It is late, Regis told himself, as he hovered outside Weskham's door. Much too late for a social call.
If I do not do this now, I never will, his more reasonable half insisted.
That, of course, was just the problem. If he never did it then he never had to face this. The last time he had pushed himself to take the next suggested step, it hadn't helped. All he had earned for his troubles had been a sore head and aching eyes.
Still, he hesitated. He raised his hand to knock but his knuckles never made contact with the wood. Astrals, why was it so difficult just to knock on his friend's door? He pressed his palm against it, instead, leaning against the wall.
This is ridiculous. Am I the King of Lucis or not?
Regis squared his shoulders and knocked before he could stop himself. He waited but a moment before Weskham came to the door, still dressed in his shirt and vest but barefoot on the tile floor.
"Regis." He raised his eyebrows. "Is something wrong?"
Many things were wrong and he knew full well. Regis, however, resisted the desire to tell him that. Weskham wasn't asking in general; he wanted to know what Regis was doing outside his door at such an unusual hour.
If he had been there for some concrete reason—because there was an issue in the kingdom or the household, because he needed Weskham's particular set of skills—he wouldn't have thought twice. As it stood, calling someone—even a close friend—from their room in the middle of the night for no better reason than to talk about his dead wife seemed shaky ground, at best.
What the hell am I doing? This could not have waiting until morning?
His more reasonable half intervened before he could flee. Between the two of them, Clarus and Weskham had been trying to convince Regis to talk about Aulea for five months. Now that he had finally worked up the courage to do so, they were unlikely to spurn him.
"I… sought some company…" Regis said. "That is, in any case, if it is not too inconvenient."
"Of course not, Regis. You know I encourage you to call on me at any time, no matter the reason."
"Then perhaps you would see if Cor is willing to join us. I…" He hesitated a moment before plowing onward. "I am prepared to do what you have all been hinting at for months. I will do my best to remember her but… it may be a long night."
Weskham was frozen for a moment. Surprise, probably. After five months, why wouldn't he be surprised?
"I'll get Cor," he said at last. "Shall we meet in your rooms?"
A phone rang in the dark of night, it's persistent chirping jarring Clarus from an unsettling dream about a long climb up a twisted mountain and an unending fall. He groped for his phone on the bedside table, somehow managed to hit the correct button to answer it, and pressed it against his ear without looking to see who was calling.
"Yes?"
It was Weskham's voice on the other end. "I'm sorry to wake you, Clarus, but I thought you should know that Regis wants to talk about Aulea at last."
It took a stunned moment for the information to sink into his brain.
"Clarus? Are you there?"
"Yes—of course—I'll be right over."
"I thought you might. I'll see you soon. We'll be in his new rooms."
The phone beeped in his ear and Clarus was left sitting up in bed and trying to make his brain work on his own.
In the bed beside him, Fidelia shifted. "You're going back to the Citadel at this time of night?"
She didn't sound it, but he suspected she was irked. There was a limit to even her patience and after five months it was beginning to wear thin. Clarus glanced at the phone in his hands. It was only midnight, but the likelihood was that he wouldn't be back until tomorrow night. Nevertheless, he would go.
"I must." He threw the blankets back and slipped from bed. "Regis needs me."
Cor wasn't the only one who joined Weskham in Regis' room. Clarus arrived, dressed and awake but looking a little bit harried. Regis should have guessed Weskham would call him.
"Clarus—I did not intend to pull you from your family for this," Regis said.
"You didn't." Clarus shut the door behind himself and approached, holding a plastic bag in his off hand. Weskham and Cor had already laid claim to the pair of armchairs, which had been dragged across to the bed, so Clarus dropped the bag unceremoniously on the bed beside Regis and followed shortly thereafter. "I did it all by myself."
"You aren't planning to get us drunk, are you?" Cor leaned forward, reaching for the bag.
"Of course not." Clarus snatched it away before Cor could look inside. "Some of us have to work in the morning."
"Let's not bicker in front of the king, children," Weskham said. "What did you bring, Clarus?"
Clarus reached into the bag and pulled out a tall glass bottle full of blue liquid. He passed it to Regis, who turned it over in his hands, smiling absently.
"How ever did you find this? I thought they had stopped making them," Regis said.
"I have my methods," Clarus said, passing a bottle to Cor and Weskham and balling up the empty bag once he had taken his own.
Cor's brow furrowed at he read the label. "Azure Sky? What is this?"
"Have you truly never seen one?" Regis asked.
"He's too young, Regis," Clarus said.
"Well, you have missed an important part of our childhood, Cor." Regis moved to pop the top off of his own bottle.
"Wait—" Clarus held up a hand. Regis paused and Clarus gave him a conspiratorial look. "Don't forget to shake it."
"Ah, yes," Weskham said.
Cor glanced between them. "What is the purpose of shaking it?"
"They get deposits in the bottom, sometimes," Weskham said. "It redistributes the flavor more evenly."
Weskham gave his bottle a few vigorous shakes and Cor followed suit. On the bed, Regis casually upended his once or twice with more care and Clarus inconspicuously avoided doing what he had just suggested.
"That should do," Weskham said to Cor. "Now pull the tab and have a drink. It used to be Her Majesty's favorite drink. In our younger years, this was a regular summer tradition—we'd sit out on the Citadel steps and wait for Clarus to bring them, because he was the only one with a car and—"
Carbonated blue liquid sprayed across the room, drenching Cor and his armchair. Weskham, sitting closest, ducked away and covered his face with his arm. Clarus threw his head back and roared with laughter. Even Regis cracked a smile.
