Chapter 26: Passing time
The days knitted themselves into weeks, the weeks into months. A brittle routine settled over the royal chambers, punctuated by the soft chime of the physician’s visits and the bright, chaotic energy of two small storms named Lucian and Ronan.
Ronan, no longer a swaddled bundle, had become a creature of relentless motion. At eight months old, he possessed a toothless, determined grin and a champion’s instinct for finding trouble. He could not yet walk, but he could roll, crawl, and propel himself with alarming speed toward any unattended object, particularly those that were fragile, expensive, or not meant for mouths. He was a mini Lucian in both spirit and the mop of dark, unruly hair that refused to lie flat.
Eleanor’s world remained predominantly horizontal. The grand walk to the arrow-slit window had been a peak, not a plateau. Her strength was a currency with a rapidly depreciating value; a morning spent sitting upright in a cushioned chair by the fire would cost her the entire next day in bed, her body a landscape of deep, silent ache. The hole torn in her vitality by the fever had never truly mended. It was now a permanent reservoir, one that drained with terrifying ease.
But she had found a new, strange battleground: the hour after breakfast.
It began with the sound. A distant thunder of small, running feet in the outer corridor, a gleeful shriek that was pure Lucian, followed by the lower, urgent protests of nursemaids. Then the door would burst open.
“Mama’s court is open!” Lucian would announce, charging in with the authority of a conquering general. Close behind, Corvin or another maid would be carrying Ronan, who would immediately begin windmilling his arms, demanding to be set loose upon the terrain.
For the next hour, Eleanor’s bedchamber transformed. It became a fortress under siege, a pirate cove, a dragon’s lair depending on Lucian’s whim. He would drag velvet cushions from the chairs to build ramparts at the foot of her bed. Ronan, deposited on a thick rug with a ring of pillows, would watch his brother with wide, adoring eyes, then set about the serious business of trying to eat a tassel from a throw pillow.
Eleanor presided from her propped-up pillows, a queen on a stationary throne. Her laughter, though still weak, became a familiar sound in the room. It was a soft, breathy thing, often punctuated by a wince, but it was real.
“Captain Lucian,” she’d say, her voice a thread of amusement. “Your first mate is attempting to mutiny. He’s consuming the national flag.”
Lucian would swoop in, scooping Ronan up under one arm like a sack of grain. “No eating the colors, Ronan! It’s disrespectful!” He’d plop him back in the pillow ring, only for the baby to immediately grab for his brother’s bootlace.
Alistair, if he walked in during this ritual, would often stop just inside the doorway, leaning against the frame. He watched, something in his chest tightening and loosening all at once. He saw the faint strain around Eleanor’s eyes as she followed Ronan’s rapid rolling, the way she’d subtly shift, trying to ease a persistent ache in her side. But he also saw the light in her face, a light that was absent when it was just the two of them and the heavy blanket of her convalescence.
One morning, he arrived earlier than usual. Lucian was enacting a dramatic naval battle with two wooden spoons against the arm of a chair. Ronan had successfully captured a discarded linen napkin and was happily gumming it into a soggy ball.
Eleanor was watching them, a small, tired smile on her lips. She didn’t hear Alistair approach.
“It’s a marvel the chamber is still standing,” he remarked quietly.
She started slightly, then her smile widened, just for him. “They’re efficient little wreckers. It takes them minutes to achieve what a invading army might manage in a week.” She nodded toward Ronan. “Your son believes textiles are a food group.”
“A strategic reserve,” Alistair corrected, moving to sit in the chair Lucian wasn’t assaulting. He studied her. There was a faint, healthy color in her cheeks today, but her hands, folded on the coverlet, were too still. Conserving energy. “Vedrus says you’re eating better.”
“I have to. I need the strength to complain about the broth.” Her gaze drifted back to the boys. “It’s the only time I don’t feel like an invalid. When they’re here, I’m just… the audience. The guardian of the spoons. It’s enough.”
