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~*~
Weeks had turned to months after the end of the Age of Gods, with the young King and Queen heralding a new age; one of a unified Valentia. Between their coronation, marriage, and the never ending work of running a kingdom, every day seemed to blend seamlessly into the next. As if in the blink of an eye, Queen Anthiese suddenly found herself close to a year later, wondering where the time had gone.
Wondering how much time she had left.
For a dark presence loomed over her, always, a shadow she could never quite step out from. A deep, icy terror that had made its home in the darkest recesses of her heart, spreading its poison through her veins. She could give her feelings no voice, for to speak them was to make them real.
At first, such thoughts were dismissed as silly, a simple lingering dread; an aftereffect of the horrors of war she had just witnessed firsthand. And it had worked, at first. Distracted by ceremonies and rituals and work, the Queen could ignore such silly feelings, put them aside.
But they would not be ignored forever.
And with every tick of the clock, every rise and set of the sun, the roots of her shadow dug deeper, seeping into her very soul.
The Age of Gods was over. But Duma’s influence lingered.
~*~
It started only three weeks after it had all ended.
She was no stranger to nightmares. They had plagued her since she was a child, ever since that horrible fire that had stolen her family and her life from her. Dreams filled with visions of smoke, blood, fire and death; none of those were new to her. But this one… this one was different.
Alone she stands, in the darkness and the cold, the soles of her boots crunching stone and bone, her fingers tense around the hilt of her sword. No… not alone. In front of her is a boy, the boy, equal yet opposite to her in so many ways. The other Brandbearer. Child of Fate.
His lips part and move, forming a word, a question in the shape of her name. His eyes both longing and wary as they stare at her, flickering to the sword she holds, now aloft. A sneer forms on her face and a guttural snarl forms in her throat as she lunges for him, the full force of her hatred behind her swing. She hates him. She hates him so fiercely, so desperately. Anger bubbles in the pit of her stomach, fuelling her, propelling her forward in a series of brutal swings. Each is met with a block and a parry, and answered with nothing but shock and distress.
”Celica! Celica, please! Stop!”
No, she would not stop. Never, ever stop, not until the boy lay dead at her feet, not until her thirst for his blood was sated. Not until she could offer his soul to her Lord Duma, as she had offered hers. Burning, seething contempt boils within her, and she strikes again.
“Celica, wake up!”
His cries fall on deaf ears. Nothing would stop her. Nothing--
“CELICA!”
She awoke with a start, right hand flying to her hip as muscle memory kicked in and made her reach for her sword. Finding nothing there but silk and satin, her fingers clenched and unclenched around empty air, confused. It took a few moments for her brain to catch up, her ragged breathing to even out, and her racing heart to slow.
“... Alm...?”
A sigh of relief came an inch away from her, warm breath tickling her shoulder. In the darkness, Celica could make out the faint outline of her husband, sitting upright on the bed and leaning over her, his hand lingering on her arm after he had presumably just shook her awake. Once he was satisfied that she was alright, his fingers loosened their grip, choosing to gently glide across her skin instead.
“You scared me,” Alm said with a smile, his voice shaking with the hint of a laugh. He leaned over to press a tender kiss to her temple, lingering just a bit too long, betraying his genuine apprehension. “You were tossing around in your sleep, and you kept mumbling… something. Well-- more like you were yelling, actually.” Even in their bedchamber lit only by moonlight filtering in through the drapes, Celica thought she could make out his grin. Or maybe she only imagined it, her mind filling in the blanks from his playful tone. “Must have been one hell of a nightmare.”
She tasted bile at the back of her throat.
It had felt so real . She could still hear the ringing of clashing metal in her ears, feel the weight of her sword in her hands, smell the suffocating damp air of those catacombs--
Feel the anger. The hatred. The bloodlust. For him .
A hand rose to her throat, curling against her skin as she tried to will her heartbeat into slowing. Her breathing was shaky and uneven, but she forced herself to breathe. Slowly, deeply. Alm’s hand was at her back, rubbing circles against her nightgown, and all air of jovial teasing was gone.
“... Are you alright?” His voice was quiet, urgent.
Celica nodded, not trusting her voice. It wouldn’t have been a lie, really -- she was fine. It was just a nightmare. A dream of a terrible memory, just like all the others. Nothing odd or extraordinary about it, save for how exceptionally vivid it had been. She was fine. Everything was fine.
“Just a nightmare,” she whispered, reassuring both her husband and herself. “Nothing more.”
~*~
Weeks turned into months, and the nightmare became ever more frequent with each passing day. It became an unspoken pact between her and Alm never to ask questions, never delve too deep. He was plagued by his own nightmares of the war, and saw reflected in hers the same haunted look. He knew better than to further dredge up painful memories by asking too many questions.
