(Okie, goodnight)
Elia took a small sip of her wine before setting the glass aside. She would work slower on this one. Her body was relaxing already and there was no need to gulp this one down.
She curled around Romulus as she sat against the headboard. She stroked his hair, getting out the last of his tangles. "I've decided to sponsor Calvin. He'll be named the heir of my estate. He'll be set to inherit my land and my riches and whatever else I acquire. I have no intention to have children of my own. I would hate for my estate to fall into the hands of someone I didn't trust when I'm gone."
She said it so nonchalantly, that she just decided not to have children. She had no intention of marrying either. She couldn't imagine a man in the world wanting to marry her for her. And she knew better than to marry a man that was out for her riches and lands. So that stuck her with being single for the rest of her life. It didn't bother her. She would be free to do as she pleased without having anyone hold her back.
The Prince turned his head just slightly and rested it against Elitia. She was soft, and he was fully ready to admit he was more comfortable cuddling this way than trying to fall asleep on his own. He always had been, and Lear had been the one on many occasions to help the troubled boy to rest. He still was, asleep next to the Prince.
Romulus gave an approximation of a smile at the news. "That's very good to hear. Calvin is a good kid, and I thnk he and Lily are going to make it." He thought for a moment. Does that mean you've chosen an estate?" His voice was getting quieter, her fingers running through his hair quickly putting him to sleep.
He didn't comment on her child choices, because he couldn't blame her. There were several reasons he'd never intentionally brought a child into the world himself. All those women, and he'd been careful to father nothing. He'd been accused, certainly, people were always turning up trying to get a piece of the royal ife by claiming their child was his, but… Well, Vespasian blood was very dominant. Vespasian genetics are pretty obvious, even at birth, and none of the children had proven to be his once born.
So he knew, without even asking, why Elitia had closed herself off from that option.
"I think so too." Elia kissed his head when he leaned on her. "And I trust them. I have no doubt they will grow up to be good people. I wouldn't trust my estate with anyone else." She was quiet for a moment as she played with his hair. "Yes, I did. But we can talk about it later, darling. You need to sleep."
She would watch over him for as long as he was injured. She knew she told Lear they could watch him shifts but she would let the man sleep for as long as possible. He needed it. She would be quiet when waking Romulus and make sure he was quiet as well, so not to wake the man.
Part of her questioned if they had romantic feelings for each other. They close. Very close. And they were sleeping on the bed next to each other as if they had done it a thousand times. She didn't find herself jealous or angry. She only hoped there was enough room her in there. She understood that Lear couldn't be pshycial, not with what he had been through. She wouldn't question him or pressure him. As long as he was happy, that's all she cared about.
Romulus wanted to talk about it, but he was finding his thoughts increasingly harder to order the more she soothed him into sleep.
He was out within a couple minutes.
He did notice her glance at Lear, and he wondered if she was wondering what so many others had wondered. He and Lear had been at the center of a lot of rumors, and if it hadn't been for his conflicting reputation as a man with good taste in whore-houses, he was pretty sure most of the court would consider them together.
I'll have to tell her some stories when I wake up…
He slept fitfully, his addled brain filling in some confusing dreams. Not nightmares, just… not peaceful. He didn't move too much, but a couple of times he twitched, and that hurt. He never fully came awake, but in his sleep, he definitely leaned further into Elitia for comfort.
Elia had gotten up momentarily at one point to grab a book from Lear's library before settling back into bed and pulling Romulus even closer. She opened the book and began reading, occasionally sipping on her wine, but mostly stroking Romulus's hair.
When the hour was up, she gently shook the prince awake, trying not to wake Lear as well.
"I know, darling, but I need you to wake for me. Let me see those pretty eyes of yours and I'll let you go back to sleep shortly." She whispered in his ear and kissed his cheek.
Romulus twitched awake, and groaned as his ribs complained about the movement. The swelling around his eye had gone down quite a bit, and he could open it finally. It was badly bruised, but he could see it of it, so that was good.
"Pretty eyes?" He asked sleepily. He couldn't tell if she was serious or if she was mocking his current ugly-eyed status.
Elia smiled down at him. "Yes, your beautiful blue eyes that are trying to hide from me."
She was happy his other eye was able to open. That was a good sign. The swelling was going down and he was starting to heal better than she had expected. She hoped this meant by morning his eyes would react to light as they should and not as they were.
