The Advisor's Queen

The Queen had been interrupted. Prince Ilgnuit’s swift transition from supporting the wilted Advisor to flying to find his mother had been most admirable. Within minutes, he had somehow managed to perform a chronological combination of depositing the Advisor safely in the Infirmary, boldly invading his mother’s space, drawing her out of her chambers and bringing her directly to some sort of explanation. Albeit, a limited one – the boy’s perspective was moderately more innocent than the truth.

Heads dropped and skirts spread in curtseys as the Queen of Nharati regally sped towards her confidante, hands reaching to gather one of the black gloves of the unconscious woman laid in stark, black-habit contrast against the white sheets she’d been laid upon. “Mere, my darling,” she murmured, resolutely setting herself to the bedside.

The Advisor had not woken for nurses or servants – no shaking, foul smoke or cold water would rouse her from her wilful sleeping. The voice of the Queen, however, had an effect like a pail full of ice upturned, and not a moment later, dark russet eyes half-opened.

It took a moment. A long one, at that. A moment of delirious confusion, and then it registered. She wasn’t dead. In fact, she was very much alive. “Danele,” she acknowledged, although her voice barely managed a whisper. Her eyes closed slowly, facing the simple reality that it had all been real. “It wasn’t a dream, then.” As if it might explain, she lifted her free hand feebly from the bed, and offered her Majesty a piece of slightly crumpled parchment.

Before taking the letter, the Queen shot the Infirmary staff a very firm, ‘get out, now!’ gaze, and each of them scrambled to leave after hastily made curtseys and nods. After they had gone, her delicate fingers set to opening the letter itself.

Eave, my love,
I have decided that it must be over. Please do not break. Be assured that I love you, as I always have, but losing you has bereft me. I never wanted to inflict this on you. I don’t have the strength to carry on the way you have, so bravely, without him. For I do love you as you loved him – to be without you is as a world without sight, and sound, and taste. I can’t live in a world colder than death itself.
And so, I have chosen death. If it makes it easier, hate me, and loathe me for my abandoning of you.
I wish you no more anguish. Know that I will go on loving you even in death, and that my last breath was yours, and my last thoughts of you.
- Verne


She sighed, and refolded the paper to return it to the Advisor. Her arms moved out to reach for her, and she drew her into a protective cradle against her bodice. Mereavus put up no resistance; in fact, her weary form seemed to slot together with the Queen’s quite nicely. “Come here, my friend,” she murmured, settling her arms around the other woman. “I am so very sorry.”

Mereavus’ cheek went to lean against the nearby shoulder, the first wave of tears coming to dampen the fabric. “Would you forgive me if I did the same?” she asked, even more quietly than the rest of her utterances thus far.

The Queen’s hand brushed itself across the Advisor’s cheek, and she lowered a kiss to her forehead. “No,” she answered. “I would never forgive you. This is not your doing, my dear, nor your fault.” Despite her words, a slow shudder hit her Majesty at the thought of just how Mereavus must have felt on encountering that hanging body, and she naturally turned to rocking her gently. “You will survive, you will go on, for you are much stronger than that.”

Mereavus only seemed to wilt further at that negative answer to her hope of salvation in death, limbs turning further lax in a hopeless fade. “I left her,” she admitted, presently finding her own pulse the most infuriating, damnable sensation possible. “It will always be my fault. Had I stayed, she’d still be here. Had I been that bit stronger, and just let her have what she wanted.” That particular grief seemed to come in a wave, and she turned her face further into the Queen, only furthering that developing darker patch where her tears pooled into cloth. Mimicry of the very same position that had been adopted in reverse so many times – so many moments of pain between the two women, and so many switches between comforter and comforted.

The Queen’s arms squeezed around the Advisor, lips lowering a second time to her forehead. “Hush,” she uttered. “You had no way of knowing your Verne would do this to herself. How could you? You thought you were doing the right thing for both of you, no one could fault you for that.” She sighed lightly, hand lifting to push her fingers through the mahogany half-curls that had become slightly loose with distress and collapse. “You will not want to hear this, but you will get over this, my darling. No, you will never forget it, but you will move forward. Then, when you’re least expecting it, someone will breeze into your life, offering you the love and companionship that you truly deserve. Your relationship with Verne was destructive, and if you look deep within, you will know I speak the truth.”

Mereavus nodded slowly, having been caught on that awful word ‘was’. There no longer was an ‘is’; ‘is’ had become such a rare word in her rapidly emptying life. “I know,” she agreed, pausing in an attempt to suppress the lump rising in her throat. She failed, however, and a broken, “But it’s still killing me,” wailed its way past her lips. She began to sob rather than simply permit tears, spine bending fractionally in small jolts that rang with despair. No physical death; just a metaphorical one.

“Cry it out, darling,” the Queen encouraged. “Go ahead and scream if it helps. You have suffered loss, and you need to deal with it in your own way.”

Long into the night, Danele simply sat holding her Advisor – even once she passed back into the relief of unconsciousness, she’d not leave. She remained clung to in the midst of dark sleep, and bore her own ache; though rather, the ache of one friend for another, and a heart so broken it cut others in its fragmenting.