Chapter 20: Fearful Lies
The weakness came back not with a dramatic collapse, but as a slow, insidious leaching.
Eleanor would be on the nursery floor, a trade ledger from the southern ports open before her, columns of numbers swimming in the afternoon light. Lucian, now a whirlwind of deliberate chaos, would stomp over and whack her shoulder with the blunt wooden practice sword Alistair had given him—a tiny, ridiculous replica of a knight’s blade.
“Enemy!” he’d shout, a new, cherished word.
She’d flinch. Not from the blow, which was nothing, but from the effort it now took to not cry out. The impact seemed to travel deep into her marrow, reverberating in the places where her strength was quietly packing up and leaving. She’d catch his next swing, her fingers wrapping around the little hilt, and muster a smile that felt like lifting a portcullis.
“Defeated,” she’d groan, letting herself fall sideways onto the rug in a theatrical slump. His laughter was a bright, clean bell in the heavy air.
This was the new shape of her days. The grand council chamber, with its high stakes and brutal verbal sparring, felt like a distant country. Her battlefield was here, on this worn carpet, defended with ginger tea and stubbornness. The ledgers were her tether to the outside world, their columns of figures a language she could still speak fluently when her body rebelled against all others.
Alistair’s strategy—their strategy—held, but it was a grinding, daily campaign.
He didn’t coddle her. He orchestrated.
The physician, a wiry, anxious man named Corvin, gave his reports not to her, but directly to the king in the nursery, as if it were a military briefing. Eleanor would be propped against a mountain of cushions, Lucian using her legs as a ramp for his wooden horse, while Corvin listed symptoms in a hushed tone.
“…fatigue persists. The nausea is manageable with the tincture, but the nutritional intake remains a concern. The heart rate is elevated, my liege, similar to the last…”
She’d watch Alistair’s face. He’d listen, his gaze fixed on Corvin, but his hand would be absently smoothing Lucian’s hair as the boy trotted past. He absorbed the clinical data, translated it into actions.
The next day, a quiet servant would leave a new kind of broth, richer, on a tray beside her. Or Alistair would dismiss the nursemaid for an hour and simply sit, working through a stack of pardons and petitions on the floor while she dozed, a silent, looming sentinel ensuring the rest was uninterrupted.
One afternoon, the weakness won. She’d tried to stand too quickly after lying down with Lucian for his nap, a wave of dizziness turning the room liquid. Her knee buckled. She caught herself hard on the arm of a chair, the thump echoing.
Alistair was across the room at the small desk he’d had moved in. He was there before the sound had faded, his hands on her arms, steadying. Not a frantic grip, but a solid containment.
“I’m fine,” she gasped, the humiliation hot in her throat. “Just stood up too fast.”
He didn’t argue. He guided her back to the cushions, his touch impersonal and efficient. Then he crouched in front of her, his eyes level with hers. “Where is the sword?”
She blinked. “What?”
“Lucian’s sword. Where is it?”
She gestured vaguely toward a pile of toys. He retrieved the little wooden weapon and placed it hilt-first into her limp hand. His own hand closed over hers, forcing her fingers to grip it.
“What are you doing?” she asked, exhausted.
“You are going to sit here,” he said, his voice low and even. “And you are going to hold this. And you are going to remember that you are the same woman who made Lord Merton cry into his wine last year. The weakness is a tenant. It is not the landlord.”
He held her hand around the hilt for a long moment, his calloused palm warm against her knuckles. It was absurd. A wooden toy sword against the betrayals of her own flesh. But the solidity of his hand, the sheer, stupid stubbornness of the gesture, sent a current of something that wasn’t strength, but was its cousin—defiance—back into her veins.
She tightened her grip, nodded once. He released her hand and returned to his petitions as if nothing had happened.
The sharing of the fear had changed the silence between them. It was no longer a frozen lake, but a deep, quiet river. Words were sometimes unnecessary. He’d catch her staring into the middle distance, one hand pressed to her lower belly, her face pale. He wouldn’t ask. He’d simply say, “Corvin says the second trimester often brings a reprieve,” or, “The shipment of Baltic timber is being audited. I anticipate gross incompetence. You’ll want to be sharp for it.”