When the laughter faded, Cor was sitting there, dripping blue soda and looking stunned. He had been working a serious job for too long if he had become so gullible. Once upon a time he never would have believed anything the others told him so readily and he certainly wouldn't have opened his bottle first.
"Why…" Cor looked at the half-empty bottle. "Do I even trust you anymore?"
Clarus chortled. He popped the tab on his own bottle more cautiously, let the pressure equalize, then opened it.
"Because you're still an idiot," Clarus said.
Cor glared at him.
Regis lifted a hand. "It is nothing personal, Cor. What you are missing—what dear Clarus has neglected to explain to you—is that this is precisely what he did to Aulea when she was about twelve."
"I admit, your reaction was much more satisfying," Clarus laughed. "Aulea looked like I had betrayed her."
"If you'll excuse me… I'd rather not be sticky all night." Cor rose, setting his bottle down on the end table and crossing to the bathroom to clean himself up.
"If I recall correctly," Weskham said. "She got even with you later on."
"She always did," Regis said, prying the top off his own bottle with care. The first sip fizzed on his tongue, tangy and sweet in some bizarre combination of fruit and cream. He lifted his bottle and stared at the label, letting the soda bubble in his mouth while he remembered all the years that went along with the taste. All the memories, now tinted bittersweet.
"Of course she did," Clarus said. "You think she could grow up between us and not learn to hold her own? The press loved to paint her as an innocent: 'King Regis Marries Childhood Friend: an Invalid'. It should have said: 'Aulea Finally Gets Fed-Up Waiting on the King and Plans a Wedding Without Him'."
Regis choked on his Azure. Clarus slapped him on the back. When he could breathe again, he said: "That is precisely what happened."
"You didn't want to get married?" Cor reappeared from the bathroom, holding a hand towel.
"Of course I did," said Regis, "But there was always one more thing in the way. I never did ask her properly… it was agreed for a long time that we would be married, but I never proposed to her. She simply told me one day that we were to be married the following summer and that was that."
He smiled sadly. He should have asked her. She had wanted a proper proposal and he'd never found the time to do it. There was a ring involved, at some point—she had chosen it herself and he bought it, because she was tired of waiting for him to make up his mind. It certainly took all the uncertainty out of the whole matter, but she never did seem to grasp that it was very worrisome to try to find the perfect ring for the perfect woman.
"You were there for that," Clarus said to Cor.
"No one ever told me these things." Cor wiped down his chair with the hand towel and sat back down. At last he had the chance to try his drink instead of spraying it all over his face and he did so. He looked thoughtful, swirling the carbonated liquid around his mouth once before swallowing. "That's… peculiar." He shook his head and set the bottle down. "I must have been, what, seventeen at the time? Sixteen, when this was all being planned and discussed? I didn't see much of her until after she moved in."
"So she was mostly Queen, to you," Weskham said.
Cor nodded. "She was an admirable queen, Regis. The people loved her—everyone loved her—and when she stood beside you, she looked like she belonged."
Regis wedged his fingernail beneath the label on his bottle and peeled up the corner.
"That's true," Weskham said. "There was always something about Aulea that made her seem royal—she didn't have that heritage or the upbringing, but she certainly had the bearing."
Regis fingered the loose edge of the label and breathed levelly in spite of how his heart pounded in his chest. The conversation lulled for a moment and he knew they were waiting to see if he would speak. If he didn't they would fill it, again. It could have gone on like that indefinitely, if he willed it. They wouldn't have even complained in the morning if it turned out he had called them all from their beds for nothing. He couldn't do that to them, though.
"She was my better half, I believe," Regis said quietly, still looking at the bubbling blue liquid in his bottle. "I was lost to her the moment we met, though I did not know until later. We must have been eight or nine—during a time when everyone else in my life was wont to bow to me and 'Your Highness' me… she did not. She had that bearing about her, even then." He glanced up at Cor with a small nod. "It certainly did not come from me. After that she was all mischief and mayhem… as often as she was out of bed she was dragging me into trouble."
He leaned his head back against the wall and shut his eyes.
"She always did live her life to the fullest. I think she knew—she had an understanding beyond her age, a grasp on the concept of mortality before the concept of death had even crossed my mind—but she never let it hold her back. Quite the contrary. Every day with Aulea was an adventure—she would be laid up in bed one day, and the next tell me: 'drive faster, Regis—hit the accelerator and just let go. Do you feel it? That hitch in your chest when you crest the hill too fast and for a moment the wheels leave the ground… for a moment, you are flying.' That was life with her. The rest of us have too much time—we grow too caught up in all the details—but she had too little time to be dragged down. She wanted to fly every day she was able, and for my part, I am eternally grateful that she took me along for the ride, now and then."
Regis didn't notice the tears on his cheeks until he opened his eyes and glanced around the room. Cor had his head bowed, his hands clasped on the bottle of Azure in his lap like it was something precious. Weskham was watching Regis, a smile on his lips and a wet streak on his cheek.
To Regis' right, Clarus lifted his bottle, meeting Regis' gaze with overbright eyes. "To Aulea. May she soar higher now than ever before."
"To Aulea," Weskham echoed, Cor following a moment after, and lifted his bottle.
Regis lifted his Azure, looked at the peeling label, and saw her face.
"To Aulea," he whispered.