Chapter 19: Rage
The morning sickness hit her like a betrayal.
It wasn't the gentle, queasy rising she’d read about in hushed tones. It was a violent, wrenching upheaval that had her kneeling on the cold flagstones of her bathing chamber, her knuckles white against the basin, heaving until her throat burned and her eyes streamed. The fatigue followed, a leaden weight in her bones that made the walk to the council chamber feel like a march through deep mud.She knew. With a sickening, absolute certainty that had nothing to do with her body and everything to do with dread, she knew.
Lucian was not yet two. The fragile, hard-won routine of ledgers and block towers, of shared walks and silent understandings over a sleeping child’s crib—it was a house of cards. And this, this new life taking root inside her, was a gust of wind.
She splashed water on her face, the cold a sharp rebuke. In the mirror, her green eyes were darkened by circles, her skin pale. “No,” she whispered to her reflection, the word a futile spell. The peace was over. The war within her own flesh had begun anew.
At council, she wore the mask. It was heavier now, carved from ice.
“The proposal from the silver guild is not merely inefficient, it is intellectually pathetic,” she said, her voice slicing through the drowsy afternoon air. She didn’t have Lucian on her hip today; the thought of his wriggling weight made her stomach twist. His absence was a loud silence in the room.
Lord Merton, who had presented the proposal, blinked. “My lady, the tax structure is based on precedent—”
“Precedent is the refuge of the lazy. Your calculations ignore the flooding of the western mines last spring. The yield is down by a third. Your ‘precedent’ is built on sand.” She shoved the parchment across the table so hard it sailed off the edge and fluttered to the floor. “Bring me a plan that acknowledges reality, or don’t waste this chamber’s time.”
The lords stared. Her critiques had always been sharp, but this was something else.This was contempt.
Alistair watched from his throne-like chair, his expression unreadable. He had noted Lucian’s absence first thing, a single raised eyebrow her only question. She had given a slight, dismissive shake of her head. Not today.
He said nothing during her evisceration of Merton, but his blue eyes were fixed on her, a quiet, relentless scrutiny.
Later, in the corridor, he fell into step beside her. The walk to the nursery usually felt like a truce. Today it felt like an interrogation.
“The nurse said you haven’t visited Lucian in three days,” he said, his tone casual, but the question in it was a spike.
“I’ve been occupied. The silver guild’s incompetence requires significant correction.” She kept her gaze forward.
“He asks for you.”
Three words. They hit her in the center of her chest. She swallowed back a new kind of nausea. “He is a child. He will adapt.”
Alistair stopped walking, forcing her to stop a few paces ahead. She turned reluctantly. In the dim torchlight of the corridor, his face was all angles and shadow. “What is happening, Eleanor?”
The directness was a threat. She crossed her arms, a barrier. “Nothing is happening. I am doing my duty. In the council. Which, I remind you, you granted me access to. If my methods are now too harsh for your taste, revoke the privilege.”
She saw a muscle jump in his jaw. He took a step closer, not threateningly, but侵入性的. His eyes scanned her face—the pallor, the tightness around her mouth, the defensive hunch of her shoulders. “You look like hell.”
A crude, honest observation. It was almost refreshing. “Court life is draining,” she snapped, and resumed walking, her pace quicker.
He didn’t follow her to the nursery door. She didn’t go in. She stood outside, listening to the muffled sound of Lucian’s laughter inside. She placed a hand on the cool wood, then turned and walked away, the laughter echoing in the hollow place her anger couldn’t fill.
Days bled together in a haze of determined brutality and private sickness. She attacked every proposal, every budget, every minor lord with a ferocity that left the council chamber shell-shocked. She became a storm, leaving silence in her wake. She ate little.She slept less. The discreet questions from her own handmaiden were met with icy silence.
One evening, she found herself in the castle’s tiny, forgotten solar, a room of dusty tapestries and one narrow window overlooking the kitchen gardens. She was hiding, she knew. From the nursery, from the council, from Alistair’s watching eyes. She leaned her forehead against the cool glass.
The door opened. She didn’t need to turn. The presence that filled the small room was unmistakable.
Alistair didn’t speak for a long time. She heard the soft clink of something being set on the wooden table behind her.
“I had the physician examine the nursery staff,” he said, his voice low in the quiet room. “No contagion. The food tasters are clean. Lucian is healthy.”
“I am glad to hear it.” Her voice was flat.
“He then, under my order, observed the council proceedings from the gallery. A medical assessment of the chamber’s… climate.”
Eleanor went still.
“His report to me was concise,” Alistair continued. He moved closer, his reflection appearing beside hers in the dark glass. “Extreme fatigue. Signs of chronic nausea. Heightened aggression, likely stemming from physical distress. A classic presentation, he said, in early stages.”
She closed her eyes. The mask was cracking, and she had no energy left to hold it.
“Is it true?” he asked. Not a king’s demand. The question was stripped raw, almost quiet.
She couldn’t lie. Not when he’d had it clinically dissected. She gave the tiniest nod, her hair brushing the glass.