He was mapping a future that included her, not as an invalid, but as a recuperating general. It was the only kind of hope that didn’t make her want to scream.
Her council appearances became rare, strategic. She went only when the topic was critical, when her specific knowledge was a scalpel. She’d enter, moving slowly, often leaning on a tall staff one of the castle carvers had made for her—a thing of elegant, dark wood, not an old woman’s crutch.
The chamber would hush. The stares were a physical pressure. Pity, speculation, calculation.
She ignored them. She’d take her seat, place the staff against the table, and listen. When she spoke, her voice was thinner, but the edge was precisely the same. She saved her energy for the killing point.
“The proposed garrison at the Serpent Pass is a drain cloaked as defense,” she said during one such appearance, cutting across a droning military advisor. “The pass is twelve feet wide at its broadest. A garrison of fifty is a banquet for avalanche fodder. Twenty, with rotating scouts, is maximal. Your proposal reeks of padded payrolls and your cousin’s need for a command.”
Silence. Then Lord Merton, of all people, cleared his throat. “The Queen’s assessment of the terrain is… accurate, I believe. My own brother surveyed it last autumn.”
It wasn’t allegiance. It was a recognition of her weapon’s still-lethal aim, even from a seated position. She gave a slight, acknowledging tilt of her head. Alistair, at the head of the table, hid his expression behind a steepling of his fingers.
Afterward, in the corridor, he fell into step beside her, matching her slow pace. “You eviscerated General Holt. He may never recover.”
“He’ll recover the moment I’m out of sight. He’ll just be more subtle about embezzling next time.”
A faint, almost imperceptible sound escaped him. It might have been a laugh. “You used Merton as a weapon. That was cold.”
“He was available.”
They walked a few more steps in the quiet, the tap of her staff marking the rhythm. “It’s different,” she said finally. “The fear.”
“How?”
“Last time it was a blind terror. A monster in a dark room. This time… it’s the same monster, but I’ve sketched its picture. I know the shape of its claws. That doesn’t make it less dangerous. But it makes me less… surprised.”
He was silent for a long moment. “A known enemy is a manageable enemy.”
“Yes.”
They reached the nursery door. From within, they could hear Lucian’s enthusiastic, incomprehensible narration of some epic battle, likely involving his horse and a defeated pillow.
Alistair didn’t open the door immediately. He looked at her, a long, assessing look that took in the fatigue under her eyes, the careful way she held herself, the staff in her hand. “You’re losing ground.”
It was a blunt statement of fact. She couldn’t deny it. The reprieve Corvin had hinted at hadn’t come. The weakness was deepening.
“I am.”
“But you’re not hiding.”
“No.”
He gave a single, sharp nod. Then he pushed the door open.
The scene within was domestic carnage. Lucian stood triumphant on the back of a stuffed bear, his practice sword held aloft. The bear was clearly the loser. He turned, saw them, and his face lit with a joy so uncomplicated it was a physical ache in Eleanor’s chest.
“Mama!Papa! Enemy is… is…” He struggled for the word. “Dead!”
Alistair strode in, swept him up from the bear, and placed him gently in Eleanor’s arms before she could brace. The weight was a sweet shock. She sank into the nearest chair, holding him close, inhaling the scent of him—wool, warm child, the apple he’d undoubtedly smeared somewhere.
Alistair picked up the practice sword from where Lucian had dropped it. He weighed it in his hand, then walked over and laid it across Eleanor’s lap, atop the ledgers and her son.
“Hold the line, General,” he said quietly. Then he went to the window, looking out at the gathering dusk, giving her the space to hold this tiny, squirming victory without observation.
She rested her cheek on Lucian’s hair, her fingers curling around the familiar wooden hilt. The fear was still there, a cold, dark pool in her belly, deeper now. But around it, in the warm weight of her son and the strange, solid presence of the king at the window, were makeshift walls. They wouldn’t hold forever. But they were holding for now.