Chapter 3

It is cold that day, biting cold. Frost lines the panes of the windows and blurs the already distorted images from the thick glass. The fire attempts to provide the room with some warmth, crackling ferociously as if in a battle with the surrounding atmosphere that nips at the bones and makes the dreary castle walls even more cold to both sight and touch. Fluttering against the cold wall flies a small banner of blue stitched with gold, taunting the room's occupant of the despicable circumstances weather brings to those who once looked forward to the restrictions of winter. She glares at her hands shaking in her lap - from fear or from the cold, she is not sure, but she glares.

Mary is feverish. Her night gown is soaked from the sweat seeping from her skin, and the one spot her back connects with the wooden headboard of her bed radiates with warmth. Though it is wintry, the warmth on her back is not comfortable nor welcome despite the circumstances. Three thick furs weigh down her legs and prevent movement, constraining her from her usual activities, tying down her legs from adjustment, trapping the insane heat her body produces to the point of sticky skin and restless bones, and yet she feels like a cold wintry cave. Her forehead rivals the heat of the fire, but it also matches the helpless attempts to combat the Siberian temperatures. Finally, latching onto the wintry theme is her skin itself, pale with purple bags hanging underneath her eyes. The very thought of her situation irritates her.

Two familiar knocks and a feeling of dread announce the presence of the pesky man long before the page enters her room. Mary thinks quick, settling further into her blankets to disappear from the person on the other side. The page enters the room, plain faced and bored, but Mary's wild eyes and crazy hand gestures capture his attention. As he hesitantly announces the visitor's name, she signs desperately that she is indisposed. His voice falters, and the relief floods through her veins as the impending headache seems to vanish with just the pure understanding he conveys. She tosses him a silver coin with a small smile, and he bows with slight amusement in his eyes before leaving her room.

The door closes, and her heart pounds in her chest with every movement, hyper aware of all ongoing around her. Her ears strain to listen to the exchange between her visitor and the page, and she thinks he can hear her movements through the thick oak door, almost as if he can see not just through the door itself but the page's lie too. Her visitor is barking aggressively, and Mary flinches in her bed, his pugnacity inviting reminders of the fateful night of her violation.

Mary shuffles lower into her covers, and when the conversation stutters to a small stop, she pales further. He heard her move. She is sure of it. He heard the crinkling of her sheets and her hair squeaking against the fabric as she slid down. Impatient growling breaks the silence, demanding that Mary needs to be brought her food and that her visitor needs to see her. Mary clenches her eyes, praying that the page is brave enough to deny the Prince of Blood his requests.

She thinks that maybe she's swallowing too loudly because she can hear the squelching in her head each time she does. She stops everything, fearing that all her actions will attract his attention and unleash his unwelcome doting. Despite her attempts of playing sleep, the growling and barking has stopped, and Mary fears the worst, imagining him storming in and stirring her from her relatively peaceful day. Shutting her eyes in case he does somehow find a way in, Mary hopes and hopes that she can at least fend him off with her acting.

However, the door never swings open, and her page never announces the arrival of someone. Her heart thumps, thumps, and thumps as she waits longer, but no visitor arrives. Opening her eyes slowly, she releases the breath she did not know she held and takes in the sight of her empty room. It takes some time, but her heartbeat and breathing return to a normal pace before she comfortably falls back in her pillows.

That is her thrill for the day, and she would prefer if everyone let her be. She is quite content with hiding away from court, or more specifically her visitor.

Conde.

Her head reels just thinking about how desperate he acts to get on her good side. The once comforting friend who distracted her from undesired thoughts has suddenly turned into the undesirable. He surrounds her everywhere she goes, and not metaphorically. If before he let her be free, now his very presence traps her, not to mention that she can see through the whole act and recognize his motives.

It disgusts her, and she pulls back the covers to refresh her view. Boredom settles on her heavily as the whole castle is concerned about contagion and is overly cautious considering the recent resurgences of the plague. Loneliness also commonly occurs due to her seclusion. Three times a day Lina and Anne come to her to deliver her meals and help her with basic hygiene, but there lies the extent of her human interaction. Her mind is left stirring, waiting to do something yet never actually doing.

Mary paces her room, bouncing on her heels impatiently. Her brain stirs, and she craves some sort of intellectual conversation, especially with all the books she has accumulated on her bedside table. The mere thought of what he does for her lifts her mood. Through her ladies, Mary obtains books to keep her entertained upon Francis' request. The gesture is small, but she sees many things through his small action. He keeps her occupied and entertained, not to mention managing the entire kingdom in her stead along with Scotland, which explained the lack of his presence.

In a turn of events, she thinks Francis spends far too much time working and away from her.

Her door opens so quietly that she almost misses it, but the intruder's footsteps echo softly against the stone floors. Her head whips around in panic, wondering how Conde managed to get through. She can see him waiting at her door, waiting to hear even the slightest of stirring noises and pouncing on the door the moment he sees her page walk away to switch his shifts.

"Oh," Mary openly sighs with relief. Her face relaxes into something akin to bliss upon seeing Francis's golden curls and soft features. "I thought you were Conde, and really, I couldn't handle him today. He's awfully tenacious."