The word hung in the air. Enough. It was a surrender and a declaration all at once. It terrified him.
Lucian bounded over, offering Alistair a spoon. “You can be the Kraken, Papa!”
Alistair took the proffered utensil, his large hand making it look like a toothpick. “The Kraken is a formidable foe. He doesn’t use cutlery.”
“This one does!” Lucian declared, and charged.
Later, after the nursemaids had corralled the exhausted boys—Ronan already drooping on a shoulder, Lucian protesting with his last breath—the room settled into a profound, echoing quiet. The aftermath looked like a particularly festive burglary: cushions askew, a pillow under the table, a lone wooden spoon by the fireplace.
Eleanor sank deeper into her pillows, the animation draining from her face like water from a basin. The performance was over.
Alistair remained, sorting the spoons from the cushions. “They exhaust you,” he stated, not looking at her.
“They save me,” she corrected softly, her eyes closed. “There’s a difference.”
He came to stand by the bed. “Eleanor.”
“Don’t,” she whispered. She knew what was coming. The gentle suggestion to limit their visits. The rational king’s solution to preserve the queen’s fragile resources.
He was silent for a long moment. He watched the shallow rise and fall of her chest. He saw the tiny lines of pain at the corners of her eyes that even sleep did not erase. He thought of the ledgers in his study, the maps, the troops he could move with a word. He could command armies, break sieges, dictate law. But he could not command her heart to beat more strongly. He could not mend this.
“What do you need?” he asked finally, the question stripped bare.
Her green eyes opened. They were clear, but so very tired. “I need tomorrow to be exactly like today. The broth, the boredom, the silence… and then that one hour of beautiful, perfect noise.” A single tear escaped, tracking a slow path down her temple into her hair. She didn’t bother to wipe it away. “That’s what I need, Alistair. Just that.”
He had no strategy for this. No plan of attack or defense. He could only bear witness. He reached out, his thumb brushing away the tear’s trail. His touch was lighter than it had ever been.
“Then it shall be,” he said, his voice rough. “The Royal Court of Wreckers is hereby granted perpetual charter. Daily sessions. Mandatory attendance.”
A faint, wobbly smile touched her lips. “Even on tax day?”
“Especially on tax day. Lord Gefroy could use a Kraken with a wooden spoon.”
She laughed then, a soft, broken sound that ended in a sigh. Her eyes fluttered closed again. The cost of the morning’s joy was being tallied, and the price was steep.
Alistair watched her until her breathing evened out into the shallow rhythm of sleep. He looked around the room, at the cheerful disarray. He picked up a stuffed cloth knight that had been wedged behind a curtain. It was missing an eye, a casualty of an earlier campaign.
He placed it carefully on the pillow next to her, a silent sentinel. Then he left, closing the door softly on the quiet and the lingering echoes of laughter, already planning how to rearrange his afternoon council to ensure he could be there tomorrow. Not to oversee, not to control. Just to be the Kraken.
He found Vedrus waiting for him in the study, a tumbler of amber liquid already poured and sitting on the edge of the desk. The physician’s hands were folded over the head of his cane, his face a landscape of weary lines. The sight sent a cold spike straight through Alistair’s gut. This wasn’t a routine update.
“Out with it,” Alistair said, closing the door harder than intended. He didn’t touch the drink.
Vedrus didn’t flinch. He’d seen kings in all their states. “She’s plateaued.”
“I have eyes. Tell me something I don’t know.” Alistair went to the window, his back to the room. He watched a hawk circling lazily over the distant training yards, free and effortless. He hated it.
“It’s more than a slow recovery, Alistair.” Vedrus’s voice was low, stripped of its usual dry humor. “The fever damaged her heart. We’ve discussed this. The weakness, the breathlessness… it’s not simply a lack of strength to be rebuilt. It’s the engine itself, compromised.”
Alistair turned, his blue eyes glacial. “You’ve given her tonics. Exercises. Rest. You said time.”
