The Last Dark Chalice
Husband
Sometimes, she wondered… Despite her best efforts, despite her knowing better, despite the constantly proving fact that she could trust no one and rely to no one, her will sometimes failed her and she let these treacherous thoughts crawl into her mind, the dreams of a smile being sincere, the hand reaching for her as they sat before the roaring fire sometimes at night reaching with tenderness for her hair and not clawing its way to her crown, the compliments he gave her due to a beautiful woman and not what was expected to be heard by a royal wife. The wife who had made him royal. Deep inside, Medeoan Edemskoidoch Nacheradavoch of the Eternal Empire of Isavalta was still a young girl longing for love, happiness, content.
Kacha had taught her better and still, this desire overwhelmed her sometimes, made her seek signs of true attachment in the man she had wed and made Emperor, just like she had made Kacha. Fortunately, these only came from time to time. For she might feel like a young girl, she might be one in years but this excuse could only be good once. It helped at night, when she relived Kacha's betrayal and the toll it had taken from her and her empire – she would never forget how her parents had died! – and tried to reassure herself that she had done nothing wrong, that a young girl could not be blamed for trusting a dashing young man. How could she have known better?
Now, she did. And she would never be this weak again.
"You look unable to get enough of me," her new husband said, with a happy sigh, like the vain, empty-headed nobleman he had been before she chose him, and Medeoan loathed him for his assumptions, for rendering her equal to a peasant girl with his confidence. She had once eaten from the hand of a man who had betrayed her. Never again.
"I can't," she said and smiled. "Give me an heir, Your Majesty. Let me give you one."
He grinned and obeyed, looking straight into her much-lauded eyes and unable to see the insincerity.
Give me an heir, so I'll no longer need you.
And still, when he did father one on her, when all she needed, all that separated her from resuming her reign over her empire as a regent on her son's behalf was one sip, she hesitated, the moments when this non-significant man with few merits – certainly nothing that could hold a candle to Avanasy, her onetime teacher and beloved, and also the man who had tried to warn her when she had been too blind to listen – had made her happy despite her will springing to her mind with unwanted, sudden clarity.
"Do you know what, my lord?" she said. "I can't get enough of you."
He looked her with a happy smile that faded swiftly, uncertainty coming into its place. For a moment, Medeoan thought he was going to realize that something was out of order. But then, he smiled again and kissed her hand, and she watched him drink the chalice and go to sleep, this smile still on his lips.
Sorrow pierced through her like the spears her guards wielded. Could things happened differently? No. She could trust no man. She had to move against any husband before they had a chance to move against her.
The tears she shed at the funeral were for this – and perhaps some of them were for the man who had, after all, never done anything to her. Even if only because she had got there first.