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It’s the small hours of the morning, and Agatha has not slept.
She hasn’t tried, either. She’s hunched over the paperwork in her lap, reading the arrangements for Vanessa’s funeral by the light of her own glowing veins. They haven’t stopped since she’d fought the guards and nobles, since she’d realised she could breathe fire and since Vanessa had fallen off that balcony and since…
Well, since a lot of things. Agatha thinks that while their constant glowing might have something to do with her increased power, and increased control over it, it probably also has a lot to do with stress.
There’s a note next to the section on approved mourning wear, scrawled in the hand of one of her mother’s advisors-- well, Agatha’s advisors now.
She’ll be replacing most of them, thank you very much. Still, Agatha leans in to read it;
Find out if the Queen will be veiled or not.
Agatha grimaces. Well, her veil is perfectly suitable for official mourning purposes, even if that wasn’t the original function of it, and it’s not as if it’s inconsistent of her to hide her face. On the other hand, her reactions to her mother’s funeral will probably be eagerly anticipated, and she’s going to have to go unveiled at her coronation. Also, there’s the curiosity of her people. The wedding press sketches will definitely have gotten to Gavaldon by now…
Callis speaks up, suddenly;
“You’ve gone all silent and sulky, what have you read?”
Callis is ‘helping’ Agatha do paperwork, which amounts to dozing on Agatha’s bed and answering questions if she’s asked them three times, maybe.
“Veil.” says Agatha sullenly. “They want to know if I’ll wear it.”
“Hmph.” Callis seems to follow a similar train of thought to the one Agatha had just been on. “Think on it, I suppose.”
“We’re leaving tomorrow.” mutters Agatha. “No time.”
“Not really tomorrow if it’s--” Callis cranes her neck to look at the clock. “2am, is it? But you’ve got a few hours.”
“Don’t you have an opinion?”
“My usual instincts would be to tell you not to wear it, but it is appropriate mourning garb, and then we can all copy you and hide the fact that we don’t cry.”
Agatha snorts.
There’s a rumbling sound from above them, and Agatha and Callis both look expectantly to the window--
A huge drift of snow slides off the roof and goes tumbling past the window in a shadowy, sparkling mass, landing with a crunch below.
“I mean, it is spring.” snorts Callis, putting her hands behind her head. Agatha stares narrowly after it. Callis catches the look.
“It’s just weather. It’s not him.”
“Yes.” says Agatha grimly. “That’s the problem.”
If it was him, if he was able to perform magic at that level, it would all already be gone.
She goes back to the papers, but she doesn’t focus on them. She reads the same sentence twice. Thrice. Returns to the top of the paragraph and gets stuck halfway, again. Writes a note and realises it doesn’t make sense.
Agatha balls her faintly glowing hands into fists and glares at the wall of her room. Because it is her room, her old rooms; they’ve been banished back to her pre-marriage quarters on the other side of the castle, and she--
Callis’s hand bats around for a moment before it finds Agatha’s shoulder. She tries to push her out of bed. Agatha shoves her back, and they grapple for a moment--
“Just
go.”
Callis says. “I can basically hear you arguing with yourself.”
“They said I can’t.”
“You’ll be pissed off at yourself if you don’t.”
“You’re not listening, they said--”
“Who gives a shit what a bunch of spindly quacks said?” Callis props herself up on her elbow. “Don’t you think he’ll be upset if we all leave without saying goodbye? If we all ditch him and leave him with no one except Beatrix, Dot and the few guards who didn’t turn out to be spineless traitors?”
Agatha slams her papers onto her knees and glares at her nursemaid.
“Well, won’t he?” prods Callis.
“Do you want me to recite to you the extremely long speech I got from the physicians, about not disturbing him or confusing him or I think it would be best if you waited--”
“What, do they think he’s gonna be so excited to see you he’s just gonna die?” Callis pauses. “Actually--”
“Shut up.” mutters Agatha sullenly. “You know they’re actually just suspicious of me because I’ve been suddenly revealed to be Magic Arson Queen. And because my mother tried to assassinate him, so they think I was in on it.”
“Vanessa also tried to kill you, he’s not special. And then he killed her. So it’s tidied up nicely.”
“He didn’t kill her, Callis.”
Callis grunts.
“That’s what everyone will think.”
“But--”
“Nope, I saw his face at the wedding. He did it on purpose. Can’t convince me otherwise.” “What?” Agatha looks down at her. “What did he--”
“You’re getting boring in your married life.” Callis clucks. “A couple of months ago you would have been quite happy to gruesomely speculate about how he murdered Vanessa.”
“He was on the verge of death himself!” barks Agatha.
“Probably thought he could get away with it, then.”