"How are you feeling, darling?"
Romulus had to smile at that. The crushing weight of expectations, the fate of a nation on his shoulders, his entire body in pain, and still…
She likes my eyes!
He swallowed before he answered her question. "Everything hurts, and I'm dreaming funny." His words were slurring badly, whether from sleep or his head, he couldn't tell. "Other than that, not worse."
He frowned just a little. Before he'd gone to sleep, there'd been something on his mind he'd wanted to tell her…
He couldn't remember.
Elia matched his smile. She kissed his forehead, his cheek. She would have kissed him more but she didn't want to cause him more pain.
"Aw, darling. What are you dreaming about?" She asked him. "I know you hurt. It will get better. You'll just need to sleep it off."
Not that he could really sleep due to being concussed. After the first twenty four hours, he should be fine to sleep as usual.
Romulus tried to kiss her back, but he couldn't crane his neck at that angle. He settled for kissing her shoulder, which he happened to be able to reach.
He nodded. "I'll be alright. Just gotta heal…" He was quiet for a moment.
"I keep dreaming my mother is alive." His voice was very quiet. "She's been dead 11 years, and I know that, and when she's alive in my dreams, its happy but… there's something unsettling about it, because I want it to be real, but I know it's not…"
"Oh darling." Elia placed her hand on his cheek gently. "I'm sorry, darling. I know what you mean. Enjoy your dreams of her, it is the last that you have. Because when you wake, she won't be here. It's awful but I am here for you if you need me."
She understood loss and mourning more than most. She had lost her entire family, her titles, her life. In the beginning, she used ti have terrible dreams about it. She had since then buried those memories deep within her. She was worried what being at the palace would do to her. She didn't want to remember that night. She didn't want to remember any of it. She was scared that those memories would surface being there and around the man that killed her family.
Romulus had an odd look on his face. "I try to enjoy them, but… I have a hard time doing that. I have ever since… well. A while." He trailed the sentence off like there was more to say, but he didn't want to say it. He knew Elitia would understand the weight of grief, and he didn't want to ask her to delve into her experiences to help him.
He suddenly remembered something. "Oh! You were looking at Lear funny, earlier, just before I fell asleep." A small smile quirked his lips upward. "Do you have questions about us?"
Elia oy nodded at him and didn't press the issue any further. She wouldn't pressure him to talk about something he didn't want to speak about. Grief was hard to talk about. Especially to someone so new to your life.
She chuckled at his question." If I didn't know you two well enough, I would. And no matter what, it's none of my business what the two of you do." It wasn't for her to question their relationship nor did she care too. It didn't bother her no matter what the answer was. She had been with multiple men and women at once as well, so again, it didn't bother her. She quite liked being with multiple people sometimes. But she knew that wasn't Lear.
Romulus chuckled a little. "You wouldn't be the first." He glanced over at Lear, the tall, thin, dark haired man his opposite in so many ways. "Our relationship was complicated at first." He looked back at her and smiled a bit. "Much like ours, actually." His head twinged, and he paused, closing his eyes to keep the dzziness away, before continuing.
"I had just turned 17 when we met. He was at a brothel, had been sold there after a long time of that life. I went in, as I had been doing for 2 years, looking to check on the practices of the place and close it down if it was bad. It was awful, and I shut it down the next day, as soon as I could. But." He chuckled quietly. "I'd never found myself attracted to a man before. It just wasn't on my radar. Maybe I had been, but never in a context where I had a chance to think about it, and certainly not with anyone where I could have expressed it." He looked back at Lear, sleeping quietly next to him.
"Lear was the first. For me, he brought a side of me to life that I didn't know I had. He was the start. For him, though, I was the end. We were together that night, and he's never slept with anybody since. Including me again. Just the once." He looked up at her. "So despite what anybody tells you, all the nights he spends in here are spent almost exactly like this."
Elia glanced at the man sleeping beside then as he talked. She had a sad smile on her face. She understood what he meant. Her life in the brothel had been better than others, though still not great. She understood to a certain point what it was like, though she was never sold. She was tricked into the life.
"I'm happy you have both found solace and friendship with each other. I'm sure if he ever decided to be with someone again, you would be his first choice." She said it with no jealousy. She wasn't a possessive person. And Romulus wasn't hers. "Just let me know if you want a third. I would be happy to join."
