The first night without Francis may have been the worst.
She couldn't sleep at first, and then when she did, it was a series of nightmares - all of which revolved around his death, his murder. That man smashing his head against the ground over and over again as she screamed herself raw, and the way his eyes looked up at her as she knelt over him, and then he was gone, and that's when she would wake up.
Each time she would turn over to look at him, to reassure herself that it wasn't real, he was there...only to be stunned when he wasn't. He was somewhere else in the castle, still and pale and cold. Gone. Lost to her forever.
There would be no more mornings where she pressed her cold toes against his legs and startled him into waking. There would be no more exasperating privy council meetings together. He would not press his forehead against hers and look at her as if she was the most precious thing in the world. There would be no more Francis. He was gone.
At least, that's what her mind told her. Her heart sobbed that he had to come back. He always came back to her. How could fate be so cruel as to give him back and then snatch him away again?
It got better after that, a little at a time. But always, always, always, it was the little things that hurt the most.
It wasn't the lack of a good king that made her chest ache all night. It was the little things she had so often taken for granted before.
The cold mornings when she would wake up and reach out to him across the bed, expecting him to wrap his arms around her and warm her with his body heat.
When she cried, and he wasn't there to give her that ever-reassuring kiss on the forehead.
The moments when she found something funny and turned to share the joke with him, only to be shocked anew that he was not there and forced to remember that he never would be.
The time when Gideon kissed her, and she had forgotten for a moment that it wasn't him.
Stepping into the throne room and looking at the empty throne. Or worse yet, seeing the wrong person on the throne. It wasn't supposed to be Charles. It was supposed to be Francis. Her golden king.
Wrong, wrong, wrong, her heart screamed.
He had left a permanent tear in her heart. One that no one could heal. Not Gideon, not Darnley, not Bothwell, never them. It hurt to look up and see dark curls instead of golden. To see brown eyes instead of blue. To wake in a cold, empty bed all alone. To remember that her son was not his.
I will love you for the rest of my life, and I will never let you go again.
She had meant it. She just hoped he knew how much she'd meant it.