The dark circles under Celica’s eyes became a permanent feature, ever visible despite how she and her handmaidens attempted to hide them with makeup. Whispers could be heard all over the castle about how the Queen would wake screaming almost every night, quickly reduced to a heaping, sobbing mess. Some said she stopped sleeping at night altogether, preferring to bury herself in her work or in a book, keeping only the light of a candle for company. Eventually her servants stopped looking for her in her room, delivering her breakfast directly to her office. More whispers began to surface as her trays were returned to the kitchen, day after day, hardly a bite eaten.
Slowly but steadily, Celica began to isolate herself. Letters from her friends on Novis began piling up on her desk, the words inside growing increasingly more urgent in tone as they received no reply, until one day Mae stormed into Zofia Castle demanding to know what had happened to her. All hollow smiles and assurances that she had only been busy, that she had been meaning to write but just hadn’t gotten around to it, Celica waved off her friend’s concerns. Nevermind how thin and ragged she’d become, or how she looked like she hadn’t slept in weeks, or how there was always someone lingering around the room, keeping a very nervous eye on her and not doing a very good job at hiding it. Unsatisfied with any of her answers, but unable to find any excuse to stay, Mae left even more worried than when she arrived.
But it didn’t stop there.
One time, on a crisp autumn morning four months after her first nightmare, she shattered a mirror. Saber had burst into the room upon hearing glass breaking, sword half-raised from its sheath, ready to fend off whatever intruder had somehow gotten in - only to find her blinking up at him from the seat of her vanity, gingerly holding up her right fist as it dripped with blood. When he questioned her about it, Celica had stared at him for a moment, then at her hand, seeming surprised to find it bleeding and covered in tiny splinters of glass.
She told him that she saw a witch in the mirror.
It wasn’t long after that until the Queen lost her taste for mirrors altogether, ordering for all in the castle to be covered or removed. If her gossiping servants were to be believed, she even disliked seeing her own reflection in her bath water, and would appear most distraught if she caught even a fleeting glimpse of it.
No one could say for sure what the reason for it was. Perhaps the stress of running a kingdom, or the effects of leading an army on one so young; a few would share musings of a particularly vicious lover’s quarrel, as it had escaped no one’s notice that the Queen seldom shared the King’s bed anymore, and that was enough to frost over any marriage. Yet whatever the reason, Queen Anthiese’s nerves were frayed like old rope, and soon they began to break entirely.
She would lose her temper frequently. Though never cruel, she became increasingly more hostile, pushing away those who dared get too close; with force if necessary, as Gray and Tobin discovered one afternoon after they had insisted for a bit too long that she spend some time away from the castle. Had Tobin not managed to dodge in the nick of time, she could have cracked his skull open with how hard she’d thrown that vase, as the two of them told Alm that evening while exchanging looks that ranged from incredulous to perturbed. Alm, in turn, had heard everything in grim silence. His expression was unreadable as he apologized to them both on her behalf, and thanked them for the effort. Unreadable it had remained for months, no matter who turned to him for answers. Some of his friends were gentle, kindly asking after them both, and delicate when broaching the subject of his wife’s behavior. Others were more blunt, openly demanding to know what had happened, and what Alm planned to do about it. But he’d had no answers for them.
Until now.
The whispers had grown ever bolder, and ever more unkind. They spoke of a Queen driven to madness, and of the incompetence of a King either unable or unwilling to do anything about it. Many had even regarded him with suspicion, having concluded that this new King had taken up the habits of the old, and his young wife had simply been unable to bear it. Ridiculous and completely unfounded rumours, of course. But Alm had borne it all in silence, content to be the target of public scrutiny if it meant keeping their focus away from Celica. Even so, it was all getting to be too much, even for him. Losing her temper was one thing, and he knew Gray and Tobin would forgive her for her outburst -- they had just said so themselves, after all, insisting that they knew this wasn’t really her, and that in the end, there was no harm done. But if Celica ever actually hurt someone…
He was brought out of such bleak thoughts by the sound of footsteps coming down the hall, too quick, too light and too urgent to be a patrolling guard. Alm looked up just in time to see a young girl skid to a halt in front of him, then double over to catch her breath. One of Celica’s handmaidens - Piper, he believed her name was.
“Your Majesty!” she managed to squeak between gasps of air, quickly bowing her head even further than it already was in a clumsy attempt to show reverence. He didn’t even have time to wave off the stiff formalities like he usually did before she peered up at him, face contorted in fright and eyes filled with terror.
He didn’t even have to ask. Those eyes said it all.
“It’s… It’s the Queen, m’lord. She-- She has a knife, and she--!”
Before she could even finish her sentence, Alm was already sprinting.
~*~
“Have you gone completely mad, lass!? Open-- the damn-- door !” The gruff voice of the Queen’s personal guard was punctuated by grunts, as he heaved the entire weight of his body against the doorframe again and again in an attempt to force it open. There was no reply from inside, save for the faint sounds of hitched breathing. Crying.
