta had needed to leave the bed in search of some relief to a temporary ailment, parched throats or hunger pangs from skipping two meals in a day, perhaps, Carlotta would have done it with the absolute grace that she rendered herself weightless in a ballroom, dancing with her heels barely once grazing the ground. Surely, with all the fretfulness and anxiety that's been marking a wedge between her delicate eyebrows of late, Carlotta would not have left the bed so barbarically abruptly, knowing that Cantarella doesn't always sleep well these days, with all the pestilent aches and pesky insomnia, and their daughter who occasionally decides to prefer a nocturnal schedule for stretching.
And yet, she can't deny it any longer, cupping a hand over the egregious tumbling that's lopping all over her abdomen when she sighs and slowly props herself up onto her elbows. It doesn't take much more convincing for her to concede to the fact that she'd long felt the warmth beneath the blankets fade colder — and that no matter how often she'd liked to poke fun at Carlotta's petite frame, there was still a clear, noticeable difference when said petite wife has mysteriously disappeared from within their bed.
Which is odd, truly. Cantarella allows herself a sigh, only to feel rather silly for having sighed at all, thereafter wondering why it would have been silly to sigh. Only months ago they were still sleeping apart, distanced not only by a bed and furniture, but rooms and estates and even geographically apart, one in Ragunna City and one in Porto Veno Castle, outskirts of Ragunna in Thessaleo Fells. Only two months ago before their marriage was legalised yet, she'd only barely been showing then, not quite as exhausted nor quite as visibly demanding for Carlotta's automatic fretting, but it's curious that mere weeks and months have made this distance yet even more inseparable — when for years they'd been at odds at each other, back when the only contact they'd made was simply another half veiled attempt at assassinating the other.
Yet quaint as it is, here they are now. Here she is now, sighing against the headboard of her bed they now share, the wonderfully larger-than-King-sized bed now feeling woefully even larger than she ever remembered it to be, before it occupied Carlotta Montelli at all, or the little one within. The little ruler of its little lodging now discontent with the misshapen circles she draws with a tired thumb, while it all but misbehaves once more, jabbing somewhere beneath her ribs, not enough to hurt just yet, but enough for her to consider what absolute chaos she'll be put through in the three more months ahead.
“Surely, your other mother did not take off under the cover of the night,” Cantarella remarks dryly, to no one but herself, but the baby that cannot quite appreciate her sardonic laughing as yet. “I'd have thought one lover would be enough on her plate for such a loyal Montelli, but where else could she have gone, this other mother of yours?”
Another kick reminds her that the baby did not, at all, understand any bit of what had meant to be humorous. It irks her mildly that her thoughts immediately wander to say, Carlotta might have laughed if she'd heard that. Which, she might have heard if she were here, in bed, next to Cantarella, laying her hands over their daughter as she so loves to do but pretends otherwise. And their daughter would not be presently mirroring her mother's ambitious nature in venturing yet another somersault, which earns its own fair groan when Cantarella covers her new region of assault, tracing yet another misshapen heart over softer kicks that follow. “My dearest little tyrant, I'll need you to stop abusing your authority, for a moment, and allow me some thought for solving the mystery of where your mother has gone.”
The newer kicks come softer; she must be tired to be hallucinating that they feel almost approving, but everything feels disproportionately psychedelic at three in the morning, in her expert opinion, so instead she closes her eyes, and tries to mentally rewind herself to the exhaustion that had claimed her a deep sleep before Carlotta had disturbed the balance in their sleeping ecosystem by leaving the bed.
The exhaustion comes, hitting harder than even the torrent Leviathan had unleashed upon them, but sleep barely comes until she feels the touch of a hand ghosting over the surface of her abdomen, and reaches tiredly to grasp the small hands of a guilty perpetrator laying renewed beside her in bed.
“The next time you decide to fancy a nighttime stroll for an eternity,” mutters the matriarch, beginning to see numbers in her vision again, ledgers overlapping with the doubling silhouettes of Carlotta leaning in to kiss her cheek apologetically. “Please, either have the decency to wake me up with you, or leave the bed as though this were an infiltration operative that absolutely everything depends on.”