“And time has given us its answer.” Vedrus sighed, the sound heavy in the quiet room. “She may gain minor ground. A few more feet on a good day. Less reliance on the cordial for pain. But the Eleanor who could ride half a day, who could walk the battlements in a gale, who argued with you until dawn without losing a breath?” He shook his head slowly. “She is gone.”
The words landed with the quiet finality of a headsman’s axe. They echoed a fear Alistair had been beating back for weeks, a whisper he’d silenced by focusing on broth and spoon-counts and wooden Kraken. He’d watched her gather every ounce of her formidable will just to sit upright and smile at their sons. He’d seen the price she paid for that hour, the deep, silent collapse that followed.
“So this is it,” Alistair said, his voice dangerously flat. “A chair by the fire. A once-daily walk to the window. A life measured in spoonfuls and limited visitors.”
“It is a life,” Vedrus corrected gently, though his gaze was unflinching. “A different one. She will need care. Constant, careful management. Exertion beyond her new limits could bring on another crisis, one she might not weather.” He paused, letting the implication hang. “The prognosis is a fragile stability. Not recovery.”
Alistair finally picked up the tumbler, draining half its contents in one burning swallow. The liquor did nothing. “She’s twenty-three.”
“I know.”
“She has two sons who will only grow faster and more robust.” He pictured Lucian’s next birthday, the boy taller, stronger, barreling into a room. He saw Ronan taking his first steps, then running. He saw Eleanor watching from her island of pillows, a smile on her face and a terrible distance in her eyes. “How do I protect her from that? From their very existence?”
“You cannot wrap the world in velvet,” Vedrus said. “Nor would she want you to. You saw her today. That hour, as you call it, is her reason to fight. Deprive her of it, and you crush her spirit. And her spirit, right now, is the only thing keeping the rest of her going.”
Alistair set the glass down with a sharp click. He walked to the map of Eldoria spread on the large table, its edges weighted. He’d redrawn borders on this parchment, commanded armies across its symbols. He could solve any problem laid out here with force, or cunning, or gold.
This problem had no borders to push. No enemy to besiege. It was a slow, internal erosion, and he was powerless to stop it.
“What do you want from me, Vedrus?” The question was raw, stripped of all kingly pretense. “To accept this? To plan a future where my queen is a permanent invalid?”
The old physician stood, leaning heavily on his cane. “I want you to stop waiting for her to get better. She is as better as she is likely to be. See her as she is now, not as a broken version of what she was. The fight, from here, is about quality, not cure.” He moved toward the door, his steps slow. “She knows, Alistair. In her heart, she knows. She hasn’t said it because she sees what it does to you.”
Alistair stood alone in the silent study long after Vedrus had left. The hawk outside had vanished. The maps before him were suddenly meaningless. A fragile stability. The words circled in his head, morphing into a cage, a life sentence.
He thought of the stuffed knight on her pillow, its one missing eye. A symbol of cheerful, pretend violence in a world that had dealt her a very real, very permanent wound. He thought of her laugh, that soft, breathy sound he now understood was measured, parceled out from a dwindling reserve.
He left the study, his footsteps echoing in the corridor with a hollow, empty sound. He didn’t go to the council chamber. He walked back to their rooms, pushing the door open slowly.
She was asleep, just as he’d left her. The afternoon light painted her hair in streaks of copper and ash. The cloth knight stood guard by her cheek. Her chest rose and fell in that shallow, careful rhythm he now understood would never truly deepen.
He sat in the chair Lucian used for his ramparts, the wood still warm from the morning sun. He watched her sleep, and for the first time, he let the future unspool in his mind not as a temporary nightmare, but as a permanent reality. A lifetime of broth, of measured steps, of holding back the vibrant, hungry world from her doorstep. A lifetime of being the wall between her and everything that could hurt her, even the things she loved most.
His hands tightened on the arms of the chair. The realization didn’t bring resolution. It brought a cold, vast, and terrifying kind of rage.