A/N: Just finished reading the second in the series, Queen of Attolia. EXCELLENT.
"But the queen-too long she has suffered the pain of love,
hour by hour nursing the wound with her lifeblood,
consumed by the fire buried in her heart. [...]
His looks, his words, they pierce her heart and cling-
no peace, no rest for her body, love will give her none."
-Virgil, The Aeneid
Attolia knows who she must be, but sometimes she does not know who she is.
She learned embroidery as a girl, as Irene, and had some skill. A true mistress of the craft keeps the underside of the work as neat as outside, or so the old woman who taught her said.
Attolia put aside embroidery for the silly distraction it was. She had a kingdom to rule.
Keeping the underside as neat as the outside was no easy task, but she knew who she must be.
Then came the Thief.
...
The few times she had seen him he was bruised and dusty, sooty and scratched. Feverish and bleeding, that last time, after she had finished with him.
And yet after all of it, the memory of his face holds and fascinates her.
Her messengers tell her that he has nightmares.
Revenge is sweet, the Mede tells her, beard glistening. She clenches down on a smile that makes her teeth ache.
Please, please.
She has nightmares too.
...
Sounis and Eddis and the land of the Medes are like the daggers she keeps hidden in the folds of her bodice, only these are blades turned inward, ready to strike without warning. Striking of their own accord.
And the Thief is an arrow, loosed from a bow she cannot see. The arrow has buried itself between her ribs, and it searches for her heart.
...
The threads are tangled. Attolia is still young, though she feels older. It is a great weight and burden to be a queen. It is a curse, more burdensome still, to fall in love with the enemy.
The nightmares worsen. She trusts that they are silent—she has always been a still sleeper, at least, and if she wakes with the fear of some crushing heaviness centered in her chest, that is better than calling every gossip to her chamber at every hour of the night.
The threads are tangled, but she holds them still. She lets the Mede's lips linger on her hand, she plots and plans for one war aloud, and another in her mind.
She thinks of his hand, the one she left to him. Long-fingered and agile, calloused and scarred.
She knows why she did it.
She would do it again.
Wouldn't she?
Attolia would; Irene is not so sure.
...
She wants wine to chase away the bad dreams, to dispel the scent of hair oil and secrets. But her mind must be kept clear, even if it cannot be kept calm.
She does this for her country, for Attolia.
She dreams of his racking sobs, of his fevered eyes, of that smile like a silver knife and how he begged and prayed but fell terribly, supremely silent at the most dreadful moment—
She always wakes up when the blade goes down.