“My apologies,” whispers her wife, but between the fingers that coax their positions into her aching waist, or Carlotta's breath on her skin, it's not clear what finally put her to sleep in the end, contented in the embrace of her wife returned. “It was a one-time occurrence; it won't happen again, I promise.”
And yet ever so often, as much as it sounded ridiculous to speak into existence, Carlotta Montelli was nothing more than an entirely elaborate liar.
Well, that was an unfair manner of phrasing — anyone who'd ever dabbled a little in business circles knew that lying was a skill that often most negotiations would boil down to. Margins could be made smaller at will, profits could be boasted extravagantly more than would truly return at first, but lying was a skill that every business person sought to equip themselves with, and Carlotta was no short of any of the essential skills that made the bundle of must-haves for the still-only-remaining-qualifying candidate for the position as heir to the Montelli Family leadership.
But it did not, at all, deny the fact that, ugly as it was to say, Carlotta was simply a liar, a cheat who either could not keep to her words, or had forgotten her promise at all, when Cantarella stares up upon the ceiling once more unblinking, and their daughter only a month older than the last incident begins her routine again.
“Your mother is doing this merely out of sheer spite, I am convinced.” A light kick suggests mild disapproval, but she'll say what she wants and think what she wants when she's the one dealing with involuntarily insomnia and their sprightly daughter simply cannot sit still. Nights like these almost always make her miss the mornings that can't come faster, when their little bundle of love instead sits like a rock, so much so that it had made her rather concerned at some point that even Rosemary had not been entirely convinced by her own diagnosis that all was fine. “She has skills of waltzing that even the Queen of the Night could learn a thing or two from, but she insisted upon leaving the bed with such uncivilised springing that it could stir even a Chest Mimic from its pretence. Tell me, are you not truly her daughter?”
Yet another kick. Yet another point to her endless sighing, and even the glass of water by her table side has run dry, which is remarkable considering the cold humidity of Porto-Veno Castle and its almost permanent state of dew point. Which, only a few days back, had recently become Carlotta's new angle for fretting, as though Cantarella were foolish enough to still be running around in heels. Sometimes it makes her wonder just what kind of an impression she'd left upon Carlotta prior to their considerably more abrupt romance in its late onset, such that Carlotta still occasionally defaults onto such strange perceptions of her as though Cantarella were not her lover and her wife. Alas, those are other mysteries she hasn't yet solved, and she's much keener to dissect the one at hand, the one that is keeping their daughter awake, and her by extension.
It was odder still that by every little thing Cantarella knew about Carlotta, it was that the Montelli Daughter could be as discreet as she desired. Most plans when devised by the youngest leader of the Montellis were often more sound than any of the others, and many of those such plans were almost always tedious to work around with the intention to foil. If Carlotta had so wanted, she could have disappeared off to an unnamed, unmanned, unknown location, doing things that would never see the light and that no soul would ever hear of.
And yet Cantarella's here standing in the hallway, seeing the light filter from the crack beneath a door to a room only paces away, three doors down from their master bedroom.
“She's gone crazy,” is the first thing Cantarella mutters in amusement, resting a hand over her abdomen, talking softly to their daughter. “First the brutish way she leaves our bed, next the absolute lack of concealment of her workings? I think your mother may just have overworked herself insane.”
But a small nudge comes as encouragement, when she tiptoes her way to the door of the room, only to find it even worse — unlocked, ajar, and quite rotated on its hinges, revealing to her an even more peculiar sight that was Carlotta Montelli, on her knees and with her room slippers adjourned, fumbling with slack ropes and sloppy knot-work, crystal shards scattered all around her in some terrible fashion, as though she'd just smashed through the stained glass windows of the room and tumbled into the midst of the chaos.
Everything, everything, about that particular assembly of things and person and circumstance, was simply peculiar enough that it would have been impossible, regardless of time or opportunity, for Cantarella to not have laughed.
