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The sun was setting over Elusia, turning the skies into a reddish and purple color. The air had taken on a brisk temperature, cool enough for a sweater yet warm enough to avoid necessitating an overcoat. The setting sun bathed Elusia Castle in a dazzling shade of orange. One could faintly hear the sounds of windows high above the mountains being closed to prevent drafts from entering the castle.
In Her Majesty’s personal dining room, a maidservant lit the candles on top of the table – a necessity as the sunlight waned. The dining room was small, only with room for around ten people. It was adjacent to Her Majesty’s bedchambers, located on the top floor of one of the towers. Originally a room to entertain potential suitors, a wise king had the idea to convert it into the monarch’s personal dining room for when they wished to escape the court intrigue. Perhaps nobody else within living memory used it as much as the current monarch.
The maidservant, a middle aged woman with lighter brown hair dressed in a simple white dress with a gray frock, had already left the room. In her stead, a younger woman with dark red hair who was wearing something nearly-identical entered. The tray had a bronze cloche over a large plate in the center. Quickly she removed the cloche, revealing a bowl of a potato-and-beef stew mixture. She set it down on one end of the table where the guest of honor would normally sit.
The table itself was fairly small, an oval that had ten seats around it. A small candlepiece with three candles was on each end of the table. There was already a water glass and a wine goblet at each chair, though the water glasses were only filled at the two occupied seats. The chairs were regular chairs, not unlike what a merchant of good standing would consider fancy, while the monarch’s chair at the head of the table had armrests. It was occupied by a woman with fair skin wearing an ornate dress, black in color with a silver floral pattern around the bottom part, an empire waist with a light black sweater to cover her otherwise-exposed shoulders. A necklace with a blue crystal hung around her neck, a ring with a diamond on her left ring finger and a bracelet on her right hand, and a simple silver circlet set with a garnet gem around her hair. Her hair, bangs combed to her left side and reaching to the middle of her back, was dark purple with enough strands of gray to be visible: The Queen of Elusia.
The only other seat occupied was the one immediately to her left. In it was an older man, his complexion a bit more bronze than his companion’s, his figure a bit stockier around the arms and torso and legs. He was wearing a maroon shirt, his brown jacket hanging on the seat behind him, with light gray trousers. A ring with a diamond was on his finger which matched the one that the Queen wore. His hair, a bit unkempt, was still mostly crimson red with a streak of light red hair at the top: The Prince Consort.
The servant-waitress set the table for the two: a napkin on their lap, a plate in front with a fork on the left and a knife on the right. Then she plated the stew on each of their plates. Finally, she refilled the glasses of water, and for the Queen her white wine, a variety sourced from the vineyard of a monastery from the south. Then she left and quietly closed the door.
The Queen, rather than eating, fiddled with her circlet. She took off the circlet, freeing her hair from it. As she played with her hair, examining a strand of grayed hair, the Prince Consort stared at her rather than eating his own food. Were she in a better mood, she would have lightly joked that it was bad manners for one to stare at a companion rather than eat their own food. But the day had been spent in long meetings debating whether it was necessary to deploy forces to the border with Solm owing to skirmishes with bandits there. (This was a topic that had taken up much of the last few weeks.) She was mildly infuriated that Solm’s queen acted so nonchalant about the fact that bandits had moved into Solm’s relatively empty north. But she also knew that militarizing the area would be taken as a sign of aggression and the younger ones were too zealous to realize that. Reasoning with them was like pulling teeth.
In fairness to the Prince Consort, it didn’t help that none of their three children were there that evening. The Crown Princess and her brother were both at the Academy during the first semester of their third and first years, respectively, and the Princess Amaranth was being hosted for a playdate with the child of a viscount. The only one whom he could focus his attention on was the Queen.
After brushing her hair to the side, the Queen let out a loud sigh. She was clearly fatigued if her slumping shoulders showed anything. Rather than eating, she sank more in the seat and folded her hands over her lap, her circlet still in her left hand. She threw her head back and closed her eyes as if she were trying to sleep.
“You’re only going to feel more tired with that bad posture,” Diamant quietly said.
“Did you forget that I am the queen?” Ivy responded.
“You’re my wife. It’s my responsibility to take care of you.”
She sat up to glare at Diamant. “Have you had to argue with people who don’t know what it’s like to fight in a war?” she raised her voice. “Have you had to carry your entire nation on your shoulders? Have you had to walk on eggshells to avoid offending anyone?”
“I know what that’s like. You can’t overexert yourself,” Diamant slowly responded as he shook his head. “You have to take care of yourself.”
“You know what, Diamant? I don’t care. Let me do what I want.”
Diamant silently pushed back his chair. He stood up, shaking off the dust from his pants and putting his jacket on.
“Go on. Feel free to leave if you can’t leave me alone.”
He slowly pushed the chair in, making as little noise as possible. Then he walked to the door to the foyer and opened it, a creak being made as it hadn’t been well oiled. For a moment, he turned around and bowed, quietly saying “Have a good evening, Your Majesty” as he did so. Then he left and closed the door, leaving the Queen alone once again.