Francis does nothing but smirk in amusement at her exclamation, watching her with just the smallest of expressions as she gets comfortable on her bed after realizing it is simply him. He is fretful in every sense of the word, hearing that Mary has been bedridden for a week already and not showed much improvement. Still, he does nothing. He promises himself to do nothing. She needs space, and he will give her what she needs, even in these times when he wants to dote on her to ensure that she is up and ferociously tearing at the people in the court again.

"Your page was walking by," he explains quietly. He has been deprived for far to long, but he fights every temptation to cradle her face in his hands and examine her features. "He asked me to watch your door while he went to get the night guard. I decided I might as well drop off a new book." He holds up a leather bound book and places it on her dresser, acting too casual for both him and her.

She settles down and sits on the edge of her bed in her white nightgown, and he cannot help but look up and be captured by how ethereal she looks. The paleness of her skin accentuates the flush of her cheeks and lips from her babbling, and the candles in the room create a sort of halo and shimmer against her skin, causing his eyes to soften and look at her forlornly, one of the few acts he reminds himself to stop. He knows he looks at her passionately, but he also knows that it irritates her. Being under a male's scrutinizing gaze after her experience is not conducive to her recovery.

Those worries flood his head as she looks up at him when met with silence, yet he realizes he has been silently adoring her. He blinks rapidly to try to break the spell and his mouth falls open to come up with an excuse, an explanation, divert the conversation, anything so that she does not slide back into the very shell he has been coaxing her out of. His stance falls, defeated and stressed. She is bound to ask him to leave, to become a recluse again. There would be repercussions- the falling apart of their relationship, their government, them. He scolds himself as his mind comes blank, and he stutters.

Then she smiles bashfully, lowering her gaze to the floor and blushing softly.

"I've been quite bored," she says, bordering on a whisper almost as if she feels ashamed to admit it.

"Oh," Francis says, blinking owlishly at her.

"Quite lonely."

"Oh?"

"Would you like to sit?" Mary offers with a kind gaze. She gestures at the couch on the far end of the room, almost recreating their library encounters. She misses them. She misses him.

He lowers his head, licking his lips to hide the smile that threatens to stretch across his face. She tempts him unknowingly, and he fears for his own actions. "I really shouldn't. I need to talk to the nobles about recalling the troops from the-"

"Please?" she almost pleads, and the sound of her voice shocks both of them. She sounds so small, so small for him, and it breaks his heart while she contemplates its meaning. Still, he obeys and begins to walk over to the couch slowly as if waiting for her to change her mind and ask him to leave. The request never comes, though, and he sits on the edge of the couch, unsure of what to do. When Francis walked in he expected she would be asleep, and he hoped to let her regain her strength. Staying never seemed like an option, and now that it is, he remains unsure of what to do and what to say.

"Is something the matter?" he asks, tilting his head like a curious young child, and it makes her grin. Francis sits before her when she needs someone, and that is more than enough for her.

"Yes," she begins, moving from her spot and closing the distance between them, stiffly sitting next to him. Their thighs barely touch, just a centimeter away, and yet it feels too distant to relieve any tension. Sparks shoot and reach, hoping to collide, but they simply cannot. She sits so close he can smell her, the smell so distinctly her, like a meadow mixing with the sea's saltiness. When she opens her mouth to speak, her voice washes over him like waves. "Read me something- or tell it. I just want to distract myself from this awful state."

Francis is eager to please. If he can provide comfort in any way, he will do so, and it just so happens comfort comes in his company, a progression that he happily embraces. Along with his company, the room swims thick with warm air, fogging up the twilight tinted windows with mist. The warmth from the fire licks their skin sensuously, but it does not unsettle Mary. She remains as relaxed as she can be considering the circumstances, alone with Francis sitting close to her. Still, the air between them buzzes, waiting to be soothed through a distraction.

He settles back into the cushion, jaw clenched and eyebrows drawn, but he blinks slowly, like a sloth, a sense of serenity settling around him. Mary waits, upright and alert, her mind twisting as she feels an odd sense of emptiness next to Francis. It is not unpleasant, but in fact welcoming, like a pendulum swing from their passionate early days to those they spent apart due to her own fear and trauma, a nice compromise between their two extreme displays.

Francis tuts briefly as he thinks before rubbing his palms on his knees. He tries to think of something other than Mary sitting next to him, intoxicating his thoughts and overwhelming his senses with her. He tries to battle the fog that clouds his mind, the haziness and slow atmosphere of the room begging him to wrap her in his arms and sleep.

But Francis has promised to refrain himself, so he does the next best thing he can think of that remains in the boundaries of their current arrangement: to do as she asks. "Esther."

Mary turns to look at him over her shoulder, her eyebrows drawn in confusion at his single-word outburst that correlated with nothing. "Did we acquire someone new in the staff?"

He chuckles at her innocent question before turning his head to look at her. He does not think as he rest his arm behind her on the back of the couch, and she does not think about him practically surrounding her. Quite the opposite, as she feels at ease, so much so that she subconsciously loosens in her posture, slowly but surely closing the distance between their two bodies.