Then, certainly of course, does Carlotta also immediately spring to her feet, with every bit the deft agility Cantarella had remembered, paling as quickly to match the shade of her platinum tresses thrown together in a horrific rendition of a self-made braid, running down the length of her bareback nightgown against the silent fluctuations of her Tacet Mark slowly simmering inactive.
“Canta!” The expression upon Carlotta's features is wrought with a disastrous mix of perhaps deciding if it's a greater horror to be seeing Cantarella here witnessing her secrets now exposed in all her little midnight ventures, or if the worse of the two is for Cantarella to be out of bed at this ghastly late hour. “You should be in bed!”
“Which I very well would have been, my dear,” She allows herself to lean against the door frame, resting the crook of her waist in one hand, supporting her back while Carlotta surveys the mess of the floor, possibly evaluating a way for an exit out of her gathering of crystals that can aid for the swiftest ushering of Cantarella back to their room. “If someone had not gone and woken me up so abruptly?”
“Is it our daughter?” Opulent eyes snap up to survey her instead, at once. “Did she wake you up? Or kick you awake again?”
“No, dear, her mother did.” The matriarch's voice is filled with a tender reserved for speaking about loved ones and loved ones only, when her gaze roams further into the room, nudging the door wide open now, and taking in the sight that beholds, welcoming her into this room so clearly carefully curated. “Her mother, who left the bed with absolutely none the subtlety a noblewoman should have, alas I now see you rather had…priorities, is that so?”
“It's not what you think it is,” Carlotta cuts in immediately, gesturing in vague alarm and horror at the mess by her feet. “It's—”
“—a decorated room that a mother is lovingly preparing for her child?”
Carlotta's anxiety quite clearly dissipates upon hearing her words. “Oh, well, then, it is something like what you think. But,” the Montelli Daughter nudges away the shards with her feet back in slippers, making a small path for her to enter the cluttered room full of crystalline light bursts. “It's not entirely that, either.”
“Then, care to enlighten me on the purpose of this little secret room you've apparently been sneaking away to every night?”
“Well, no, I was hoping it would stay a secret.” There's a shred of indignance muffled into Carlotta's greater tone of embarrassment, abashed at her own apparent "wrongdoing". But she wouldn't be Carlotta Montelli, wouldn't be the famed Second Daughter of Montelli, if she didn't already recover, puffing her chest out just the slightest and gesturing back at the crystallised mess of whatever she'd been sorting. “But if you must know, I've been thinking for awhile now.”
“And this must be the pretty result of your much comprehensive thinking, I assume?”
“I've been thinking,” Carlotta presses on, wholly ignoring her pokes and quips as they come, while still kicking shards out of the way. Steadily Carlotta guides her by her hand in that soft grip, until they reach the window side, and she lets Carlotta settle her onto the chair by the windowsill, whether Carlotta realises it or not. “That certainly the nursery would be a wonderful room for our child. Your tastes are certainly quite finely acquired and there are much of the gifts we've received that can be well purposed as furnishings of that nursery that our daughter is to spend most of her time in.”
“But?”
“But, think about how awful it would be to be cooped up purely in that single room. It's dreary, Canta, don't you ever feel like it's as though we're walking into a room full of oppressive energies, all that expensive furniture, all the gifts and expectations that our families have gathered into that room? I appreciate your artistic choices, Canta, I really do, but I was just thinking that we should have a room for our daughter that she can simply be in, you know, like a playroom she can hide away in to escape from the pressure of realities—”
“My love,” She just has to cut Carlotta off for a moment. “While I appreciate your thoughts, I think it's apt if you could just say you hate the drapes.”
And to her credit, Carlotta immediately flicks her finger along her bottom lip in consideration, before quietly admitting it. “Alright, fine, I do hate the drapes. But that's not all there is to it, Canta, I was trying to say…”
“An approximate ten other euphemisms about how you hate the drapes?”
“Well, no!” Carlotta looks positively distraught by now, gesturing somewhat protectively in the general directions of the nursery. “I appreciate your design of the nursery, Canta, trust me, I really do! It's just that the drapes were a terrible choice in principle of design, have you seen how pale they— oh, for Imperator's…just nevermind the drapes, now, will you!”