“Callis.”
“Go and ask him yourself, bet he’ll tell you.”
“He can’t talk!”
“Did the physician with the hairy mole tell you that?”
“Yes, because I tried to go last week and they stopped me--!”
“You’re the Queen, you muppet!” Callis thunders. “Twice over, at that! Is he married to the physician with the hairy mole? Huh?”
Agatha stares at her. Callis points a crooked finger in her face and prods her in the forehead.
“I’m going back to sleep, and if you’re still here when I wake up, I’ll finish what Vanessa started.”
“Who are you killing? Him or me?”
“Haven’t decided yet. Night.” Callis rolls over and burrows back under the covers. Agatha grinds her teeth, exasperated…
But Callis has a point.
Well, of course she does. She always does, even if Agatha doesn’t want to hear it.
Don’t you think he’ll be upset if we all leave without saying goodbye?
Agatha picks nervously at the ragged lace on her nightgown. Singes it and stains it black. Swears and holds her hands away. It’s not as if they’ll be away for years, she tells herself, as she has told herself repeatedly over these last few weeks-- current plans need him at her coronation, since he’ll be coronated as Prince Consort at the same time, so it’s only really a couple of extra weeks…
It does seem a long time. It seems a really long time.
Agatha looks at the door. Wonders how fast she can run compared to whoever gets dispatched to chase her. Wonders if it’s unfair to burn whoever that is--
But they can’t stop her. They can’t chase her. They can trot after her and make admonishments, but she is the Queen.
And they’re leaving tomorrow.
Teeth clenched, Agatha gets out of bed and goes to find a robe to hide her burnt nightgown.
“Am I to believe you’re just on a nice little midnight peramble?”
“That’s right.” says Agatha mildly as Chaddick comes clanking up to her in his armour.
“And I am not to make a big song and dance about this?”
“That would be good.” Agatha opens the door that leads to the royal apartments.
“Uh huh.” Chaddick scratches his jaw. “And if any meddling people with medical degrees turn up, I suddenly have lots of questions about my mother’s ingrown toenail?”
“Whatever you like.” says Agatha. “I’m sure they’ll be happy to answer all of your many, many questions. Thanks, Chaddick.”
Chaddick grants her an elaborate bow and his laughter follows her down the corridor.
The two guards at the door of Tedros’s rooms are more problematic, however. Agatha had been expecting someone like Yara, but these two… well, perhaps calling them guards is generous. They’re clearly squires that have been hastily promoted. One’s knees are knocking comically. The other looks ready to piss himself. Clearly they weren’t worried about these two trying to murder Tedros. They look like they can barely tie their own shoelaces. The two of them peer up at her-- she’s a good head and a half taller than them, even with no shoes on-- and Agatha sees their gazes track from the singed hem and neckline of her nightgown, to her choppy haircut, still not fully uniform from where she burned chunks of her hair off. Then to her rings, to her fancy robe with burn holes in it. To the glowing veins in her neck and the back of her hands and her shoulders, that cast unsettling shadows on her face.
It’s not as if they can mistake her for anyone else.
“Well?” she says.
They bow so fast their heads bash together, then dizzily scrabble for the door handles. It takes them three tries to get purchase on them.
The second the doors are shut, Agatha hears them start whispering to each other, and knows it’s not going to be long before she’s apprehended by some red-faced physician who’s come puffing from his quarters to tell her through gritted teeth that she’s being hysterical.
Scowling, she picks her way through the parlour, opens the door, and takes a step inside--
Instantly, her feet hiss on the cold flagstones, and Agatha looks up to find frost glimmering on the ceiling. Nervously, she backs towards the bed, scanning the room for water she ought to avoid, but nothing seems to have melted. Probably too cold. It’s a dry frost. It seems the doctors’ no magic rule isn’t working very well. Either that, or he’s not in very good control, but the weather has been normal, so she wouldn’t have thought--
Agatha turns around to find Tedros half-sitting up, staring at her. She freezes.
His eyes are oddly luminescent in the dark, like an animal's eyes when they catch torchlight. She’s never noticed it before, but they seem to have the same quality as snow, reflecting light back so aggressively they almost glow. His hair does the same thing. His colouring is so light he makes the white of the sheets look grimy; clearly, no one has dyed his hair back, yet. Agatha wonders if Beatrix and Dot have also been refused entry like she has.
To an observer, they’d probably look very odd; Agatha as her own light source, and Tedros reflecting it back at her. In the mirror, they look like an unsettling painting, with strange lighting and dramatic posing.