"From the Bible," Francis says simply. She nods, knowing exactly what he talks about.

"Oh, that Esther," she replies. Mary adores the story of the Persian queen who helped save her own people by exposing the plots of the royal vizier. While she was in the convent, she would always ask the nuns to repeat the story. At one point she was determined to know the passage by heart. Esther used her position to save her people, and Mary hopes that she will do the same. "One of my favorites."

"I know," he shoots back rapidly, and she turns to him with wide eyes, an alarmed look on her face. He fears she will stand up, claiming she is tired and in need of some rest. She looks so unsettled, but then a blush creeps across her face. Mary settles further back, her back falling behind while her shoulders span the length of his outstretched arm with her hair falling over it like a blanket. Francis clears his throat, and with one nod from her, he begins his story.

"The King of Persia holds a banquet and wants to show off the beauty of his wife," Francis says, watching as Mary tucks in her legs beneath her and leans on him even more. He will let her set the pace, but he cannot help the comment that slip from his lips. "Understandably, I would want to hold a banquet for my beautiful wife, too." Mary chuckles, ducking her head shyly. Francis smiles, feeling like he is courting her again, but he decides he is already pushing his luck. Instead, he continues the story.

"She refuses to come, and the silly king gets angry. Unlike a true gentleman, he does not respect his wife's wishes and views her rejection as obstinate." Mary nods her head, agreeing quietly, but he sees it. When she realizes Francis has stopped, she jumps a bit.

"You're not like him," Mary whispers in an attempt to reassure him. "No, you're much better." He gives her a look, a smile spilling across his face. She lowers her head again before whispering for him to continue.

"Embarrassed and shocked, the king deposes Vashti and calls for a beauty pageant to find his new wife. Among the crowd assembled to participate stands Esther, a beautiful jewish girl with whom the King is absolutely smitten for, and she becomes his new queen. Now, Esther's uncle happens to hear two men plotting to kill the king, and through their connection, Esther tells her new husband of the plot, managing to save his life- one of the reasons why we kings need you queens." She laughs a little, but it is so soft that he turns his head to look at her. Her eyes are straight ahead, and her lids look heavy. Still, she looks at peace, and he proceeds to tell the story of the Esther.

He is halfway through, describing a beautiful banquet that Esther holds when Mary rests her head on his shoulder, her long lashes casting dancing shadows on her face from the light of the fire. Her lips turn up at the edges in the slightest of smiles, but it is there and makes her look unbothered. Her hair tickles his neck, the wisps of chocolate strands breathing on him like a comforting whisper while her own breathing is deep enough to tempt him to sleep. "Now Esther manages to save the Jewish people and Mordecai when she reveals everything to her husband. She knew a lot more than he gave her credit for, and she was proactive when it came to helping those who need her. That is a respectable woman, a real queen who never forgets her true self amidst the chaos. So brave, reminding me of someone we know quite well..." He ends the story with a slight flourish, and he knows she is not listening anymore, his voice drowned out by her impending sleep. Despite her slumber, Mary murmurs in agreement through the thick veil of fatigue, and Francis hopes that she dreams of her own honorable actions, spurned by the story of Esther.

He does not want to let her go, but if he has learned anything, it is that letting her breathe on her own might be their best option for improvement. Keeping this in mind, he gathers his energy and cradles her neck in one arm while using his other to lift her legs from her curled position. Carrying with some effort - he too has grown sickly from their time apart - he gently lays her in her bed before gracing a blanket over her body to keep her warm.

Mary remains out cold the entire time, with little to no movement. He watches her briefly, letting himself ingrain the image of her in his mind, peaceful and content. Overwhelmed by his love for her, he places the lightest of kisses on her hairline, almost like a bird skimming the water with its wings but never falling in for it knows the distance that provides safety.

A/N: Whoops! I apologize to all those who waited a long time for this. I love Reign, really I do. I simply couldn't crank this one out throughout the entire school year and due to lack of motivation. I recently got a burst of inspiration again, and I came up with this. In all honesty, it's not my best work. I got a little lazy when it came to retelling Esther- in case you couldn't tell- but this was a chapter dedicated to bashing Conde and rebuilding Frary so enjoy the 16th century fluff. I certainly enjoyed experimenting with the innocent side of Mary and Francis' internal struggle to keep cool- though I can't say I wrote it best. I produced what I did as well as I could at this moment.

Thank you for all the follows and favorites. It really makes me gush and encourages me. I fell behind with writing individual thank yous, but please know that I appreciate each and every follow and favorite.

As for the next chapter, we'll see if it is a possibility. I don't want to keep leading readers on if I can't come up with good content. I'd rather come up with good content rather than just put something out there. For now, though, let's just say I subconsciously ended the chapter on this note, and I'm quite liking the way the words are written.

I don't own Reign, nor did I come up with the character portrayals in it.

Thanks again for everything! You've all been so great, and I really enjoy writing when I can - FrenchLavenderAndHoney