There was no time to process, no time to think. Alm barely slowed as he reached the door, timing his momentum to the last of Saber’s shoves. Finally the door burst open with a sharp crack , and the two men staggered into the room.
Celica stood in the center of the room, trembling, her red hair matted with sweat and tears. Gone was its usual healthy sheen; now it fell, muted and limp, providing an apt frame for her gaunt face, stained with tears. Gods , how long had it been since she last slept? Alm had almost forgotten what she looked like without exhaustion written all over her, and in all likelihood, so had she. But it wasn’t her face he was most worried about -- it was the ornate dagger she gripped tightly in her hand, inches from her breast.
His eyes never left it as he took a tentative step forward, palms aloft and extended, approaching her as one might a wounded animal. “Celica…”
“Stop.” Her voice was terse but not… aggressive, like he had expected. If anything, she sounded… scared . Alm blinked, turning his attention back to her face, and saw the panic in her eyes as they met his. Saw her shrinking back, recoiling from him as though he’d just struck her. “Don’t-- Don’t come any closer! ”
He could hear Saber shuffling a few steps behind him, but for how much attention Celica paid him, he might as well not have been there. Her eyes were fixed solely on Alm, and they were utterly terrified. A pang of guilt and hurt churned in his stomach. What had he done? Why was she so afraid of him?
“I-- … I’m not going to hurt you, Celica,” he murmured gently, unable to fully hide how dejected her felt at her fear. “No one’s going to hurt you. Please, just put down the knife, and--”
Confusion flashed across her face, which confused him in turn. But she only tightened her grip, and the light of the setting sun caught on the blade as she tilted it. “No. No . You don’t understand! I have to-- I have to end it. Once and for all.”
He froze, eyes widening at those words and the grim determination with which she spoke them. He’d heard her use that tone before - that tone of defeat, of bitter inevitability. And he’d be damned if he was gonna let her use it again.
Gritting his teeth, he breached the distance with one firm stride, then another, grabbing her wrist before she could react. Celica made a noise somewhere between a yell and a squeak, caught off-guard, but he ignored her protests to let her go and forced the dagger out of her hand. It clattered to the floor as he tossed it aside, well out of her reach.
She was struggling now, desperate to break free from him. She pointedly refused to look at him, keeping her gaze low as she pushed against his chest with her free hand in an attempt to get away, to no avail. Choked sobs caught in her throat as she grew more and more desperate, and he could see fresh tears springing in the corner of her eyes.
Dryly, Alm thought to himself how incriminating this would all look, if any of the gossip-mongers of the castle happened upon them now.
“Saber,” he said calmly, turning to face him. “I’ll handle this from here. Keep everyone else out, would you?”
Saber looked at him strangely. Alm couldn’t blame him. He hesitated for a moment, his one eye darting to Celica, before giving a curt nod and backing out of the room. Though there wasn’t much he could do about the door, he did his best to affix it back onto the frame, in an attempt to give the pair some privacy.
He breathed out a sigh, before turning back to his wife. She had calmed down now, somewhat; rather than resisting him, she was huddled against his chest, head hung low. Her entire frame seemed to quiver as she struggled to even out her breathing, and tears dripped silently off her chin and onto the fabric of his doublet. She looked… small. Small, frail, and helpless, and so very, very tired.
Gently loosening his grip on her wrist, Alm pressed his other hand to the back of her head, and leaned in to kiss her brow. Celica gave a strangled sob in response, burying her face in the crook of his neck. Though his heart ached at the sound, he calmly shushed her as one would a weeping child, stroking her hair as he held her close.
An eternity seemed to pass before Celica finally stopped crying her heart out. By then, Alm had gently led them to the foot of the bed, both to keep her comfortable and to put even more distance between her and the dagger. She pulled away, still refusing to look at him as she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. Alm sighed, and held her squarely by the shoulders.
“Celica,” he said, a little more sharply than he had intended. She winced. This has to stop. “Celica, please. What’s going on with you? We’ve barely spoken in months-- Hell, I’ve barely even seen you.” He didn’t mean to reprimand her, truly; whatever had darkened her thoughts, the last thing he wanted was to make her feel guilty over it. But he needed answers. The whole kingdom did. “Please. Please , let me help you.”
“No one can help me.” Her voice was a little hoarse from crying, but the flat curtness of her tone invited no argument. Alm sighed again, this time making no effort to hide his exasperation.
“Don’t be like that. If you would just tell me what’s wrong--”
“It’s none of your--”
“Don’t give me that, Celica!” he snapped. “We run a kingdom together, remember? You’re my wife, and I-- … Your wellbeing is my business. You are my business.”
She gnawed on her lip guiltily, and looked about ready to burst into tears again. Alm wanted to kick himself, but settled for another sigh as he forced himself to calm down and regain his composure.
