There's still light at the bottom of a well, you know—Regis read—
I couldn't really tell for sure until I fell in, head first and boots last, scraping on the stone, to plunge face-first into the black liquid ice below, and—lungs burning, coughing, gasping, feet kicking—turned my eyes back up to stare at that little circle of light overhead. So far away.
In the quiet of his temporary rooms, Regis looked up from the loose pages in his lap. It had been, by all accounts, a lovely evening: his friends all gathered together to celebrate the first birthday of his children, Noctis with his first words, Spero dropping by unexpectedly to deliver those pages that Regis now read and seeming—as far as Regis could tell—very much better than he had been for months.
In spite of that, something about the encounter troubled him. He played through the visit in his mind. Spero smiling, thanking him… why did that bother him so much?
His mind stuck on a handful of words.
I understand now, Spero had said, This is how you can carry on.
Intuitively, he felt the root of his discomfort was there, in those two sentences, but though he ran them over and over in his head, he couldn't put his finger on the problem.
This is how you can carry on.
This is how you can carry on…
What was it about those words that troubled him so?
Regis set the unbound papers aside and walked the length of the room to the bathroom door and back.
This is how you can carry on…
It sounded of understanding, of puzzle pieces clicking into places, and yet… there was a second half to the sentence, which Spero hadn't voiced.
...but I cannot.
Regis stopped mid step as his brain lit with comprehension.
This is how you can carry on, but I cannot.
What was it Spero had said just before he left? Something about not needing to worry about him anymore. That he was going to see his friends. And why, after ten months, would he do something like that so suddenly?
To say the same thing he had said to Regis: 'goodbye'. In all the months Regis had known him, it was only tonight that he had ever said that word. Perhaps he was being foolish. After all, it wasn't so strange for people to say other such words—but, then again, Spero rarely said those, either.
Gods prove me wrong, Regis thought.
He wrenched open the door to his room, startling the crownsguards who stood outside but paid them no heed. They fell into step behind him as he swept down the hall. There was no walking around the Citadel without dogged steps, these days, but right now Regis didn't care. It wasn't as if Cor wouldn't know where he was in a moment, anyway.
The Citadel halls had never seemed so long before. Always, whenever he needed to be somewhere, they stretched endlessly. Cor's rooms should have been closer. He could have just sent a servant, but then he would have been left standing around and already he felt useless enough.
It took five minutes to reach Cor's door. It felt like fifty.
"Cor!" Regis pounded on the door.
It opened almost immediately. That was one benefit of being a king in a hurry.
"I need you to take me to the lower city. Immediately."
Only half a second passed while Cor stared at him with an open mouth. Then he was stepping into the hall, jaw snapping shut.
"Ready His Majesty's car. I want the Regalia at the Citadel steps ten minutes ago." He spoke into his radio, shutting his door behind him, then turned to the two crownsguards who had followed Regis from his room. "You two, with me."
I only pray we are not too late, Regis thought as his small retinue fell into step around him.
Fewer people crowded the streets at this time of night; a smaller crowd gathered outside Spero's apartment complex when the Regalia stopped at the curb. Regis didn't linger to shake hands or hold babies. He took the steps three at a time, leaving Cor and the others to catch up.
The last time Regis had stood outside the door to Spero's apartment, a steady barrage of disjointed violin notes had been audible. Tonight there was no sound.
Please, let me be wrong.
Regis knocked on the door.
Cor took a stance beside him, watching the halls, but nothing happened.
Regis pounded on the door.
"Spero?! Open this door at once!"
Down the hall, other doors opened. Spero's remained shut. No light glowed in the cracks around it; no sounds came from beyond.
He was probably asleep. It was rather late, after all. There was no reason to believe anything had happened, save that nagging feeling in the back of his mind.
Regis turned to Cor, taking a step back. "Open this door."
Cor gave him only a fleeting glance—as if to ascertain if he really did want the apartment door broken down. Whatever he saw on Regis' face was enough to convince him. He took the place in front of the door and planted one foot, swinging the other out to drive his boot against the wood near the handle. The door was cheap and soft, already falling apart—like the rest of the apartment. It splintered on impact and a second kick sent the door swinging in.