She waits for Tedros to say something, but he doesn’t-- and she remembers with a jolt that he probably can’t. He claps his frostbitten hands and gazes up at her, surprisingly calmly. There’s something off in his demeanour. Agatha’s not sure what it is, but either way, her heart sinks. She had thought that the doctors had been dramatically exaggerating his condition to keep her away. She’d thought about his sudden clarity in the ballroom and his inexplicable feats of magic, and how they’d had to prise his hands off her skirts to be able to carry him away, and she’d thought, he’ll be fine.
He’s not fine. She could draw attention to the way they’ve clearly had to do some sort of surgery on his throat, or the odd way his mouth is set, but really what unsettles her is the fact he doesn’t look surprised to see her. In any way. He seems more as if he was expecting her, as if this is routine, but it isn’t, because she’s not been here, and he’s barely been conscious, and--
Oh, no.
“You think I’m a dream.” Agatha crouches in front of him and grabs his shoulders, not as gently as she probably should. “Tedros--”
Then she realises what’s off about him.
He’s shivering.
Tedros doesn’t get cold. He can’t. His skin simply doesn’t register cold in the same way. Agatha has seen him wandering about shirtless in minus temperatures. Shoving his hand in snow and frozen ponds just because he can. At no point has he ever complained of being cold. He’s flaunted his inability to be. So how…
“Tedros.” she repeats, sounding considerably weaker. “What’s --”
Tedros puts his hand reverently to her face, and they both jump at the hiss as his cold skin collides with her hot cheekbone.
But Agatha has caught sight of a book on the floor at the foot of the bed, one she recognises; the magic history book they’d found, that they’d been using for information the night before Vanessa had pushed Tedros into the lake.
Looks like being human gives us limits, especially lungs.
Agatha had said it herself. Lungs. Tedros was never supposed to have inhaled all that water, and it definitely wasn’t supposed to have frozen in his lungs.
No wonder he was cold. It would probably take months for his body to regulate itself again.
Spitting curses at every single one of the physicians for deciding she’d be no help-- her, the magic space heater, the fire spirit-- Agatha takes a breath--
There are harried footsteps from the floor above them, and Agatha groans. She knows it’s going to take the physicians a good few minutes to get past Chaddick, who will definitely stall on purpose, but she’d thought she’d get away with longer…
She whirls to Tedros, intending to explain everything as fast as she possibly can, but she stops when she sees the look on his face; it has morphed from a sort of vacant interest to something that can only be described as absolute bafflement--
And then he’s scrabbling for her, eyes wide, clearly only just registering that she’s actually come to see him, that he’s not making this up that--
They meet in the middle, in an awkward half-embrace; Agatha still sort of kneeling on the floor and Tedros half hanging off the bed.
“I’m sorry,” Agatha says desperately, gripping his arms. “They wouldn’t let me in, I had to scare the shit out of those poor squires on the door--”
“You came.”
His speech is barely intelligible, and it’s more lip-reading than actually understanding him, but a spike of guilt hits Agatha hard anyway, and she chokes on her harried explanation.
“I--” she stops. “I should have come sooner.” she croaks. “I’m sorry, I--” Before she’s even done, Tedros shakes his head emphatically, and Agatha grimaces. Of course he’s making excuses for her. “No, I should have-- Tedros, listen, I am apologising to you--”
But he looks so happy, and he’s clearly not listening. He cups her face in his hands gently. Agatha swallows.
“Tedros, we’re leaving tomorrow. My mother’s funeral--”
She stops, then, because his face does change. There’s a look--
And then it’s gone as quickly as it arrived. But Agatha’s sure of what she saw, because it had looked so out of place on his face. She’s never seen him look like that before; alight with a sort of… savage satisfaction.
I saw his face at the wedding.
“You... knew that, right?” she tests. “She’s dead. She fell through the floor on one of the balconies. You… you saw it.”
Tedros nods. He looks appropriately serious, as you would look to be discussing your mother in law and ally’s death.
Agatha doesn’t believe it for a second. She knows, then, that she will never ask him about it, but she will never doubt it.
Whether he broke the ice under her feet himself, or simply neglected to save her, Tedros killed Vanessa.
He did it on purpose.
It’s not often Callis is wrong about things. Not often at all.
Agatha remains silent for a moment, then drops her head onto his shoulder. No, they will never talk about it. But she knows well enough.
Tedros fiddles with one of the shorter pieces of her hair.
“I need to be there for it.” Agatha says, finally. “You know. Propriety, as the new Queen. Your advisors want you to go to my coronation a few weeks later, but you don’t have to, not if you’re not well--”
But Tedros is already nodding, and Agatha suspects he’ll probably demand to be taken to it, no matter what state he’s in.
