Earlier that week, in the rather more luxurious corner of the grand Palace of Leon, the young King had been woken — yet again — by the sound of a noble lady weeping somewhere in his halls.
It was, all things considered, becoming a habit.
King Aldric the Second had come to power young, and not without difficulty. The coup attempt of the previous generation — the losing side of a civil war that had torn the nation of Panthera in two — had left its scars upon the court as surely as it had left its scars upon the history books. The embers of old grievances still glowed behind polite smiles at his banquets. Noble families who had once backed the wrong claimant now offered their daughters in place of their loyalty, and Aldric was expected, as kings invariably are, to accept both with equal grace.
Which made the current situation considerably more vexing than it might otherwise have been. Not to mention he had to make sure to strengthen and ensure the lineage of his own faction.
Which meant one thing.
Heirs.
"This is the third fiancée candidate you have driven away in tears, Orion." The King pressed two fingers to his temple, the metal piece on his head was certainly not helping the growing headache. "I am enormously fond of you — you know that I am — but at this rate you will drive a wedge between me and every noble family in the kingdom that happens to possess a daughter."
The Duke said nothing.
"That is to say: all of them."
"Your Majesty—"
"Drop the formality." Aldric cut him off with a wave of his hand. They had climbed the same trees as children. He had absolutely no patience for pretenses at this particular hour of the morning. "We grew up together. You may simply tell me what went wrong this time."
Duke Orion Vesper, the young Duke of the Northern Territories, the King's most trusted ally and the singular reason Aldric currently occupied his throne rather than a considerably less comfortable alternative, stood in the centre of the royal study and received this speech with the same expression he brought to most things: composed, and emotional range of a rock and a …bigger rock.
He was a striking figure, it must be said. The Northern bloodline ran clean and unmistakable through him, his hair carried that rare luminous trace of white that the Vesper family was known for, fine as the first frost of the season, and his eyes were the pale, clear blue of a winter lake at depth. Tall and well-proportioned, a master swordsman and a strategist of considerable reputation, he had guided his cousin's ascent to the throne through crisis and conspiracy alike, and had done so with a steadiness of nerve that lesser men could only admire from a distance.
He had, in short, every quality a Duke of the realm could reasonably be expected to possess.
Every quality, that is, save one.
Personality.
"I will issue a formal apology to the Marquessa and her family," said Orion, with no sign of remorse , still correct in every particular, and entirely missing the point.
The King stared at him.
Orion looked back, patient as winter, and waited.
Aldric closed his eyes.
This, he reflected, was going to require a rather different solution entirely.
"Orion." The King leaned forward in his chair. "The noble factions are still restless. Several of them, as we are both aware, would not be entirely displeased if the outcome of the civil war were revisited. I need to strengthen our position. I need alliances. I need heirs in the northern line." He paused, and then, with a dramatic sigh continued: "A daughter if you will, would do. Even a bastard, frankly, if you could manage to convince one single person in this entire kingdom—"
He gestured, with some feeling, toward the face of his cousin.
It was a remarkable face, in fairness. It was also, at this precise moment, as warmly expressive as the marble bust of an ancient general that Aldric kept in his east corridor. The general, at least, had the suggestion of a frown.
"—to agree with your…quirks." he finished, "in any reasonable span of time."
A beat of silence.
"I will do my utmost to accomplish your task, Your Majesty," said Orion.
The King looked at him for a long moment.
Then he looked at the ceiling.
It was at this point that he accepted that his cousin was a complete and utter lost cause.
An anti-romantic of the most thorough and committed variety. A man who could make a sincere promise to pursue a lover and make it sound like a formal declaration of border policy.
"Get out of my sight," Aldric said, pressing both hands over his face.
"Your Majesty?"
"Now, you emotionless ice sculpture."
***
Later that evening, the King of Panthera could be found in the royal bedchambers — though found is perhaps too dignified a word for a man who had just dramatically flung himself face-first across the mattress and buried his head in his wife's lap.
"My wife," he whined to her blanket, every last vestige of royal posture abandoned somewhere between the corridor and the door.
Queen Seraphine, who had, over the course of their marriage, developed a constitution admirably suited to this sort of entrance, lowered her papers by perhaps two inches and regarded him with the fond patience as she was the woman who had known this man since they were both small enough to hide in the same wardrobe.
"Was it Orion again?" she asked.
"Worse." Aldric rolled onto his back and gazed at the canopy above him. Gently, as though the gesture grounded him, he rested one hand on the soft curve of her newly pregnant belly — still their secret, his and the Duke's alone, tucked warm and private against the world for a little while longer.
"I called him to the capital expressly to meet eligible ladies. Three weeks. Three candidates. Three separate incidents of weeping in the corridor." He counted them on his fingers. "He is peculiar, yes — I have always known he was peculiar — but if only someone could get past the initial—"
"Awkwardness?" Seraphine offered.
"That," said Aldric, "and the rather formidable ice wall behind it." He sighed with great theatrical weight. "Alas. Not everyone is as fortunate as I am, to have had his greatest love sitting directly across from him at the childhood dinner table for fifteen years before either of them had the sense to say anything about it."
He beamed at her and deposited several very emphatic kisses along her cheek in demonstration of his current feelings on the matter.
Seraphine bore this with equanimity, though her mouth was curving. Their courtship had been, to put it charitably, eventful — a long comedy of misread letters, unfortunate timing, and two proud young people who were deeply in love and absolutely furious about it. That it had ended with a royal wedding and a small, wonderful secret growing quietly between them still struck Aldric, on certain evenings, as the finest piece of luck he had ever had.
Which was, of course, precisely why he could not leave Orion to his ice sculptures and his border reports and his complete indifference to the whole business of human warmth.
"I could have my alchemist brew something," Seraphine said, with a thoughtful look that her husband knew very well by now.
"...A what?"
"An apothecary's tonic. If he cannot get it up. Quite legitimate." Her eyes were perfectly innocent. "Though I suppose it would only be useful once he had actually managed to reach the point of—"
"Let us," said Aldric firmly, "set that particular thought aside for the moment."
She laughed and stroked his hair affectionately.
"I do wish him a love match," she said, returning to her papers. "One like ours. He deserves it, in his way."
The King, whose love language was undivided attention, immediately noticed that she was reading.
"What is that," he said, "that is so vastly more captivating than your husband?"
She kissed his pout with the brisk affection of a woman multitasking. "My maid brought it up this morning. Apparently it is all the talk among the commons."
"What is?"
"The story of that notorious rake — Fabian, they call him. Fabian the Rake." She shook her head mildly, entertained. "Another noblewoman's heart broken, another narrow escape. What is remarkable is how he continues to win the affections of perfectly well-mannered ladies of good standing, given that his reputation precedes him by approximately three city blocks."
The King went very still.
Then, slowly, a smile began to spread across his face, a slow mischievous one.
"A rake," said Aldric softly. "Is that so."
He stared at the canopy.
"...Aldric," said Seraphine, without looking up from her papers.
"Mm?"
"Whatever you are thinking, I want it noted that I had nothing to do with it."
The King smiled wider.