Inside, Regis groped for a lightswitch and found one where he expected it. The cramped apartment flooded with flickering yellow light. It was just the same as it had been months ago with one notable change: Spero sat at the overflowing desk, his arms flat across the surface, his head resting against the typewriter.
Asleep.
"Spero?" Regis picked his way through towers of books and mountains of paper. He must have been an uncannily deep sleeper to sleep through not only the shouting but the sound of his door crashing open.
Unless he wasn't asleep.
Regis' mind refused to register it at first. Even when he drew closer and the image became more clear, his brain couldn't make sense of what his eyes saw. Red was a strange color for mottling, wasn't it?
All at once, it was glaring before his eyes, like an optical illusion clicking in the opposite direction.
The blood wasn't just pooled on the desk: it was spattered on the walls and the window; it dotted Spero's white face and his white shirt; it dripped off the edge and made a dark spot on the stained carpet; it soaked into discarded papers; it drenched open books.
It was stupid, feeling for a pulse in that—he knew enough about physiology to know a person couldn't lose that much blood and live through it—but he felt anyway. He pressed his fingers against Spero's neck. His skin was cold.
"Spero…"
All he could see was Spero's face as the world blurred. Ashen skin, turned too pale, even for a sickly man. Messy hair, still growing back in. Smooth pink scars stretched over his exposed neck.
He was smiling.
Gods, why? Why this? I thought you were happy…
He had been so content, that evening. Had it only been that evening? A few hours of time separated Regis from a Spero who was alive and well. But he had never really been well, had he?
"Your Majesty," Cor said.
Something was squeezing him from the inside out, crushing his lungs, wringing his stomach. The lights outside stretched in long lines until he couldn't see anything anymore. Regis put his hand down on the corner of the desk—mercifully finding a place that was free of blood—and hung his head. No sound escaped his clenched teeth, but tears joined the blood soaking into the carpet.
If only he had been there sooner. If only he had realized at the time how strange it was—how final that last farewell had felt. If only he hadn't let Spero leave. If only—
"Regis." Cor's hand landed on his shoulder.
"I know…" Regis said. He could stand there and dwell on 'what if's and 'should have's all year. It wasn't going to bring Spero back.
He straightened, passing a hand over his face to dry it, and turned away from the desk. The two crownsguards who had accompanied them were lingering in the doorway and Regis addressed them, now. "Call emergency services. There is nothing to be done for him, but that is the proper protocol. You will remain and ensure he is taken care of."
For his part, Regis needed to be out of that apartment.
"Your Majesty—" Cor spoke, but Regis didn't let him finish. He was going to object to leaving half the king's retinue behind. Regis didn't care.
"Assure them that I will see to all of the necessary arrangements for him," Regis said, stepping toward the door.
"Sire," Cor said with more feeling.
Regis turned and looked at him, prepared to shut down his objections with a glance. Instead he found Cor leaning over the desk, looking at the typewriter.
"This is for you," Cor said.
For a moment he couldn't fathom what Cor meant. He watched as Cor reached out and released the page from the typewriter. When Cor held it out, Regis took it.
Regis—
He read.
This is what I wanted.
I know you'll come first. You're the only one who understood that I always meant to do it.
I'm sorry about the violin, but music comes from the heart. You understand: mine is gone. I hope you'll keep it. Maybe someday, someone else will make it sing for you. Someone with a heart so big it makes you forget the hole in yours.
Don't mourn me. This is what I wanted. I won't haunt you, like she does. This is what I always meant to happen, and I'm sorry I let you believe it could be stopped.
So go back to your castle, read that damn book, and understand:
This is what I
The last chain of senseless letters set in ink a grim reminder of what had followed.
Regis dropped his gaze from the page. The violin was laying on Spero's overburdened sofa, away from the mess that seeped off his desk. Regis scooped it up and held it cradled in his arms. No one of his circle could play it, but now that he thought of it he didn't want them to. The violin, like the manuscript, was Spero's legacy to him: something quiet they had shared together when no one else understood. Perhaps, someday, he would find someone worthy of coaxing music from the strings once more.
Until then it would have a place inside the hollow of his heart.