“It won’t be that long until you can follow us.” she says, but she doesn’t sound convincing, even to herself. “I mean, I don’t really think you should travel at all, but…”
She trails off, because they’re both thinking the same thing. After two assassination attempts in quick succession and a very abrupt revelation about his magic, Tedros cannot afford to look weak. He has to be there with her. Agatha feels very selfish for being pleased about it.
There are faint voices somewhere outside, getting louder. Agatha looks up at Tedros, moving her grip to his hands.
“...is it really awful?”
The fact that Tedros immediately knows what she’s asking, and shakes his head instantly, smacks of bravado and means yes. Agatha pulls a face at him.
“Hm. Do you have to drink everything?”
Tedros shakes his head again and touches his hand to his inner arm. Agatha winces.
“Artificial supplements? Horrible.”
He shrugs unconvincingly. Agatha thinks; I’d rather it had been me that she’d pushed into the lake. She doesn’t say it. They stay in their odd, uncomfortable embrace. The physician’s voices get louder. Agatha lifts her head and kisses him lightly. Tedros kisses her back, harder. For a minute, they remain that way--
Then Agatha pulls gently away and stands up.
“I’ll try and come back before we go.”
Tedros smiles at her. They both know she won’t be able to, but the sentiment is enough.
Agatha casts him a last, lingering look, then turns for the door--
She opens it just as the physicians arrive.
It’s not fair, and it’s frankly very unkind, but Agatha finds she can feel nothing but anger as she looks at the gaggle of sweaty, confused men in a meerkat huddle in front of her. They’ve done their best to help Tedros, but it doesn’t make her feel any more benevolent towards them.
“Good evening, gentlemen.” she says with as much confidence as she can dredge up, even though it’s 3am and she is absolutely not supposed to be here. “I was just leaving. If you’ll excuse me--”
She brushes past them and stalks away with as much Sophie-inspired haughtiness as she can muster, but really, there’s only one thought on her mind.
Yes, she’ll wear the veil.
Because if she doesn’t, there might be serious questions about why the new queen looks so savagely relieved about the old one’s death.
After she spent so long not wanting to come to Camelot in the first place, it feels odd to be leaving.
Dot, Anemone, Yara and Hort have come to see her off, but Beatrix and Chaddick-- and their King-- are all conspicuously, but unsurprisingly, absent. A sheepish Weatherford lurks at the back, directing the practical side of things. Agatha had heard all about how he’d flung himself on his face at the foot of Tedros’s bed and begged for mercy. Tedros had granted it. Agatha would have thrown Weatherford off the Belfry, but each to their own.
Still, it’s chaotic, and Agatha doesn’t have much time to do anything except briefly hug everyone and promise a tearful Dot that Tedros will definitely bring her, Anemone and Beatrix to Agatha’s coronation, because Agatha sure as hell can’t dress herself for it--
Then she’s being dragged over to the carriage, and just as she’s about to be handed up into it, someone tall and blonde brushes hard against her side, barges into her really, and something is deposited into her hand. Agatha, confused, tries to see who it was, but Hester is shoving her inside and before she knows it, she’s in the carriage, and looking at down at the--
At the ice rose.
Beatrix has always been in on Tedros’s little schemes.
Agatha turns frantically to look out the back window as Callis gets into the carriage opposite her, and sees Beatrix standing with Dot, looking in her direction.
“Where the hell did you get that?” demands Callis. Agatha splutters and points wordlessly back in the direction of Beatrix--
But the door slams, and the driver cracks his whip, and the carriage starts forward with a jolt before they can even consider getting out to interrogate her.
“Is it real?” asks Callis.
“Yeah, it’s like-- like the last one-- from the Eastern Gallery--” Agatha struggles for a moment, then bursts out; “He’s not allowed to be doing magic!”
Callis shrugged, looking rather amused.
“Well, you weren’t allowed to go and see him last night, either. But he always said he was good at carving things, didn’t he? Probably easy as pie. Good practice for regaining his control. No wonder it got handed over so surreptitiously, he’s not meant to be trying that yet.”
She snorts and settles down for a nap, but Agatha is wriggling around in her seat to stare out of the back window, keeping the palace in her sights for as long as she can. The second the last turret is out of sight, she hunches over the rose and peels her gloves off, tracing the petals as carefully as she can with the tip of her finger. She knows what this is; it’s Tedros’s attempt to say everything he wasn’t able to say last night.
Agatha cradles it in her bare hands until it melts, and the water evaporates from her palms, turning the windows damp with condensation which draws tear-tracks down the glass and pools at the bottom. It evaporates again. It repeats itself.
Agatha finds it a very cruel metaphor.
She blots with her sleeve and lets it brush cold against her skin for the barest second.