“... I’m sorry. But, listen, Celica.” He hesitated, then took a deep breath. “If… If there’s something I did, some reason you’re unhappy with me, then you don’t have to stay in this for my sake.” A lump formed in his throat, but he swallowed hard and continued. “You don’t have to stay… with me.”
Finally, finally , she turned to look at him. There was that same confusion from before, but realization seemed to hit and it was quickly replaced by panic.
“No-- No! Alm, it’s not-- No !” she gasped, as if she couldn’t believe the idea had even crossed his mind. He blinked. Her hand had draped itself reassuringly over his, resting idly on the bed -- then recoiled, as if his skin had burned her. She froze, staring at it, and after a sharp intake of breath, she closed her eyes.
“I… I’m… scared.” Her words were barely audible, a petrified whisper, but it was as if a spell had broken. As if finally admitting it, finally saying it out loud, allowed her to breathe once more. And so she did, a great, shuddering gasp of breath before she continued. “I… I can hear him , Alm. He’s there… always there, in the back of my mind. And he’s so, so angry .”
“Who? Celica, what are you talking about?”
“Duma,” she breathed, making the name sound almost like a curse. Alm frowned. Duma was dead-- they’d both seen to it personally. And even if he wasn’t, his hold on her was supposed to have gone, that night Mila used the last of her power to save her. But as if reading his thoughts, Celica shook her head.
“I don’t know why. But I can feel it, Alm. Ever since the war ended, I’ve felt… different. Not quite right. And it just kept getting worse.” Anguish crept into her voice, raising its pitch. “The nightmares-- You were there for those.” He nodded mutely. “Just one nightmare, really. Always the same one. The two of us, fighting in that tower. But it’s different. Back then, I could tell-- I was still me , deep down, and I tried to fight it. But in the nightmare, I’m completely gone. And instead, there’s just… hatred.” Tears pooled in her eyes, and she stared at her hands.
“Every night, I kill you in my nightmares. And he cheers for it.”
He wasn’t sure how to react to that. But after a brief pause, Celica kept going.
“Then I started seeing her in the mirror. The witch. I would see her face, her eyes, in my reflection.” She shuddered. “And his voice kept getting clearer. Before I knew it, I started getting angry at the tiniest things, and wanting to hurt people, wanting to hurt you , and I--” Her voice caught in her throat, and she moved her hands in wild agitation. “I can’t-- It’s only getting worse! It’s only going to get worse, don’t you see? I can’t stop it, I can’t hold him back forever. It’s been all I could do just to stay away from you, just so I don’t hurt you!”
“Celica--”
“I can’t live like this anymore, Alm! It’s killing me, and if I don’t stop it, I-- I won’t let him hurt the people I hold dear. I won’t, I refuse. But I don’t know what to do anymore!” She was crying again. “I didn’t hurt anyone today, but what about tomorrow? Or the day after? Or the week after that?”
“Celica, if you would jus--”
“It needs to stop! I can feel it, I can feel myself slipping away, a little more each day. And I don’t know how much time I have left, how much time before he takes over completely, but I know I’d rather die than hurt you, I would--”
“CELICA!”
Alm grabbed her shoulders and shook her, in an attempt to snap her out of it. It worked, and she fell silent, gawking at him in surprise. He stared back down at her, eyes burning like emerald fire in their intensity, lips set in a tense line. The heat of the moment had them both breathing heavily, and for a second there was a shift in tension as they both came to the realization that this was the closest they had been in months.
Alm took in a deep breath, closing his eyes. Then he smiled at her, warm and affectionate.
“I don’t care,” he said simply.
She blinked rapidly, startled and even a little offended, and he quickly corrected himself. “I don’t care how much time you might have left. I don’t care if you hurt me, even. I can handle being hurt.” His hands slipped from her shoulders, and he raised them to cup her cheeks instead. Tenderly, he wiped a tear from her cheek with his thumb. “I care about you . I care about you being happy, and about you being safe. I care about you getting some actual sleep for once, and not starving yourself to death.” His jaw clenched, and Celica thought she could see something shimmering in the corner of his eyes. “So, please … Stop shutting me out. Whatever this is, we’ll find a way to fix it. Together.”
Silence hung heavily between them, until Celica broke it with an almost inaudible whisper.
“What if it can’t be fixed?” Alm hesitated at that, but Celica pressed further. “Witches have no salvation. No cure. I’m not even supposed to be here. It’s stolen time, and it’s catching up to me.”
Her statement made him pull back slightly and stare at her, thoughtful. Then he hummed.
“Then let me spend that time with you.” Celica opened her mouth to answer, but he quickly pressed a finger to her lips. “I don’t care how much time you have left. I don’t care if it’s a year, or a month, or even just tonight. But if you’ll have me, then let me spend it with you.”
~*~