“Alright, we'll adjourn the discussion of the drapes for now.” Cantarella laughs quietly, brushing aside the fallen silver fringe to kiss the space of Carlotta's forehead, while her wife's breaths shake through her shoulders, and Carlotta's grip pinches her waist just slightly more than before. There's something wantonly in that coloured gaze that brushes past its eye level, but Carlotta has the decency to cough, her eyes flicking away from the abundance that pregnancy has just further endowed Cantarella with, instead composing herself back to the topic at hand. “So, mind giving me a proper introduction to your most recent magnum opus?”
“Nothing that grand,” says the Montelli Daughter, with the practiced indifference that comes from years in her line of work as Executioner, but with the tinge of pride that isn't quite fully hidden, in the hand that holds Cantarella's waist and guides her further forward into the heart of the room and the eye of the mess. “Certainly not a magnum opus by any degree, but an opus still, I would suppose. Have you heard of playrooms, Canta?”
The question leaves her mildly amused, caught mildly off-guard with once again the urge that she acts upon, to tease her wife just a little further. “My dear, I may have been born in a furthered branch of the Fisalias, but the Fisalia children do get to visit the main estates. Certainly I've had invitations to Hebenon and Mandragora's playrooms to know what it is.”
“Oh,” Carlotta goes slightly quieter. “Well, I…”
And suddenly, with a belated realisation that rends her in grieving empathy shortly after, she's reminded by the nasty thought that despite Carlotta's prestige as the Second Montelli Daughter, her wife had very much been adopted from an orphanage, away from the luxuries of the main branch, too. In some terrible sense, her childhood had been even more privileged than Carlotta's, no matter if it had not seemed the most secure childhood to be given at all.
A hand over her stomach, Cantarella blanches ever so slightly, with a sympathy that hits her tenfold now from the maternal instinct, and the unspeakable emotion that throbs in her chest when she immediately steps nearer to Carlotta like she can revoke her words that came forth so unthinkingly. “Oh, my dear…”
“Well, it doesn't really matter.” Carlotta's words make it out faintly, but firmer yet as she clears her throat and manages a determined smile, even if it looks not too far off from Cantarella's grimace of remorse. “Canta, please, I know you meant only to quip.”
“Certainly, I had only meant to say that we both haven't had very delightful childhoods, have we?” is all she can manage, with a strangled laugh that makes her blink twice at Carlotta, repressing the heat behind her eyes with a choked cough of a chuckle. “So I appreciate your efforts, darling.”
Carlotta looks down for a moment, as though in deep thought, before she finds her beloved's blue gaze once more and brushes her fingers over Cantarella's hand nested at the top of her abdomen. “I think, a playroom is where a child should be able to be just as it is — a child, a brand new soul in a very wide world, eager to enjoy its innocence, able to be sheltered, and protected, from the realities out there, realities varying in degrees of nothing but cruelty.”
“That's nice, my love.” Cantarella's smile has long faltered, but it comes back slowly, in the small corners of her lips. “That's wonderful to hear.”
“And this room,” Carlotta continues, picking up a shard of a quaintly mushroom-looking crystal from the floor, tying it to yet another piece of cord she'd been managing up until Cantarella had disturbed her working. “Is simply meant to bear our daughter's expectations of her world until the day it no longer can.”
“A safehaven.” Despite Carlotta's immediate noises of protest, Cantarella slowly reaches, bending to pick up another piece of crystal; for this piece, to her, looks more like a misshapen little bird, if she angles it right, tying it next to Carlotta's. “Her very own safehaven, isn't that so?”
“Somewhere that we can play with her, in her world.” An arm already encircles her waist, while she arranges some of the pieces that appeal to her, and Carlotta's eyes have never left her — this, she knows from her periphery. “It really is delightful, my love. I love it.”
“I'm glad you do.” Carlotta murmurs, kissing her hand holding a piece of crystal that looks like a heart. “And I'm glad you like that piece, too.”
“This?”