Romulus chuckled quietly. "I won't pretend we've never been romantic, but… well. He's my dearest friend in the world, and neither of us is planning on jeopardizing that for a fling. We draw comfort from each other, and his presence helps me think. Probably because he's so smart." He looked up at her tiredly. "And I don't know if I'd want that threesome, I'd feel so stupid stuck between you two brains." He was drifting, and that made him feel bad, physically and emotionally. He needed to sleep.
"You're not stupid, darling. You're one of the smartest people I know. Far smarter than me. I know books. I know history. But I don't know much more than that. Don't sell yourself short." Elia stroked his hair back and kissed him sweetly. "Go back to sleep, my darling. I'll wake you again in an hour or so. You will feel better then."
It wasn't hard to notice he was drifting off. It looked like he could barely keep his eyes open. She just smiled softly at him and prayed he would have sweet dreams.
Romulus laughed, then groaned as the noise hurt his ribs. "I'm not smart, it's why I have Lear do all my thinking for me. And when I do make decisions, garbage like what happened in Calegon goes down." He shook his head slightly. "No, best for me to keep the dumb reputation in place."
Her gentleness lulled him back to sleep, but the conversation and the knowledge he'd have to be awake again soon had caused his brow to furrow.
He did not have sweet dreams.
Elia frowned as he spoke of himself in such a way. Romulus was very smart and brave. Sometimes things didn't always work out. Mistakes happened, and unforeseeable things happened, that changed the desired outcome. But that didn't mean he was any less smart. She would have said as much but he had already fallen back asleep. She wasn't sure if she could convince him but she would do everything in her power to make him realize that this was not his fault. It was an accident. A tragic one, but one that could not be avoided.
Her fingers soothed his brow, trying to get it to relax. She picked her book up again and began to read where she had left off. She sipped her wine here and there until the glass was empty.
The hour passed easily.
Romulus eventually stopped frowning, although he continued to twitch every so often. He was still dreaming weird things, some about his mother, some about his future, anything his addled mind decided to throw together.
Lear slept well, still as the dead, as he always did next to Romulus. He still nightmared occasionally, but never when the Prince was around.
He woke up just before the hour mark, stirring and sitting up, blinking in the lantern light.
"Time to wake him up soon, right?" He looked over at Elia. "Ah, you've found my library. What did you decide to amuse yourself with?"
Elia looked over as Lear woke up. She placed her makeshift book mark in the pages and closed it. "A romance. I never pegged you for that sort of thing." She teased.
She took a look at the time then nodded. "Yeah, just about. He said he was doing a little bit better earlier but with having his sleep interrupted every hour, only so much can happen."
She stroked the prince's hair softly. "I'm worried about him. He thinks Calegon is completely his fault. He won't listen to me about it."
Lear gave her a tired wink. "You'll be surprised to learn, I do have a heart."
He nodded at her words about the Prince. "He'll heal better once he can sleep a bunch."
He looked down at Romulus, his face pensive.
"Well… it is his fault, in a way." He looked up at her. "That's the responsibility of royalty. Most awful thing I had to learn as his Lieutenant was how many people live and die on his commands." His face softened a bit.
"But even if that wasn't the case, of course he blames himself. He always does. I'll wager he's brought up his mother at some point today?"
Elia nodded. She looked down at the prince before shifting her focus to Lear. "Yes, he did. He said he kept dreaming of her and it felt off. Does this normally happen when something like this has happened?"
She didn't touch on the other part. She didn't need to get into an argument, especially not with Romulus trying to heal. She didnt see it as his fault. It wasn't something he could predict and he had his hands full with all the kids. It was a tragic accident, but it was an accident. He wasn't stupid. He was smart and calculated. He missed someone, and that unfortunately led to the city burning down. Just because that specific event led to the city burning didn't mean there couldn't have been something else that would have led to the same thing happening.
Lear nodded slowly, looking down at Romulus with a sad look on his face.
"He doesn't always dream about her, that's likely the head trauma, but… he always thinks about her when he feels excessively guilty about something else." He thought for a moment, before looking up at Elia.
"I'm going to tell you, because if you're going to help, you need to know this." He kept his voice lowered, not really wanting Romulus to wake in the middle of this story.