She sighed and ate nothing more than a few bites from the plate. She spent much of the next hour emptily gazing at it. Eventually, her moping was interrupted by the creak of the door. She looked up to see the younger maidservant returning. The maid asked if the Prince Consort had left; the Queen merely nodded to that question. She took the two plates, both still full of food, and the Queen’s wine glass since she declined a refill. After refilling her water, she wished Her Majesty a good night before leaving and closing the door once again.
After that, the Queen stood up. She pushed her chair in, leaving the water glass, and softly blew out each of the candles. This made the light in the room decrease. She hesitated to blow out the last one before leaving it: she didn’t want the room to be completely dark.
Then with her circlet still in hand, she passed through the door into her bedroom, and from her bedroom to the wardrobe. There, she put down the circlet on top of her nightstand and strolled to where her nightclothes hung. She picked out a very simple white nightgown. Then the Queen took off her clothes for the day and replaced them with the nightgown. After hanging up the dress and its other parts, she returned to the bedroom. The main object of the bedroom was, of course, the bed, a king-size bed with a canopy. It was large enough to fit the Queen, the Prince Consort, and their three children. A painting of the Divine Dragon hung on one corner of the room, and opposite the bed was a painting of the landscape of Elusia. Next to the entryway from the dining room was a porch which led out to the outside where the Queen oftentimes summoned her wyvern.
On each side of the bed was a small table where a lit candle lay, providing the only source of light in the room. The bed was neatly made with a dark brown comforter on top of gray sheets. On top of one of the tables lay a book with a green cover. The Queen sat down on the bed and took the book, an anthology of detective stories which featured a Brodian armor knight as the protagonist. She tried to immerse herself in the story but something stopped her from understanding the words. Whether it was because of the sinking feeling in her heart or her stubbornness in obtaining her reading glasses, she didn’t know, but it seemed that there were random shapes on the page rather than words. Out of frustration she slammed the book shut and returned it to its space.
Ivy laid back on the bed, folded her hands over her chest, and closed her eyes. But she couldn’t fall asleep. She sat up and threw her legs over the side of the bed, trying to deduce what it was that prevented her falling asleep. Then it struck her that this scenario was so familiar. The feeling of carrying the world on her shoulders, barely having many moments to herself, retiring to a bed where one half was empty. This was just how she would feel in the earliest years of her reign when she silently cried in the privacy of her bedchambers after tucking Holly in and leaving her to sleep.
The difference between now and then, of course, was who was by her side rather than fighting his own battles in Brodia.
Ivy slid her feet into her pair of black flip-flops as she got off the bed. A draft of wind made her shiver, so she quickly went to the closet to take out the first sweater she found – a white wool sweater – before leaving on her quest to find Diamant. She opened the door at the front of the bedchambers which led to the foyer. In the foyer, she picked up a candle on a pan which she always had ready for when she had to walk through the castle at night. From the foyer, she descended down the stairs to the next floor of the castle, and from there she passed through that floor’s main hallway. It did not take long to find him; he was inside a reading room, the first door on the left, which had shelves of books on two walls and a fireplace on the third. Diamant had laid back on the sofa that was in front of the fireplace, having fallen asleep. This was unsurprising given that the two chairs across from him were empty. She put a hand over her mouth to stop a chuckle from escaping.
Thankfully the door was already wide open; there was no need to close it. Ivy walked down the hall to open an unassuming door between two of the bedchambers; here was where the closet for linens was. The closet was full of various blankets, sheets, towels, and carpets. The maidservants wouldn’t mind if a comforter was taken, she thought. Even if they did, this use was approved by the Queen of Elusia.
Then, she returned to the reading room where Diamant was peacefully sleeping. She gently draped the blanket over him, covering most of his body except for his head. Then she lifted herself down to sit next to Diamant, crossing her arms so that she could feel warmer. Ivy decided that she would wait for Diamant to wake up, but he evidently wasn’t going to anytime soon. To stave off her boredom, she looked at the titles of the different books, the red and the green and gray books. Most of them were treatises on magic which blended into each other, something that she would pick up if she wanted to learn something new or nowadays that she would give to one of the kids if they wanted to study for magic lessons.
It was all a blur to her, though. She was just reminded of how things were when they were younger, before they even married. The times when they savored every minute they spent together, rare as it was. When every touch they shared was something that they would treasure, especially when it had to be limited to those times when they were out of the public eye.
Soon, Ivy’s eyelids were heavier…and she kept blinking…and then as she fell asleep, her head rested on Diamant’s shoulder.
...
After several hours, Diamant woke up. It felt strange that in the middle of the night in a darkened room, there was a warmth on him and that something was pressing on his shoulder until he saw the blanket draped on him. Then he realized who it was that was lying on his shoulder.
“My apologies for worrying you, Your Majesty,” he said.
Evidently she woke up as she stirred a bit, but she didn’t open her eyes. Instead, she snuggled up closer to Diamant’s side. While doing this, she grabbed the blanket and pulled it to cover herself as well as him. Then she sighed as she tried to fall back asleep.
“It’s okay,” Diamant whispered into her ear. “You may rest.”
Then he put an arm around her…and the two listened to each other’s breaths as Ivy lay her head on Diamant’s shoulder…until they both fell asleep again.