The silence that followed was vast. It wasn’t joy. It wasn’t anger. It was the sound of a future reconfiguring, heavy and unknown.
“Look at me,” he said.She turned slowly. He stood a foot away, his face grim, searching. He looked at her not as a problem to be solved, but as a battlefield he had to suddenly navigate. “You’ve been fighting it.”
“I have been… managing it.”
“By withdrawing from your son? By trying to start wars with my tax collectors?” A flicker of the old frustration.
“By doing what I must to survive it!” The words burst from her, sharp and broken. “You have your reports, your diagnoses. Do you have any concept of what it is? The trap of it? I am barely free of the last one. Lucian is just… he is just becoming a person. And now my body is not my own again. It is a country under siege. I am the siege and the citadel both. And I am tired, Alistair.”
She had never spoken his name like that, not as a wife, but as a exhausted ally admitting a defeat.
He absorbed the outburst, his gaze never leaving her. He gestured to the table. On it sat a simple wooden tray. A cup of steaming tea that smelled of ginger and mint. A small plate of dry, plain biscuits. “The physician suggested these. For the nausea.”
She stared at the offering. It was so practical. So utterly devoid of the sentiment or pressure she feared.
“Sit,” he said, not unkindly. “Eat.”
She sank into a chair, the fight draining out of her. She took a biscuit. It was bland as dust, but her stomach didn’t rebel. She took a cautious sip of tea. The warmth spread, easing a knot she’d carried for weeks.
He sat across from her, not speaking, just waiting. He looked at the dusty floor, then back at her. “The fear is different this time,” he stated.
She nodded, unable to voice it.
“Because you know what you stand to lose.” He understood. Of course he did. He saw the ledger of her heart: the fragile gains of the last year, now suddenly at risk. “You think it will take him from you. And me.”
“It changes everything,” she whispered.
“Yes.” He didn’t insult her with false comfort. “It does. The council will talk. The demands on you will shift. The risks… are known.” He paused, his own fears locked behind his teeth. “But you are not last time’s Eleanor. And I am not last time’s king.”
She finished the biscuit, the simple act grounding her. “What does that mean?”
“It means you do not withdraw.” His voice gained a quiet steel. “You do not hide in here, or use my council as a whetstone for your fear. You come to the nursery. You let Lucian climb on you, even if you must then run to a basin. You bring your damn ledgers and your sharp tongue to the table, even if you do it sitting down.” He leaned forward slightly. “You fight with it, Eleanor. Not against it. And not against us.”
It was a strategy. A cold, tactical plan for a biological campaign. It was the only kind of sense that could reach her.
She met his eyes. “And you?”
“I will have the physician report to me daily.On you. No arguments.” A corner of his mouth twitched, almost. “And I will ensure the port masters continue to write their reports with florid stupidity, so you have something to tear apart. You seem to need that.”
A breath, almost a laugh, escaped her. It felt strange in her throat. She looked down at the tea, then back at him. The mask was gone. All that was left was the weary, terrified truth. “I am afraid.”
“I know.” He didn’t reach for her hand. He simply held her gaze, an anchor in the swirling dark. “So is the King of Eldoria. Now drink the tea. The nursery awaits its general.”
The next morning, she walked into the council chamber, her steps slower. She carried a stack of ledgers and a cup of ginger tea. She felt every eye upon her, sensing the shift.
Lord Merton, emboldened by her days of absence, began to re-present his silver guild proposal with a defensive flourish.
Eleanor listened, sipping her tea. She let him finish. Then she set her cup down with a soft click that echoed.
“Your amended figures are an improvement,” she said, her voice clear but without the previous lash. “A five percent improvement on a foundation that was rotten. It’s still insufficient. But it’s a start. Work with the Master of Mines on the real yield projections. Bring it back next week.”
It wasn’t praise. It was direction. The chamber exhaled.
Alistair, at the head of the table, kept his eyes on his own papers. But she saw the faint, approving stillness in his posture.
Afterward, they walked to the nursery. The silence between them was different. Not a truce, but a concerted, shared advance.
At the door, she hesitated, a fresh wave of anxiety tightening her chest.
Alistair opened the door for her. Inside, Lucian, upon seeing her, let out a shriek of pure delight and launched himself across the rug on unsteady legs.
She caught him, his solid, warm weight a blessing and a burden. He smelled of soap and childhood. He immediately patted her cheeks with his sticky hands, babbling.
Her stomach churned. She held him closer, breathing him in, anchoring herself in the now.
Alistair closed the door behind them, sealing them in the sunlit, chaotic world of blocks and one-eared horses. He didn’t go to the chair. He lowered himself to the floor, within reach, and began to silently sort wooden blocks by color, creating a tidy line—a ordered kingdom for his son to inevitably destroy.
Eleanor sat, letting Lucian settle in her lap. She picked up the cloth dog he offered. The fear was still there, a cold stone in her gut. But it was out in the open now. It was a shared campaign.
She looked at Alistair, at his concentrated profile as he placed a blue block just so. He glanced up, meeting her eyes. No smile. Just a steady, blue acknowledgment.
The siege continued. But she was no longer alone in the citadel.