"When the King came through and took over, Romulus was 13. He didn't approve, though he couldn't have explained why exactly at 13. He just knew it felt wrong. So he wasn't excited when his father came back and told him they had a country now. He told his father that killing all those people was wrong, and they should stay in their place, and serve his uncle, the King in Harad. His father got angry at Romulus's lack of ferocity, and wanted to work the mercy out of him. He told Romulus if he was going to act like a weak woman, he'd make him a weak woman." Lear paused, his jaw tightening.
"He was in the process of emasculating, castrating, whatever you want to call it… he was holding down Romulus and taking a knife to his manhhod when his mother burst into the room and pulled him off. His father backhanded her, just once, before storming out. She seemed ok, but a little over 6 months later, she died." Lear shook his head.
"Romulus didn't process that and come to understand that his father had killed his mother for a long time. He was 20 before he put all the pieces together and saw the full picture." Lear reached down and traced the Prince's cast.
"He's blamed himself for her death ever since, saying if he hadn't been so weak and in need of saving, she wouldn't be dead."
Elia inhaled sharply and looked down at her prince. Her poor prince. He had been through so much already. Casteration? What kind of a father would want to mutilate his own child like that? Her heart broke for him to more that she learned about him and his past.
"No father should ever treat his child like that. And it wasn't his fault. How can he blame himself for such a thing? It's all his father."
She didn't understand why he couldn't see it. That everything that went wrong was because of his father. The king.
"You're right. No father ever should." Lear said quietly. "But the King did, and does. Which, by the way." He glanced at her. "You threatened Romulus once about cutting off his balls and wearing them like a trophy. This is why he reacted so strongly." He was thinking back to a couple nights ago, outside the meeting tent. She'd made an idle remark and Romulus had actually put a hand on her, for once. Never a good sign.
"As for why he blames himself… the Prince has never had good psychology. Would you, growing up with his monstrous father as yours? So there's that. But." He sighed. "It's also the fact that if he ever fully laid the blame for these things at his father's feet, he's afraid it would outweigh his love for his father, and he'd kill him outright. Romulus probably could… but then he'd plunge at least two countries into war. Venia, because his father's allies would come after him, and the Venians, if they didn't pick sides and oin the fighting, would get caught in the middle. Maybe one of them would make a power grab, which would make things worse. On top of that, Harad would get involved, because his uncle the King wouldn't be able to just overlook his nephew killing his brother. He would have to come after Romulus, and that would be a terrible outcome." He shook his head.
"So he copes this way. Unhealthy, but it keeps his world from war."
Elia looked down at her lap. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes briefly before reopening them. "War might be inevitable. The king cannot continue to be in power. There must be something we can do."
She did not care what happened to her as long as Romulus was safe. That was a scary revelation, that he meant that much ti her she was willing to throw her life away. She knew he would be a good king, a great one. They only needed to get him on the throne.
Lear looked at her, his expression becoming that hawkish expression. "Be careful what you say. Not because I necessarily oppose the ideas, but because I have sworn allegiance to the Prince and cannot hide what yo usay to me from him." He watched her levelly for a moment.
"But I don' disagree with you. War might be inevitable, especially if the king were to die of causes other than old age… But why do you think Romulus has been trying to gain allies and put his own handpicked people in positions of power for 10 years?" He leaned towards her. "This is why he wants people back in nobility, because if it comes to it, he doesn't want to have to fight the whole court, just those who support his father, and while the Venian nobles may not like him, hey will not fight him to avenge his father."
Romulus stirred just then, and Lear cut himself off.
Elia only nodded. There was more she wanted to say but the prince had started to stir. She set her book aside on the bedside table. She leaned down and kissed Romulus' forehead. "Wake for me, darling. I need to see those pretty eyes of yours."
She repeated the phrase she had spoken an hour earlier to wake him. She could tell how much he liked it. It pleased her to please him. She pulled away just far enough to look at his face. She glanced at Lear briefly before looking down at the prince.
Lear nodded at her, tabling the conversation for now. He smiled at her compliment to Romulus. "he does have the prettiest eyes, but the ladies never comment on that. They're usually too busy noticing other features of his." He grinned down at the sleepily blinking Prince.
"Usually the scars." Romulus mumbled, smiling up at Elitia. "I'm glad you like my eyes, though." He would have squirmed if he hadn't hurt so badl and been so tired.
"Are you going to sleep now that Lear's awake?"