“I made that one when I was thinking of you.” Carlotta takes the crystal from her hand with a small, wan laugh. “Right before you appeared, I was wondering if you'd still sleep properly today. Because every time I leave and come back—”
“—Oh, every time?—”
“—I find you slightly more into my side of the bed, without seeming to realise it at all.” Opulent eyes flick slightly guiltily towards the hallway. “Yes, dear, every time.”
“Oh, so this has indeed been happening more than twice now, you're saying.”
“Well, you know how the days are…”
“No, Carlotta, I know how the days are, but I was not prepared to learn tonight that my wife has been abandoning me at nights for a recurring amount of times now.”
“In my defence, you were sleeping rather soundly—”
“You absolutely do not get a defence, Carlotta Montelli, did you think I only woke up twice this whole time?”
That finally gets another horror-struck expression out of Carlotta's wide eyes and half-parted lips. “Do not tell me you've woken up every other time?”
“Well, you leave the bed with the same subtlety that overtime reflects on Zani.”
“Well, if I had known…!”
“…yes?”
“I would…still make this playroom.” Carlotta visibly deflates, pushing aside another group of misshapen crystals. “But if I knew I was disturbing your sleep, Canta, I would have scheduled it a little differently…”
“You would simply not come to bed altogether, would you?” She only means to tease, but Carlotta's posture shoots straight sharply, with an attitude that suggests if Carlotta had done any other reaction, she would have thought rather badly about herself, too. “Canta, you know I wouldn't.”
“Of course you wouldn't.” The matriarch softens, leaning in to kiss her ostensibly tense wife on the lips. “Or you wouldn't have thought of sneaking out of bed once I was asleep, to begin with.”
“Yes…”
“And it's not that I don't appreciate your efforts, my love,” Cantarella repeats, stroking the side of Carlotta's chin softly. “I just think perhaps it's time that, if you really wanted to dedicate some efforts to the making of this playroom, it's time you re-looked at everything you've booked yourself for in the day so that you don't have to be doing this in secret like a thief in a repository. Lord Francesco already gave you the green light to take on a lighter workload — he even asked you to spend more time with me. You don't have to prove yourself to anyone, Carlotta, we all know you're capable of marvels. Sometimes, is it not a better option to simply take things at a slower pace of life?”
“You say that,” Carlotta grouses quietly. “And yet Sebastian was complaining that he had to argue with you to go and take a rest.”
“That's different—”
“Oh, really, how different?”
“It's different because my wife isn't there to tell me when to rest.” Blue eyes are set with determination, a spirit of there, I've said it, and an utterly shameless affection. “So will you make the good choice for both of us, Carlotta, and stop operating at these ridiculous hours, or will you have your pregnant wife be sorting crystals with you at two hours before the crack of dawn?”
“Canta!”
“I'm fully serious; why would I go back to a cold, empty, desolate bed when my wife is making something for our daughter without me?”
“That is not the point—”
“That is, I fear, entirely the point.”
For a full moment, Carlotta's jaw is set in a way that entirely suggests she'd thought through continuing the argument with a possibility that she would win in the end — but her shoulders sag with the weight of a calculated realisation that such a win would come at the cost of exhausting her already exhausted, heavily pregnant wife.
“Then, I promise I'll rework my schedule.” The Montelli Daughter begins, with the familiar air of a bargain in midst of negotiation. “But you must go to bed right now, and you must rest properly every night.”
“Given that you're in bed as well — I make no promises about situations without your presence.”
“Deal?”
“Deal.”
And perhaps content with the easiest deal she's made in a while, Carlotta smiles at last, her arm around her wife's waist firmly pulling Cantarella back to her feet in stable balance, before she guides them both out of the room, turning back only to turn off the lights at last, and to close the door on the creative chaos that they leave behind in their wake, shuffling back to their room like two youths afraid to get scolded for being up in the night.
So when morning comes, the Fisalia Matriarch confidently opens her eyes for the first time in a while, to see her wife laying beside her, with a hand that already, still, began to stroke soothing circles against the curvature of her stomach, and the other that remains interlaced and interlocked with Cantarella's own fingers.
“Had a good night's rest, my love?”
Carlotta only smiles, turning their hands over to kiss her fingers, as always.
“I certainly did; good morning, my love.”